Here’s the scene: You’ve researched and sourced the perfect product to sell online and you know for certain that it’s going to do well. You list it on your chosen venue and, as expected, it starts selling like it’s going out of fashion. Buyers can’t get enough and you’re making a good tidy profit. So what do you do? You relax and turn your attentions to your next ‘hot product’.
But suddenly, out of nowhere sneaks in a competitor who, to your dismay, insists on listing the very same product as you. Ok, you think, I can deal with this – every product has some competition – and this is true. But what’s worse is that this new seller has decided to undercut you at a price you just can’t, and more to the point won’t match (because unlike your competitor you actually want to make more than 50p profit on each of your sales!).
So, the result is that your sales take a bit of a dive and panic sets in. How do I know this? Because it’s happened to me – more than once – and is extremely frustrating. I just don’t understand why any seller would prefer to make for example 50p profit on their product when they are perfectly capable of making much more…
Why negotiate a great wholesale price and then set the resale price so low, because all this does is ultimately start a price war between sellers of the same product, each undercutting each other until eventually none of these sellers can drop their prices any lower and so it becomes that no-one can sell the product and it fizzles out.
I refuse to get involved in price wars.
I either let my listings run their course and then don’t relist until things have calmed down whilst watching the others sellers descend into a downward profit spiral as they fight it out between themselves… or I put my creative head on and stop competition in it’s tracks.
Now, for the past few weeks, I’ve been hinting that I’ve got something special coming your way which will help you become perfectly prepared for selling online in the coming months – so you can’t have failed to notice the special email from me that landed in your inbox yesterday!
Please check your inbox for my exciting email!
I’m currently taking on new subscribers to my exclusive website The Source Report and have lined up a host of special reports, hot product alerts and an exclusive hot product report and brand new webinar invitation for subscribers.
If you haven’t checked out my offer yet then I urge you to do so here.
Hang-on, what’s this got to do with being creative and stopping competition you may ask?
Well, it just so happens that today’s eletter topic does have relevance to the brand new webinar I have planned for subscribers to The Source Report. So please read on, and if you want to know more then please make sure you take advantage of my offer as soon as possible.
Do something a bit different.
In order to stand out from your competition you do need to be different. By all means sell exactly the same product as other sellers – this does work – but in the words of Louis Walsh ‘make it your own’ – offer that little bit more, whether this in the form of a no quibble money back guarantee or simply a more descriptive listing that makes people want to buy, it’s really up to you – but you do need to be ‘better’ than the rest so that you stand out. ‘Similar but better’ should be your mantra.
A very effective way of doing this is to offer something extra with your product. This is what makes it ‘similar but better’. So you are still offering the same product but there is something more enticing about it to buyers. This could be in the form of a money off voucher for a subsequent purchase, offering discounted postage or even free postage or selling two or more products together to make a set or a kit – this is known as ‘bundling’.
‘Bundling’ is simply like a type of up-selling, except you are not trying to up-sell people by directing them to separate listings for your other products, you are offering them a unique package or ‘bundle’ in which the buyer can receive related products at a discount, compared with if they were to purchase them individually.
A great strategy that really does work
This is a strategy that can work for pretty much any product. But there is another way to get ahead of your competition and you might be surprised to learn that it doesn’t necessarily involve dropping your selling price either. You will keep your profits intact and it’s quite possible that you will make even more sales than your competitors – even if you are selling at a higher price!
You might think that this probably sounds too good to be true, but actually it’s very simple and it does work. It’s a strategy I teach my E-Seller Mastery students and is also the topic of a brand new training webinar for The Source Report members that I will be hosting next week.
I’m talking about offering ‘free gifts’ with your main products. See, I told you it was simple! You can find out how and why this works in my exclusive webinar…
In the meantime, try putting your own creative hat on and consider grouping products together, upping your guarantee, providing money off vouchers or putting together a specific offer that buyers can’t resist. By adding something more and becoming ‘similar but better’ you will still be selling your original product but the chances of being undercut are considerably less.
As always I wish you the best of success,
Amanda