That means you are giving away 20% of your sale to Amazon and you are working your ass for Amazon

Amazon Is Claiming To Be The Best Online Retailer

Did you know that a recent survey by InternetRetailer found that online shoppers trust Amazon the most among major retailers?

Really? Amazon doesn’t own any products. It’s the sellers at Amazon providing the product
What happen of the buyer wants to return a product and even claim for the 1 year warranty?
Is Amazon helping you (buyer)? No way, they will only refer you to contact the seller instead.

Guess what? Seller doesn’t even have a phone number. Most Amazon seller don’t have phone number.

Amazon Has Huge Number of Shoppers, But you Don’t Own Them

Just like Ebay, there are tons of customers buying products on Amazon.com. In fact most Ebay sellers moved to Amazon due to the high transactions fees of Ebay. With 20% and the montly fee of Amazon, it doesn’t look much different from Ebay.

Besides, once the Amazon customer bought the product from you, you don’t have the email from your customer.
There is no phone number and no email address of your customer. Unless you upgrade your merchant account (pay more fees).

So what does this mean?

You cannot built a customer list and you cannot make follow up sales with Amazon customers.
Basically, you don’t the own customers at at all

Amazon Is Keeping The Customers Away From You

Amazon is very smart!

They built complex internet platform and let retaillers think they can make lots of money.
Amazon just sit down and watch the money of the retailers (20% of sales + monthly fees) streaming into their pocket.

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While the conversation about which is the better option, online shops or eBay, might not be anything new, it is something that’s constantly changing as both of these options develop and evolve.

For those who don’t know much about online shops, as well as sellers who may be considering them as an alternative to eBay, what does the future hold for these two very different methods of selling online?

A possible future for those selling on eBay?

Many professional sellers on eBay might be quite pessimistic about the future of the world’s largest online auction site, and the impact that is likely to have on their business. More and more sellers, offering cheap, low-priced items means it’s getting harder for merchants to sell quality, high-value products on eBay, and the profits are likely to be smaller when they do.

Is this situation likely to continue, or even get worse? It certainly doesn’t show any signs of improving. A lot of the changes eBay has made over the last couple of years have meant that the balance of power has definitely shifted more towards the buyers on eBay (and of course, eBay themselves).

This could mean it’s likely to get even harder for sellers to build profitable businesses on eBay, and now might be a good time to look for a better alternative.

How are online shops likely to develop?

The future for online shops, on the other hand, and the potential they offer online sellers, couldn’t be a more different story. With the growth of sites like Weebly and eCrater, both platforms providing free online shops to ecommerce merchants, and sites like Amazon constantly improving their ‘Webstore’ offering, it’s not difficult to see why online shops are becoming a more popular choice for professional sellers – particularly those who have seen how much eBay has changed. As technology advances, more platforms become available, and setting up and managing these online shops gets easier and less expensive, it would seem to be more a question of when, rather than if, for professional online sellers who are serious about growing their business.

With much lower costs, more flexibility, and the opportunity to offer customers real value and service, rather than just the cheapest price, it’s difficult to see any reasons why those looking to sell products on the internet wouldn’t set up online shops – particular as it is so inexpensive and simple that die hard eBayers could always dip their toe in the water without any huge commitment. Online shops and eBay aren’t mutually exclusive, and having more than one route to market would be sensible for any type of business. While some sellers might want to take a little time to consider their options, with the way the future seems to be developing for these two online selling options, any professional seller with an interest in running a successful business might want to give online shops some serious consideration soon, before their competitors do!

