5 Digital Marketing Lessons I Learned from Selling on eBay 

The year was 2003 and I was in my second of college. I’d just shelled $14 for my favorite foundation (a hefty price tag for a poor student) to a cosmetics consultant, the only way to buy this brand.

I hated the pushy upsells and constant pressure to buy, buy, buy that I had to endure to get my makeup, but I loved the actual product.

After politely declining the anti-aging moisturizer (I was just out of my teenage years FFS), exfoliating lip mask, and geriatric-smelling perfume, it occurred to me that there had to a better, cheaper way to get these products.

As a child of my time, I immediately thought of eBay, where just about anything legal could be bought and sold (and some illegal shit too).

Low and behold, there were thousands upon thousands of women selling this brand through eBay, and for deep discounts.

The brand made its money by convincing consultants to purchase huge inventories which they often couldn’t turn around and sell profitably. If they returned their inventory to the company, they were barred from becoming a consultant again.

So, many liquidated their stock on eBay for a fraction of what they paid for it.

This opened the door to enterprising folks who saw an opportunity to buy large lots of products for pennies on the dollar and resell them individually at a profit of 25-50%.

I was one of those people.

I didn’t realize it until years later, but I relied upon digital marketing tactics to convince prospective customers to buy from me.

Here are some takeaways from the years I spent building my dorm-room empire.

1. Measuring your efforts is paramount to success

It wasn’t a coincidence that certain auction titles performed better than others. Long before I knew what A/B testing was, I had been employing a (much less sophisticated) version of it by switching up my headlines until I found the best combination.

I found that when I included “free shipping” in the title, I sold more than when I left it out.

Longer headlines seemed to perform better than shorter ones.

Creating urgency by noting if an item was rare or if it was the last one I had in stock also seemed to make a difference in what products sold and what didn’t.

If I had been more serious about business at the time, I would have tracked these changes more closely and continued to tweak titles until I found the sweet performance spot.

2. Working with you should be as painless as possible

Back before the days of Amazon prime, I learned that my customers preferred free shipping.

It turned out to be a no-brainer because by building the cost of shipping into the price of the item, I could charge more and customers happily paid it.

This helped my customers avoid the hassle of calculating the shipping cost and doing the mental arithmetic to come to the final cost.

I learned that if you make working with you as easy as possible, customers will prefer you over someone else (who may have lower prices).

3. Repeat customers are worth their weight in gold

I shouldn’t have been surprised, given the nature of cosmetics, that so much of my business came from repeat customers. These customers were worth their weight in gold because they would often be willing to bypass the eBay platform (saving me a considerable amount in fees) and email me directly for what they needed.

I catered to these customers because they also tended to be the ones who sent their friends my way too.

If I’d had a little more business acumen back then, I would have set up shop off the eBay platform so that I could control the full customer experience and avoid the fees.

As a professional freelancer, I’ve witnessed at a larger scale the value of repeat business through clients that hire me time and again. I don’t have to devote time and resources filling my pipeline. I can focus on delivering great work to my clients and know that they’ll be back.

4. Learn from your competitors

I remember admiring one of the sellers who sold the same brand I did. She had an eBay store packed with multiples of nearly every item the brand sold. By scouring her feedback and listings, I knew that people wanted to get what they needed from one shop. By ensuring she had everything on hand, this seller did good business.

She also offered free shipping if customers met a certain spending threshold. This helped her bundle multiple listings into one sale (saving her on shipping costs and eBay/PayPal fees).

I even ordered from her on the occasion when I wanted something for myself but didn’t have it.

When I expanded my inventory (though I never quite reached her level), I found that the number of people making multiple purchases in one transaction soared and my operating costs decreased.

Taking the time to check out the competition helped me do what I did better.

5. Test and Iterate, Test and Iterate, Test and Iterate

One you find out what works, keeping doing it! One small way I did this was to ditch the boring photos I took of each product and fancy them up a bit. I found that photos that were feminine and colorful (while still showcasing the product) helped me sell more than the generic “picture of the item on the carpet” did.

I also learned that items sold better in small bundles than individually, which saved me listing and shipping fees. So I played around with what bundles did well together and which ones didn’t, then focused on ensuring that I had the well-performing items on hand as much as possible.

By being willing to try out new ideas and methods, I got a better picture of what worked well for me and my business, and what didn’t.

I learned that nothing is more valuable than on-the-ground experience.

Perseverance is the Biggest Factor in Digital Marketing

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but to my 20-year-old self, I found that the more I put into my business, the better it did. During busy times in school (or when I was just lazy), I didn’t sell as much as when I really devoted serious time and effort.

Now, nearly 2o years later (yikes!), I’ve seen the fruit of perseverance in digital marketing (and other areas of my life). The more I focus on honing my craft, the better the outcomes are for me, and more importantly, for my clients.