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Originally Posted by sellsimplestuff
Thats not necessarily true. The internet is not the be all and end all of buying and selling.
For every company/person that relys on ebay to pay thier mortgage there are many others who don't.
I think people shouild be more flexible and have different business ventures
one could be internet, mail-order, property, amazon. Offline business works just as well.
The thing is it requires a bit more work/application but once it does it's great,
and you don't have to worry about getting negative feedback and being shut down for 30days, and you won't have to worry about paypal holding your money.
For people who rely on ebay, it's difficult for them to wean themselves off it.
People should realise because the net is more or less a faceless medium trust is an important factor. Website conversions are around 1% I have been told.
If you conduct business offline (ie) mail order or visiting people it is easier to build relationshhips because you can see who you are dealing with.
I watched a programme called 'Mary Queen of Shops' on BBC2 last monday. The host of the programme was helping a struggling botique.
She took members of the staff to a Gap store in Manchester to see how they work. The manager of the store said on a Thursday night they get 1,000 visitors and expect to convert 40% into sales.
This would never happen online, unless you are a big player or firmly estblished.
I think it shows that the closer you are to youre customers, the more trust you can get and the bigger your sales can be.
People should still try and set up thier own sites, but not see it as the be all and end all, and they should not think that if they can't sell on ebay it would be impossible elsewhere.
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I certainly agree with you on that, don't put all your eggs in one basket and all that. I do also have money invested in property, but the internet & ebay is an amazing thing. Nowhere else can you do so much business with so little outlay. Me and 2 friends put £200 each in 3 years ago and we all had other jobs at the time. Now we have a business that turns over 200K. If the internet & ebay weren't around we would never have rented our own shop, paid for the shop fittings etc on £200 each. We wouldn't have taken the risk of borrowing any money either, so we probably would never have bothered.
Yes ebay is a fantastic invention, but so was the internet and the guy who invented the internet doesn't get a percentage of every sale.
What i'm saying is the whole buying online thing is bigger than just ebay and the goverment shouldn't allow it to be a sellers only option.