Did you just get into eCommerce?

I know that 2021 is the changing time in our country.  We are now all buying from home and online for just about everything.  It is pretty cool, but if you are jumping into this industry it can be a bit hard. Now, I am so happy for you and the American Economy in general because we all win when people compete and build up a great economy.  This is a cool thing, but many people are just starting out and don't know the simple basics of selling online.  That is just fine and I want to help you understand the basics so you don't end up losing money learning the hard way.  I have lost money-making sales online and I don't others to learn from a mistake that could be avoided.  I like to learn from other people's mistakes, so let's go over some of mine so that you don't have to do it!

Now I want to go back to my first sale.  I sold my first thing online back in college.  Back then was my first time selling so I made accounts on Amazon and eBay.  This was really fun and a little complicated back then because it was all run on email.  We didn't have smartphones so you had to manually check on a computer each day.  Well back then you only hopped on a computer once or twice a week normally.  So it meant a lot of extra work to even see if someone purchased your item.  But I got lucky and within a few days of checking my book sold for almost as much as I paid for it.  I was too excited to really think about a lot of different things that would end up biting me in the butt.

Now, I got the buyer's address I decided I needed to get a nice package to send it in.  I went to my local big box store and found the aisle of cardboard boxes and decided to pick a nice one out.  I found that there were a lot of cardboard boxes to chose from and in fact I decided a bag was going to be better. It had bubble wrap in it already and I went with that one.  I got the bag but didn't trust the seal on it.  The bags were indeed not as sturdy bags then and I needed to buy the tape.  So I went to the tape aisle and got a roll of packing tape as well.  To be honest, once I checked out I realized I had just spent 10 dollars on supplies for the book to be shipped.  Then I packed it all up and went to the post office.  It was a cost of fifteen bucks or so to ship the book.

In the end, I only had about five bucks left in profit.  I was a bit sad. But then the money was transferred to me from the seller and eBay took ten percent and PayPal took another three percent.  With my time, gas, and energy put into this I lost money.  It all made me a bit sad at first.  I then realized I set my prices way too low and that I didn't take into account the money that the platform would take from me. Yep, I lost money. But I learned a whole lot!