3 Lessons to learn from the stories of the failed eBay sellers

eBay marketplace has produced many millionaires over the years. However, there has been plenty of failures even here that often gets overshadowed in the glam of all these success stories.

While, for motivation, people usually like reading such millionaire accounts, the instances of failures can be a great source of inspiration too. After reading through hundreds of stories penned by failed eBay sellers, here are 3 life lessons that we think everyone should learn from them:

1. Focusing on the “selling” part too much

E-commerce business is 20 percent selling and 80 percent marketing. Sadly, this is something many new online sellers do not understand. And this is something we encountered over and again from the stories of these failed eBay ventures. They regret not doing enough to market their products and stores. While some only focused on the in-built eBay search engine and SEO, completely overlooking the social media platforms, others didnt even do that.

If you’re an online seller, learn to invest a large part of your time and resource in the marketing department.

2. Doing everything all by yourself

For someone who’s just starting in the e-commerce scene, going about alone seems like a fitting idea. However, it’s also a big mistake. In reiterating their stories, many of these sellers said that they should have hired professional eBay listing service right at the beginning. Such third-party service could have easily helped them not only optimize their listing but also tackle other backend tasks like inventory management and order fulfillment.

If you’re a new eBay seller, don’t try to do everything all by yourself. It’s highly tiring and ineffective. You would be unproductive.

3. Not adapting to the changing trends

A decade back, eBay was the king of e-commerce. However, while still just as big and relevant on the scene, many new marketplaces have come up that have become favorites to many niche sellers. Failing to adapt to the changing trends of e-commerce is another big mistake that the failed eBay sellers said they made. They say, had they started selling on other channels as well, their business would have sustained.

The bottom line for you is to not just focus on eBay but also sell on other channels. Become a multi-channel seller. It’s easier than it sounds, really. With the right third-party multi-channel solution, you can easily integrate all your storefronts together – from Bigcommerce integration with Amazon to Shopify with eBay. And this could add ease and efficiency to the backend activities of your stores, including in product listing, inventory management and order fulfillment, which would eventually make multi-channel selling much simpler.

These are 3 lessons you can learn from the stories of failed eBay sellers. Avoid the mistakes they made, and you will automatically be on your way to the top.