Internet Sales and Auctions - eRetailing
or, Selling Physical Products On-line
Run an Internet Store or Sell with Auctions - I Recommend BOTH!
If your Plan B involves selling products on-line, you have some options. Everyone has heard how HOT eBay is. The number of people looking for products on eBay has grown to astounding proportions, and is now an International market. My hubby and I eBay here and there.
Here is our eBay About Me page.
Ebay did figure out how to make it easy. After all they would not be so popular if it was difficult. You can look around as a guest and read some Getting Started stuff there. Find a few items you might be interested buying at a cost you can afford. If you want to sell your items, you should look at similar items and see how they are presented. What does the description entail? How many pictures? Check the quality of the photos. How many bidders and what prices are being offered? Get familiar with your product line.
Bid on something you can afford because you want to understand the buying process before you sell anything of your own. Even if you don't win the auction, you will learn. You will learn more if you do win though, so try to outbid someone and get your product shipped to you.
When you are ready, signup for a free Ebay account and start reading their helpful Sellers information. I won't duplicate it here.
Several years ago I bought some books and tapes on making money on eBay. Half the information was about how rich I could become. Some basic information on drop-shippers and other suppliers for finding products was included. A few recommendations were made on providing several good quality pictures and accurate descriptions with policies on payments, shipping, returns, and the like. Clearly the authors had made money. They were PowerSellers.
One simply had a good marketing campaign for his eBay system with information that anyone could figure out in a few days. There was a nice set of workbooks. Plus there was a "plug" to sign up for advanced help which costs much more money, and I am sure added much more money to his profit margin.
Both authors recommended that to "grow your business" you need an Internet store with more items. There was not much help on how to set them up. I have WAY more details below.
An important feature of eBay is their Feedback Rating system. You DO want to avoid dealing with those with low Feedback scores and usually you can trust those with high scores. You need to establish your own high ratings to become a trusted seller. That means you have to do some deals and give and get some feedback points yourself.
When you are ready to sell, start with one listing and see what it takes and watch the bidding frenzy if you are lucky. Maybe list something to "test the waters" first, rather than your grandmother's necklace or some other high value item. Learn what it costs to enhance your item and get the best price for your valuables.
There are alternative auction websites too. Amazon is another popular place to list and sell most anything in an Auction format or for a set price.
When you look at other auction listings, see how many have an eBay store or other storefronts on the Internet. They may simply be selling a few items over eBay.
A SMART STRATEGY is to use EBAY as an Advertisement for YOUR Estore
Having a store on the Internet with all the features needed to order, pay, ship, and maintain inventory is WAY more involved than simply having an affiliate website. Many people sell products directly and make excellent money at it, whether they list items on eBay or not.
Internet Retailing or Online Storefront
Selling products directly from your website involves a great deal more than managing a typical website. You would need to support a full retail operation online and off, like gathering inventory (or working with dropshippers, or both), performing order processing, and making sure product was shipped. You would deal with the suppliers, unless you manufacture the product yourself, in which case, you would probably have a whole staff working on your store front website for your product, and not be reading this. Though there are many people that sell items that they create themselves.
Some home-based business entrepreneurs are making resale agreements with suppliers that presents them with enough cost benefit (profit) to make money selling their products. You can find inexpensive products in wholesale houses and outlots. You can even find Dropshippers to "dropship" products right to your customer so you won't have to package and ship products yourself. See the SECRET PRODUCT resource I found for you on top of this page!
The first storefront I had was with Vendio. Their ecommerce service was simple to setup and use. I chose them because they said their "stores" were automatically listed in Froogle. I still didn't know what products to sell but found and listed some items I found at some dropshippers. I tried to order something to test it all, and I couldn't even get my own order working. When I tried to get help, I saw that they charged a monthly fee for support, except through email. And their email responses were slow and not very helpful. I dropped their service quickly.
Then I decided to proceed with a Yahoo Store. After my bad experience, I wanted to use a service that was well-known and offered full support for free. And they were helpful. They even had someone assigned to me personally for 60 days to help me get started. Since I am a programmer, he led me toward their tried and true RTML Store Editor which makes it possible to literally manage hundreds and thousands of products almost as easily as one or two.
I spent the next several weeks pouring through RTML guides and designing my estore. I had a lot of fun programming the Halloween theme, but I didn't get any sales. Then I put up a cute Christmas theme. I had about 50 products loaded from various dropshippers. Then I got inquiries about buying my iPod's. They were the old ones I had found at one dropshipper. They were gone. I realized that I had spent almost no time on my product line. I couldn't afford to purchase them myself and "hope" someone would buy them. I realized that my strategy was all wrong. I closed my store after an equally dismal Valentine's Day. Since then, I've learned more and more to share with you here.
For one thing, I learned enough about setting up and programming Yahoo Stores to help you with their difficult interface and loading products. If you want to sell products with your website and you want technical help building your website estore, just let me know. Remember I provide Affordable Custom Work.
There are alternatives for shopping carts that work well too. I'll be happy to discuss them with you personally if you sign up for FREE consulting at MyMinisites Network. This is also the best place to learn HTML and how to be your own webmaster with my FREE online Step-by-Step Guides to "Webmaster Yourself", FREE templates and the FREE "ALittleHTMLGuide". Really, you can download them FREE without even subscribing! Such a deal!
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