a lot of people ask why did I stop
selling on Amazon and eBay because it
seems like you had hundreds of boxes in
the in the front of your store and you
had a lot of people learning about you
in buying from you because he used
Amazon and eBay and I'm going to explain
from top to bottom the reasons the first
are you have a lower class of human
being as your customer here is a
customer who purchased a screen this is
the part that he
needed this is the part that he
bought
this is what he did to the part that he
bought so that it would maybe work like
the one that he
needed and surprise surprise it did not
work at all and will never work again
now what this guy did is he returned it
and said that it was shipping
damage now what kind of idiot do
you have to think that I am to believe
that this was done in shipping if a
screen is cracked and stepped on that's
shipping damage if a screen doesn't work
but it doesn't look damaged that could
conceivably be shipping damage but when
you need a screen that has the PC board
at the top side with the connector on
the right and you get a screen with the
PC board on the bottom with the
connector on the left and you cut this
with an X-Acto Knife and then you reades
it to the other side turn it around so
that it looks exactly the part that you
needed I don't think that a little
Garden gome at the post office
snuck into your package and cut this
and put it on the other side
because they knew you needed to scream
with the connector on that side call me
crazy call me paranoid but I think that
you're some stupid in that's
full of that can't read the
instructions and pick out the right
screen and the only person who's going
to be stupider than you is the
idiot that works at Amazon that believes
the customer who said that that was
shipping damage now you may wonder why
is it that they can get away with that
the reason is because when you use eBay
or Amazon or any one of these systems
you're not dealing with real e-commerce
you're dealing with play school
e-commerce you're dealing with Fisher
Price e-commerce you're dealing with a
lower grade of e-commerce that's made
for any idiot that opens a store
just because anybody can open a store on
Amazon or Ebay you have to deal with the
fact that anybody can sell to people and
the way that they do that is by creating
policies that benefit the customer
regardless of how stupid they are and I
don't feel like selling on that kind of
environment I don't want to sell to
people that use free shipping and live
in Alaska and want to know why it took
more than two days I don't want to sell
to people that wonder why that there is
no 5-year warranty I don't want to sell
to people that buy a black screen and
then tell me that they needed a white
one and that and they say the product is
not as described again I'm not even
talking about when we up I'm
talking about when they are idiots and I
have noticed and I have blogged about
this for two years that the lowest form
of customers is typically a customer
that has been found on Amazon or Ebay
the second point that I would like to
make is that when you purchase a product
from Amazon or Ebay you're typically not
searching for a specific seller you will
go for whoever is best match or if
you're a cheap skate you may go by
lowest price and when people search by
lowest price or best match they're not
searching for you they're not searching
for your product they're searching for
whatever Amazon or Ebay declares to be
the best at that time these people will
click the first result regardless
regardless of how expensive it is I've
experimented when I've had products that
were at the top and just tripled their
price and made the listing sound
and have typos in it for no
reason and people were buying a part for
$189 that should have been 60 and then
they search by lowest price I have done
experiments here too I put in the
product description this product is a
piece of crap it looks like crap this
screen will be blue and when you touch
it it will look up and people
were buying it in droves because it was
the lowest price whereas when people go
to a website they're typically doing a
little bit of research they're looking
into the vendor they're going to be a
returned customer of this vendor you
don't get that on eBay and Amazon you
are renting your success you don't own
your success and you don't own your
brand you are renting it from Amazon or
Ebay and regardless of if you have 400
800 1,200 sales a day if you close that
store and open a website tomorrow you'll
be back to three or five sales because
you do not have that success in that
brand name that comes from actually
owning your business if
if I were to give one suggestion to a
small business owner selling on eBay or
Amazon right now it would be focus on
your retail store focus on your private
invoice customers that call you and want
to make large orders specifically and
focus on your own website focus on
owning your success instead of renting
it from other companies the third reason
is price competition there are a lot of
companies that sell products cheaper on
eBay than they do on their own website
even though you have to pay a 6 to 10%
fee between eBay and PayPal to sell on
eBay this does doesn't make sense why
would you not only charge a lower price
on eBay but also have a higher fee and
the reason is that the price competition
on eBay over the past 5 to six years in
particular Industries has gotten crazy
there are more and more companies that
sell products cheaper on eBay than they
do to their own private invoice
customers one of my employees right now
works we used to work at a company that
would buy directly from the vendor
meaning they paid cash there was no fees
there was no shipping no anything and
they were actually being charged more
money than they weree on eBay and the
excuse that the company gave was when we
sell on eBay we make no money and this
is this is the truth God's honest truth
they said when we sell that part on eBay
we make 50 cents and I got myself into
the into the same rut because I wanted
to keep selling on eBay I didn't want to
lose that customer base I was so scared
of losing all those sales per day that I
wasn't even uh paying attention to the
fact that I wasn't even making any money
off of it so I would watch these one I
was there watching a, 1200 1400 boxes
going out the door a day
making $300 $400 off it and paying the
staff to pack those boxes and paying the
customer service representative and
paying with anything that went wrong
with these products and I'm and I
eventually reached the point I realized
I must be out of my goddamn mind because
I can sell this part to customers who
are not going to break the we're
not going to cut the thing in
little pieces and mail it back to me
like the that they are uh and
make and not make 50 cents dealing with
that crap it doesn't make sense to sell
on a marketplace where you have to pay a
fee for the right to to be in a price
War with5 other people that are
competing based solely on price and not
on
quality