Two things are for sure, eBay is not going to go away soon and every day there are more people looking to buy products. But how can eBay be used as a channel for your business and how best to address this huge market?

Firstly, a little background. EBay was founded in 1995 when Piere Omidyar sold some Pez sweet dispensers for his wife. He was surprised to see how quickly they sold and before long a community of Pez traders had built up. This community ethos is a core part of eBay today.

Twelve years on and eBay has over 180 million customers worldwide and 15 million UK customers. It offers massive exposure for your product and your business. Yes, eBay is no longer just a second hand car boot sale. It is a significant channel in its own right. This is largely for three reasons:

1. It's so easy to find items, eBay is very fast and easy to navigate.

2. The community ethos develops trust. If a seller has a very high feedback rating then they are probably trustworthy.

3. It is easy to pay for items. With PayPal you don't have to enter your credit card details each time so buying is simple and hassle free.

A common misconception about eBay is it is purely an auction site. Well, Buy It Now items account for about 60% of all eBay transactions. The recently launched eBay Express is exclusively for businesses to sell new items using Buy It Now.

eBay Case Study

One business that appeared recently in The Daily Telegraph as an eBay success story has applied this exact approach. ‘All You Bead' is a successful eBay business run by Sue Bailey. She has sold over 50,000 packs of beads to almost 10,000 customers and her feedback record is excellent.

After experimenting with eBay for a while she focused her business on this one particular area, a strategy that has paid dividends. The success has allowed her to live a lifestyle of her dreams, she now lives in a farmhouse in Brittany, France and continues to trade from there, "eBay provides me with more buyers than I could ever attract if I was purely running a shop on a high street."

But "inevitably", she says, some buyers are put off buying from France , despite the fact that the cost of sending the parcel from France to the UK is often cheaper than the price of Royal Mail's domestic service.

"One of the important things about selling 'pretty things' is the constant need for new lines, new things for your buyers to look at. I have to constantly think about new stock. Sue buys beads from all over the world, sourcing her goods from European wholesalers as well as manufacturers in India and China . "Not that I mind, my job is about buying beautiful things, and who could complain about that?"

For retailers, there are various success strategies to make the most of eBay. The most simple is to use Auction or Buy It Now to sell on products that are not moving in the shop. Bring cash back into the business to invest in new lines. A strategy that I have seen work time and again is to focus on a very small niche and do it particularly well. This could be a range that you feel is not well served on eBay or one that you find particularly enjoyable and could develop an edge over others.

A vital component for any online business is customer satisfaction. The user experience determines whether a buyer will return and spend again, as well as recommend to friends and family that it's a great place to go. Whilst auctions can be an essential part of the strategy you employ to draw traffic to your website or eBay store, as well as a great way of getting the highest price for your product. You can then hook the customer in by communicating well through the fulfillment process and delivering on time.

As retailers already have the supplier contacts and stock, as well as any eye for the latest trends, there is the potential to be successful if eBay is used in the right way. Becoming an eBay member is simple, choose a name and a password and you're in. To start trading under your business name, set up a business account when you register with eBay. All you need in order to do this is a UK address to receive a confirmation letter through the post and bank account details to set up a direct debit. If you enter your VAT registered number when you create this account, then you won't pay any VAT on seller fees. (If you don't have a VAT registered number, register with HM Revenue & Customs.)

Possibly the biggest drawback for most retailers is time. Time to add stock images, descriptions and prices. Then managing the fulfillment side. Whenever new sales channels are added to an existing business it creates a significant overhead in workload. I believe the solution to this sits with the suppliers of technology to retailers to help them take advantage of these new channels in a manageable way. This is where Connect comes in.

To sum up, the potential benefits of eBay to a retailer are that eBay offers a new route to market quickly and cost effectively without affecting existing channels;

1. Grow market share.

2. Increase your customer database.

3. Reinforce your brand.

4. Get maximum recovery rates for end of line or excess inventory.

If retailers can establish ways to manage the workload effectively they really can take advantage of the opportunity for incremental sales.