How to enter marketplaces and not burn out in the first year - advice from an experienced seller
Miscellaneous / / July 04, 2023
Be prepared to multiply your original budget by four.
Where to start if you have no experience in selling on marketplaces
Anyone can trade on marketplaces. There are many inspiring examples when entrepreneurs started with 10 thousand rubles, and now they sell for millions. But it seems to me that it is more useful to think about the opposite experience. Because anyone can enter marketplaces, but not everyone manages to stay there.
You need to imagine what beginners cut off on, what pitfalls there are. After all, a mistake can be very costly. I know a seller who tried to go to Wildberries and decided that all the advice that experienced sellers gave him during consultations was banal. He thought that you can act intuitively, skip some steps, do it your own way. And as a result, I lost three million rubles and returned for advice, because now I am ready to listen.
1. Decide on a product
So, you have no sales experience, but you have a desire to enter the marketplace. To get started, choose those products that you understand through your main occupation or hobby. For example, a person who is fond of fishing may start selling fishing rods, floats, hooks, because he is an expert in this. And if a girl knits or makes macrame, a store with goods for needlework is suitable for her.
You may not be an expert on the topic yourself, but you can have one in your immediate environment. That's how it happened to us. My wife is a makeup artist, she is well versed in cosmetics and makeup accessories, can tell what is really high quality and what is not. She acted as an expert in evaluating product samples, makeup brushes.
But this alone is not enough. The product must be different from the competition. If there is a lot of competition in a niche, as in the case of clothing, chances are that more experienced salespeople will overwhelm you. Therefore, the only option here is to be different: better quality, better promotion, better interaction with customers.
Returnable and non-returnable goods
Find out if your item is eligible for a return. By law "On the Protection of Consumer Rights" a person can return an item of good quality within 14 days. But there are non-returnable items. This is, for example, the first layer of clothing (underwear), cosmetics, swimwear, makeup brushes.
If your product is returnable, you need to expect that some part of it after redemption can still return to you. And these are costs, problems with warehouses, a drop in the rating of the product card.
Complete goods
If the product consists of several items, for example, a top and shorts or trousers, then this is a complete product. The risk is that at the point of issue of the order or in the warehouse, someone can steal some part of it and the kit will no longer be whole. In this case, you lose a whole unit of goods, because it is no longer possible to sell a set from the top and skirtswhen there is nothing there.
This can be influenced by various packaging options. But it is better to sell goods that come as a whole.
Seasonal items
During the season you can get very good sales. But I would not recommend beginners to enter such goods because of the risk of not having time to sell the entire batch.
If this happens, the commodity balances will lie around until the next season. This is bad, because the money will be frozen for a long time. Or you will have to sell at zero, and sometimes even at a loss, so as not to be left without money at all. After all, there are products that lose their relevance for the next season. Such, for example, are New Year's toys with the symbols of the year.
In addition, competition in seasonal goods is very high, it is difficult for beginners to compete with experienced players.
2. Calculate your budget
After choosing a product, you need to decide on budget under launch. The mistake of the majority is to count only the amounts for the purchase of a consignment of goods. For example, a unit of goods costs 1000 rubles. We plan to sell 100 units per month. It turns out 100 thousand rubles - and it seems to you that this is the starting budget. But these are not all expenses that need to be calculated.
We will need money for the initial design of a product card, the formation of an SEO‑description of cards, and other elements of product promotion. So from the total budget we eat off the first piece.
The second piece is even larger: we buy one batch to start selling, but we pay for three at once.
For example, we sell 100 units of goods now. Another 100 pieces are goods that are in the process of logistics. The next batch of 100 units of goods must be produced when you sell the first one, so that the goods in the warehouse do not run out.
But that's not all. Another 100,000 should be set aside for some unforeseen expenses. It turns out that the original budget is increased by more than four times.
3. Select Suppliers
Suppliers are most often Russian or Chinese. The latter often have lower prices. But the difference is not only this. The logistic shoulder will also differ - the production and delivery time. And this must be taken into account. The longer they are, the more money you will need for the first batch. Because the main thing in trading on marketplaces is that you don’t run out of goods. Otherwise, the card will lose positions in the general issue.
When ordering even a test batch of samples, you need to think about the next deliveries so as not to fly out-of-stock, that is, not to end up in a situation where the goods are over.
4. Determine which marketplace is right for you
All marketplaces differ not only in design, but also in the audience. If you are planning to enter the clothing category, then you should take a closer look at Wildberries or Lamoda. There is mainly a female audience here, who is used to buying clothes on the Internet.
