Problems Faced By Online Sellers on eBay and Amazon
Planning to become an online seller? Welcome to the world of online selling. The websites like eBay and Amazon don’t just give us a convenient platform to showcase our products, but also retailers can reach out to the world market, online selling introduces us to the world of infinite possibilities and a presence in the global market. The world is getting connected through the internet in a faster pace than we can imagine. This leaves us with one question, how difficult is it to start selling online? Well, it is just like starting another business you start with your own website and get visitors, but the happy news is that it is much cheaper than opening your own retail store.
However websites like eBay and Amazon provide you with the opportunity to sell your products if you are a new online seller, it’s not all a cakewalk, you might face fewer difficulties, given below are a few examples of problems faced by online sellers on eBay and Amazon:
1. The Hidden Costs:
eBay and Amazon both let you join for free, but that’s not the case after you have joined them, Individual account cost .99 cents per item fee (up to 40 listings per month) and $39.99 month (unlimited listings) in a case of Amazon, whereas eBay's Insertion fee is about .30 cents per listing (but can go up to $2.00 depending on how many more you add, such as bold text, or subtitles).
eBay’s seller fees vary a lot, and they try hard to keep it hidden from public view. If you are a new seller, before you list anything with eBay you should calculate it through the site’s fee calculator to see exactly how much you’ll owe eBay if it sells.
2. Countless competitors:
try not to drown in the ocean of sellers; making your presence felt will be quite a task after looking at the official figures of 2006. eBay reported 1.3 million sellers worldwide and In 2009, Amazon reported 1.6 million sellers worldwide, the numbers are only growing. This kind of competition can intimidate new sellers who have just stepped their foot in the world of online selling.
3. No customer loyalty:
Customers visit your advertisement through the brand name Amazon or in some cases eBay; they are loyal to these platforms that shower their customers with various offers, flash sales, deals and not to your brand, So you lose the ability to up-sell, which includes marketing more profitable products to the customer, selling to the same customer leads to their loyalty and repeat sales.
According to “the journal of business and industrial marketing; written by Michael J, Sheehan, and Paul R, Prabhakar “It is five times more expensive to get a new customer than it is to hold onto a current one”.
4. Exasperating Rules:
Once you are a seller, there is a rule book that you will have to abide by, while some of them make sense, others feel unnecessary. Rules restricting multiple seller accounts, Product Detail description Page Rules, Selling Textbooks, Selling International Media Products, Selling Software, Selling Ink or Toner Cartridges are a few example of long annoying texts that you have to go through before you get disqualified or blacklisted from selling.
In conclusion, these sites are taking back from you more than they offer, for a newbie. it might not be as simple as it is made to look. Though glorified from outside and portrayed as simple as a click of a button, these sites have their loopholes making it quite a task to get rolling.
You Can Also Read: 5 Common problems faced by eBay sellers