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Selling through your own online shop

• Use any of the online websites, like 24homeshop and eCrater, that allow you to set up your own online shop, decide on the look and feel of your store, add some products and you’re ready to go
• Promote your new online shop anyway you like, using a variety of methods to get customers to your store where they can look at all the products you have for sale
• A customer sees something they like in your online shop, selects it and pays for it
• You receive an e-mail telling you that you’ve sold something, collect 100% of the price the buyer paid, pay a small percentage to process the payment, package and send the item to the customer
• You keep in touch with your customer, telling them about all the new products for sale in your online shop, which brings them back to spend even more money with you

>> At 24 home shop You can create your own online store without technical knowledge

Selling on eBay

• You sign up to eBay and complete there listing form, adding only the information they choose to let you include, and paying extra for any photographs that might help you sell your product
• You upload your listing onto eBay, hoping that a potential customer will find your item among the thousands of others that are listed, and that nobody is selling the same thing for less than you
• You sit and you wait, for up to 10 days
• You try and drive some extra customers to your listing, who are just as likely to see other sellers’ listings as well
• You finally get a buyer!
• You wait for your buyer to pay
• If you’re unlucky, you realize that someone has tried to scam you, or that your buyer is unreliable, and you have to relist your item and start all over again
• If you’re lucky, your buyer eventually pays and you package the item up and send it to them
• You get an invoice from eBay and have to pay them and PayPal nearly 20% of the money you made
• It’s very difficult to build any kind of relationship with your customer, in a bid to encourage them to spend more with you, so you start the whole process all over again and try to find another new buyer

You might think that this is a bit of an exaggerated example, but in a lot of cases it actually isn’t. Setting up and running your own online shop can actually be as easy as that – not to mention a lot more enjoyable. And trading on eBay, finding new customers, paying higher fees, and struggling to make a profit can be the norm for a lot of sellers. There are plenty of options that make setting up and running an online shop a simpler and more profitable alternative to eBay. So if you still think using eBay to sell online seems a lot easier than your own online shop, maybe you should take another look.

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Okay, so this may be quite a simplistic view of running a successful eBay business, but the fact remains, it used to be a lot easier than it is today. Selling successful on eBay has become a lot more difficult for a number of reasons.

More effort for less reward

The competition and demanding buyers mean that prices seem to be getting lower and lower. This of course means less profit, but it also means that it is getting harder to find products to sell on eBay that will actually make any money. All this extra time spent sourcing cheaper products to sell, the extra effort required to attract buyers, and the lower prices you end up getting, all means that you’re actually doing more work for less reward!

Unscrupulous buyers

eBay’s feedback rules were recently changed so that buyers were no longer able to leave negative feedback for dishonest buyers who might be trying to scam sellers, or those bidders who were simply unreliable. Without this important indication how how genuine a bidder is, anyone selling items on eBay might end up wasting a lot of time and effort on a buyer who has no intention of paying.

No place for quality products

It seems eBay has become the place where buyers go when they want to find a bargain, which means that anyone who is trying to sell any high value or quality products is going to struggle to stand out against the thousands of listing for cheap and second hand items. Even when they do, all the buyer is likely to be interested in is how much the item costs, as eBay tends to reduce the value of any product to the one thing buyers really care about – price.

Difficult customers

While feedback may no longer be an issue for buyers, it certainly is for anyone who wants to keep selling on eBay. The problem with this is that customers who only care about price seem to be more difficult and demanding to deal with. Even though they are paying less on eBay, it seems that few actually appreciate this fact, and the negative feedback of one or two unreasonable buyers will be a serious threat to your success.

Hard to build a customer base

Most business owners know that once you have a customer, you should try and maximize the business you get from them. Building a base of loyal and happy customers who are willing to keep coming back to spend more with you, is a sure fire way to success. This can be hard to achieve on eBay, with restrictions on what you can and can’t do with customers, all designed to keep them spending within the site, so you have to keep paying your eBay fees. eBay doesn’t really provide the opportunity to build a good relationship with your customers that your own online store might.

It’s fair to say that because of these, as well as a number of other factors, it seems to be getting harder and harder to build a successful eBay business – which could be one of the reasons why even well-established eBayers are now looking at alternative ways to sell their products online. With the opportunity to sell quality products, at decent prices, on sites like 24homeshop even their own ecommerce sites, many sellers are finding easier, and more profitable ways to be successful.

