My Shopit Portable Storefront

Online Selling Mistakes to Avoid

Top 10 Online Selling Mistakes

Buying and selling via Internet has become a way of life for many individuals and businesses. Some sellers, however, do not get the best results from their online stores because many continually make costly errors in their listings. Here are 10 of the most common errors and tips for avoiding them.

1. Excessive shipping fees. If your quoted shipping price is higher than those of your competitors', you will lose out to them. Most seasoned sellers prefer to raise the initial price of the item and offer competitive shipping costs.
2. Lack of descriptive text. A photo alone will not sell your item. You also need a concise, but complete, description of the item. Try to put yourself in the position of your potential purchasers, and craft the copy in terms of the features and benefits of the item you are selling. Your text must impress a jaded buyer, who may be looking at an entire page of similar items.
3. Too much text. Try to completely describe the item in a few sentences, and don’t write a novel. When it comes to effective copywriting, it is quality -- not quantity -- that counts. Read your competitors' listings and try to differentiate your item.
4. Poor layout. Internet readers are used to seeing concise material down the center of the page. Long tedious paragraphs are not as reader friendly as short independent sentences with some space between the lines. Typing in all caps does not help you sell, and will likely hurt. Stay away from "cute" animated images that can junk up your listing. Consumers shopping for items have no time or need for anything of that nature.
5. Bad photos. A bad photo can actually be worse than no photo at all. When you photograph your item, be sure to light it properly, and include as many photos as possible to convey the appearance of your item.
6. Not thinking internationally. By offering your items to overseas bidders, you can dramatically increase your base of potential buyers. And in an auction model, more bidders generally means more profit. Remember, eBay is global.
7. Listing in the wrong category. Most people shop by category. Therefore, a poor choice of category can make it much more difficult to sell your product. If you cannot decide on a single category for your item, or if it is equally at home in two different places, pay a little extra and list it in both places.
8. Jumping on the bandwagon. Unless the bandwagon is heading to a goldmine, stay off it. Try to diversify yourself from the many listings for the same objects. If 25 people are selling a clock similar to one you have, wait and sell the clock when there are less similar items being auctioned off.
9. Setting a price too high or too low. If your asking price is too high, you are wasting valuable time and money. Likewise, if your price is too low, you could be leaving money on the table. Do some basic market research, and get a good idea what comparable items sell for.
10. Poor timing. Many items sell year-round -- but not all. If you have something seasonal to sell, such as holiday-related items or anything that can sell more effectively at a particular time of year, be patient and post it in the months leading up to that particular season or holiday.

MASHABLE

ShopIt Store Widgets for MySpace

September 18, 2007 — by Kristen Nicole —

ShopIt is an online store creation tool that lets you sell your items, and post them to other networks using its widget offering.

With your ShopIt profile, you can add items as well as commercials to sell your products. When adding an item, you can include up to 4 images, which can be uploaded from your desktop, or imported from your eBay or Yahoo store. There are a few other options for your store, including the ability to offer items for sale, trade, or a semi-auction option for accepting offers from potential buyers. You can also indicate which forms of payment you’ll accept.

From there, you can hold your store online through ShopIt, or create a widget to be placed on social networks like MySpace, or your own website. There is the ability to play your uploaded commercial through your widget. The commercials, however, seem to be somewhat disconnected from store items listed on the site, especially as all of them can be found in their own section of the site. Few of them even sell products, so this could be one aspect of ShopIt that needs to be modified or regulated. There are also celebrity sites that you can check out for things like artists’ albums, etc.

As with most store widgets, you cannot grab someone else’s store to place on your own site. I think that giving this option though, would be good for a site like ShopIt, as it would enable sellers to leverage larger communities to promote items and services.

KILLER START UPS

Shopit is both a personal online store and also a widget you can add to a blog, website or social network profile to sell products and services. Shopit users have their own profile to which they can ad products or services for sale and real commercials for promotion. Shop owners can add as many items as they want, and when adding an item for sale the user can upload up to 4 image files that can be imported from the PC or other online selling points. Items are listed at a default of 45 days but users can request to extend or shorten the period of time. Along with regular vending, users can mark items on sale, for trade and even for auction. There are obvious prohibited products and services such as firearms, drugs, pornography or any x-rated items. The idea of an online store is perfect for anyone who has old things to sell, new products, artisan goods, portable services, etc. User profiles and stores are easily searchable and it is all free. Free to shop, free to sell, free to earn.