Intro to Multi-Venue Management

I think it's fitting to open this blog with a short discussion of the new emphasis on this multi-venue concept. Why are so many sellers branching out away from their core venue?

1. Reduce Risk
We've heard many horror stories of eBay and google trashing an entire business. All of a sudden your prime eBay category might be totally moved and changed into something that doesn't convert. Google may change their search algorithm so that you no longer rank for your top selling products. We've seen businesses lose 90% of their sales overnight.

To counteract this, many eBay sellers have moved a lot of their business over to their own e-commerce website, and e-commerce sellers have begun selling on eBay and Amazon. If you're spreading your business between eBay, e-commerce, and Amazon, and using multiple forms of promotion like shopping comparison sites, paid search, and SEO, you greatly reduce your risk of a catastophe.

2. Reduce Costs and Increase Sales
eBay sellers know first hand that it is the most expensive place to sell on the internet. Margins are getting slimmer and slimmer as eBay continues to "tweak" the fee structure, and sell through rates are also decreasing in many categories. Increased competiton in search engine paid search has also increased the cost of acquiring a customer.

Using multiple venues, you can channel customers from many places into repeat customers on your cheapest presence - your website. The technology is now out to have your website's checkout take over for eBay's, allowing a high cost eBay purchase to develop into cross sells at higher margin and develop repeat website business.

Shopping comparison sites can reduce paid search marketing. Bids on products are generally much cheaper than formal paid search, and the shopping comparison sites now rank very well in google results.

Email automation technologies can be employed to offer promotions such as discounts and rebates for your website to buyers that have purchased from more expensive venues.

And finally, affiliate marketing can provide low cost, very targetted traffic.

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With all of these options open to sellers, it's no wonder that the multi-venue software (or multi-channel software as most of the industry somewhat incorrectly calls it) industry has begun to really take off. This blog will be mostly dedicated to multi-venue management strategies for e-commerce.

I'd really enjoy making this blog into an interactive discussion. Please post any questions you may have!