| Selling online in South Africa
Posted by: HomeGrownHoney on Mar 07, 2010
Last month I blogged about attending the Girl Only website launch. I started looking around the web to see what other website offer a service where you can sell you home creations online.
I currently do beading project from time to time for private requests and now I am investigating whether it would be possible to expand that to sales online. Here are a few of the sites I cam across.
Kalahari.net
Kalahari.net has a marketplace where they give you access to sell your products via their site.
According to the site information you:
- Choose your price
- Send your product to the customer
- Receive the money
A bonus going down this route is that they do the marketing for you since they are already the largest online retailer in South Africa. They also handle the payment process which is a big issue for me. This seems very beneficial but let’s assume that you go down this route, then you need to have stock available. It would be a disaster if you get 100 orders the first week and you only have 10 products in stock.
Something to consider.
Bid or Buy
Bid or Buy is another popular site that offers a selling service.
My problem with it is that it doesn’t look as professional as Kalahari.net. You can auction your products and set a minimum asking price, or you can set a fixed price and sell it. Placing listings is free and they only charge a 3.5-5% success fee if a product is sold. So you should also calculate that into your selling price along with how much it would cost to mail the package to the buyer.
Junkmail.co.za
I don’t think so. Just by opening the site I felt like I was doing my reputation damage.
And that is about it unless you are doing your own website and market that. It will however take a lot of work since you have to get someone to do the website who can also give you the function to take orders, receive money and all the other stuff that goes into a successful site.
The other big question of course would be whether their is a market for it online? Are South African successfully running businesses from home by selling their goods online?
A friend of mine is now starting the same concept by marketing her dresses online. In America and the UK they have Ebay which is popular but are we on the same level in South Africa?
I guess more research is needed before I go into this. Right now it seems to be a very small market with limited opportunities. |
