Expanding Your Business? Get the eBay Pulse

No business which has spent some reasonable time can afford to remain in the same rung as it used to be when it started. This applies to eBay online business too. It could be by way of setting up of your own eBay store or just broadening the product portfolio. So, as Jawaharlal Nehru once famously said, ‘No one can prevent an idea whose time has come’.

Vertical Expansion of Business

You can carve a niche in your expertise and begin to sell more items of different varieties but belonging to the same category. What does it mean to you? Suppose for example, you are selling Nokia cell phones for long time and over this time you have built up your own reputation. You have also noticed your buyers are regulars buying either by participating in the bidding or through ‘Buy Now’. You have also noticed and mapped their buying habits and that there exists a pattern. You have statistics of their demography. And finally the higher feedback stars you accumulated through sheer hard work, from the cross section of people have boosted your confidence.

All these indicate that you can expand into a multi brand cell phone and accessories seller. You can hope to sell IPODs and MP3 players or gamin consoles rather easily. Your buyers trust your recommendations and you monetize the reputation. You can either open an ‘Exclusive Showroom’ or just continue as a power seller.

Expanding Your eBay Business Horizontally

Horizontal expansion calls for deeper and vast understanding of business, eBay’s transaction and buyers’ demography across eBay. You must have observed, from others, and picked up cross selling techniques. That is, you have specialized in selling watches for long time and you know selling T-Shirts or cell phones or even jewelry isn’t too hard as long as they are all goods of fashion statements and selling any from the same category shouldn’t trouble you much.

Opening an eBay store is the right step for you. You are, among other things, betting on higher traffic to your store. More the buyers greater is the sales generated. But watch out to select the right items, know the pulse of eBay visitors across sections and categories. Because sell unconnected items may disinterest your visitors.