What are the advantages and disadvantages of online selling?

In the present time, Online Selling is a profitable business. Everyone wants to buy goods or services through online. In this way, they can access the markets of all over the world. They can reach wherever they want only with the help of a smart phone or a laptop. So, if we think about the advantages of online selling then there are a lot of advantages. But, as we know, everything has some negative and some positive sides. So, online selling or e-commerce also has some negative sides. First, I want to write the advantages of online selling.

The advantages of online selling are –

1. We can reach to the customers of all over the world –

            We can sell our products under the international marketplaces also. So, we can target a large number of customers. Instead of that if we have a shop in a city then, we will target only the customers of our locality or the people of adjacent areas. Online marketplaces can give you a large number of customers.

2. Monthly expense is so less –

            Our monthly expense is almost nothing in online selling. If we are selling in our shop then, we need to pay rent, electricity bills, phone bills, govt. taxes etc. In this way, we will save a lot of money every year.

3. Business can be run from our own home –

            In online selling business, we can run our business from our own home also. It is not required to go anywhere for your business which cannot be done in offline business. In offline business, we need a good place in a city/town for a shop because we need a gathering of customers to run our business.

4. In online business, it is not required to renovate your shop –

            If we sell offline then, we need to renovate our shop regularly to give it a beautiful look to attract people. But, in online selling business, this renovation is not required. So, in this way we can save a lot of money and time.

5. No need to handle cash –

            In online selling, we get our payments in our bank account directly. So, it is not required to handle cash in online selling. Instead of that, if we sell offline, we can get the payment in cash and then we need to deposit it in to the bank. Thus we can save a lot of time in online selling.

The disadvantages of online selling are - 

1. Return charges that charged by the marketplaces - 
             In online selling, almost all popular marketplaces are giving return offer to the customers. Sometimes, the customers deny to receive the parcel from courier service. In the both cases, a return charge has to be paid by the seller. Sometimes, this creates loss for the seller.

2. Photography and Listing of the products - 
              In online selling, we must take the photographs of our products in a professional way. After that we need to list the products under the marketplaces. These processes take a lot of time and for the professional photography, we need to expense. But, these two things are very important for online selling.

3. Service from Courier Partner - 
              Courier Service is a very important part of online selling business. Sometimes, the courier partner executive does not cooperate properly which create problems. In these cases, we need to contact the seller service. But it needs time. So we need a proper service to run our online selling business smoothly.

4. Highly competitive market - 
             In online selling business, competition is very high. Because the sellers from all over the world are selling their products in the popular marketplaces. So always we need to think different and try to give better deals to the customers to attract them.

5. Continue market research is needed - 
               In online selling, we need to find unique products to attract customers. To find useful and unique products, we need to research the market at a regular basis which needs a lot of time. We need to spend a lot of time in the internet to search for such unique products to sell them and earn profit.

In spite of all these disadvantages, online selling business is in the highest priority in the present time.