How to start a Carousell Blogshop business

Firstly, a little background of myself. I started selling anime merchandise since I was 14 years old and it's been a long 7 years now. My parents were entrepreneurs, selling women's clothes supplied from Bangkok and China. From there, I learned the basics of business, buying something at a low price and pricing it higher for profit.

I studied Business Management in Polytechnic and learned some things that may appeal to you. In this blog, I will offer some tips in starting a blog shop and hope that it will help some of you~

1. Create a nice and unique username. 

The purpose of a unique username is so that buyers can search you and remember your name easily. It should preferably be something lesser than 6 characters. In my case, I took my favorite 2 words and combined them into 1 word to make it my username. It ended up becoming haru + sora = harusora. But it's easy to remember after a few tries.

Your username needs to be easily remembered and unique at the same time. Avoid using punctuations such as : / , ! ? ' = (you get what I mean) as they are hard to remember. Although I say it has to be unique, please don't put your username as 'xxxhahauqbq1o'. Please don't make life difficult for your buyers.

2. Decide what you want to sell.

Find out what are people on carousell buying these days, whether there is a market for the items. Eg if you want to sell female accessories like earrings, are there people on carousell who will buy them? If the answer is yes, you can consider selling earrings. However, if the answer is no, then you should reconsider selling. For example, mousepads. People rarely buy those, unless they need it.

3. Decide on the type of items and the pricing.

Do you want to sell unique items or things that everyone is already selling? If unique items, you can sell at a higher price since not everyone is selling them. If common items, you need to be more mindful of the price you set and not set it too high--which makes people not want to buy from you and buy from others who sell it at a lower price. (Refer to point 4 for pricing)

4. Determine the price to sell at.

Having studied this at school, I am positive this will help. There are such things called 'Price Ceiling' and 'Price Floor'. 

Price Ceiling - Maximum price consumers can pay for your product.

Price Floor - Minimum price you can sell your product at.

Do some research on how other people price their items and try to price your items similarly. 

An example of price ceiling is if someone sells an item for $30, do not try to price your item at $60. If people are not buying that item for $30, they will definitely not buy it at $60 for the same item. Try to price it at $30 or lower, you can make it slightly higher to maybe $35 but not too much.

An example of price floor is let's say the cost price (base price) of the item you bought was $5 and you sell the item at $5. That is the price floor. It's the lowest you can go in selling your product without making a loss.

What you should take away from this is to price your items between price floor and price ceiling. Price it reasonably so that you don't make any losses (price floor) and also price it not too high that people are still willing to pay (price ceiling). 

For example, the cost price of the item is $5 and the highest price someone is selling is $20. Based on these figures, you can price the item between $5 and $20 depending on the amount of profit you want. (Refer to point 5)

5. Determine the Profit.

You need to first set a profit you want to at least earn. For example, $10. Let's say you found a supplier to sell you the item at $5, then you proceed to sell it at $15. 

It looks like you will earn the $10 profit but you actually did not because costs such as shipping for the item to reach you, transport for you to bring the item to the customer and mailing the item to the customer were not factored in. There are other costs of course, but these 3 are the main ones. 

After adding these costs, the actual cost of the item will be $8. If you price it at $15, you will not be earning that $10. Therefore, keeping in mind the price ceiling and price floor, you should either (1) price the item higher at $18 or (2) find a lower price to buy the item at so you can price the item at $15 and still earn $10.

6. Put more effort into your products' photos and descriptions.

A customer's first impression of the product when they see your listing makes or breaks the deal. The purpose of a good picture of the item is to make the customer click on your listing to find out more details. So you need to put in effort in taking a picture of the item and use it as your first photo (cover photo).

To put it simply, a blurry and dim-lighted picture = does not interest customer = customer does not click on your listing = you do not sell = no money for you.

If you find taking a nice picture too much of a hassle, you can ask your supplier to provide you with a photo and use that photo as a cover picture.

As for descriptions, do not leave it blank. Put in some details of the product. The brand, the dimensions, the colors, the condition, anything that you want the buyer to know. An empty description does not appeal to the customers and please don't lie about it. An unhappy customer is not good for your business if they start spreading around that you've been lying to them about the item.

7. Upload listings regularly.

Try not to upload everything in one shot and space out your uploads throughout the week. This is to allow new customers to continually see your listings. The best time to upload a listing is during lunchtime, after work hours between 5 - 7pm and on weekend afternoons, when they are using their phones.

8. Get your customers to make an offer on your listing and leave you feedback. 

Making an offer will prevent the customer from backing out from the deal and also promise to honor the deal. 

By feedback, I meant positive feedback. A higher number of positive feedback will encourage buyers to deal with you. For example, who would you want to buy from, a seller with 655 positive feedbacks or a seller with 1 feedback, who both sell the same item at the same price?

In Carousell, a higher number of feedbacks is better. Please do not get neutral or negative feedback. Deal with the buyers nicely, how you would want a seller to treat you if you're the buyer. That is how you can guarantee positive feedbacks from customers!

9. Value-add your items. Distinguish yourself.

To make your item stand out among others, put something special with it. Customization, free delivery, high-quality items, these are the things people look out for. Between a seller who sells an item at $10 and you who offer the same item with customization, a buyer is more likely to pick you over the other seller. Give your customers a reason to choose you.

That's about it! I hope these tips will help you and all the best in your business :)