What you need to know to sell online

Steps to take before you start selling online;

*Determining whether the sale will be made from the website or the marketplace,

* Determining the business idea and sector,

* Making a business plan

* Budget planning,

*Tax liability,

* Adjustment of products (images, product information, etc.),

* If you are going to sell from your own website, cargo agreements, setting up payment institutions,

Deciding on the platform to sell

The first decision to be made before starting the sale is on which platforms the sale will be made. You have 2 options for this:

Marketplace platform:

It is the ideal option as a starting point to start selling. Marketplaces offer you many options ready-made. Cargo agreements instantly offer you essential and difficult-to-prepare transactions such as payment alternatives, online visibility and customer base. Thus, it saves serious time for you to focus only on your sales.

Establishing an e-commerce site:

Although it is everyone's dream to set up an e-commerce site, professionally keeping this website alive requires serious cost and labor. You should bring together the vital functions that we mentioned in the marketplace platform option, and in addition, you should buy a hosting and create your website and create a team that will manage both the technical and administrative works of your website 24/7. Although it may not seem very logical at first, we recommend that you create your own sales platform in the future.

Deciding on the types of products to sell

Before starting the sale, it is necessary to decide what kind of products we will sell at this point. It is important to make product choices in accordance with which products are in demand in the region/country where you will be selling, and in which season we will start selling. Planning to sell only bikinis for a business that you open in October may mean that you can't make any sales until April or May. Here you can get help from the Google Trends site, which will give you an idea about which keywords are searched more in search engines, what the most demanded products from which region might be, and which keywords your competitors stand out for.

Completion of tax registration and other necessary procedures for sale

After deciding which path we will take for sales and what kind of products to sell, the most important thing that we need to deal with immediately is to establish a business that is subject to tax. No matter which option you choose at the top, it is necessary to have a tax plate and to be able to sell postpaid. In order to create a store that can sell to almost all marketplaces, you must have a tax plate. Even though there is no obligation to set up your own website, you will still face the tax plate barrier in order to make an agreement with a BRSA licensed company or banks in order to be able to sell with a credit card. It will be meaningless to have your own e-commerce site after you can't get an order with a credit card. At this point, you can start a sole proprietorship by hiring an accountant.

After establishing your own company and obtaining a tax plate, you can issue your invoices online as an e-invoice taxpayer or continue to use standard invoices by printing stubs. At this point, we recommend e-invoice. Although it is possible to issue an invoice with a voucher in e-commerce businesses for now, e-invoice obligation is considered to be certain in the future.

Budget Planning

Everything is ready for sale. At this point, we need to set a budget. We need to plan how much of the money we have will be invested in product stocks, and how much will be spent on resources such as expenses and advertisements. If you make a mistake, such as dedicating the entire budget of one hundred thousand TL to product procurement, you may find yourself looking at the products in your warehouse. It is not enough to have a product, you must also have a marketing method to market this product and present it to the consumer. At this point, you should create accounts in advertising networks and promote your products and brand. You can benefit from many alternative advertising channels such as Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, Cloudrome Ads. If you have a low budget, you can also take a look at options such as dropshipping instead of stocking products first.

Preparation of products

You have procured your products and there is one last step left for sale. At this point, what you will do is to provide product images. After preparing the images of your products for sale, you can start selling by uploading your products to your website or marketplace platform. We wish you good sales.

As Cosmedrome, we offer all our sellers the opportunity to sell with 10% commission regardless of category. Thus, you can pass through many of the above-mentioned stages without any effort and focus only on sales.