When you are looking to sell products online it is important to find the right balance between a tempting deal for your customers and the profit you need to make as a merchant. Choosing the right price for your products is therefore essential, although this can prove difficult to get right at first.
Trial and error will allow you to build up an idea for most products over time, and you can raise or lower your prices according to what the market will bear. However, this can be a costly process and it feels far better to be sure you are finding the right price as soon as possible.
Find the right website for your product
With the huge majority of sales happening on either Amazon or eBay, it can be easy to assume that these are the only practical options for selling your products to your customers. However, depending on your product there may well be specialist sites which exist to let people find the specific things they are looking for.
One surprisingly huge example is Bricklink, a second-hand Lego site across which it is possible to find almost any piece from the decades-long history of Lego second-hand. If this is what you are looking to sell, then taking the time to create an account, and matching your goods to the prices there, can be a great way to make your profits go further.
For many specialist interests there are similar sites it can be worth exploring. Getting into niche markets can be time consuming, but the rewards can be far higher than they would be if you sold on standard sites such as Amazon.
Consider the best research tools available
If you are looking to sell in large quantities it is worth staying ahead by looking out for deals across a great range of websites. There are tools which can automatically scan for these and give you updates as frequently as you like about where there are deals to be found on goods you will later be able to resell at a good price. One such tool is the website Source Mogul which undertakes deep scans of a huge range of retailers.
The companies they scan include IKEA and many others, and when results appear, they are quickly put together in a straightforward way for you to analyse, allowing you to keep track of what you want and where you stand in buying your wares. This will allow you to go on to trade from a position of strength as you will potentially be able to sell below the market price while still making a profit.
Consider how demand changes across the year
Many products are mostly bought at a few specific points in the year. Keeping data on how your items have sold can allow you to build up an idea of when it is best to stock up on certain things and when it is best to hold off buying in stock. For example, students moving at the start of the academic year need are likely to need a range of supplies and to look online for them.