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There’s no loyalty

Even though eBay offers the functionality to keep in touch with buyers who spend money in your online shop, hopefully encouraging them to spend more with you in the future, for a lot of sellers this is becoming less and less effective as a marketing tool. You would have thought that when a customer has a positive buying experience on eBay, they would be more likely to go back to the same seller and buy from them again. However, there is very little loyalty on the world’s biggest auction site, and many buyers are only interested in which seller is the cheapest – and a good business will find it hard to survive if they are only selling on price.

It’s even harder to make a profit

With so much focus on price, many sellers are finding their margins are getting smaller and smaller. Combine this with the relatively high fees across many of eBay’s main categories, and it can be hard to make a consistent profit – low prices and high costs don’t usually make for a very profitable long term business. Many sellers are switching to the some of the alternatives to eBay, including Amazon and even their own online shop, so they are able to focus on the value they can provide their customers, and benefit from the better profits that usually come with that.

You’re not the one in control

Another big factor that can make it hard to be successful on eBay, is that you aren’t really the one in charge of what happens to your online shop. Not only do you have to operate within the rules and guidelines that are strictly enforced by eBay, but those rules could be liable to change at any time – with little or no warning. You really have no control over where your eBay business is going, and you could find that one significant change in policy could have a serious impact on the business you’ve worked so hard to build up.

So whether it’s the low prices, demanding customers, all the rules and regulations, or even a combination of all three, it can certainly feel like an uphill struggle trying to get established, and make a good living on eBay. This is one of the main reasons why sellers who are serious about growing their business, building a h2 and profitable relationship with there customers, and also being in control of the success of their enterprise, are choosing to develop their own online shop away from eBay. With a number of excellent, and very affordable options available, this solution not only makes good business sense, it also puts a bit of the enjoyment back into selling online.

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eBay is becoming more about quantity, not quality

eBay has always been the place to grab a bargain, but whether it’s due to the tougher economic climate, or simply because there is a lot more competition on the site, buyers are demanding lower and lower prices. While it’s not impossible to get a sensible price for any high value, quality items, it is becoming increasingly more difficult – and there are much easier, and more profitable alternatives for selling these kinds of products. As a result, low priced, low quality products seem to dominate eBay, with more and more people selling solely on price, and relying on a high turnover of these types of items to make any money.

It’s getting harder to make an honest buck

For all it’s faults, eBay always seemed to be the kind of place where any genuine seller could find a like-minded buyer, and actually make some money. But with more and more auctions attracting bidders who are at best demanding, and at worst unscrupulous and fraudulent, it is increasingly more difficult for honest eBayers to manage their online shop without the risk of being ripped off, or suffering some unfair feedback which could have a significant impact on their business. A lot of professional sellers on eBay are simply realizing that there are easier, and more enjoyable ways to sell their products and make a living.

It can be hard to find good suppliers

With the pressure on prices, from increased competition and demanding buyers, it seems to be getting harder and harder to find a good, reliable supplier that will provide items at a price that will allow sellers to make a profit after all their eBay fees. Many suppliers are quite rightly reluctant to slash their prices in the same way that some eBayers seem happy to, instead preferring to work with businesses that use any of the many alternatives to eBay, and sell on value, rather than price. Professional sellers seem to be more than happy to take advantage of these alternative ways to promote their online shop to markets that appreciate these products and this approach, instead of taking their chances with those suppliers who will provide the kind of items and prices that will still sell on eBay.

As any business grows, it needs to change and evolve, and eBay is no different. However, it could be that many of the changes eBay has made for the benefit of its business, haven’t had the same effect on the millions of the established sellers on the auction site. As a result, these individuals, and anyone else who’s looking to establish a profitable online shop, could find that the best option for them is somewhere other than eBay.

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The truth is, there are plenty of options for businesses looking to set up online stores that might be a better, and more profitable way of selling than using eBay

Setup a Professional online store without technical knowledge !