If you are planning to sell technology, then Yandex. Market" or Ozon - here the male audience mainly buys, and technical goods are more in the zone of interest of men.
Of course, this is a very conditional division. Women also buy equipment, and men become Wildberries customers. But if you look at it as a whole, then marketplaces can still be divided into those with a predominantly female audience, and those with a male audience.
5. Get your cards right
For good sales, it is not enough to take beautiful product photos. Because few people will see them. The place in the issue where your product will stand is affected by filling the card with key queries. This is called SEO optimization. The text and the keys sewn into it are important - the main phrases by which people are looking for a certain product: a yellow summer skirt, a large ceramic mug.
Pictures only motivate to pay attention to you. And the text decides whether your product will catch the eye of the buyer.
At the start of sales, we were puzzled by the content of the cards. We contacted a company that was ready to make pictures for product cards for us. They offered a price that we considered exorbitant: for 10 pictures with a description - almost 100 thousand rubles. We refused and took care of the content ourselves as best we could. But six months later, they still came to that company and made an order from her.
As a result, we lost time that could have been profitable if the content was of high quality, and the money that we spent to write the description ourselves.
But you can go the other way. A way to save money on creating content and images has appeared quite recently. Now many sellers began to use neural networks to create an image and description of a product card. With the help of AI, you can generate and quickly test everything and not spend extra money on the work of copywriters and designers. For example, you can use Midjorney to create images, and ChatGPT for SEO descriptions.
6. Engage in product promotion
Many beginners have heard the advice: your card should be in the top of the issue, only then you will have good sales. This is partly true. Cards in the top sell better than those in the back of the issue.
You can raise the card with the help of internal advertising, when you pay the marketplace for a profitable place. This is a good tool for beginners, because their product can be promoted to the same positions as the products of experienced sellers. Another plus is that Wildberries removed the “Advertising” mark from the cards participating in the internal promotion program. True, the die disappeared only in the desktop version.
But not every seller can afford this method of promotion.
In some categories, the rate per place in a thousand impressions can reach several thousand rubles per hour or day.
It all depends on the popularity of the key query for which the seller wants to show his product.
In general, the more popular the request, the faster the budget will run out. And the goods for 100 rubles will not be able to cover these costs.
You can promote the card using an external advertising is working with bloggers, social networks and, in general, with traffic, that is, with all external sources from where customers can go to marketplaces, such as Yandex Direct, a website. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that even advertising for a millionaire blogger may not work, that is, you will invest a lot of money, and the demand for the product will not increase.
There is another promotion method that sellers use. This is a self-purchase, when sellers buy goods from themselves, leave positive feedback and thereby increase the rating of the product and the store.
This element of promotion is not approved by marketplaces. In Wildberries, they even began to fine sellers who got caught on self-purchase. As a punishment, they can block the product card or even the seller's personal account.
Self-buying is not only a risky business, but also unpromising. Suppose you use this method to get to the top, but you also need to stay there. But not all newcomers who jumped up are ready for the volume of traffic and purchases.
The second danger is that buyers may not be interested in cards that have not been developed in terms of content, even if they are from the top of the issue. People will just flip through and buy from someone else.
7. Build a customer base
Do not forget to work with regular customers, make special offers for them. If a person bought one product from you, then he can come back and buy another.
For example, along with our product, the customer receives warranty a coupon with a QR code, which can be used to contact your support account in order to resolve the marriage issue or, conversely, leave positive feedback. Accordingly, you retain customer contacts, and from them you can form a customer base for further mailing.
At the same time, be sure to check whether customers are against you telling them about your promotions and special offers.
How not to be left without money when ordering goods from a supplier
If you buy a product, and do not produce it yourself, then you need to minimize the possible risks when working with a supplier.
1. Check product in production
Always check the product before it goes to you - even if you buy in China. It would be nice to have a representative there.
A production check is needed to reduce the percentage of possible defects. I know cases when sellers were brought from China a batch that was 70% defective. They were sunscreen. glasses, more than half of which are scratched, interspersed with sand under the paint.
This product is not suitable for sale.
2. Insure cargo
Insurance is a few percent of the value of your cargo. But this amount will protect you from losing all the money invested.
Something can happen to the transport on which the goods travel. Something with the cargo itself: if a shipment is delivered by sea, then a couple of containers in a storm can simply fall overboard.
If the goods are insured, then the cost of the goods will be reimbursed to you. If not, you will simply lose your money.
3. Buy the first batch for small amounts
Don't need it right away invest all the money in the product, even if you thought it was cool. Test in small batches.
