Category Archives: Wholesale News

Importing items from overseas suppliers means two good things for sellers:

-  Cheap prices on wholesale items which leave a lot of room for deliciously high profits (especially when you source from manufacturing giants such as India or China who make top-quality, non-branded items for pennies on the dollar).

-  Access to unique items that most other sellers can’t source (meaning you get significant market share!)

However, anyone who has imported items for re-selling into America will tell you that there is a bit of red-tape and a few bureaucratic layers you need to penetrate before you can reap the benefits I listed above.

If you’re a US-based seller who wants to import, read on for the answers to the most frequently asked questions about importing to the USA.

1. Am I liable for import duty?

All goods imported into the USA are subject to duty or duty-free entry depending on their classification in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States so you need to look up how the items you are planning on importing are classified in order to determine what and if you will pay.

You can purchase an official copy of USHTS from Informed Trade International for $US44.95 or just view it online here: http://hts.usitc.gov/  

2. How do I know how much duty I will have to pay for my imports? 

Although I’ve heard this question a lot, I never grow tired of it, because when sellers ask me this question, it means they want to know the exact cost price per item before they decide if they will sell it. This means they are doing some market research, and I get really excited when sellers do that!

Really, I already answered this question above, but what you should know is that, generally speaking, import duties are pretty reasonable (as long as you are not importing restricted items). Therefore, unless you are operating on very low margins, the cost of importing is unlikely to affect whether you will or will not go ahead with the import.  

3. Will my shipment be checked and opened by Customs?

It depends on how much you are importing. Customs generally takes less interest in smaller packages with a declared value of less than US$1,000 and lets them in easier than larger shipments (as long as the sniffer dogs don’t bark at them, that is!).

If your package is checked out, they will be looking at:

-  The value of the goods and whether it matches what your documentation says about the value of the item. Customs look at this because some suppliers will write “gift” on the package or state the value as being a lot lower than it really is so that you don’t have to pay duty. However, this is illegal and if you get caught, you could find yourself in deep trouble with Customs!

-  Whether the items are authentic, not replicas of branded items that Customs guards.

-   Whether the shipment contains any other prohibited goods.

For more information on how to import to the US, check out: http://www.cbp.gov/

Have you imported from overseas suppliers into the US? What was your experience? I’d love to hear your stories, please post them below.                                                                                 

Continue reading →

It’s every eBay seller’s biggest gripe: eBay is expensive to sell on!

I enjoy a good rant about eBay fees as much as the next guy, but I also think that you get a lot of bang for your buck when you sell on eBay: They get an insane amount of buyers coming to their site everyday who are ready to buy. This means that you don’t have to spend any money (or a lot of time) on trying to pull buyers to your listings.

Instead, eBay does this for you, and your fees cover their ongoing marketing costs which ensures that those buyers keep coming to the site, and that everything runs smoothly when they do.

However, there are some simple ways that you can easily cut down on the costs of selling on eBay so check out my 5 tips below and if you have any additional tips to share, please leave a comment.

1. Host your own product photos

We all know how important it is to include multiple photos of the items we are selling , but this comes at a cost with each photo (bar the first one you upload which is free) costing $0.15 cents which can soon add up!

By hosting your images on a free image hosting website, you can embed the images into your HTML listing and stop paying photo listing fees.

Here’s how to do it:

Use a free image hosting site such as ImageShack.us. Just sign up for a free account and start uploading your images.

Uploading your photos to Image Shack is very similar to uploading to eBay – just click browse and search through your files for the images you want to upload.

From there, each image will be given a URL which you simply enter into your HTML code of your listing.

The code will look something like this:

2. Save on insertion fees for auction-format listings

By familiarizing yourself with eBay fees structure, you can really save yourself some money.

If you take a look at the fees information below, you will see that if you list an item with a reserve of $10, you will pay a 50 cent insertion fee. But if you set the reserve to $9.99, your insertion fee is only 25 cents, and across say 50 listings for the week, for a medium volume seller, this can really add up to some big savings on fees. Better in your pocket than eBay’s, right?

As you can see above, the same rule applies for anything that you might list for $25, $50, or $200. You’re much better off selling it for 1 cent less to save on fees.

I think this one is pretty obvious to a lot of sellers, but I wanted to bring it up because if you don’t know about it, it could be costing you a lot of money.

3. Skip insertion fees for Second Chance Offers 

Use eBay’s Second Chance Offers feature to your financial advantage: If you have multiple identical items that you sell in an auction, offer all your bidders (other than the winning bidder!) a second chance to buy the item. When you make sales this way, you skip the extra insertion fees.

4. Explore PayPal alternatives

PayPal is without a doubt the most popular payment method on eBay… but it comes at a premium! To help offset the costs of receiving payments from buyers, explore some of the other options that eBay allows such as payment via credit card through your merchant account (more cost-effective for high-volume sellers), MoneyBookers, ProPay and PayMate.

