Reason 6: too much rules and stipulationsYour listings are made to attract costumers and put everyone in the mood to buy whatyou are selling, not scare everyone away!Some sellers have so many rules and stipulations you must agree to in order to buy fromthem, it can seem that you would be signing your life away if you buy from them. Therules and stipulations I am talking about is the seller’s policy. Some sellers require you tocontact them with in 24 hours if you want a refund, others will charge you a 25%restocking fee if you chose to return your item. There are also sellers that threaten toreport you to eBay if you don’t fulfill your end of the deal and some even threaten to takelegal action!All of these rules and stipulations are a very negative and scary thing for the costumer.Your listing is supposed to make the visitor feel welcome, comfortable, safe and ready tobuy. That is why you should never include anything negative like a 25% restocking fee inyour listing. Your costumers are already worried about weather or not you are going torip them off or not, why would you want to give them more things to worry about?
Reason 7: no refundsIf department stores, shoe stores, internet stores and even service companies give refunds,you should definitely do the same. Most successful eBay sellers offer a 100% moneyback guarantee, why? Because like I said before, when someone decides to buy a productover the internet they are usually going blind.There are so many things to worry about when you buy something over the internet(credit card scams, flawed products, thieves etc.) that when a person is about to buysomething they are usually full of doubt and worry.That is why you need to offer a 100% money back guarantee…to easy the worry and takeaway the doubts of your potential costumer.Would you ever buy something that you haven’t had the chance to inspect in person,from somebody you have never seen in your life. Knowing that if there is somethingwrong with what you have bought there would be no way for you to get your moneyback? I didn’t think so. But when you say “no refunds” that is exactly what you areasking people to do…go blind and hope for the best.If your policy is “no refunds” most people would have to be crazy to ever buy from you.And guess what, most people are NOT crazy.
Reason 8: sloppy and unprofessional listingsYour auction listings are both your company representative and salesperson, and how arecompany representatives and sales people made to look in the real world? Professionaland presentable! So why would you’re representatives and sales people (auction listings)be dressed in rags?If your listings are filled with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and look like theywere put together in 2 minutes, it will look very amateur and some people will think thatyou don’t take your business seriously (which would probably be true). Most peopledon’t want to deal with amateurs because amateurs are usually the ones that will screw upand send the products to the wrong address.Your listings need to neat, clean, easy to understand and appear professional.Your listings are what you are judged by, so if your listings look sloppy; you will looksloppy. If your listings look chaotic and confusing you will appear the same. The truth isthat it doesn’t take much effort to put together a nice, professional looking listing. Sothere is really no reason why your listings should appear like something a mentallydisabled seagull put together.
Reason 9: unreasonable pricesYou must understand that the reason most people chose to buy off of the internet is to geta great deal. A lot of people also think that it is more convenient to shop from the comfortof your own home, but the biggest reason is still savings. So why would anyone everwant to buy something that is close to or at the retail prices?Another thing you should keep in mind is that besides the cost of the item, the costumermust pay for shipping and possibly even costumes taxes! Remember the number onereason why people refuse to buy stuff over the internet? It is because most people believeshipping and handling charges add too much to the final cost of the product. That is whyyour prices should always be below retail.What you should do is check what prices the competition sells the products you want tosell at. That way you can get a good idea about the prices you should charge yourcostumers.Now I know you might think a good idea would be to find out what the competitionsprices are and make your prices lower in order to attract more costumers. While that maysound like a good idea, it’s really not. The last thing you want to do is needlesslyundercut your competition and get into a price war with some of the more established andrespected sellers…they will destroy you.And besides, as soon as someone else lowers their prices everyone will run to them.Costumers that are looking for the lowest possible deal are not loyal and they will leaveyou as soon as they find a better deal.If you are putting an item up for auction it would not make any scents to start it at a highprice. Auctions are meant to start at low prices and get bided up until there is a winner.And if you check eBay you will notice that most of the power sellers out there alwaysstart their auctions at $1 and no reserve.So remember, if you are going to sell something over the internet, whether it be througheBay, yahoo or Amazon. One of the biggest advantages to buying something from theinternet is the great prices. And that is exactly what most people are looking for, bargains.
Reason 10: bad reputationThere is a reason why eBay created their now famous and imitated feedback system, thatreason is trust. The folks at eBay realized a long time ago that the internet is full of scamsand thieves. They also realized that when it comes to spending money over the internet,most people are very nervous and worried about getting ripped off.Every time a seller rips someone off or makes a costumer unhappy, the costumer has achance to give the seller negative feedback. This negative feedback will stay with theseller for as long as they remain a member of eBay and will forever be a stain on theirreputation. So naturally, the last thing most eBay sellers want to do is make someoneunhappy. This results in a very safe and comfortable environment for people that arelooking to buy something on eBay.But regardless whether you are planning to sell your products on eBay, yahoo, Amazonor open your own internet store. You should protect your reputation at any cost. Becauseeven though a costumer can’t give you bad feedback if you own your own internet store,what they can do is go to internet forums and let others know the horrible things you didto them. The word will spread quicker than you think, your reputation will get ruined andbefore you know it you can find yourself out of business.If you think about it, would you trust someone that has a bad reputation? Of course not,because when it comes to buying over the internet, most people are already nervousenough buying from someone they know anything about. And if you have a badreputation you have no chance.The ten reasons above can severely hurt the number of bids your auctions receive and asa consequence make you loose a lot of money.Overcharging on shipping, using bad photos and short descriptions are not mistakes onlyrookies make. If you brows through the listings on eBay you will find that manyestablished sellers make a lot of mistake, maybe not as much as sellers that are juststarting out, but they do make these common mistakes. So just by following the advicegiven to you in this short list; you will be able to gain an upper hand on some of yourmore established competitors.I think you will agree that most of the advice in this list doesn’t take a lot of effort toapply to your eBay, yahoo or Amazon business. But even though it is quite easy to applythe advice in this book; the results can be overwhelming.Now that you know what NOT to do, go out there and apply everything you should do.Because unless you use the information in this list to your advantage all of that greatadvice you have just received will go to waste.Something you should keep in mind is that even though the advice in this book is aimedat primarily eBay sellers. The advice can be applied to any kind of online sales business,weather its eBay, yahoo, Amazon, Ubid, your own website etc.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment