Choosing A Sales Platform For Your Online Business

If you have a product or service that you want to sell online

, one of the important decisions you have to make is where online you are going to sell.

There are a number of choices.

E-bay. The well known auction store is very successful for some sellers. The advantages of eBay selling are many - there's no need to set up your own web store, and eBay attracts it's own traffic - so for many an e-bay store is a good way to start up, however the large fees taken by PayPal and the listing fees do make a hole in narrow profit margins.

Many sellers use eBay as a stepping stone to their own web store. Although eBay does not allow sellers to advertise their own stores on the site, it is simple enough to add a leaflet or business card to each package you send out to customers showing that you have a website with a wider selection of products.

The disadvantage is that there are fees attached to eBay listing which have to be paid even if the item doesn't sell and there are numerous add-on services which may be essential to your business. e-Bay has a reputation for being cut throat with regard to price.

Amazon. There are several different ways to work with Amazon. One is to set up your own information site and add to it ads for Amazon products related to the subject. You then earn commission on the sales.

A slightly more advanced form of the same thing is to create an A-store - rather like your own small corner of Amazon, which can be added to your own website (usually a self-hosted blog). You are selling products which are already in the Amazon catalogue.

You can also sell your own products on Amazon using their shopping cart but fulfilling the orders yourself - or you can send the products to Amazon so they can pick pack ship etc. Each service requires a separate fee.

Your own e-commerce store. There are many ways to create an e-commerce store - from buying a general web design package to using open source software which should be available free from your hosting company or a hosted e-commerce package.

You can hire a web designer to create a completely customized store just for you, but most people use an e-commerce software package which attracts a monthly fee.

The platform you choose makes no difference to the problems of supply. If you sell a physical product it still needs to be stored it, picked, packed and sent through the mail or by courier service.

The simple way to get started is to use a drop shipping company where you buy the stock only when a customer places an order with you. The drop ship supplier then handles all the shipping for you saving you time, money and effort.

If you are looking for a business which is location independent, allowing you to spend time on the beach, you will need to find a drop shipping company or fulfillment house to deal with that side of your business.

Whichever option you choose be sure to configure the many and various charges into your selling cost. Its a basic point but easy to miss when margins are tight; you have to charge more than the item costs in order to make a profit - whether you sell on or offline.

by: Kirsty Hale

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