5. Review your Fee Invoices

This is my best advice for you if you want to save money on eBay fees. Like any serious business owner, you need to have a good understanding of your costings and where your biggest expenses are. The best way to do this is to view your eBay invoices inside you’re My eBay Dashboard.

Here’s a screenshot of part of one of my recent invoices: 

You can see that my biggest costs were scheduling my listings (to end at an optimal time) and listing photos. After reviewing this invoice, I can see that I would benefit from hosting my images off-eBay and wherever possible, manually listing items rather than scheduling them.

Got more money-saving tips? Share them below, we would love to hear from you!

Continue reading →

Facebook needs no introduction: We all know what it is and the might it holds on the internet, but is there any return to be made when you promote your eBay business there (or any other marketplace-based business)?

For most sellers, the answer is yes: Facebook provides us with a platform to not only advertise our products and our business, but also to engage with new and existing customers which in turn can dramatically increase your number of sales.

As with all marketing, Facebook is no magic bullet and in order to get maximum gains from the time you spend on Facebook, you need to commit time and energy to a long-term campaign. If you can do that, keep reading for a quick guide to getting the most out of your Facebook campaign.

If your business isn’t already on Facebook, find out how to create a Facebook Page here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

(Note: A Facebook Page is different from a Facebook Profile which is what you have for personal use. You need a personal Facebook Profile in order to create a Facebook Page. If you need to create a Facebook Profile, you can do so on the Facebook homepage.)

Easy ways to get more from your Facebook Page:

Update your status regularly… but not too regularly

Status updates are an integral part of your Facebook marketing. They are how you share and interact with your Fans and keep them interested in your business and products you sell. It’s important that you update your Facebook status on a regular basis, but it’s also crucial that you don’t overwhelm your Fans by updating it too often and clogging up their Facebook Wall. If you do, many Fans will look at your updates as being “spammy” and it’s likely they will “unlike” your Page.

In order to avoid this, keep your status updates to 2-4 per week and always apply the age-old rule of ‘quality over quantity’; if you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t say anything at all!

What should you include in your Facebook status updates?

- New products you have available (share pictures, too!).

Just make sure you don’t go too heavy on the promotional material: Try to keep a balance between updates that entertain and inform your Fans and ones that promote your business and or products.

- Ask your Fans questions that relate to the products you sell

Facebook has a cool Question feature which allows you to ask your Fans questions and for them to vote on answers that you pre-determine.

The best questions to ask are ones that relate to the products you are selling. For example, if you sell makeup, a good question might be “What ONE cosmetic item could you just not leave the house without?” followed by four or five optional answers your Fans can vote on.

-   Statistics or facts related to the products you sell

This is a good way to gauge some interest from your Fans and get them to notice you more: Everyone loves statistics! For instance, going with the makeup example, you could say something like “61% of women sleep with their makeup on. Do you commit this faux pas yourself?

Create a landing page

What’s the #1 goal of using Facebook for business (besides making more sales)? Getting as many targeted fans as possible and a landing page is one of the best ways to do that. A good landing page explains exactly what your business is about, or what products you sell and provides an incentive for new people to “like” your page.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is the first thing that new, potential Facebook Fans will see when they view your page.

Here’s what SaleHoo’s landing page looks like:

As you can see, it’s clear what SaleHoo is all about and there are some testimonials from some of our members, along with a big red arrow pointing to the “Like” button (which isn’t in this frame because I’m already a Fan).

It’s also common to include an incentive on your landing page to encourage new Fans to join such as a chance to win a prize when they become a Fan. The prize doesn’t need to be expensive or extravagant, but it should be something that appeals to a wide audience so that you can maximum possible reach from it.

How to create a Facebook landing page

In order to create a Facebook landing page, you need some basic HTML knowledge and a good design that will lure in more “likes”. If you don’t know HTML or how to design up a page, you can hire a freelace designer or developer from eLance.com where you can get professional designers to do one-off jobs for you at very affordable rates.

Want more ideas on how to make your Facebook marketing work? Become a Fan of SaleHoo and check out how we do it! (You’ll also see all our usual updates full of hot selling tips and industry news).

Do you use Facebook or any other forms of social media for your business? Has it helped increase sales? Share with me by leaving a comment below!

Continue reading →

Hi SaleHoo members and subscribers!

I just made this quick video to let you know about some lovely feedback I have received lately and tell you all about my fun free giveaway! Check it out below:

Competition details recap:

• Email us at support@salehoo.com and let us know what you love about Online Selling Tactics. You will then go into the draw to win Alice’s leftover stock from the Tactic 1 Video Lesson
• The winner will be drawn and notified via email on Thursday the 14th of July. Their name will also appear in the comments section below so check back then for an update.

Join other satisfied Online Selling Tactics members!

You can learn more about Online Selling Tactics and how it can help you build a profit-pulling business here:

http://www.salehoo.com/tactics

Continue reading →

One of the best ways that you can maximize how much you earn from your business is to increase your productivity.

