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E-Commerce
Solutions and Online Marketplace
The
easiest and most convenient way to start selling your product
or service online is through the already established online marketplaces
such as auction sites and popular internet hyper stores or malls.
It is also the best way to try out whether ecommerce will work
for you.
You can test whether your product (or even service at certain
marketplace) is sellable especially if it is new and/or unique
with practically little investment.
Marketplace
offer relatively complete ecommerce package including wide range
of categories of items, tools to list your items, tools to bid or
purchase those items, various options of payment methods and secure
payment processing systems. But more importantly they provide ready
buyers and browsers or "would be buyers" ranging from hundreds to
hundreds of thousands at any given time.
The
drawbacks are:-
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Your audiences are limited to the marketplace only, unless you
do additional promotions using other marketing avenues and methods.
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You
must abide to the rules and regulations set forth by the marketplace
which means lesser flexibility.
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Some
marketplaces are overcrowded with almost similar items in some
popular categories. With the very huge competitions, it will
be almost impossible to sell and still be profitable in some
of these popular categories especially when you have limited
experience and budget.
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Too
many almost similar items and difficult navigation structure
at certain marketplaces can be very exhaustive to some buyers
to find the deals for specific items they are looking for. Because
of this, some of online buyers prefer to shop at individual
sites that cater to the needs of specific target market, as
this will save them a lot of browsing time and fewer headaches.
Then again,
if you have unique products or services catering to certain market
segment or niche, these marketplaces are very much viable, as
the startup costs are rather minimal.
We have reviewed
a lot of companies that offer complete ecommerce package solutions.
However, we list only a handful that we think are the best currently
available including non-marketplace ecommerce solutions that you
might want to review.
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Pricester.com.
By far it provides the best marketplace model currently available
on the internet. It is a new and upcoming e-marketplace without
the various fees and charges of the bigger and more established
ones. Through your online store, you can not only sell products,
but also promote services that you provide. Sellers pay a 1-4%
fee for each successful transaction, and only their own successful
business transaction.
Once registered, a seller would receive a free online store
with no monthly fees. You can put up your own online store in
the marketplace even next to major players there. As a seller,
one can take advantage of the thousands of potential buyers
the marketplace provides that constantly growing everyday.
When you have somewhat established your business there, you
can upgrade to a larger store for a nominal fee. These flexibility
certainly help a lot (financially) especially for those who
just starting-up or not ready to go full time yet.
Fees:-
Item Closing Fees - 4% for closing value of up to $25.00, 2.5%
for closing value of up to $1000.00, 1.49% for closing value
of up to $1,000,000.00 and 1% for item closing value of above
1,000,000.00.
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eBay.com
is the world's largest online trading community. The site was
launched in September 1995 and has grown well over the years
with total registered users of more than 125 millions as at
early 2005 although only about 30% are active users. It provides
huge product selections from wide range of categories and integrated
payment processor - Paypal.
However, too many items for some popular categories make it
a daunting task to search for the best deals especially for
new users. Regular, non-featured items (some of which are real
gems) are buried together with countless other almost similar
items. With various up-front fees to strategically list their
items, some sellers even the seasoned "ebayers" found it more
and more difficult to maintain reasonable profit in certain
really competitive categories. Nevertheless, there are others
who'd found their own niche benefited from the huge market.
Fees:-
Sellers Listing Fees (excluding vehicle and real estate) - $0.30
to $4.80 per listing. Additional Reserve Price Auction Fee -
$1.00 for item reserve price of below $49.99, $2.00 for reserve
price of below $199.99 2% of item reserve price of $200.00 and
above. Final Value Fees - 5.25% for items that are $25 or less;
up to $1.31 + $26.81 + 1.50% of the remaining closing value
balance of above $1000.00.
eBay Stores Owner Fees - $9.95 for basic store, $49.95 for featured
store and $499.99 for anchor store.
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Amazon.com
commenced its online business in July 1995 and today stands
as one of the largest secure internet shopping arena. It has
three trading venues - Marketplace,
zShops
and Auction
for sellers to market their new or used products that come
with an integrated in-house payment processor. On product categories,
its strong points are trading books, music, DVDs and videos,
video games and cell phone accessories.