Focused on the ecommerce aspect of having your own website, 24homeshop.com is another great, and free, alternative to eBay. You can build your own site, apply your own branding, sell whatever you want (within reason) and keep 100% of the sale!. You just need to pay your PayPal or Google Checkout fees, but you will still be making more money on each sale, than you would with eBay.

eBay isn’t the only big player out there

If one of your concerns about leaving eBay is missing out on a huge marketplace full of hungry buyers, you have no need to worry. You could sell your items on Amazon alongside the site’s own products, for less than it costs to sell on eBay, and often for higher prices than you would have been able to achieve through an auction. There is two drawback with Amazon:

- Amazon will take 20% from your sale (that’s huge!)

- Buyer don’t provide their phone number, so you can not call customer back.

Besides the high fees of Amazon, your rating can go down quickly, since you are not able to call customer back to solve any issues. Once you have a bad rating, same as Ebay, your business is going to fail. Unfortunately, Amazon market place is soon becoming like Ebay.

The best solution is open your own professional online store at 24homeshop. You do have to work hard to promote your online store the beginning. You can use SEO, Pay per Click and Social Media marketing. Once your website has enough hungry buyers, your reward will be much bigger than on Ebay or Amazon.

Become truly independent from Ebay and save thousands per year

One of the best options would be to get your own domain and hosting and build your own website. This is a great alternative to eBay as you have complete control over everything buyers see and do on the site, and even with the costs involved in setting these online stores up, it should prove to be much more profitable in the long run. It doesn’t even have to be difficult, with software and services available to help make setting up your own ecommerce website nice and simple.

With these great options to choose from, it’s hardly surprising that sellers who want to be able to do a lot more with their online stores, and also want their businesses to make more money, are finding it hard to resist the alternatives to eBay.

>> Open your drop ship account at Big Drop Ship Here <<

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The Advantages and Disadvantages of Drop Shipping

A small online retailer can greatly benefit from drop shipping products. Some of these benefits include:

· No Inventory Risk
· No need for Large Storage Warehouses
· Allows for a variety of product offerings
· Drop Shipping is a great model for researching new products

Although there are many benefits to drop shipping, make no mistake about it, there are many disadvantages to drop shipping, including:

· Smaller Profit Margins – This is due to the fact that the wholesale pricing is based on single items as opposed to the traditional wholesale pricing that exists with making bulk purchases.
· Lack of Logistical Control – Because the drop shipping supplier is shipping the products to customers, the retailer has little control over logistics and customer service. If packages are delivered late or are damaged during shipping, the retailer will often feel the negative effects of a botched logistics process.

Keep them Honest

It can be difficult to find good drop shippers with decent wholesale prices. Quite often, new retailers will use search engines such as Google in order to find drop shippers, however, this is arguably the worst manner in which to find credible wholesalers as many middlemen and scammers use this strategy as a method to masquerade as a legitimate wholesaler.

A great way to find great drop shippers is by attending tradeshows that are related to the products that you want to sell. You will surely find reputable wholesalers and manufacturers that are members of the industry trade association and committed to the industry and the products that they sell.

Finding the Drop Shipper For You Company

After you have narrowed down your list of drop shippers, you need to interview several suppliers in order to find out whether they are the right supplier for you and your company.

First you need to determine whether the supplier has any experience working with online businesses. Many drop shipping companies prefer not to sell to online retailers who do not have a history of success, however, there are a few that are experienced in dealing with online retailers and truly understand the needs of online businesses.

Another questions that you need to ask is whether or not the drop shipper allows for one item to be shipped or if they have a minimum amount of product that needs to be shipped, for example 4 units at a time. You want to make sure that you find suppliers that are willing to ship single items for your business to ensure that you are not purchasing more inventory than you can sell. You also need to know if the drop shipper has a minimum sales amount required in order to drop ship product, this is generally referred to as a “minimum ticket”.

