As I put the finishing touches on my two presentations for the upcoming Super Zoo show in Las Vegas on September 9 & 10, I found myself adding a section about Ebay that I thought I would preview here.

Ebay has gone through some serious changes recently.  Ebay plans on emphasizing their fixed price sales model at the expense of their auction format.  This has a lot of loyal Ebay sellers up in arms for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into here.

But if you’re a pet retailer looking to dabble in selling products online, Ebay can still be a good thing.

 Here’s why:

• You can tap into the more than 70 million users of the Ebay community.  This can help build your own mailing list (direct mail as well as email)
• You can use the Ebay shopping cart to collect credit card payments and sell your wares.
• Speaking of wares, Ebay is a great place to sell overstocked items, returns, discontinued items, closeouts, etc.

Because even with the changes that are mainly making it more expensive to sell auction items while favoring fixed price items, as a registered Ebay user you can still set up an ABOUT ME page that you can use to send traffic to your own site or store.

In essence, Ebay may be a great way to dabble in the world of ecommerce so if you decide to jump in with both feet, you’ll have learned to walk before you run!