Many online sellers today are looking to expand their sales into other marketplaces, such as Amazon and eBay. However, those aren’t the only two options out there. One of the others that sellers should seriously consider is Rakuten.com, or Buy.com, which was the former name of the site. Those who want to sell through the site need to know a bit about how the system works and what it will entail
The Costs of Selling
One of the most important questions on the mind of most sellers is what it will cost to sell through the marketplace. With Rakuten.com, there are no actual fees for listing your items. However, the sellers will have to pay a commission and a percentage when they sell their products. The commission is $.99 per item, and the percentage amount can vary quite a bit based on the type of product. For example, books and videos have a percentage fee of 14.5%, while games have a fee of 9.75%. It is also important to realize that these costs can change. Another important thing to note is that the fees are based on the total price of the sale, including the shipping and the handling fees.
Pricing the Items
When you are pricing your items, you need to make sure that you keep the prices the same or lower than you have on your own ecommerce site and on other sales channels. This makes perfect sense. They are providing you with additional space for your goods, so they don’t want your products on another site to undercut the sales on their site.
Those who are selling on a large number of different channels can sometimes find it difficult to keep track of the price they have on their products, particularly if they have a large number of products, and they put some on sale from time to time. Instead of trying to handle each of the channels separately, it might be a better idea to work with a piece of software that can centralize your channels. It can make them all easy to control through a single interface.
Shipping
When you are selling on Rakuten.com, you have to adhere to their shipping policies when making a sale through their site. Currently they require that you ship the item to the buyers within two days of the sale. They send notifications whenever you sell an item, so there is never an excuse not to meet the shipping requirements. Sellers also have the ability to monitor their account for their orders. It might also be helpful to use some software to help with shipping and inventory management so you are always on top of the sales.
Sellers need to use shipping methods that are at least the equivalent of the USPS. The items ordered should be to the buyer within four to fourteen days. However, the seller does have the option of offering expedited shipping if they wish to do so. If they do offer expedited shipping though, the packages need to arrive within three to six days of placing the order.
Confirming the Orders
After shipping the order, sellers must confirm the shipment to the buyers. They will confirm the shipment of the item and provide the tracking numbers to the customer within two days. If they don’t, Rakuten.com will consider the order cancelled and will not pay a commission on the sale.
Returns
Sellers can’t list items on the site that are not returnable. If a customer does have a return, the sellers need to be willing to accept those returns for 30 days after the sale.
Resource: http://www.rakuten.com/loc/Marketplace-Sellers-Guide/65546.html