Once you have met these requirements and are ready to start exploring and joining eBay's neighborhoods, visit http://neighborhoods.ebay.com to directly visit the “front door” to eBay's neighborhoods. There you can search for and visit neighborhoods, any of which you can join. This “front door” page will also show, each time you visit, a list of all the neighborhoods you have joined, so that you can return to your favorite haunts quickly and easily.
Turning Neighborhoods Into an Advantage
If you're an astute seller, you may also see that there are some ways in which eBay's neighborhoods can serve as a valuable marketing and market research tool. Though social networking isn't for everyone, sellers that decide to leverage the power of eBay's neighborhoods can do so in several ways.- Store and listing visibility. Each time you make a post or participate in an eBay neighborhood, your member ID is displayed. Members can click on your member ID in order to access the list of items that you currently have for sale and/or your eBay store. The more you participate, the more links to your current inventory become scattered throughout eBay—in front of a captive audience whose interests match your inventory exactly!
- Market research. By reading and posting in neighborhood discussions and blogs, you have a ready window into what your market wants—read about the types of issues they're encountering in relation to this hobby or interest and how they can be solved, the products that your market likes best, the ways in which they use them, and so on.
- Reputation management. Buyers that know you personally and that know you to be an interested and enthusiastic hobbyist will be much more likely to buy from you in order to fulfill their shopping needs. eBay's neighborhoods give you the ideal opportunity to transition from being an impersonal seller to being a valuable community member—and that can drive repeat sales without any extra work on your part.
When all is said and done, eBay's neighborhoods are a long-overdue entry into the social networking world by a marketplace that has always been about sharing and community. If you're a hobbyist or enthusiast, explore eBay's neighborhoods to learn and make friends. If you're a seller, learn and make friends while you build a clientèle and market your goods. Either way you're going to eBay's neighborhoods and the diversity and community that they offer.
