There are many advantages of using ebay as a marketing tool for your business, particularly a drop ship business. There’s a long list of what to do and what not to do to make this angle work to your advantage:

Do:

 List a link to your personal website (assuming you have one) on your About Me page. List additional options through this section to steer your ebay customers to find this information. An example would be offering an option to track their package that can be found on your About Me page.

 Include useful information in the package that is sent. For drop shipping purposes, make sure your wholesaler has your website and email information included in the label and invoice they create for your products. In the case where you send directly from your home you could feasibly include a brochure outlining your other products.

 Offer related products on your ebay site and your personal website. Notify customers of this via the packaging or the link from your About Me page. In effect, you’ve transferred a customer from your ebay site to your personal website (using ebay to market for you) and hopefully the customer will use your website in the future, thus cutting down on ebay fees for you.

Don’t:

 You cannot include links on the auction itself. This will get you in trouble with ebay (they can’t make money if you are redirecting people to your site before they purchase anything on ebay) and it will cause a breakdown in the your credibility if ebay does give you a slap on the wrist, as it reflects on your site in a variety of ways, up to the point of shutting down your ebay store.

 You cannot include links on your ebay store either, for the same basic reasons listed above. Absolutely make certain there are no links anywhere except the About Me page that redirect customers to your personal website.

 Don’t offer unrealistic expectations, as in prices you are incapable of maintaining. If you offer prices that are too low you’ll only bring in the kind of customer that will quit buying from you when you are forced to increase your pricing in order to at least break even.

 Don’t break any new ebay rules inadvertently. Make sure to sign up for a valid newsletter that gives all the info you might need about updated ebay rules and changes. This is integral in maintaining your reputation and credibility on ebay.

Ebay is a useful marketing tool so long as you abide by their rules. They have a huge, pre-existing customer base, which makes it a lot easier for new businesses to create a solid backing of customers over a reasonable period.