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Using eBay for more than just wholesale

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#11
re: Walter's Elkland Chevrolet in rural rural Northern PA
25 sales in 6 months is great business for a store with 27 units in stock. Ebay is giving them 2 extra turns a year. Surely there are offline buys going on here too.

At what cost?
I see a lot of new units advertised for GMS. I see a lot of <$10,000 units that are super easy to retail anyway.

I don't see much of anything other than a classic rural ebay dealer. Am I missing something here?

eBay Feedback Profile for walterselklandchevrolet
 
#12
JoePistell said:
FORGET eBAY, its vBay.
-When was the last time you saw an eBay listing in a natural search?
-When was the last time you saw an eBay listing in a paid search?

eBay use to be EVERYWHERE. Paid and natural. Not any longer. eBay is Vanishing. I call it vBay.

(note: this is the danger that AutoTrader.com and Cars.com has, God help them if Google decides to re-arrange its algos... Dale Pollak take note!!)
Click to expand...

Joe - you hit the nail on the head regarding Cars.com and AutoTrader on this, we saw this trend in the early spring when local dealers' inventory started taking precedence over the large inventory aggregator's inventory in the search engine results. The difference to me is the HUGE amount of direct traffic that eBay Motors gets, which is significantly higher than Cars.com and AutoTrader. Note also that eBay Motors has a HUGE amount of direct traffic looking at ~250,000 cars listed at one time vs. several million cars being listed on Cars.com and AutoTrader. With all that said, selling on eBay takes a lot of work, and you will not be successful without giving it the focus and effort it needs.
 
#14
So I went out to see if Google has made an update and to my suprise, a major Google update looks to be going on NOW.

Just as I had suspected, google is hard at work on local search. SEO communities are seeing Google working on improving LOCAL SEARCH. They're all a chatter about how Local real estate offices are poping over mash-up Real Estate directory sites.

see: Google Updates and SERP Changes - July 2009 - part 2
 
#15
How many visitors to eBay motors a month ? Something like 11 million. I think eBay is still a good value.
Texas Direct has made 99 sales over the last 30 days. Not all are vehicles, but from the way I see it, it looks like 88% of 99 sales are vehicles priced from 9K to 35K. If you do it right, it works.

Has anyone been to a eBay Live seminar ? I have and there are certain things you need to do to get effective placemment.

If you have an ebay button on your website that has auctions going on every day, don't you think there is some excitement behind winning a car vs. buying a car ?

I think bashing eBay is totally rediculous.
 
#17
I'm going to go a little further. When you auction cars, you have inquiries. Inquiries allow you to capture email addresses. I can guarantee you that Texas Direct has an email database that would kick a** ...

We have around 70 feedbacks on dealerrater over a 2 or 3 year period. Texas Direct has 99 in one month..and over 1400 in 12 months... Over 3000 testimonials ...
 
#18
danoneil,

If I was your GM and you came to me jacked about this opportunity, I'd appreciate your young bright-eyed enthusiasm and after a review of your idea, I'd call you in for a meeting, give you a pen and paper and tell you to take notes. " Dan, It's time for some "after-hours" homework... Let's see... So you think theres money to be made on eBay? OK, here we go.... "
 
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#19
GROSS MARGIN ANALYSIS:
Look at our inventory and TD's, find matches. Look at OUR selling price and TDs. I've looked and I don't like what I see. You're asking me to blow up the current business model to sell stuff on eBay? Have you considered this? If so, it affects everything under this roof, what are your thougths? If you haven't compared, I'll remind you that price sells cars on ebay, you need to address this and everthing that touches this. It's a tall order!
 
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