Selling online is becoming more and more common every day, even if there is the risk to lose your money or your product. The first big challenge is to create your online store in a way that shows confidence and reliability to buyers.
You may ask, “what is the key to successful selling in the online world?” Nowadays there are many competitors with seemingly good products, attractive profiles and properly designed shops. The first step obviously is to have a good design and quality SEO. I will get back to this aspect after I run through some other ideas about successful selling.
At the beginning of my blog, I have mentioned the danger of losing your money or products in the online world. Be trustworthy, remove every doubt concerning your credibility, and be transparent as possible. In order to understand the buyer’s concern, you yourself have to become an online shopper. If you do so, you can see how things go from both ways. Share your thoughts and experiences about online shopping, including also the negative ones. Try to offer an alternative answer to your buyers regarding typical issues that one might encounter when purchasing. Another important thing to keep in mind when you sell something online is that you have to become an expert in your field. The idea is to create your own recognizable brand. In the case of selling expensive items, adding more information about yourself is more important, especially if you are a new seller. People indeed read these to try and find out more about you, so it’s a good place to explain your credentials, such as being a collector, a retailer, a person with knowledge of particular items.
Concerning the external parts of your online selling (shop design, photos, description, price) it is essential how you manage it. With the design, it is good if you look around, and do a little bit of research. Read feedbacks about sellers who have had their design done by the company with whom you would like to work with. Try to make good quality photos, make an appealing name, a proper description which meets the needs of buyers. Try to offer solutions via your products, and if possible try to show your reliability as a shop seller. Look at how others do it, get inspired and be better. It is important to evaluate you potential profit and to make good decisions on how much to invest in this activity. If you have products that have a high chance of selling and you managed to reach the target audience it is good to invest in a well made shop design.
Let’s get into details regarding the online selling process. First you need to open an eBay account. After that, as I mentioned try to buy some other goods and see how the process works when purchasing online.
Build your reputation by buying a few small items. One important way that eBay maintains itself as a safe marketplace is by encouraging buyers and sellers to leave feedback about each other.
Try buying small items that you want or need anyway, and pay immediately to get good feedback as a buyer. Don’t worry about buying things you can’t sell after a while. The main thing is to present as a reliable member of the eBay community whom buyers can trust. Potential buyers who see a new seller without feedback can think that you’re not a serious seller, and they may hesitate to buy from you.
Let s talk a little bit more about the items themselves. As I mentioned earlier, you need to have good quality pictures.
As you can see you just need to be creative, and buy some tools, and you can already make photos suitable for the purpose. Just as if you were taking photos of a beautiful model, your products need to also look their best.
Regarding the description, you need to meet the demands of the market. In order to do this, you need to create your description is this manner. Here are few tips: put the most important information at the beginning of the list, put some key words in the description, so the search engine finds you easier; keep the design simple. Be clear about any negative in the product. Buyers will find this out anyway, so let them decide for themselves what might be a problem and what is not. Clearly describing an item mistake will build buyers’ confidence and make them more likely tobuy your item.
Setting the price
Try to set your price according to the market situation and of course consider your eBay fees, and how much it costs to ship. If you set the price too high, and no one will buy your product, if you set it too low you’ll probably end up losing money on the sale. The trick to setting the right price is to know your competition and your target customers, and to know the profit you want to obtain. Search eBay for similar products and monitor how their purchasing or auctions are going. Which items are getting the most bids? Which items are getting the biggest bids? Check out eBay’s “Completed Listings” to get an idea of what the selling price has been for your product. Once you have a general idea for how your item sells on eBay, you’re ready to post it.
Based on your research, and depending on your product, sometimes setting the average selling price as your starting price, and then listing a slightly higher price can help you in starting selling. Another thing you can try is setting a slightly lower price than your competition. If you are selling a less-expensive product, try starting the auction low and see at what price it sells. On your next listing, set the start price at what it sold at, and repeat the process. It is possible to change the price at any time with fixed priced items, or before the first bid is placed for auction items.Lower starting bids attract more bidders and interest in your item, and may well result in your item selling for more, but if an item doesn’t generate enough interest or isn’t visible enough, you may get a very low final selling price.
There is an option to set a “reserve” price for your item while offering a low starting bid, but eBay charges extra cost for this and some buyers are reluctant on this.
Who’s going to be your buyer?
You need to find the target, the group of people who are looking for what you sell. Try reading forums, blogs about groups of people, who would want to buy online, read their concern, read about their problems, and this way try to offer the solution suitable for them. If you can manage to make personalized solutions for online searchers, than you have a big advantage in the field.
Smart shipping
Good shipping is essential to have satisfied customers, and to monitor your own orders. Even if you had good sales, if the customer doesn’t receive the packages properly, you can have negative feedback. Let me show you some tips on this. First you need to have a good online platform where you can monitor your outgoing packages. Secondly you have to have acceptable shipping prices that are ok on the market compared to other shipping companies. You have to define important shipping policies like:
What are my shipping times?
Will I offer insurance on all packages?
Will I accept returns, and will I reimburse buyers for return shipping costs?
What mail providers I use?
What shipping methods I offer, and what are their average shipping times?
Will I ship internationally?
Am I taking all the steps that will make me eligible? Will I offer free shipping?
These conditions need to be known by the buyers, and they need to be adjusted to buyers’ situation. By buyers’ situation I want to say: shipping distance, region, country, continent where they have their residence. You can give as well discount on shipping if the buyer purchased a certain amount, or give a discount above a certain value or quantity.
Selling on eBay and making ecommerce can be a great challenge and a great opportunity to find new business opportunities. Being authentic and being reliable is essential. As I went through some ideas, you need to be aware of these rules in selling in eBay, and last but not least you have to constantly follow any possible modifications in terms and keep up with the new ideas.