Taobao has become a monster, and "JD.COM. COM "and" Ctrip "have been greatly threatened. It is not difficult to imagine that in the future, real estate, fast food ... all areas related to payment will be involved in Taobao. Then, in big Taobao, how do small sellers get a chance to survive? Even a little chance.
The plight of small sellers
Small sellers, especially those who have just settled in Taobao, need to do a lot of work to survive, because small sellers face the following difficulties.
1, with serious homogenization.
With the development of Taobao, the variety and quantity of goods have reached an alarming level, and almost all consumer goods and services can be purchased in Taobao. Mobile phones, clothes, business cards, real estate ... However, due to the dominance of Taobao, countless sellers rushed in, and the number of similar goods also rose sharply.
Take Nokia E7 1 as an example, the search for "E7 1" has at least 5000 results. The first two results of Taobao Mall occupy the first page, followed by some big sellers, and the sidebar is the seller who bought the advertising space.
Figure: The first three results of searching "E7 1"
When I turned to page 100, I still sold E7 1. They have little turnover. These small sellers can't find a chance to survive under the two big mountains of big sellers and Taobao Mall.
Figure: Search results of "E7 1" on page 100.
Perhaps you can think that E7 1 is too common, and sellers can find another way to sell some unique goods, so that homogenization is not serious. However, how many people will look for these "unique" goods online? How to make your shop famous by relying solely on Taobao and not doing other promotion?
Out-of-print books and out-of-print audio-visual products are a good idea, but at present, sellers cannot sell books on Taobao without a business license for physical books. Even used books.
Taobao Mall, big sellers and small sellers are like a long tail curve. Shopping malls and big sellers are at the head, and small sellers are at the end. Many small sellers have done big business, but individual small sellers are likely to make ends meet.
2. Bad competitive environment
In the harsh competitive environment, money is undoubtedly important. Spending money on advertising can promote sales and popularity. However, for small sellers, it is difficult to do things even if they have money. Because many people will choose big sellers when shopping in Taobao, and they will choose sellers with high reputation. Small sellers who have just settled in Taobao may only have poor "heart-shaped reputation". How do they compete with big sellers?
The first thing small sellers do when they first enter Taobao is not to make money, but to spend money to own "diamonds" and "crowns". But there is no sales? How to get diamonds and crowns?
Sales can be bought. There are generally three ways for small sellers to quickly enhance their reputation:
(1) spend money to conduct false transactions in the brush drilling alliance, thus rapidly enhancing its reputation.
Adsense gave birth to the advertising click alliance, and Taobao gave birth to the brush drill alliance. According to media reports, it costs about 7000 yuan to brush a crown. Taobao recently cleaned up tens of thousands of sellers with false credit records.
(2) Buy an online shop that is already a diamond or a crown, and start directly from the heights.
It is obviously a good choice to buy an online shop that is already a crown instead of taking the risk of brushing diamonds. But if you are unlucky enough to buy an online shop with a false credit record, you can only admit that you are unlucky.
(3) Selling at a loss, and quickly manufacturing sales.
Many sellers will sell their products at the price of 1 yuan 2 yuan when they first enter the market. It is nothing more than earning sales at a loss, thus improving your credit.
Some sellers have more ideas, selling agent software on Taobao, 0.0 1 yuan. Apart from a little charity, they want to earn more credit.
3. Evaluation system.
Taobao's evaluation system has been criticized by blogs and the media. Because Taobao is fiercely competitive and the homogenization is so serious, sellers certainly don't want buyers to give themselves bad reviews.
Therefore, if a buyer gives the seller a bad review, the seller will try to eliminate the bad review. The general method is as follows:
(1) Give the buyer some benefits in exchange for favorable comments.
(2) Threatening and harassing sellers to force them to change their favorable comments.
(3) Find the so-called "delete bad review service". It is said that the price of a bad review ranges from 200 to 500.
Buyers have the right to evaluate whether the service is excellent or not, and sellers should accept the opinions and improve them. But in such a competitive Taobao world, a bad review may be fatal to sellers. So, how should this contradiction be solved?
how to survive？
1, Internal Skill
An online shop has good business, and products and services are the foundation. So the first thing we have to do is to work hard on products and services, and we must work hard. Doing online shop is a typical job that is easy first and then difficult. No online shop is easy to grow up. To be an online shop, the products must be welcomed by consumers, and the quality must be at least acceptable. Then, the service must be in place, so that customers can buy comfortably and naturally want to come often. In particular, good products and services are not enough. Another important factor in internal cultivation is the "face" project of the shop, that is, the decoration of the shop. A good product needs a good display, right? In addition, baby description is also very important. Shopping online is no better than shopping in a store. Customers need to fully understand all aspects of the product, so detailed and beautiful baby description is essential.
2. External work
The main content is of course promotion. With a good product, good service and good display, you need someone to open it and take care of it before you can make a deal. Because of the new rules of Taobao, my shop has also been greatly impacted, but I am trying to find a new way out and explore hard. Most sellers of Taobao are in-kind transactions, but our store is a store decoration service, and its audience is relatively limited, which is somewhat different from everyone. But I want to give some advice to the sellers and friends who do physical transactions. These suggestions are by no means imaginary, but are summarized from many successful sellers and customers of our store's services.
Promotion 1: Advertising
I don't recommend selling the home through train, because the cost is too high and it takes a long time to try and learn. Recommend friends to try advertising outside Taobao station. Such as directional forums and shopping guide websites. Generally speaking, the price of 1000 views is about 1 to 5 yuan. Even if several attempts are unsuccessful, there is not much loss. There are many ways to buy advertisements, and the simpler one is to buy them on Ali's mother's platform. It is particularly emphasized here that whether the advertising pictures are beautiful or attractive is an important factor for the success of advertising. I hope my friends will pay more attention to this.
Promotion 2: Blog
Many sellers attract considerable views by writing blogs. In the field of e-commerce, traffic is king, and traffic is the first step to success. As for how blogs attract visitors, I won't explain too much here. I hope my friends will pay more attention to online success stories, think more and learn more.
Promotion 3: Forum
Many forums have very good potential business opportunities. Posting in these positive forums is a good promotion method. For example, if you sell headphones, you can post more related posts on the forums frequented by earphone enthusiasts, or reply to the purchase stickers of some enthusiasts. What do you do? You must have a certain understanding of the forums related to this industry, which forums are there, and what are the characteristics of the main netizens on the forums.
More promotion methods, I hope friends will discuss more, and welcome more exchanges. I'm just here to attract more attention!
Mentality decides everything
It is very important to be a Taobao mentality. Doing Taobao is not easy, and it takes a lot of time to accumulate. You can't do Taobao well if you are eager for success. If friends come to Taobao just to try their luck, I don't think it is necessary to waste energy and time. At present, the living environment of Taobao small sellers is very bad, and it is difficult to meet luck. Do Taobao must maintain a good attitude, if you believe that e-commerce has prospects, then be serious and stick to it. Keep a learning attitude, keep a self-confidence, keep a persistence, and keep a momentum of going forward regardless of any difficulties and obstacles until the day of success. Because of the wind and rain, the rainbow will have such a beautiful color! Isn't it?
Ok, let's call it a night. The above contents are sincerely dedicated to everyone. It's not those words made up to attract shop traffic, but what I summed up seriously after working in an online shop for so long. Even if what I said is wrong, I hope everyone can understand my sincerity.
Finally, make a slogan of our store: "Serve with your heart and be satisfied with one hundred".