Boost your profits: Financial strategies for online sellers
Now is a great time to be in the e-commerce world. According to ThredUp, online reselling is growing 15 times faster than regular retail. (1) Even in today’s day in age, with global economic hardships on the rise, we can expect e-commerce to thrive at least through 2028.
Benefits of online selling
If you’re an online seller, you know being in the industry comes with its many pros.
Online sellers have much lower operational costs. They do not have to worry about the costs associated with brick-and-mortar storefronts, like lights and cashiers. Sellers are also extremely convenient for buyers since they are available 24/7, all year round. Third, e-commerce sellers do not have a geographical limit to their market—they can sell globally and expand easily.
Financial burdens of e-commerce
On the flip side, if you’re an online seller, you know e-commerce also comes with its many financial burdens and headaches.
As someone already involved in e-commerce I probably don’t need to spell this out for you. Yet, price setting, shipping, and inventory management burden the e-commerce seller.
Financial management tips for online sellers
There are many ways to manage finances as an online seller.
First, is keeping track of every dollar coming into and out of your business using software like Quickbooks. This will help keep track of revenue and spending. It’s impossible to know where you stand without knowing your spending and income.
Make sure you are watching your listing fees. Certain e-commerce sellers, like Amazon, for example, charge a listing fee. How are you going to compensate for listing fees? Make sure you are accounting for these fees when pricing your products.
Using a shipping tool to streamline shipping can help reduce costs too. Shipstation can help you keep track of your shipping from different carriers as well as compare prices.
Inventory management can be particularly tricky as well. Imagine selling a shirt on three different e-commerce platforms and it sells out.
How do you keep track of which platform you’ve delisted from? How do you keep track of which platform you are out of stock on?
This problem can cause headaches without the right tool.
Introducing cross-list: An effective solution
Are you an e-commerce business owner who has felt annoyed when trying to manage your inventory? Tired of having to post on each e-commerce site individually? Luckily there are strategies available to you to save you time and money.
Have you heard of multi-platform listings?
These are apps where you can cross-post your inventory across multiple e-commerce platforms in one fell swoop. Crosslist is one of those apps that saves users time, money, and headache medication.
Not only does Crosslist work as a multiplatform listing tool, but it also simplifies inventory.
Crosslist allows you to see all of your inventory across all of your e-commerce sites- which can help you avoid overselling. Further, you can add or delist stock in bulk making it easier to deal with your inventory.
Crosslist vs. Vendoo: A smart comparison
There are several apps and tools for multi-listing in the e-commerce world. Two are Crosslist, as mentioned earlier, and Vendoo.
Vendoo is similar to Crosslist in that they are also a multi-listing tool however, that is where the similarities stop.
Vendoo requires you to fill out multiple forms for different e-commerce sites whereas Crosslist has you fill out one form that can post to multiple sites. Crosslist is much more user-friendly in this respect.
Crosslist is also 30-70% cheaper than Vendoo depending on the plan, starting at $29.99 per month while Vendoo starts at $41.98 per month, getting more expensive the more listings you have. As the tiers go up, Crosslist is more inexpensive than Vendoo, with the most expensive plans having a 70% difference in price.
Vendoo is less user-friendly with its lack of metric conversions, photo editor, AI listing generator, and support for Canadian and Australian markets, unlimited bulk listing or delisting- whereas Crosslist supports all of these.
Taking this into consideration means that if you want to have an easier interface, easily expand your business, and save time and money- Crosslist is the multi-listing tool for you.
The bottom line
While e-commerce is a growing industry, it is difficult to run an online selling business and turn a profit. Therefore, it is important to make sure you are saving yourself time and money in every way you can. Online sellers often struggle with tracking revenue, tracking shipping, and inventory management.
Tools like Quickbooks, Shipstation, and Multi-listing apps are just some examples of tools that can help with the financial burdens of online selling.
In the debate between Crosslist vs. Vendoo, Crosslist is the superior app. Crosslist is user-friendly, cheaper- even in the more expensive tiers, and can easily help you expand your business.