Views and Opinions of Selling Online

Hello, and Welcome to LilacsNDreams! Glad to have you here, see you again, or see you for your first time. All are always Welcome to LilacsNDreams.

Today I am going to touch on a subject that many of us deal with as sellers online.  Gonna do a little comparison here, and remember this is in my opinion. There is no right, or wrong. You are welcome to comment, or share with us here too. When searching, or doing a listing with any of the venues I sell with I try to put things into perspective as if I were the buyer.

I believe that Selling Online is hard work. It is very time consuming, and much harder to do than selling in person in my opinion. I feel it to be harder because the buyer is not able to touch what is being sold. Therefore we have to work more with our descriptions to help the buyer feel the product, and also make the search engines happy with words we use, and that things are acceptable to be found with searches. Along with this are pictures so that the prospective buyer can also better see with our descriptions what is being offered. As some of us know, pictures can also be time consuming with lighting, finding the right angles, showing more than one picture to help with our descriptions, and etc.

Another issue is that there is no two way conversation between the seller, and the buyer so that the seller can see the buyer's eyes. Seeing someone's eyes helps to get a feel about the upcoming purchase. This helps so that you can better assist with addressing things right on the spot. Conversation is always helpful, and I myself feel like sometimes I get too winded when describing things in my listings. I do it because I am trying to get the buyer to see what I see, feel what I can feel, and hopefully answer questions so that time is not wasted between us with contacting each other through emails, and that purchases can be made sooner too.

Time is spent with shipping costs, finding the best one to offer for the item being sold, and the best way to ship from past experiences too. Unless the items I offer can be put to something smaller like an envelope, I generally send items USPS Priority Mail with insurance included. Reason for that is generally the shipping rates are a bit better, customers get their items within 2-3 days, and the insurance is always included for a more secure delivery. That comes from past dealings with the postal service. Since I have been shipping that way, how I mark the boxes, and so on I have not had any issues to complain of...just the cost like many other things. If a customer contacts me, and wishes to have it sent another way, I will work with them to do so as requested. Sometimes though they have found that the way I offer has been a little more cost efficient for them than what was anticipated. All the same, I work with my customers that best possible way that I can.

Another thing as a seller to keep in mind is the venues we choose to sell with. Some of the venues do not cater to the same type of buyers, and sellers. I have found that sometimes what can work for one seller does not always work for another seller. There are many venues out there to choose from, some have higher fees to sell with than others, some of them advertise for their members, some of them work well with their members by having an operational site with support that can always be contacted too. It all depends what works for you, and where you find to feel comfortable with. It is important for you to pick the right selling venue for You. 

Some have their own websites. That is more cost to some with lower sales revenues due to hosting fees, domain fees, shopping carts, and then with your own website you also have to work harder to get yourself seen within search engines for the prospective buyer to find you, and your products too. For me I have my blogs, my website, all having domains directed to them, and find this to be a smaller cost for me. With my blogs, and websites I am found, I offer links for the venues I sell at, instead of the shopping carts I use the Artfire Rapid Cart, Ecrater Widget, and the RSS Feeds for the sites including Addoway. If any questions I can be contacted with no problem as I do read my emails through out the day. And, if a seller would like to purchase directly from me I am more than welcome to invoice them through paypal. 

So, what do you think? How has it been for you selling online, and have you found what can work for you? If so, please share with us here. Thoughts, comments, and opinions are always welcome at LilacsNDreams. I only ask everyone to be civil, and remember that we all have our own opinions to things with not everything having a right, or wrong answer.

Thanks so much for visiting with LilacsNDreams today! I enjoy the visits, the comments, the sharing, and hope to see you again. Take care till the next time Everyone.  Remember to visit with my stores, the links are on the side bar, and they are clickable for you too. I have my website listed there as well. Thank You!