Starting out in the dropshipping industry, most people focus on selling on eBay.  The online auction house ensures a steady stream of traffic of people looking to buy your products.  However, depending on eBay itself for all of your business is not the way to maximize your dropshipping profits.  You may also want to look at starting your own store online.

After all, most of the people buying on eBay are shopping on the site to try and get a bargain.  They want the lowest possible price for their goods at all times.  Selling on eBay to a pack of rabid bargain hunters is not necessarily the best way to ensure you have healthy profit margins.  Most eBay buyers have no qualms about leaving you high and dry if you aren’t the absolute lowest priced seller.

To counteract this phenomenon, you may want to start your own website as a supplement to any selling on eBay that you are doing.  With your own website, you will be able to control your marketplace and the pricing on your products.  You will have a greater chance to talk to your customers about exactly what is so great about each item that you offer, and you will be able to bundle and promote products as you see fit.

Many people overlook the opportunities inherent in having their own sales website because they think it will be a lot of work.  Selling on eBay is easier—it doesn’t take much work to list a product.  However, developing your own webpage is much easier than you might think, and getting a page from concept to live and working really doesn’t take very long.

Putting together an ecommerce website is very straightforward.  All that is needed is a few simple web pages that can be created in a few hours from scratch and even less time if you use templates.  Once the page is built, you simply launch the site and you are ready to go.

You can even partner with web hosting services that are dedicated to shopping carts and dropshippers.  Usellcorp is one such company, and there are others that can help you put your page up.  You can even use freelancing websites like Elance, Rent-A-Coder, or Guru to hire a web expert for a small fee to put the whole page together if you absolute think you can’t teach yourself to do it.

The traffic patterns on your personal site will be different than what you get selling on eBay.  However, you will be able to do your own marketing and build up traffic for specific products that you want to highlight.  You will also be able to compete on quality instead of merely competing on price.

You don’t have to depend on eBay for everything.  It is also possible to launch your own website.  Taking the time to develop your own page will set you free from the brutal price wars that characterize the eBay business and help you maximize the profits you earn in your dropshipping business.

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