My Internet Business Basics: Selling To Where Online
Before you start your own site, selling things, it’s worth your while to take a look at the established selling services out there. They can be a good place to “get your feet wet” as it were, and start selling things before investing a lot of time and effort into your own site. A lot of businesses never “graduate past them”, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to do so with your business.
My internet business recommends that you start out small. There are three major venues for selling things on the internet before you take the plunge on your own web shop: eBay, Amazon Shops and Caf Press. We’re going to explore all three to give you a baseline for comparison.
The easiest one to get into, assuming you have a means of generating graphics, is Caf Press. You upload your artwork, set up the shop, and select what products it’ll be on, ranging from tee shirts, to coffee mugs, to calendars – even intimate apparel. (Yes, we have seen “Just Do IT?” thongs) The flip side is that Caf Press charges a pretty premium; they handle all the manufacturing for you, so you don’t have to cover inventory. So you’re not making much per sale unless you can command a premium. Still, if you’re an artist and lazy, they’re a good way to make some money off of your artwork.
The next step up from Caf Press is Amazon Shops. Amazon Shops lets you print books on their Booksurge service, or just sell used books online. My internet business is not limited solely to books – we’ve sold tee shirts, cookwear and electronics on ours. Amazon Shops charges $40 per month as a listing fee and takes anywhere from 10% to 25% of the sale price of the item. The advantage is that it’s a natural destination for selling things online. Millions of customers go to Amazon every day. The setup is more involved than Caf Press is, but the reduced fees probably make it worthwhile once your business grows.
Once you figure out what you want to buy, make sure it is selling and check out the competition. You can research similar products that are on eBay and read the customer reviews. These customer reviews are also another advantage to using eBay as a precursor to your own webpage. You can later state your rating and quote some customer reviews that you received from eBay.
eBay is more labor intensive than Amazon, but the percentages that they take out are less. eBay has moderately high listing fees, so keep that in mind when planning your sales patterns. eBay is the ideal forum for selling things you buy locally, or retailing something you buy at wholesale. By the time you’ve outgrown an eBay shop, you’ll be well set on setting up your own eCommerce site.
Deciding what to sell is the next step – you’ll want something that’s distinctive, and that you can get at a reasonable price, and can sell for a reasonable markup. Again, Amazon and eBay are good places to do the research. Any time you think of something you might sell, do a search for it on eBay or Amazon and see how many other people are selling it. Also look at how they’re selling it; the mistakes of your competition are how you propel yourself in this business.
Finally, keep your options open. Never ever sign an exclusive deal, and always be on the lookout for new products you can sell; not all products have to be made of atoms, Informational products are also a natural product for the Internet, and may be the product type that catapults you into doing your own web shop.
Filed under: Internet Marketing