Deb Johnson and Ernie Campbell began selling driftwood on eBay 3 years ago. They created a website to get their name out and drive traffic to their listings on eBay.

Last year they enabled the site to accept payments, but mainly used it for processing credit card transactions on their eBay sales (they don't accept PayPal). The couple said they became Powersellers last year with a consistent 100% sell-through rate (60+ core auctions per month), and business was booming.

"More and more people started emailing us and wanting to purchase our wood outright," Deb said. So in February 2007, they started their website over from scratch with a freshly installed ZenCart shopping-cart system. They completely revamped everything and started stocking it with driftwood and river rocks.

Deb said in comparing her eBay sales to those on her own website, everything is the same as far as product cost, time invested, etc. "The main difference is my eBay fees were approximately $150 (now $50) per month, while my hosting fees are only $24.95. (This is amount could be even less if I had selected a lower cost hosting package)." In April 2007, Deb and Ernie calculated sales for the previous 30 days and discovered 25% came from eBay while 75% came from their own website.

As website sales become more important to Deb and Ernie, they are looking for feedback on how to improve their site.

Deb said, "The main thing we'd probably like feedback on is there anything that turns people off and makes you want to leave. Also, if there is any information they would like to see on the site that we haven't included."

Please visit the Old River Rat Driftwood website (http://www.adriftwood.com) and post your feedback on the AuctionBytes forums here:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=22318

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