Ever since I was a college student, I’ve always calculated the amount that I earned per hour from selling items online. For example, if I made $300 one week for doing five hours work, I would divide $300 by 5 (the number of hours I spent earning that money) to figure out my hourly rate (which would be $60 per hour, in this case. Not bad for a 19 year old student!).

Admittedly, one of the main reasons I did this calculation was to make sure that I was always earning more than I could if I chose to do a ‘normal-person’ job to get me through college, like waiting tables. Not only did I have a great time bragging to my dorm mates about how much I was earning (I was 19, cut me some slack), but it also forced me to make sure that I was always productive with the time I spent on my business.

Why productivity means better profits                                                            

After all, if I was mucking around and I spent 10 hours earning that $300, my hourly rate would plummet to $30 per hour, rather than the $60 per hour I earned if I did the work in five hours.

So for me, productivity means more profits and in order to help you be as productive as possible, I’ve listed my top 5 ways to increase your productivity when you work from home. These tips are useful for both part-time and full-time sellers. If you have your own productivity-increasing tips, make sure you share them in the comments section below.

1. I’m going to start with the most crucial. Get yourself set up with a second monitor.

If you only take away one tip from this blog post, I suggest you implement this one. In a study by Microsoft, it was found that dual monitors could increase your productivity by 41%. I’m not at all surprised by these statistics – I use a dual screen here at work in the SaleHoo office and at home when I am working on my own projects.

And if anyone ever tried to take away one of my monitors, I would tackle them.

Last weekend, I took my laptop with me on a weekend escape to the mountains and when I sat down to do some work, I missed my second screen like crazy!

Productivity aside, having a secondary monitor makes life so much easier. For example, you can have emails from buyers up on one screen and your PayPal account open on another to make checking order payments a lot easier and faster.

You can buy a secondary monitor from anywhere – it doesn’t need to be a special one and there are always some great deals on eBay. If you are a little fussy like me, though, you might want to make sure that your secondary monitor matches your primary. Unmatched screens can cause obsessive compulsions to flare!

2. Cut down on the number of questions buyers ask

While buyers asking questions is definitely a good sign that they are interested, answering the same questions over and over again is hardly efficient! A great way to pre-empt buyers from having to get in touch with you when they have questions is to setup a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs). You can do this on any marketplace such as eBay or Bonanza or, if you sell on your own website, you can list your FAQs there.

 Here’s an example of a website that has done a really good job of answering their buyer’s frequently asked questions:

When you click on the questions on the right, the page automatically scrolls down to the answer which is very handy for buyers. But you don’t need any nifty coding to make your answers effective and user friendly: Just lay them out nicely with bold headings for each of the questions and the answers cleanly spelt out underneath.

 At the very minimum, make sure that your FAQs answer questions about:

-  Shipping costs and deliveries (such as how long it will take for the item to be delivered)

-  Your return policy

-  Payment methods available

And anything else that customers consistently ask you about the products that you sell.

3. Dress up for work

This one is really important.

 I know that a few of you heard about the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, where SaleHoo’s headquarters’ are. Well, for about two weeks after that horrible earthquake, we Christchurch SaleHoo staff worked from home so that we could get back to normal as soon as possible, as much as we could.

During that time, friends of mine were surprised that, every morning, I would get up and shower, do my hair, put on some makeup and dress in regular work clothes for the day. A few of them talked about how they were working in their pajamas.  For me, this would be hugely unproductive, as I just would never get into “work mode” if I was wrapped up in my robe with my slippers on at 2pm in the afternoon!

There are a lot of articles and studies that confirm that you are much more productive if you dress up when you work at home. While wearing a full suit and tie or stiletto pumps isn’t really necessary, it’s important to wear something that you wouldn’t be embarrassed by if a friend stopped by to visit you. It will make you feel like you are ready to work.

 4. Schedule your time

I see a lot of at-home business people struggling with this one, but creating a schedule for how to work will really help you get everything on your to-do list ticked off and in a much more time-effective manner.

For example, you might have ongoing everyday tasks like replying to emails, re-listings items and dispatching sold items, but you should allocate time for other important tasks. For example, you could make a plan to do your bookkeeping on a Monday and researching new suppliers on a Tuesday afternoon.

You’re sure to deviate from your plan somewhat, just like you do in a regular job, but at least set something in stone and try to stick to it!

 5. Take regular breaks

I bet you’ll like this one: Take regular breaks throughout the day, just as you would if you were in an office or regular job. Make an effort to get up and away from your computer, even if it’s just for 5 minutes. At midday, try to get away from your desk and eat lunch in the kitchen or dining room and limit your lunchtimes spent in front of the computer to three per week!

Taking breaks gives you time to reflect on your to-do list and prioritize tasks and also just gives your brain a rest from all the work! Breaks away from the computer are also really important for your eyes.

What helps you stay productive when you work at home? What do you struggle with? Share your thoughts below!

Continue reading →