E-commerce

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich (Pexels)

A little bit before the shitshow of a pandemic came, I started selling toys of mine online. After two years selling and earning more than a thousand euros selling things, I wanted to spend some time reflecting and maybe stating the reasons how I got to the place I am today.

First things first, I didn’t sell anything expensive, I just sold old toys and no-longer-in-use items I found around the house. Turns out selling items is not only a good way to earn an extra few bucks but it is also a fabulous way to clear out your room.

It just is just amazing how something you consider to be worthless is worth enough for other people to spend money to buy it. To be fair, it is also far better off this way considering the other option for those toys being the trash bin which is just sad and not very environmentally friendly.

Anyways, I started selling items online not thinking that it could be something I would be interested in or something that I could learn from, since looking back, I did have tons of fun selling things online and I did learn a trick or two.

At first, my mother did not believe that I could make anything from the toys me and my brother overused when we were children. Maybe this is my mother’s way to keep me from disappointment. In her way she let me know that she didn´t manage to sell online so I won´t be able to do the same as well. Nothing against my mom but I am glad that I could prove her wrong and even impress her a little.

When I first started, I just did the bare minimum. I took some mundane pictures of the toys and posted them with very little consideration for their appeal or if they would sell in the first place. Selling was a way to clear out my closet and not my job, so I didn’t give too much of a crap.

Yet after selling some small toys and having a little bit too much time on my hands, I decided to make my repertoire more noticeable and make my pictures look a little more than decent. Turns out all I needed was a bit of boredom and a camera.

During my year off from college after graduation, I spent most of my time scrolling through social media looking for something interesting to do since I did nothing that year. After some time, I stumbled on this interesting post that could take one´s product photography to the next level.

It went from this…

To this…

There were many compliments flooding in just thanks to those pictures and I believe those pictures also managed to boost my sales. It just felt flattering to hear compliments when you just did this for fun and are just an amateur at photography. This somewhat inspired me to continue photography despite the fact that in most pictures something is not right.

After a few tries, I got taking pictures of the toys down to an art form and I was proud of myself for once. Many people I know were also impressed with those pictures and they were shocked to find out how easy it was to take those pictures.

Once, I was scrolling through eBay doing some product research, I was shocked to have stumbled upon a seller who took the pictures in the same way I did. I mean that technique is not patented so I couldn’t stop the seller from taking those pictures and not that I wanted to. To be fair, I feel flattered that people are starting to make knock offs of my pictures and yet, no offence, they did not put too much effort into picture taking.

After perfecting the photography part of selling items online, I went on to learn about the actual part of e-commerce… the selling of the item.

For the record, I did not promote my toys in any way since, even now, I am not that invested, and I already have a lot of things on my plate with this blog. And I was curious to see how things would turn out if you just let your product drift on the selling site.

The first thing, I learned is that you need to know your product. What are you trying to sell to your customer? It will just make you appear as a competent seller even though you don´t know everything about your product.

Make sure to be as detailed as possible when it comes to naming your offer placement. Try to avoid any bold letters and just stick to the facts. For example, when I sell toy cars, I don’t title the offer “USED CAR”. That title is way too generic and most of the time just sets up the customer for disappointment. Instead, I wrote something like “(Manufacturer) (manufacturer number) (model) (type of item) (colour)”.

Despite the fact of not knowing anything else about the toy car, the customer will believe you know your product because you managed to concisely explain your product from the manufacturer and manufacturer number (which is often found on the toy car itself) to the type of vehicle and its colour.

After giving your offer a title, the next important thing is the price. Most of the time, I don´t set a price based on my perceived value of my product, but I prefer to do some market research to know what the market value for my product is.

This prevents you from selling your product for too cheap or too expensive. Since selling for too cheap is your loss and selling for too expensive won´t get you any customers and that will be your loss in a roundabout way as well.

Since I do accept price proposals, I like to set my asking price just a bit above the average market value since people would always want a discount and when you discount at a higher price, you are just getting the average market price for your product, which is not a loss. And if people are willing to pay above market value, I won´t complain either.

The description is one thing I don’t spend any time on, because from experience, the description is just time wasted on something nobody is going to read, so instead I would like to use the time I saved on something more important like shipping.

