How To Brand & Market Your Ebay Business (No Store Required)

There are many ways that you can brand your Ebay business many of which do not require an Ebay Store Subscription. Although Ebay is always touting their Store Subscriptions as a great way to brand and market your business most of the options available through the store can be implemented in other ways with a little extra effort. One thing that you gain by adding a store subscription is a searchable store with your own unique store name. However, your Ebay profile name can work in the same way. So first think about what kinds of items you'd like to sell. It is better for branding to stick to mostly one type of product. Once you have a catchy name in mind you'll have to change your user ID on Ebay which is quite simple:


First sign in to My Ebay>Click The Account Tab>Click Personal Information>Click Edit USER ID

Create A Unique Ebay Profile

Once you have changed your Ebay User ID to something more suitable for a store name you may want to create a store logo. It need not be extremely artistic or professionally made but it should emphasize the name of your store and have a pleasing color scheme. As for the size it should probably span the entire width of the screen and the letters should be big enough to grab the attention of the user. One the easiest programs to use for simple logos or store names is Microsoft Paint, obviously if you want something more sophisticated you would need to use something else. However sometimes simpler is better. Once you have created a logo you will need to store it somewhere so you can reference it. I would suggest www.photobucket.com it is easy to upload and get a html reference. To add your store logo to your listings you can copy and paste the html code from photobucket into your listings or listing templates.


So now you have a store name and store logo but how do you get customers to come back to your store again and again? One of the best ways is an e-mail newsletter list this feature is built in to Ebay stores but you can do something similar without a store subscription. Using a blog from www.blogger.com you can easily keep your customers up to date on your items. First go to blogger and create an account if you have a google account then it should be easy if not you may have to open a new google account.

Create A Blog On Blogger To Feature Your Items

Once you have an account open it will prompt you for a blog name. Try to choose a similar name to your store (although this may be hard, a lot of the good names are taken). Choose a template and your set, you now have a blogger blog to update your customers. You can post pics, write about items or even take video. Now all you have to do is get your customers to subscribe. To accomplish this use we will go back to Ebay:


Sign in to My Ebay>Click The Account Tab>Click Marketing Tools>Click Customize End Of Auction E-mail
>Click Change

Customize Your End Of Auction Email To Include Your Blog

From here you can add your logo that you created before and also you can tell your buyers about your blog and how to subscribe. Over time you should gain a good list of e-mail subscribers to your blog, use this to your advantage by writing post about new items you have up for sale. This should help drive sales and repeat customers.