Learning how to flip products on Amazon or eBay can be an extremely profitable venture, but mastering the arbitrage process is only half of the battle because you’re going to be competing with thousands upon thousands of other entrepreneurs who are all trying to do exactly the same thing. You need a way to gain an edge, which means that you need to learn how to drive traffic to your Amazon or eBay store.
One way to gain an edge is by paying to promote your listings, of course, but sellers have complained that paid promotions consume so much of their profits that it’s hard to stay in business at all.
So, let’s skip the paid promotions entirely. You want to drive traffic to your Amazon or eBay store without giving even more of your profits back to the platform than you’re already giving up in your seller fees. Here are four tips to help you do exactly that along with one thing that you’ll want to avoid under all circumstances.
Use SEO Techniques When Building Your Listings
If you want your listings to be among the first to show up when people search for products on Amazon or eBay, it’s extremely helpful to think of the selling platform as a search engine. It’s just like Google, in a way, except that it only shows products on that site. In that sense, the best way to drive traffic to your listings is by practicing good search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. If you want a product to show up when people search, your listing needs to contain the keywords that people would use when they want to find that type of product.
Don’t forget that people also use Google to find products on Amazon and eBay, and Google can be a strong traffic driver for you if your listings are well optimized. It may be helpful to use a keyword research tool when you construct your listings because you’ll want to align your product text to the keywords that receive the highest search volumes.
Encourage Customers to Leave Reviews and Feedback
Although customer reviews and feedback ratings won’t necessarily influence your rankings on eBay and Amazon, they’re crucial anyway because they can help to close the deal when people do find your listings. People are naturally wary of buying from sellers that don’t look like active, established businesses because they don’t want to get burned on a bad transaction.
Ironically, it can be very difficult to get people to leave feedback on Amazon or eBay when they’ve had a good experience – so you might have to do a bit of work to get those first few crucial ratings when you’re trying to get established. Don’t be shy about following up with your customers by email. Let them know how important their feedback will be in helping to make your small business successful.
Use Social Marketing to Highlight Interesting Products
Since Amazon and eBay arbitrage is all about taking different online platforms and making them work in your favor, why stop there? There are plenty of other platforms – including social media services – that you can use to expand your reach and drive traffic to your listings.
Let’s suppose, for instance, that your specialty is selling antiques and other collectables on eBay. In addition to looking for listings that are priced too low and could potentially be profitable for you to resell, you’re probably also visiting storage locker auctions and estate sales to find interesting products for your store. Why not post about your latest discoveries on social media?
No matter how happy your customers are, they’re probably not going to bookmark your eBay store and visit it weekly to see what’s new. They might follow you on a platform like Instagram, though, if your account is full of interesting curiosities. If you manage to find something really unique, social media could even potentially help you get mainstream media coverage.
For a perfect example of this technique in action, look at any major car website like Jalopnik or Car and Driver. In their most recent posts, you’ll almost definitely see interesting vehicles that are being offered on Bring a Trailer. It’s a great source of easy content, and writing about it requires little effort.
Build a Platform You Control
It’s great to have a successful and profitable Amazon or eBay business, but you should always keep an eye on a potential future in which you don’t rely on those platforms in order to make a living. In other words, it’s a very good idea to develop an online store that you own.
Why should developing your own store be part of your long-term plan? It’s because Amazon and eBay are platforms that you don’t control. They’re concerned about their success and profitability – not yours. At any point, the environment could change in a way that’s not favorable to you.
For a perfect example of this, just look at what’s happened on Amazon over the last several years. People used to earn decent money by buying products from Chinese wholesalers and reselling them on Amazon. Today, those same wholesalers are selling directly on Amazon and pricing domestic sellers out. If you were in that niche, you might have been able to weather the storm if you had your own website. After all, sales made through your own site are more profitable because you’re not paying fees to the platform.
Start thinking about building your own website now. Once it’s up and running, encourage repeat customers to buy from you directly rather than going through Amazon or eBay.
Don’t Use Prohibited Tactics
Whatever you do to drive traffic to your eBay or Amazon listings, you should always be mindful of the platform’s rules and avoid using prohibited sales tactics. For example, some people try to skirt the rules by selling prohibited products like vapes. That’s going to be profitable on a short-term basis because you won’t have any competition. Likewise, many people resort to buying fake reviews on Amazon and eBay because they want to do whatever they can to get ahead. These short-term gains aren’t worthwhile in the long run, though, if they end up getting you banned from the platform. If you want your business to be sustainable for years, you’ll need to get a leg up without using techniques that the platform doesn’t allow.
