When times are tough, smart sellers diversify. For many sellers on eBay and other auction sites, having an online storefront is the ultimate goal. Yet, it can be expensive to pay for hosting, payment processing, domain names, and other fees associated with running a business online.
Enter BuyItSellIt.com, an ecommerce storefront hosting service that seems tailor made for the current recession. For no monthly fee, budding entrepreneurs can set up a storefront complete with a shopping cart and accept payments from buyers through PayPal Pro, Google Payments, or a merchant account they set up with a bank and with the payment gateway Authorize.net. If they upgrade to a monthly fee of just $4.95, they get domain name hosting and the ability to customize their site. They can also sell digital files such as MP3s and e-books for additional fees that start at $9.95 per month.
BuyItSellIt (or BISI, as it's often called on the site's discussion boards) was purchased about a year ago by the auction service provider InkFrog. InkFrog's co-owner, Tomas Salas, said the economic downtown was a factor in the purchase. "We were thinking about the recession," he says from his office in Saginaw, Michigan. "InkFrog deals primarily with eBay, and our customers often say they are looking for other venues to sell on. We don't want to compete with eBay, but give people another venue where they can sell their products and have an online storefront."
You don't have to be an InkFrog customer or an eBay seller to open a storefront on BISI. The free version gives you a URL that takes the form http://mybusinessname.mybisi.com. You design your store using one of the site's Web page design templates. You can post an unlimited number of products in your store. All of your listings are automatically posted to Google Base for greater exposure.
How can BISI thrive by offering so much for free? "We get a lot of people converting to domain accounts for $4.95 a month," explains Salas. "If they know some HTML and scripting, they can completely customize their store. We also get referrals from third-party services like GoDaddy.com and eBay." The paid version of BISI includes 25MB of storage space for graphics and other files, and the ability to integrate CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and other technologies into the site. Sellers also get 2GB of storage space if they upgrade to deliver digital content such as audio files. The customizable version of BISI has grown so popular, in fact, that a niche business has developed: some BISI sellers offer their services as designers for other sellers. Since BISI opened in November 2007, it's grown to 11,000 members.
The thirty-year-old Salas has a background in programming and technology. He started out "doing little Websites here and there." He created an auction service called SpareDollar in 2001 for his wife, Kate.
"My wife was selling on eBay - mostly clothing and odds and ends - and we were looking at auction management tools that were pretty expensive. I had some programming experience, so I wrote SpareDollar for her to use." He and Kate have one nine-year-old daughter.
Eventually, Salas merged SpareDollar with InkFrog. The biggest challenge in running such auction services, he says, is "the changes that eBay has thrown at us throughout the years. We have always coped with them pretty well."
Among Salas's future goals for BISI is the addition of more payment options. Another is the option for sellers to create a newsletter that they can send to their customer mailing list. These sorts of features frequently come from user requests, which go directly to Salas. He still works hands-on, doing all the programming for BISI. As a result, he often works long hours, but he loves the direct contact with customers. "If they have a suggestion, it can be implemented in a day or two."
Recent improvements include: International Currency Support; Product Cross Promotion; Amazon Payments Support; Customizable Checkout; Customer Accounts Manager; Multi-Option Variants; Mad Mimi Email Marketing Integration; Enhanced XML Bulk Upload/Edit; Expanded Coupon Functionality. Also coming very soon, Salas said, is support for ProPay payments.
Looking ahead, Salas foresees that ecommerce sales done through one's own Web site will eventually become more popular than online auctions. "People are always looking to have their own standalone site," he says. "The problem is that you have to be dedicated and promote it yourself, and you won't have as much traffic as you would on eBay. But if you put the time and effort into marketing your own site, people will come to it."