I will cite as an example the guys I know who were selling clothes. We saw the goods, ordered samples, checked them minimally.
I liked everything, and the entrepreneurs decided to immediately order a very large batch.
But when the product was already uploaded to the marketplace and began to be sold, customers began to receive very a lot of negative reviews: the seams are poorly made, the clothes did not sit well, there were factory defects. As a result, the seller was left with several tens of thousands of unusable goods and regrets that he hastened with purchases.
So, to make sure the quality of the goods, work with the supplier for a while, do not make large purchases at once, test the goods in small batches.
How to deal with bad customer reviews
Everything seems obvious here: the higher the quality of the product, the better the reviews. But it is important to take into account the “expectation/reality” moment.
If you have very beautiful photos of a product with graphics, but in fact the client receives an ordinary thing, then he is disappointed.
Therefore, initially put in the card those photos that reflect the actual appearance of the goods.
Mistakes with sizes can also spoil the impression. A familiar seller ordered fulfillment - a service related to the packaging and logistics of goods. But the contractor mixed up the sizes, and therefore the size range of the blouses did not match the description in the product cards. People refused, the rating fell. And the seller had to invest a lot of money to correct this situation: the goods were taken out of the warehouse, negative reviews were blocked so that the card could continue to exist.
So I advise you to check and recheck the dimensions and other parameters of the product, and if negative reviews appear, work with them. The team should have a person who responds to customer messages, asks them what they like, what they don’t, what they would like to see. This is a good tool for dealing with negative reviews.
And one more thing: if negative reviews are written by competitors, just accept it. Such comments are only dangerous if you have a really poor quality product. If it is good, then a competitor will not be able to buy and scold your product forever, because it is simply expensive.
Why stock lovers can go bust
Promotions and sales are a cool tool to increase sales. But it is important to be able to work with it. It can be compared to fire. On the one hand, you can cook food on the fire, on the other - burn down the house.
The main advantage of promotions is that they help newcomers to stand next to experienced sellers in the search results and increase sales. You get a good profit even taking into account the fact that you lowered the price of a promotional product, due to the volume of sales. Plus, sometimes marketplaces give a commission discount for sellers who enter promotions.
Promotions help to increase the status of your store, because the more products you sell, the higher your rating.
But stocks also have downsides. If you participate in promotions with one product, you need to think about how to prevent a decrease in sales for other products.
A product that is not participating in sales is limited in promotion, the marketplace itself will omit it in the search results.
Therefore, you must have additional traffic sources set up that will support your card at a time when you are not in any promotion.
Another danger: the goods may not be enough. If you enter stocks, then there should be enough leftovers of your product to cover demand and not fly out-of-stock.
The third danger: shares often flow into one another, and it will not work to get out of voluntary-compulsory ones.
With a constant transition from stock to stock, your price will decrease. Because the price of a new share is always calculated from the price of the previous period. I know sellers who were constantly in stocks and lowered their price to such low levels that it became simply unprofitable to sell further. All that was left was to exit the stock and raise the price. And this leads to a decrease in customer traffic, because it is no longer possible to sell in the same volume as with promotions. As a result, the demand for the goods falls, and the card rolls back in the issue.
You can not participate in promotions. But for this, the seller must be able to work with external traffic, with bloggers, make external advertising, use internal methods of promotion on the marketplace. It is best to combine techniques.
Why the principle of “everything by itself” does not work
Most sellers are initially confident that they will cope with all the tasks themselves, that they will do it better than anyone else. But this is a big misconception.
The principle of "everything by itself" does not work if you want growth. After all, growth means scaling. At first, you can work alone or in pairs with someone. But then there are so many tasks that one or two people are not physically able to solve them all.
You will need to control the product, order, check for defects, look for new products to expand the sales line, work with the audience - account, support, chat ...
It is important to have a team of different specialists so that everyone is a pro in their field. I will give an example from the experience of selling goods on the American Amazon. Once, when transferring money, we had a problem with a period and a comma. In Russia, the integer and fractional parts of a number are separated by a comma (for example, 9.99). In the USA - a dot (9.99). And in the payment system, when you put a comma instead of a period, $99.99 turns into $9,990.00.
One day, instead of transferring $69.90, we transferred $6,990 to a person we didn't know at all. It was a new contractor doing small turnkey work.
We were saved by the fact that the team had an experienced lawyer. With the support of the bank, he was able to cancel this transaction. Then it turned out that we took a big risk, because that person was a scammer.
So gather a team, and you will succeed.
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