In e-commerce who is the seller?

June 13, 2010
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With e-commerce platforms being so open to everyone and under a variety of different business models what do you have to do be able to take credit for the sale?
The reason for my query is I sell in e-commerce under a variety of business models, in one case I purchase from a wholesaler and resell at retail, another case I pick up items in a variety of places and resell, then I have things given to me to sell for my profit and in the final case I list and do the customer service for items that belong to someone else.

Which sales are mine?  If it is just items I have money invested in then a trading assistance, consignment shop or someone who drop ships is not a seller.

If it is just items I physically ship or have the physical inventory myself then anyone who uses a fulfillment center or drop shipping is not a seller.

If I list the item but don’t own it am I the seller?  That is a trickier one to define, many larger e-commerce companies have people that do the listing for them, but they also have someone else do the shipping and another person to do the customer service so in that case who is the seller. Then you have smaller situations where people list for others on consignment or on eBay as a trading assistant so who is the seller, the owner of the item or the person who takes the time to list it.

Does product sourcing make you a seller?  Not really, just because you have product does not make you any money, they still have to be sold somewhere.

Does being a product stager or photographer make you a seller?  No, it gets the products closer to being sold as you now have a physical representation to show to the consumer but it will still not get you any cash as it is still not available for the consumer to purchase.

Does listing the item available for sale make you the seller?  That person at least gets the products out onto the e-commerce site so it is available to be purchase.

Does it matter if the e-commerce model is a large company or a 2 person job?  A solo operation is easy of course they are the seller as they do all the steps involved, but what of any business model with more than 1 person.

Just in the circle of e-commerce sellers I know, there are many that are individual people doing all the work, then I know people who list things that belong to others as their sole income, others who are large enough to have a staff to do the work for them.  So who should take the title of “THE SELLER?”

In my case I feel all the sales are mine, the ones that I have no money invested in but list, the ones I have money invested in and the ones I list for others because I do the research on price, title and description, and I am the one that handles the customer service both the complaints and the compliments.  Even though my name is not on the door I am the one accountable for the sales or lack there of.  If I were not listing them they would not be available for sale on the venues I work with.

What part of the job do you think makes someone the seller?

I will be interested in others opinions so please leave a comment

By Karen | Posted in ecommerce | Tagged , | Comments (9)

Heading to Ecommerce summit 2010

April 12, 2010
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Tonight, I am staying at a hotel at the local airport to leave early in the morning for Las Vegas to attend the Ecommerce Summit 2010.

People have been asking me what I look forward to the most about the trip.  The funny thing is for me it is as much about getting away and seeing a new place as it is the learning, networking and meeting new people.

I am really looking forward to meeting the people I did not meet in Atlanta for eBay on location last month and seeing the people that I have not yet met.

I look forward to networking with people whose businesses are where I would like my to be next year and 5 yrs in the future.  I want to learn effective ways to move my business forward in 2010 and beyond.

What truly amazed me though was how sad I was saying good bye to my kids.  I had an entire night tonight all on my own and realized I had not real idea what to do with it.  No kids to try to get to bed, no eBay listings to get accomplished.  So I actually sat and watched television for the first time in ages.

One of the most interesting thing I discovered when looking at the agenda for the week, is that thanks to social media over the last year I have build connections with a lot of the presenters there and if not the presenters themselves then people that know them.

Social media has been the best networking experience I have encountered.  I am years ahead of where I would have been if I had just stuck to reading forums and searching articles on the web.  I am learning daily what is really important and what is fluff, and I realize I do not have a lot of time for fluff in my life so I really appreciate the meat in the posts and tweets of the people I follow.

I am sure I will have much more to say over the course of the week so what my tweets, facebook pic and blog posts as the week goes on.

If you can’t make it to Las Vegas do like I did last year and make sure you listen to the podcasts from the Summit and watch any live video that is streamed on either You tube or Justin.tv.

I know I felt like I was there last year just with the amount of information that came out of the summit via social media.

Talk to you later in the week.

By Karen | Posted in ecommerce, social media | Tagged , , , | Comment (1)

Ecommerce sellers who really controls your business??

February 11, 2010
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I have read a lot of really interesting blog posts and had several thought provoking discussions this week which have me thinking about my online world.  To process it all  I decided to do a series of blog posts.  A case of me thinking out loud.  They are on a variety of subjects from networking, branding, social media ecosystems to ecommerce education.

The first one I decided to tackle was ecommerce education.  I read a very interesting blog post by my friend John on his ColderICE blog called,  Each One, Teach One: eCommerce OPEN Discussion. and it made me realize that as ecommerce sellers we need to learn all we can to enable us to run our own businesses as effectively as possible.

The old saying that knowledge is power is as true today as it ever was, the greater the opportunities the internet affords us the greater the knowledge base we need to be able to access.  The more you learn the more you are able to control your own business.

The majority of people I interact with online line are ecommerce sellers, but their main source of income is the eBay platform or the Amazon platform, with just a minor secondary emphasis on multi-channel selling, and that made me realize that I don’t want to be known  primarilyas an eBay seller.   I don’t care to allow one person or entity that much control over my business.

Think about it, if eBay or Amazon or any of the other platforms that you base your entire business model on were to become an untenable situation what would you do?  Do you have the skill set to be able to run your business on your own?  If  your platform based business is how you feed your family do you have enough time or money to start from scratch elsewhere?

Now I know that neither eBay or Amazon are not going to disappear tomorrow or anytime in the near or distant future but they are both large corporations and large corporations do fail, look at the banks, car manufacturers and insurance companies a lot of them were on the brink of failure when the government and tax payers bailed them out.

Will the government bailout out all the small business that fail if their marketplace crashes?  It would be the equivalent of a massive layoff with no unemployment insurance.

You need to arm yourself with as much information as possible to control your own business, otherwise you are no different than an employee of a large company.  Most of us work in ecommerce because we want to work for ourselves not for somebody else.  Make sure you take the time to learn.  Find others that can teach you and in  turn teach others.  Only by doing that can you really continue to be successful.

What did you learn today?

Who did you teach?

By Karen | Posted in eBay, ecommerce | Tagged , , | Comments (6)