Here are 4 critical mistakes that you should avoid doing if you dropship on eBay.
Not researching the cost of shipping to each country you ship to
Remember that eBay is an international online sales company, and it is accessed by everyone all over the world. So when you start your dropshipping business, understand that you must select the right shipping options for your business. While working with eBay, you can choose to ship within a certain amount of miles, within your country, or a set of certain countries or all over the world. They're also options to provide free shipping or express shipping. If you select free shipping and then offer to ship it to customers all over the globe without researching the prices, you could end up spending five times more in shipping fees than the actual purchase order! If you do want to ship around the world, then be sure to only ship to the countries whose shipping costs won't eat into your profits. Or you could pass the excessive costs onto the customer.
Not standing out from the competition
Dropshipping is big business on eBay, and there are many online stores within the eBay website. But don't feel discouraged at the number of stores, as there's still plenty of money to be made with dropshipping. But you will have to get creative. Gone are the days when you can gather a random number of items and sell them as a general store. Nowadays, it's imperative that you create a niche for yourself. Because of eBay's nature, you can create several niches and pass them off as different online stores, unlike an independent website where you can only specialize in one or two areas.
Not utilizing emails or creating sales emails
A well-maintained email list is like finding a diamond in the rough. Whenever a customer buys from your eBay store, you should create an email list and place them on your list to notify them about sales in the future. It is always better to market to people who have chosen to be in your audience than to find and convince potential customers to buy from you. You can create sales emails, store newsletters, or remind customers about items they left in their cart.
Not testing out an order
Now we know you're eager to start accepting orders for your online business, but one critical practice order may save you days and days of issues and prevent customer complaints. When you test out in order, use a different computer or ask a friend to do it. Here are some things you need to test out:
- If coupon codes work
- If shipping was calculated correctly
- How the shopping cart works
- If the tracking number works
- How fast you receive the order when the customer finalizes it
- How fast the supplier sends it out
By understanding how these processes work, you can catch any problems or errors that you didn't know about.
Conclusion
Knowing these eBay dropshipping mistakes can keep you from losing hundreds of dollars and countless hours of frustration and stress. You must check the shipping cost to every country to plan to ship to and stand out for other stores by being unique. Two other practices you cannot forget about using emails from the customers who visit your store will help you advertise to an audience that already knows and trusts you. And always test your store or new process with a test order to ensure everything goes well.
