Is Ebay a legitimate business platform for professional services? Would a service provider be able to transact credible business on Ebay?
I am currently exploring offering professional services (Social Media Marketing consulting and activation). However, my review of the site seems more like scam artists and spammers. Is there a place for white hat operations and can you be taken seriously?
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Brett N
Digital Media Planner & Buyer at Next Digital
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Hey Douglas,
Interesting question - I think Ebay can be a great opportunity for the right types of business'. But's it's predominantly a product sales platform. I would also suggest that consumers on the site are looking for products (at discounted prices) and not services.
Being unique in your offering is a fantastic way to build business but there also needs to be relevancy with your target audience. I think it would tend to damage you brand more then it would attract business.
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Marina M
Owner of The Type-A Way Efficiency Consulting
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Ebay is partnered with Elance.com for selling services in an auction-based environment. It's absolutely legitimate, but most jobs will be seeking the lowest possible bid, and when you're competing internationally, that can be pretty low. Still, some bidders will pay well for experience and quality. Worth checking out - it's only $20USD or so for a month-long membership.
Links:
WIth respect to Ebay as a business, it appears to be the same business model it set out to be, an auction site for people to dispose of unwanted items. It has developed as a product based outlet for many small businesses which trade as part of their selling strategy, sometimes using the platform for overstock items or disposal of product which may or may not be first quality.
I do not see it as being helpful to professionals, in fact more likely to be detrimental unless Ebay itself drives a niche to fully support this area. Even then, it will have major obstacles in overcoming its brand image.
What it could do is separate the idea by differentiation to a professional service site as an Ebay Company, which would probably work.
Gideon R
SEO & Online Marketing Specialist
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Hi Douglas
I think you might find the reputation side of Ebay a little restricting as it's not set up specifically for services of the type you're proposing.
Odesk might be more appropriate...
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Kristian C
CEO at Jackson GI Medical
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In general no, but I do see opportunity to use it.
Specifically, since you do not have strictly defined deliverables in most services situations - especially marketing and PR - it's hard to "offer" something on Ebay. How do the bidders know what they're getting unless you strictly define it? How do you know if you're getting a fair price or getting into a black hole unless you have defined what you're doing exactly? And how can you define what you're doing not even knowing the customer, their business, business model, needs, etc?
Where I do see opportunity is to offer a clearly defined "initial assessment" sort of product. You can clearly define the actions/steps you will take to offer an in-depth "situation analysis" of someone's e-marketing, social marketing, PR efforts, etc.
Many might say that sort of thing should be "free" as part of a pitch to gain an account, but I've often seen (and had) the need to go out and have a third-party assessment done in a relatively impartial, unbiased way. I do see it more as a lead generation/relationship-establishing method than a core business driver, but is that so bad? I think not.
I do agree that many of the services offered on Ebay now seem a bit scammy. Specifically, I mean services based on lots of pie-in-the-sky promises with few specifics about exactly what's being offered: No clear action items, deliverables, results defined, etc. And many of those services are ones where I find similar characteristics regardless of forum: fly-by-night Search Engine Optimization vendors, "Executive Search and Branding" offerings, etc. I think you can easily overcome that as noted above - with a clear offering and defined service parameters.
