Showing posts with label online stores. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online stores. Show all posts

Monday, 20 August 2012

How to know if you should be selling on eBay

If you sell items on eBay and are having reasonable levels of success, you may look to try and build on this by creating an eBay store. With many people turning to online stores in order to find products at a discounted price, there is a constant urge for sellers to try and grow their business as fast as they can to try and achieve as many sales and as much profit in a short space of time. However, this over reach can often result in sellers biting off more than they can chew, struggling to keep up with demand and eventually burning out. So, when is the right time for you to try and take your business to the next level?

eBay's guidelines suggest that no one should look to create their own eBay store until they are able to handle having at least 25 listings on eBay at any time. Basically, this is because if you can't handle the demand from these 25 listings, you will struggle to be able to keep up product demand when running a store. Realistically, you want to have been selling on eBay from anywhere between six months to a year, ensuring that you are familiar with the whole process, all of the stipulations and have an understanding of generally what all eBay customers look for when purchasing through this platform. 

The huge benefit of spending this time to hone your skills is that it is going to allow you to build up a decent seller rating. This means that when you do eventually decide to make the transition to opening up your own eBay store, you are already going to have a good seller rating that is going to make you much more trustworthy in the eyes of buyers. Instantly, this sets you out from all other newly formed stores who do not yet have a seller rating, greatly improving your chance for success.

How much you roughly make a month through product sales over eBay is also a huge indication of whether or not to open up your own eBay store. Obviously, if you are not making much of a profit each month, there is no point opening up an eBay store as it wouldn't be a worthwhile endeavour and the added fees would make it difficult for you to turn a profit.

When deciding to set up an eBay store you need to take into account all of these factors, look at your current success and realistically see if growing your business is going to be a worthwhile decision. If you are making a small but consistent profit through just selling a few items of eBay every month, then for you it may be better to not rock the boat and stick with what is already working well. 

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Friday, 17 August 2012

Potential danger for UK stores on the horizon from foreign shores

A competitive market for eBay stores in the UK could be set to get even bigger with Royal Mail's announcement that they will now be sending Chinese imports to the EU.

Royal Mail's European parcel business, GLS, has formed an alliance with Chinese company, ZJS Express, to provide a package delivery service for China to Europe.

This announcement could be both good and bad for online sellers. First let's be positive and look at the good aspects of this. Having the ability to receive products from Chinese suppliers, gives you more options as to where you purchase your products from, allowing you to possibly get cheaper supplies or get items that you previously haven't sold before. The greater variety you can provide your customers with, the happier they are going to be to purchase for you. However, you need to bear in mind that you will not be able to buy items in bulk as that would require you to ship through containers. This option should only be undertaken if you are a relatively small business looking to sell a small number of items.

While Royal Mail's partnership with Chinese suppliers does provide some positives, the potential negatives could cripple an online store in the UK. If a Chinese supplier does decide to sell directly to UK customers through the marketplace, it gives them the ability to provide customers with products at cheaper prices, that you just can't match. This would result in you losing a large number of your customers, lowering your total sales and damaging your overall profit. 

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Wednesday, 15 August 2012

eBay Thrown in to Anarchy

Earlier this week, many eBay stores were brought to a stand still as sellers reported numerous glitches and issues on the eBay website, making it almost impossible for them to run their store.

Some of the many problems customers were reporting, included:

  • Changes in Top Seller rating
  • Missing email notifications from eBay and Paypal
  • Photographs missing from listings
  • Missing item specifications

It is believed that these problems will harm eBay, not only in the amount of revenue they generate, but also their overall public image.

This isn't the first time problems have occurred on the marketplace and while you think a platform with over 100 million active stores is bound to have some problems from time to time, one seller shouldn't be able to see the details of another seller through their dashboard interface, which one seller claimed happened to them. These problems have resulted in some store owners becoming annoyed, preferring to leave eBay to go in search of another platform to run their online stores. 


While the problems were being fixed, many sellers were told not to list any products from anywhere between 24 hours to six days. Although this doesn't seem like very long at all when you look at the bigger picture, this is a time frame where your store competitors maybe selling products that you can't even list, possibly resulting in you losing future business from that customer.

This couldn't have happened at a worse time for eBay sellers as it is right smack in the middle of an eBay promotion that allows sellers to add 5,000 free listings in the fixed price format between the 8th and 18th of this month. 

All this comes in the wake of eBay achieving a record increase of fixed price sales by over 33% through July in comparison to the previous year. Ironic, huh?

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