eBay - Web Traffic Machine

There are numerous ways to drive traffic to your website, such as search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, or getting back links to your site. When done properly these can all be very useful methods for building a steady stream of traffic for any website. Another method that people generally do not think about is using eBay or sites like it as a web traffic driver.

This method can be almost as effective as a good PPC campaign – and a lot cheaper in the long run. Starting a web traffic campaign of this type is not as simple to begin as many of the other methods of online advertising, it takes more creativity and effort upfront than beginning a PPC campaign for instance. For a sales company the benefits of using eBay to drive traffic to your website is obvious – eBay has a large and active base of consumers looking for goods to purchase. Yes, it is true that while the consumer is on eBay they are typically looking for a cheap price, but here’s the catch: you are not interested in the consumer while they are on eBay, all you want to do is make them aware of your web presence OFF of eBay.

Your eBay listing should in some way be related to the content of your website – this is important for two reasons: The user who clicks through to your website is already interested in that topic, if they find that your site presents them with good information or related products and services they will become a likely customer or repeat visitor. Additionally, they will be more likely to click on the ad links featured on your site (assuming you use a targeted PPC campaign like Adsense on your website).

Remember, on the internet content is king. It does not matter what your content is, so long as it is quality and relevant to your targeted user base. eBay simply presents another avenue to reach this base. One problem you will have to deal with is that eBay does not like blatant advertising of seller’s personal websites. Generally eBay does not like auctions that takes the user away from their site.

Fortunately, there are a couple of things that you can do to reduce the chances of eBay shutting your auction down; first of all you must make sure that the landing page the user ends up on at your website is highly relevant to the auction ad itself. The simplest way to accomplish this is to make the landing page an article, review or further information about the item being offered in the auction. Secondly do not make the item being presented in the eBay auction available for purchase on the landing page of your site. Obviously eBay wants the item to be purchased on eBay, if you make it too easy for the user to purchase it outside of eBay your auction will likely get pulled. Likewise if eBay does not see any relevancy in the landing page linked to in the auction they will likely stop the auction. And of course why would you want to make a landing page that was not relevant to the auction? The landing page should in some way enrich the eBay user’s experience, if it does not you will not only make eBay angry you will have blown your shot at converting a long term customer or website surfer. So take the time to think through what you are posting! Add to the user experience, that is how you get customers for life.

For content sites it can be a little more difficult to use eBay as a traffic driver. Most content sites do not sell hard goods. So how can they use eBay to drive web traffic to their sites? There a couple methods. First off write an ebook or special report and just like if it was a physical good make sure the landing page the user ends up at on your site has an article, review or some other related content that eBay would view as increasing the odds of the consumers purchasing the good listed in the auction.

Using eBay and similar sites like it to generate web traffic can be tricky, and will certainly take a good amount of testing to pull off. But once you have built a successful auction page that gets a lot of views, you will
have created yourself a giant advertisement amidst a user base that is 10s of millions of members strong, that will only cost you about 25 cents per week. In my book, that’s a pretty good deal.