How do you reach potential buyers outside of eBay, including the millions who read "Web 2.0" content like blogs and RSS feeds? You can create a blog and include a text link to one of your sales in your blog post. But eBay sellers know how important it is to include a photo. A simple text link doesn't induce anyone to click and shop.
I noticed that Skip McGrath, author and eBay PowerSeller, uses MyST Blogsite to post miniature eBay sales items alongside his own blog (http://blog.skipmcgrath.com>. "I wasn't getting any traction with my blog on Blogspot," he says. "I never got over 100 visitors a day and rarely made the first page of Google search results. Within two months of launching my Blogsite blog, I was getting four times the traffic. I am regularly indexed on Google in the first couple of pages."
Skip uses MyST Blogsite for eBay (http://blogsite.com), a blog creation and management platform. It lets eBay sellers advertise selected items alongside their blog posts in a box complete with a photo of the item and a link to the description on eBay. The eBay listings, combined with other ways to actively gather content, help improve your blog's search placement, which brings you more potential customers.
However, MyST Blogsite doesn't come cheap. The basic service carries a $199 setup fee and a monthly fee of $199. Customization fees can run much higher, and some high profile Web sites use MyST Blogsite to provide news and commentary as well as eBay sales listings. Visit a Web site devoted to the rock group The Who called The Who on Virtual Ticket.tv (http://thewho.virtualticket.tv), and you'll see a boxed content "tower" off to the side containing The Who memorabilia and other items that are up for sale on eBay.
Another, much cheaper, option is to use a blogging platform that can be hosted on your own domain, and use it in conjunction with eBay's Editor Kit (http://affiliates.ebay.com/odcs/custom.htm?template=EditorKit) or eBay's recently launched To Go widget (http://togo.ebay.com). A service like Typepad allows you to host your blog on your own website, and Typepad pricing maxes out at $14.95/month for an unlimited number of blogs and 1GB of storage and 10GB of bandwidth per month (http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/pricing).
Skip McGrath said his blog does generate revenue through eBay sales. "I use the blog not only for my auctions, but to drive traffic to my Web site, and that really does work." Because he attaches his eBay affiliate ID to each item he promotes on his blog, he can track sales: in March 2007, for instance, he sold 11 items through his blog at an average of $97 each, plus a $700 photo lighting kit.
The key to making any blog work is adding fresh content on a regular basis. "I try to post every day, but usually only manage about five times per week," McGrath comments. "I do notice that the more often I post, the more traffic I get."
Because blog posts can be online for a long period of time, McGrath makes sure to use eBay store listings for his blog ads. Besides selling those items, his blog includes a link to all of his eBay auctions. Visitors who click on that link go to eBay where they view a list of McGrath's current auction listings. But his blog page is updated far more frequently than that. MyST Blogsite converts the content to an RSS feed automatically every 24 hours. The service also automatically gathers relevant news headlines; this serves as a stream of frequently updated content, which ensures better placement on Google and other search engines.
These days, potential buyers don't simply surf the Web. They read blogs, they use news services, and they subscribe to content using an RSS newsreader. To reach these consumers, normally, you need to know some XML or at least to convert your content to RSS so it can be syndicated. Blogsite gives enterprising sellers a way to reach all of these tech-savvy customers.
Services such as Blogger continue to offer services for free, and if that's all you need, sticking to the basics will make your life more simple. But blogging platforms that allow you to publish on your own website will give you all you get at that level and go several steps further.
Note from the Editor: I noticed another author and eBay seller, Julia Wilkinson, uses Typepad and a widget called Postapp.com (http://www.postapp.com/ebay/widget.jsp). You can view her blog at http://juliawww.typepad.com/bidbits, her eBay listings appear in the left column.