Overall finding a good drop shipper can be a tedious process, however, if you are willing to conduct your due diligence the potential payoff could be enormous. The reality is that your profitability will be determined by the quality of the drop shipper you use for your retailing business, so it is in the best interest of your company that you take your time and find the drop shipper that is right for you.

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But eBay’s fees seem to be more and more of an issue with the professional sellers trying to run a profitable online store – and it’s hardly a surprise. With fees for listing, fees when you sell, and even fees for accepting the payment from your customer, these costs can soon add up. Is using eBay eating into your profits?

How the costs can mount up

Some of the most popular items on eBay are things like books, DVDs and video games, and if you decide to open your online store in any of these markets, you will need to pay eBay 15% of whatever you sell your items for. Then, because you will have to choose PayPal as one of the payment options, you will need to pay them 2-3% as well.

All in all, you might have to pay nearly 20% of any sale for the privilege of using their site. Okay, so this might be an extreme example, but even the lowest final value fee on eBay is 8%, and we haven’t even considered the listing fees and costs for any upgrades that might be necessary in order to attract customers. Of course you can get discounts on fees as a business user who subscribes to an eBay store – but there’ll be a fee for that as well.

Consider the alternative

It is going to be hard to make a profit when you have to give away 10%, or maybe even more, from each and every sale. However, making a healthy profit becomes much more realistic if you have an online store elsewhere on the internet – and there are plenty of cheaper, even free, platforms to choose from.

Even if you choose to still use PayPal as your payment processor, your cost per item sold could be reduced to as little as 2-3%! Plus you would have a lot more flexibility to brand and build your online store the way you want to – making it a much better option for businesses wanting to sell quality, high-value items, or products that customers might buy again and again.

Why eBay favors volume rather than value

It looks like the only way to make any real money on eBay, could actually be one of the main reasons why the site seems to be selling more and more cheap, low-quality items. By keeping starting bids and final sales values low, sellers with an online store on eBay will pay less in fees – although this does mean that you will have to sell an awful lot of items if they want to a decent living from it.

But no matter how cheap the items you are selling, or how many of them you sell, eBay will always mean your profits are less than they could be if you had your own online store on any of the other sites that are actually designed for the purpose. As well as making more money, there are a wide range of other benefits that make these eBay alternatives a much better option for most sellers, not least of which is that many of them are actually free! So maybe there is such a things as something for nothing after all.

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More is Not Merrier
Every retailer must have access to inventory in order to conduct a profitable business. However, when companies acquire too much inventory it can put them in an uncomfortable cash position and drastically affect the financial fundamentals of the company. If inventory stays in storage for an extended period of time, it can lead to products reaching the end of their life cycle before ever being sold. This will enviably lead to huge sales featuring these products at clearance prices which will diminish the profit margins of the business.

Plan to Succeed
In order to balance inventory needs, retailers need to plan their product needs in advance. One way to do this is by implementing a cash flow plan. This plan will help the business in the management of its cash and identify times when it is beneficial to scale back inventory purchases. Retailers also need to implement an acquisition plan which will determine how much inventory to acquire in particular buying categories. This type of plan is also beneficial in planning your inventory needs around drop shipper lead times.

Lastly, retailers need to plan their inventory needs on a monthly basis. Every business needs to know at the end of each month as to which product category will need increased inventory levels for the upcoming months. If you make it a habit to replenish your inventory on a frequent basis, you will be less likely to have excessive inventory at the end of its life cycle.

There are numerous small online retailers that are under the impression that they don’t need to plan their inventory needs or budget because they are small companies and drop ship many of their orders. However, in order to be successful and maximize the sales of your company, you will need to know what products to market and how these orders will get fulfilled. Once way to accomplish this is by having a good inventory control plan.

Overall, proper inventory planning will give you an advantage in the marketplace as it allows you the flexibility to change your inventory needs as business conditions change. Any online retailer that takes the time to master this skill is sure to see their profits soar as a result of having a more efficient business.

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