A Guide on How to Buy and Sell Online
A guide on how to buy and sell online.
You must have read about how people buy and sell online to earn huge profits. In my previous article entitled “Making Money Buying and Selling Online”, I mentioned that a lot of people who can be erroneously considered as jobless, earn fantastic income even much more than some so called professionals.
I threw some lights on what some of them do to make money on the internet. They simply buy products online and sell them at profits. Buying and selling online is very lucrative but you need to get it right. Every business has its peculiarity. If you want to buy and sell online, it is good for you to learn the basics before you start the business.
Firstly, you should understand that there is nothing mystical about online business. The same way you can go to the market and buy products, the same way you can go online to buy products. Before now, before you could buy products from overseas suppliers, you had to be an importer with huge amount of money. Also, the documentations and other processes required could be very frustrating. But now, with the proliferation of ecommerce and easy access to internet by many individuals, to buy and sell online has become easy. By following the steps below, you can buy and sell online with ease.
Read Also: Making Money Buying and Selling Online
Find a good product
If you want to buy and sell online, the first step you need to take is to search for a good product. There is nothing as important as locating a good product if you want to make it in this type of online business. Likewise, nothing can be fatal as buying and selling a wrong product. You may ask me which product is good or bad. Well, I will say that it is not the product per se that is good or bad but the situations that surround the product. How then do you identify a good product? You need to identify your objective. I believe that the main reason you want to buy and sell online is to make profit. If that is the case, then you need to find a product that you can buy low and sell high. You can search for such products from different sales channels. Good places where you can easily search products and then compare prices are eBay, Allibaba, Amazon, Etsy, and other eCommerce websites.
Essentially, you are trying to find a product that have wide price differential. Search for the minimum and maximum prices a product is being sold. A product with a wide gap between the minimum and maximum prices may be a good one. However, you need to pay attention to the size or weight of the product. This determines how much you or your customers will have to pay on shipping. Small and light products are more cost effective. Also, products selling below $150 usually attract more patronage. It is easier for customers to part with $50 than $200. Products with low cost can be bought on impulse. Therefore, you can easily play on customers emotion with low cost products.
Another area you need to pay attention to when choosing a product to buy and sell online is the frequency of its use. One off product cannot be considered a good product to buy and sell online. Go for products that customers use frequently. You can be sure of having growing customers base with such products. Products with high margin that can give you minimum of 40% are good to buy and sell online. Don’t forget to factor the cost of shipping into the product cost.
If you want to buy and sell online, try as much as possible to avoid fragile products. Fragile products can bring a lot of complaints and return which may eventually lead to refunds to customers. If the product you want to buy and sell online is trademarked, please ensure that you buy the original. Almost every trademarked product has counterfeit in the market. You can get sued if you buy and sell counterfeit products online or offline.
Find a reliable Supplier
When it comes to buying and selling online, there are elements of risk. One of the risks is the possibility of falling into the hands of wrong suppliers. Wrong suppliers are scammers who are out to dupe unsuspecting customers. To reduce or eliminate this risk, following these steps will help.
- Buy from Gold Suppliers. Certain suppliers are rated “Gold” based on their track of records. If you want to buy and sell online, I advise you buy from Gold Suppliers. This will ensure the security of your funds.
- Search for at least 10 suppliers. This will increase your negotiation power.
- Please, don’t use you personal email address in your correspondences. Have a dedicated email address for your online business.
- Suppliers with quick response rate may indicate good customer service.
Buy and sell your product.
No matter how good a product may look like, it is advisable you order for samples first. I will not encourage you to disclose your credit card details to any supplier. It is safer to buy products from suppliers that accept payment through Paypal or Escrow. If the samples meet your expectations, you can then order in a large quantity.
Read Also: A Guide to Starting an Online Business From Home
To start selling online, you need to open seller accounts on popular sales channels like Amazon, eBay and Itsy. If you want to enjoy patronage, your price should be friendly.
Conclusion
If you want to buy and sell online, you will get to learn other things as you grow in the business. There are pitfalls but in order to mitigate the impact, it is better to start small. But the truth is that, buying and selling online is a lucrative home based online business.
