Many sellers have made eBay their full-time occupation and many more are joining its ranks. eBay is the biggest auction site on the Internet. Writing an article about selling on the Internet that doesn't mention eBay is like discussing the American Revolution without mentioning the Declaration of Independence.

Some sellers count on eBay for 100% of their sales. But is this a smart way to do business?

I have only been selling on the Net for two years. My rating on eBay is only 81 (that's 84 positives, no negatives, no neutrals). But I still sell at least ten items directly off my site for every item I sell on eBay. eBay auctions should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. Your goal is to get customers, not just close auctions.

The risks of relying on eBay sales exclusively are many: eBay outages that take down auctions; vacation periods where bidding slows down; poor economic conditions causing final values to be lower; and questionable rules that cause auctions to be cancelled.

Start deducting the listing fees for the items that didn't sell. Now throw in a deadbeat or two. Even worse, throw in a customer who returns the item later or, in an ever-increasing scam, pays with a payment service and does a charge back a few months later.

eBay is a good way to start out, a good way to dispose of excess inventory and a good way to get your name out there and keep fishing for new customers. But it should NOT be used exclusively to build a business.

Getting a Web Site Before you sell on eBay, I strongly suggest that you get yourself a Web site. It does not have to be elaborate nor does it need instant buy buttons with credit card acceptance. It should have photos of your goods, pricing and an email link. Though you may be on a tight budget, do not skimp by using one of those free Web sites that puts pop-up ads on top of your page. This is a mistake I made and one I still regret.

When you own a brick-and-mortar store (called B&M on the boards), customers can form an opinion of you by the size of the store, location, inventory, etc. The same is true of a virtual store. A free Web site implies a seller who has not yet made the commitment to stick around. It indicates that he will do anything to cut his costs, no matter how unprofessional it makes him appear. On top of that, the savings are minimal. A real domain name like johnsvideo.com along with a Web site and your own email ID such as sales@johnsvideo.com will only cost about $10 a month. Since I got my own Web site over a year ago, I easily recover this expense every single day in increased sales.

There are three steps to setting up your Web site. First, you need to register your domain name. Next, you have to find a server to host your domain. Last, you have to actually build the site. This once-complicated process has become much easier. Now many services will both register your domain and host your site.

Microsoft Word and Corel Wordperfect both let you create a file and save it as a Web page. This is fine for simple pages. If you want to do something more elaborate, there are many Web sites that offer free lessons on HTML. If you want to create a database of the items you sell, you will have to learn javascript, cgi and ASP. If you use a database and some programming, your Web pages describing your items and prices are built dynamically right off your database. Visit my site and check out the links on the left for the online catalog and item categories as an example.

Where should you go to get your Web site? There are many services out there, some good and some bad. I have only used one service. If you put up a message in our forum at http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewforum.php?forum=7&28, asking for reliable Web Hosting services, you may get some good recommendations. It is important for you to decide what services you will need of your host. Some hosts offer the site at a low cost but provide no real support. Others charge more but provide shopping carts and credit card processing.

I chose a Web host run by a consulting firm that offered some assistance with setting up ASP pages with database and email lists. It was a bargain for $10 a month. I highly recommend the service I use - contact sruli@shaffren.com for more information.

Now that I have my own Web site and see how much business it brings in, I regret not having done so sooner. I regret not having had one when an article of mine was published in an Internet newsletter. My free Web site got thousands of hits from the article. A number of people emailed me. Many wrote to say that they found the article very professional and well-written and then visited my Web site, only to be disappointed by its amateurish appearance and annoying pop-up ads. I had achieved the goal of a Webmaster - an active site with thousands of hits - only to lose it all in order to save $10 a month.

Your Web site speaks for you. Do it right before the visitors arrive. NOTE: See Part 1 of Izzy's story at