subject: Running a Small Business Online [print this page] Running a Small Business Online Running a Small Business Online
If you are a small Internet business owner or sell items on auction sites, now is the time you'd better take stock of your product, and start advertising. Especially if you're planning to sell items for Christmas, you better start working on it right now as there is very little time for reflection for the next 11 month or so, you're either ready or you're not!
We have sold on auction for seven years and we know how hectic this time of year can be. Since we moved to an ecommerce site, and we expect the Christmas rush 40% of our international sales as it is fast becoming a trend! Foreign customers buy until the end of November and then they disappear as quickly as they appeared. They reappear just after Christmas and start their binge shopping again. They will pay a premium for their product as they can not buy the product in their own country at a reasonable price. Or if they buy from a U.S. retailer, they usually pay an exorbitant amount for shipping and handling. This was one of our niche market strategies. We send products abroad for a little more than the port. How do we do it? Well, we calculate the actual shipping costs and add a little for packaging, plus online transfer (Paypal) fees, etc. When we sell on the auction, we also add the entry and final value fees. Now that we have an ecommerce site, we do not always have to add these extra costs, which makes the ultimate price we sell our product on, less. That is another angle of our marketing techniques - reduced shipping costs - and every year the same international customers would make their Christmas shopping through us due to our cheap shipping method!
Our North American customers should normally start surfing after Thanksgiving until December 24. We get the same question asked before in December - "Can you deliver our items before Christmas! We always have a laugh at this question and send the item within 24 hours. Even if our shipping policy states we ship within 48 hours, we ship within 12 hours to 24 hours after receiving payment. Again we saw this as part of our marketing niche. Comments regarding out fast shipping or super-fast shipping are abundant in our 99.8% feedback with over 10,000 positive, more like EBay. We continue to follow this policy of ultra-fast shipping for the Christmas rush on all sorts of items ranging from gifts, gadgets and fun, cool collectible items.