It provides a relatively better online transaction guarantees
for both buyers and sellers. However product selections and
category wideness are rather limited compared to eBay. Amazon.com
does provide a rather helpful customer and editorial product
reviews.
Fees:-
As a Pro Merchant Subscriber, a seller would be able to market
his products at all three venues and up to 40,000 products at
the zShops without additional per listing fee. The seller only
pays the after sales commission of 6-15% of the selling price.
Currently, the subscription cost $19.99/month for the first
3 months and subsequently a Pro Merchant Subscriber pays the
normal fee of $39.99 monthly.
Alternatively, for low volume sellers the pay per item sold
is favorable ie:-
For the Marketplace
- a fixed $0.99 + 6-15% of selling price for each item sold.
For the Amazon
Auction - a fixed $0.10 per listing + closing fee that range
from 5% of item final value of $25.00 and below; and up to $25.63
+ 1.25% for item final value of greater than $1000.00.
For the Amazon
zShops - the fees are the same as the Amazon Auction without
the associated listing fee.
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Yahoo.com,
like Amazon also have merchant store and online auction marketplace.
It is an internet directory portal and has a really huge user
base using the various interactive services it offers, though
not all of them are online shoppers. Currently, Yahoo
has about 145,000 merchant stores that try to attract the millions
of daily visitors frequenting the Yahoo main site.
Yahoo
Merchant Solution is a secure, complete ecommerce solution
that includes domain name, web hosting, email, online store,
shopping and integrated payment gateway targeting individual
and small business owners.
Yahoo Auction attracts a respectable amount of daily visitors
as well but not as popular and competitive as eBay auction site.
Due to lesser competition, a lot of genuine novice bidders prefer
this marketplace as a "training ground" for their auction bidding
skills.
Fees:-
For the
Merchant Solution Store - $39.95/month + 1.5% of transaction
sales for Starter Package, $99.95/month + 1% of transaction
sales for Standard Package; $299.95/month + 0.75% of sales value
for the Pro Package.
Fees for the Yahoo
Auction site. Listing Fees per item for regular item (excluding
real estate and vehicle) - minimum $0.05 for item starting price
of less than $9.99 maximum $0.75 for item starting price of
$50.00 and above.
Reserve Price Auction Fee - $0.40 for item reserve price of
less than $24.99 $0.75 for item reserve price of above $25.00.
Final Value Fees - minimum 2% of the closing price for item
closing value of less than $25.00 maximum $0.50 + $9.75 + 0.5%
of the remaining closing price for item closing value of more
than $1000.00.
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Sitesell.com
- SiteBuildIt!. It is not a marketplace that provide ready
buyers but it does offer an extensive ecommerce solutions if
you choose to own an ecommerce website. It is an all-in-one
site hosting, site building and site marketing solutions that
help you focus on starting, building and expanding a business
online rather than spending time learning to build a website
that may or may not sell.
SiteBuildIt!
provide a user manual or system not only to design a site but
also to research the important keywords for you to write content
based on your specific target audiences. Once you finish building
your site, it provide auto submission to the major search engines.
As a result, it is no secret that majority
of SiteBuildIt! websites that really use the system put
in place by SiteBuildIt!,
rank very well on major search engines in their respective industries.
Fee:- SiteBuildIt!
solution cost USD$299.00 for a whole 1 year complete SiteBuildIt!
website and business building package. For majority
of current SiteBuildIt! Owners who have make full use of
the system and guidance SiteBuildIt! provides, it is an investment
well-spent for their online business establishment.
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WebsiteWizard.com.
This is another all-in-one ecommerce package that offers site
hosting, site building and site promotion. It comes loaded with
very useful tool and features especially for those new to website
building. WebsiteWizard provides auto submission to major search
engines but the marketing aspect it offers in general, is limited
compared to SiteBuildIt.
However, it is much better than majority of "complete ecommerce
solutions and package" available currently on the internet.
Fee:- WebsiteWizard
ecommerce package cost USD$46.95 per month or USD$397.00
if paid annually.
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