Selling on eBay or creating an online store on Shopify is a question of two business models that come with their own advantages and disadvantages. With suppliers secured, product picked and your online business legitimately established; it’s time to start selling. You need to decide on how to get your products in front of your customers. Although there are several sales options available, you are most likely to choose one or a combination of selling on your own store, Shopify or Amazon. Here are some of the things that you should consider when it comes to making this decision.
Driving traffic– Shopify is perhaps one of the most convenient online stores to get up and to run. However, you need to understand that having a nice looking store does not guarantee traffic. Investing time and effort in marketing your store and bringing in traffic is, therefore, a very important thing to do. Thankfully, there are several ways that you can use to bring in customers even though they take time. On the contrary, on eBay, there is always traffic and a ready market looking for products. Since eBay spends millions of dollars to drive traffic, you can significantly benefit from this by listing your products.
Customer retention- The biggest disadvantage of selling only on eBay is that you are not building any relationship with your customers. eBay is basically a marketplace where customers are driven by finding the product from a seller whom they can trust. Shopify, on the other hand, is a retail store in which customers are attracted by trusting the store and by buying the products from the retailer whom they trust.
Payment and fees- If you use their Shopify payments, Shopify cheapest plan starts at $29/month for an online store. If you use there Shopify payments method, then no other fees are applied. This basic plan comes with the ability to list an unlimited amount of products in your store. Although eBay does not have a monthly fee, they have what’s called final value fee. This means they will charge you for each product that you want to list. They will also charge you some percentage based on the product that you’ve sold. In addition, they have some fees for choosing special duration listings, multiple categories, and other advanced charges.
Dropshipping on eBay
As the world’s’ largest online store for selling physical products online, eBay is a site that most people know too well. Here are some of the reasons why you might want to consider or avoid them.
Pros
Easy to get started- With eBay you can immediately join and start listing your products. Once you’ve created an account and listed your products, you are already in business
Access to a broad audience- When you list your work on eBay you will have access to many online buyers who usually frequent the site. Since many people will see your listing, you are likely to get a decent price for your products.
Less marketing involved- Since you depend on the platform for marketing, you don’t have to spend any cash on paid traffic, SEO or marketing.
Cons
Fees- The most significant disadvantage of this site is the kind of fees that you have to pay. The most notable one is the success fee that’s placed at 10% or even higher.
Constant monitoring and listing- As an auction site, eBay needs constant monitoring and relisting. Although you can use some tools to automate this process, it’s still not as straightforward as a static product on sale at your own site.
You cannot customize your platform- Since product listing should follow eBay templates, it’s very difficult to customize them the way you want.
Long term customers- Although you may have a few repeat customers, most customers are unlikely to buy from you again.
Dropshipping on Shopify
The alternative to selling on sites such as eBay is selling your own products on Shopify. If you are interested in building a successful dropping business, then this is the most preferred method.
Pros
More control- With Shopify you get to create an environment that’s conducive for the products you are selling. You can customize the layout and the look and create Custom product pages that are optimized. For details, click here.
Easy design- Shopify makes it very easy for you to build your own ecommerce business. You just need to choose a store design, make any customizations that you want, add products and have a getaway payment.
Mobile ready- Unlike eBay, if you choose to build your online store with Shopify, your store will likely to be very responsive. This means it will look great on mobile or iPad.
No third part fees- As compared to eBay, you won’t have to pay a percentage of some money on every sale that you make.
Cons
Less traffic- With your own Shopify site, you are responsible for driving your own traffic. Through SEO, marketing and paid advertising
So, when getting started on dropshipping, you can either do both or choose the one that suits your needs. Although eBay is an excellent way to start getting sales in the short term if you want to build momentum and create a long-lasting relationship with your customers choose Shopify.
