A Few Helpful Hints For New Sellers

HELPFUL HINTS
This is a short list of general suggestions that are intended to help new sellers 0n Atomic Mall.

In general, we would like to point out that each seller is different and your approach to selling will depend on many factors. These include but are not limited to: Type of merchandise, Price range, Your personal reasons for selling (Are you trying to make a living here or are you just hoping to make a little extra cash from personal items that you don’t need any more). What works for one seller may very well be a complete waste of time for others. Please try what you are comfortable with first and if that doesn’t work move on to something else.

1. Probably the first thing to remember is that Atomic Mall is an entirely different venue than Ebay and other auctions (Not better or worse, just different) . Because it costs you nothing to list on Atomic Mall, you do not get all the promotional advertising and site support that some of the other sites offer. You have to work harder to promote your own auctions and to make them attractive to the buyers.

2. Because Atomic Mall does not have the traffic that ebay has you will not see huge numbers of page views for your listings. Your items will sell eventually to someone who wants them because your offer is more attractive than the next guy. Remember that you can list merchandise as long as it takes here, while on other sites the fees rapidly eat away any profit you might make unless you can sell them quickly. It isn’t how many page views you get that puts cash in your pocket. It’s how many sales that you make.

3. Many people are impulse buyers and do not want to wait for days or even weeks waiting for an auction to close and get the item that they want. Set your price at what you want to get for your merchandise and list it.

4. While a few sellers and buyers do not want to use on line payment services like Paypal, Amazon and Google to transfer money, the vast majority prefer them and a number of buyers will not even look at your items if you do not accept some form of on line payment. This again speeds up the process and they like that. Probably the most popular system is to offer all the options. On line, Money Orders, Cashier and Personal Checks. If you want, you can add caveats that checks must clear before shipping.

5. Another major issue is shipping charges. If you are offering items that sell for less than $10.00 you will soon find that in many cases the shipping cost will exceed the merchandise price. If you want to be competitive you must minimize these costs. Use lightweight packing materials and try to eliminate extra packing fees. Use on line shipping to avoid delivery confirmation charges. It is a major plus to be able to state in your auction that you only charge exact postage with no additional charges or fees.

6. Selling on line is pretty much the same as selling in a brick and mortar store and the same basic rules apply:

Your customers are your greatest asset, treat them right and they will keep coming back. Please remember that that many new buyers come to Atomic Mall every day, the way things work is different in each site. Just like you have to learn the differences, you are going to have to help them learn them.

Promote your own store any way you can. Many helpful suggestions pop up in various blogs and forums. Try things that you think might work for you.

If you have problems with a buyer, try not to waste time with them, try and end things politely. Be extremely careful when using negative feedback, the buyers reputation is just as important as yours. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose by getting into back and forth retaliatory feedback wars that every other potential buyer and seller will read. Reputation is more than 50% of the game here especially when you are new. Non-paying offers only cost you time. They could care less about reputation. You have to care about yours.

Try to keep everything in your listings on a positive note. If you have more space allotted to your rules and regulations than you use to accurately describe your merchandise, you are going to find that potential customers are turned off and will go elsewhere.

Once again what works for you will be unique to you. Keep trying different ideas until you find a style and modus operandi that works well for you. Be patient and take your time. Enjoy your selling experience it can be very rewarding or very frustrating. It's up to you.

thanks for listening..... the old guy
Updated for content (06/09)