You’re probably wondering what “Multi-Vendor Shopping Cart Software” is. You’ve seen it before and you may even have used it before because eBay and Etsy are both examples of multi-vendor technology. Put simply, multi-vendor is a type of website that comes with a shopping cart that enables anyone who registers on the site to put up their own products and sell them. It’s been around for a while and therefore it’s tried and true.
What this means to you are those sellers will help you in various ways. First, these sellers will be telling their friends about their “store” and they’ll be blogging and tweeting trying to sell their products, but in the mean time, as they pull people to their products, these potential customers will see everything listed on your site, including what you’re trying to sell. This means that the more sellers you bring in, the more buyers you’ll bring in.
How you make money
Another way this type of software can help you is that you can charge people (nominal fee) to set up their store and sell their products on your site. In fact, there are sites like Etsy where people are getting rich off doing this. You could also take a small percentage off everything that is sold on the website. Even if you’re only taking 1%, this can be quite a bit if people are selling high dollar items.
Not much overhead for you
Multi Vendor Software is sold as a package and usually the set up cost is included in the fee. You don’t need any kind of special server or programmer to set it up or to administrate it. The software package will come with a dashboard that enables you to control the look and feel and you’ll be able to determine who can sell on your site, and many other things.
Marketing to sellers
Your marketing will then be geared to those who want to sell. Convincing someone you’ve got a great way for them to make money is much easier than trying to get someone to purchase something. Be sure that you let these potential sellers see the benefit of putting their products on your site. For example: They do not need to purchase server space nor do they have to incur the costs of setting up a shopping cart.
Make sure the potential sellers understand that they have nothing to lose by putting their products on your site. (I let them put their products on the site for free until they sell one product and then I charge them a nominal fee for each sale afterwards.)Multi-vendor technology can work for you and can make it easier to sell your own products. The more people you attract to your site, the more sales you’ll make.