How to make money through online retailing

Retailing, the process whereby goods are distributed and sold directly to the end user has been around for thousands of years. In fact, the need for retailing will continue for as long as people exist as they will always require several products to meet their needs and wants.

Retailing has seriously evolved over the years as consumers have become more exposed and demanding, wanting better products. For instance in Africa more and more shopping malls are springing up, threatening the existence of the traditional small stores. These malls make it easy to do all your shopping in one location, which resonates well with the customers, many of whom desire convenience.

The advent of the internet brought tremendous opportunities for many sectors as it revolutionised the way things were being done. The internet has made the world a global village, thus make it possible to better transact business across borders with payment and delivery facilities set up all making for a seamless transaction process if you want to sell your goods online.

Today shopping malls have literally been created online with sites such as Jumia and Konga providing retailers with virtual store space to sell their products to a wider reach of customers nationwide. These retail giants provide sellers with everything from advert space to a secure payment platform and top class delivery systems which enable people to purchase online.

Making purchases is as easy as registering an account on the portal, surfing to the desired product and clicking the order button. Once confirmed the cost of the order, delivery charges and the duration of time it will take is communicated to the buyer. Payment can be made on delivery to the person who delivers the goods to the buyers address.

The process is equally seamless on the seller’s side as it costs nothing to register and become a retailer on these sites. Once registered and verified sellers can upload pictures of all their products onto the portal, set prices and indicate quantities available and they are ready to sell. When a sale is made the delivery person collects the money and enters details into the system. The funds may be kept for a few days pending if the customer decides to return the item; but if not the funds are transferred to the seller less the commission fee due to the online portal which ranges between four and fifteen percent depending on the type of product sold.

The advantages of selling this way are numerous – less costs spent on a physical location; customers do not need to commute to buy; you literally sell at anytime of day and night; these sites have many customers already who may need your product; orders will be coming in from many other locations that your traditional store cannot reach; ease of payment; ease of returns if customers change their mind; little need for substantial numbers of staff who have to be paid; and the ease of convenience to run promotions on these sites.

Other advantages include the provision of a system that tracks all sales, stock and payments for each retailer thereby making it easy to monitor your efforts; free advertising as these sites have robust social media framework; better interaction with customers and prospects; account management and excellent seller support systems.

However the most critical decision every would-be retailer needs to take is one of which product to sell online. Some of the more popular categories are Clothing and fashion, Phones and Tablets and Appliances. Online retailers work hard to cover every imaginable product category so there are hundreds of thousands of products available for sale in several categories. They even make provision for a category called “others,” just in case some products cannot be specifically classified.

The top performing retailers usually have exclusive rights to the products they retail thereby minimising threats from competition, good photo displays, great prices and service. These attributes can easily be replicated by anyone who wants to invest in online retail.

There are still a great many products that should be in use in this country that are still not here. All one needs to do to find them is to check sourcing sites for products such alibaba.com or globalsources.com. A visit to these sites will easily expose one to many product ideas and items that can be imported into the country and retailed online.

Those who do not want to go through the stress of importation can research and be on the lookout for products that are already in Nigeria and are not being sold online. There are still many people who have not seen the light regarding this opportunity especially since it is still relatively young in Nigeria. They would be willing to work with others who are purchasing a reasonable quantity of their products and creating more distribution channels for them.

It is also important not to overlook or trivialise doing due diligence regarding the pros and cons before investing in any venture. Don’t tie all your funds into large quantities of a product, believing it to be the next big thing, without doing your homework. For starters purchase small quantities instead and test the online market to see if these sites can elicit patronage for these products. Once the orders are substantial then you can commit to purchasing more quantities.

According to the Ministry of Communications Technology Nigeria’s e-commerce market has a potential of $10 billion with about 300,000 orders made on a daily basis. The sector has created over 12,000 jobs since 2012, expanding the infrastructure, warehousing, advertising and logistics services industry. The rate at which online businesses are springing up in Nigeria, along with the availability and accessibility of broadband internet can expand the boom in e-commerce and make Nigeria the hub of online business in the sub-Saharan Africa in the next one year. This is an opportunity you should try to cash in on.

Kenneth Doghudje