eBay and the Social Networks
Jun-2007
With the rise of the social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, it is no surprise that there is a growing number of widgets to help sellers advertise. Lets take a look at a few of them
Cooqy
Cooqy offers 3 different widgets, a seller showcase for smallers sellers (shown above), a seller shopfront for powersellers and a eBay buyer widget for integrating eBay search into your website.
Configuration and branding can be edited which is important, and the product supports multiple eBay sites. The widgets are free to use on non-eBay sites, but there is a charge for posting on eBay.
Visit www.cooqy.com to see it in action
Ztail
ztail is a really rather neat product which allows you to easily create listings which can then be posted on eBay and on social networks. A great user interface and and one of those few products which I think will make ebayers lives easier.
eBay To Go
Not to be outdone, eBay has developed its own widget. This is rather a neat tool, allowing you to select from a number of simple to configure eBay widgets showing multiple or single items from one or many sellers. This is good if you want to advertise items from a particular seller (i.e. yourself), or don’t care.
Visit https://togo.ebay.com to see the widget in action.
VFlyer
Not an eBay application, but a useful app nevertheless for creating adverts and then posting them on classified sites and on social networks. More useful for listing unique items than inventory
A word of warning
I am guessing that these products in part make their money from the eBay affiliate network, and I notice that they do not offer to share the revenue with publishers. By publishing these widgets on your blog etc will be giving them and eBay free advertising which they should really pay for.
Unless you have a very high traffic website you will probably find that the traffic that is driven to your listings will be very low compared to that from the eBay search, so don’t get your hopes up!