Sometimes, I struggle with setting shipping prices because I can´t always guarantee the price I set is the price I am going to ship it for. Sometimes, I set the shipping price too low, which made a dent in my profit. If only I have paid more attention to it, I would have saved a few euros.

However, I do have some pointers. Make sure the parcel measurements are right because shipping companies can be stingy and will charge more just for an extra centimetre. And the same goes for the weight of the parcel.

Now the offer is done. You have an eye-catching amazing product picture, an interesting yet detailed title, the right price for your product and a reasonable shipping method and price. All you have to do now is wait.

Don´t expect anything to sell immediately. From experience, I can tell you that some items sell really fast, and some just sell real slow. Therefore, don’t worry too much if your product doesn’t sell instantly.

Sometimes you just have to wait for the right season since you can´t sell heaters in the middle of the summer without a marketing strategy. Sometimes you just have to wait for the right customers to come along. Sometimes the price is just too unreasonable.

Case in point being that there are many factors that play a role in why something is not selling so don’t worry too much and if necessary ask friends for second opinions because there could be something you have missed.

Surprisingly, I managed to sell a lot of stuff many considered to be trash. And I don’t feel like ripping anyone off or cheating anyone out of their savings because my products are not that expensive, and I took decent pictures of the product. In those pictures, the flaws of the product are quite visible so no one can complain.

In e-commerce, honesty is key. I always feared that I was being dishonest by setting the prices too high or marketing those products in a deceitful manner. Nevertheless, everything I do is honest. I don´t touch upon any pictures so my customers can get an honest picture of the product they will be receiving.

After doing it for two years now, each new item I sell doesn’t feel special anymore but there is still a flicker of pride coming to life whenever a product is sold because I have learnt how to do this all by myself and actually managed to make something out of it.

My current experience with customer service has been quite mixed. On the one hand, you have amazing customers who make the transactions ten times easier. Then there are some dishonest and impolite customers but just so you know that it will always turn out fine in the end. The customers even each other out to a certain extent.

There are also sites that take over the whole selling part for you if you don’t have time or just want to earn money without too much effort. When using those buy n sell sites,  you don’t have to take the pictures, set the price and handle the shipping since they do it for you. I have tried out those buy and sell shops online and they make it so easy to get rid of many unwanted things in my home.

First, you obviously need to make sure that the online buy and sell store is a trusted site since there are many scam buy and sell sites out there. It is just a word of caution but just do your research beforehand and you will be fine.

Then you just need to name the products you want to sell and they will set the price you will get. After agreeing on the selling price, you just ship it off to the given address and receive your money. It is that easy.

However, those sites have their downsides as well because you lose control over the narrative. The profit you are going to make will also significantly decrease because the buy and sell company is also set to make a profit.

Besides learning about different methods of selling items online, taking the perfect product picture and finding out the way to post my offers online, e-commerce has taught me some valuable skills that I can apply in my life going forward.

For instance, I have learned how to organize piles of items efficiently and how to sort through them the quickest. It took some time to sort through the bulks of items my parents wanted me to sell after finding out there is a better way to get rid of things they don’t need besides throwing them in the trash but with time you get really efficient with that. Obviously, Ted-Ed helped a bit.

E-commerce taught me how to use excel to sort through the bulks of data I got after sorting through the physical items. It taught me how to work more efficiently and helped me learn how to keep track of everything because you need to.

It also taught me how to deal with people. Since e-commerce puts you in a different position. Now you are not talking to a stranger, you are talking to a potential customer, so you learn how to talk and formulate things differently in a manner that will keep even the stubbornest customers satisfied.

E-commerce taught me some finance management as well otherwise, I would be captaining a sinking ship. To a certain extent, I also learnt a thing or two about human behaviour just by observing the customers I already have and the potential customers I could get.

The best part of e-commerce for me was just the fact that I got a chance to try it out. Discover all this for myself with no one around to help me. A chance to learn all this by making mistakes and learning from them. Just a chance to try something different.

E-commerce not only helped me to clear out my messy room but also helped me learn what it feels like to earn my own money. It did not make me independent per se, but this is just a stepping stone on the way to independence.