Let’s talk about how to sell products on the Internet
Selling online is complicated: the market, the competition, the economy, Black Friday, people’s reviews, the crazy people who lower the price without asking, the Sellers that appear out of nowhere, the fight to win the buy box… A lot of concepts that you have to control to have the minimum chances of success in the online jungle.
To begin, the first thing is to know through which sales channels we can distribute products to our customers:
- Wholesale Channel: B2B, they buy from brands, offer many references with stock and resell to other businesses with a small margin. To sell in a wholesaler, an agreement must be reached on volume, price and other guarantee policies, marketing and objectives. On many occasions you have to help them sell by providing funds for marketing or other concepts.
- Ecommerce Channel: These are online stores that buy from brands, manufacturers or wholesalers. They normally have stock in their warehouses. Although there are ecommerces that do dropshipping, which is nothing more than receiving the order, passing it on to the manufacturer or wholesalers and having them send it to the final customer.
- Marketplaces: Amazon is a Marketplace. But it is also an ecommerce. That is, a brand can sell to Amazon and Amazon can sell that product. And you can also set up a store on Amazon and sell your products on Amazon but through your store. This is called Seller. According to https://www.marketplacepulse.com/marketplaces-year-in-review-2021 , the volume of business generated by Sellers reaches 65% of Amazon sales. The Amazon model as an ecommerce/Marketplace is already fully adopted by almost all the big ecommerces. In Spain, El Corte Ingles, Carrefour, Pccomponentes, among others, are already marketplaces.
- Seller: If you want to be a Seller you will have to assume that you have to pay a commission for selling the products. Each Marketplace has its rates and they depend on the category of the product, or the services they offer. There each one has to do their numbers and see if they are interested.
Depending on the size of your brand or what you sell, you can choose one or several channels. There are many strategies and all are valid if they are profitable in the end. But there are always certain kpi that need to be monitored.
Always.
Price, availability, stock, Sellers, buy box and reviews.
