So you want to market your eBay business? Well, you probably won't have too much luck with traditional marketing methods - they're just not targeted enough. The best way to do things is to pay for targeted advertising, which comes up when people search for keywords you specify: they're looking for exactly what you're selling, and so many of them will click on your ad.
On eBay.
You might not have noticed that eBay offer this kind of advertising, but they do. You can pay them for a small ad that will appear above the search results (next to the banner ad) for any keywords you want. Buyers will then be able to click through and get to your eBay store - and you only pay for clicks, not for views. You can also set a budget for how much you want to spend, and your ads will simply stop if they go over-budget.
If you do this, it is best to create very targeted ads for specific products. Buy a specific model of something as your keyword, and write how much you sell it for in the ad - this will be more effective than just advertising across the name of a whole category.
There are some products that this approach simply doesn't work for, though, and you might be better off spending your money on a more visible Featured Plus listing for your item, especially if you're trying to advertise on valuable keywords.
Search Engine Ads.
If you want to market your business more widely, then you can try to bring in business from outside eBay. The best way to do this is by buying keyword-targeted ads on search engines. With Google AdWords, for example, your ad will appear in their 'Sponsored Links' section when someone searches for your keywords. Again, you set a maximum budget and only pay for clicks.
This can be very effective, as you've just taken your products to the world outside eBay - imagine someone going to a search engine, typing in what they're looking for and seeing your store right there! What's more, if you target this approach to specific models of a product it can be very cheap. Most advertisers try to get as much traffic as they can instead of targeting their ads as specifically as you will be, meaning there won't be much competition for the keywords.
eBay benefit from this as well as you, since it drives new buyers to eBay as a whole, not just to your site. They actively encourage sellers to go and advertise on search engines by offering you 75% of your final value fee back for each item that someone finds and buys this way. On expensive items, that's probably enough to pay for the advertising to begin with!
If you'd really like to try a little marketing in the real world, though, you might want to make some flyers. Did you know that eBay can do this for you automatically? The next email will tell you how.
About the Author
Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit http://www.auctionseller411.com/ for more great tips on how to make the most from Ebay and other online auctions.