Hi,
is it legal in Europe to have a store where all things are for free and you pay only delivery costs (where commission is hidden)?
Can I promote these products on Facebook telling people they are all free but in fact they pay for them in shipping cost?
Do you think it's a good idea to make the store like this? Maybe it's better to just use normal prices with timer? I guess some people may not be happy for paying shipping cost 3 times, when they chose to order 3 different things (from different people on Aliexpess).
What is your experience with shops like this?
Other idea is to make a store where everything costs the same price and shipping cost is normal.
In general, what do you think about a store with partially useless but interesting things? Things like lasers, fidget cube etc. Is it easy to promote it? I'm interested, because some time ago I almost bought "titanium bracelet" which is completely unuseful but looked nice on the photo. It was for free but I they wanted me to pay $10 for shipping. Of course finally I didn't buy it, but I was really interested what it is.
First of all I want to put it on record that I've never promoted products using the free + S&H model.
But I know for a fact that there have been a lot of scams that were using this model - therefore, even if you're just an honest seller, people may associate you with scams. Here's an example:
https://www.warriorforum.com/ecommer...merce-ads.html
I've come across articles that recommend using FB to promote "free products" - like this one:
https://www.oberlo.ca/blog/free-plus-shipping-business
And this article is from last year. I also remember having seen quite a few ads for these types of products, so people ARE running them on facebook. It's just that there may be a risk of getting your account banned, possibly from negative comments from people that didn't notice the "S&H" requirement (as someone pointed out in the post linked to above).
Like I said though, I don't personally have experience using this model, so am just speculating based on my quick research just now.
Anyone care to share more recent experiences?
Amy
You could, but be prepared to deal with razor thin margins, high abandoned cart rates, and an unsustainable ratio of unhappy to happy customers.
If you were one of the first to use this angle early it would have been much different, but too many people burned this one out by now though. IMO it's not worth your time and energy based on exactly what stacking benjamins said above.
Free + Shipping is a solid model that works wonders. But of course, the details count massively, and many over abuse it.
You will not get away with Free + shipping if you end up charging $9.90 or above. That is just plain silly (unless perceived value is massive)
Nor with bigger bulkier objects. You want to think very very small, like jewellery or similarly small items
The idea behind Free + Shipping is
a) Trending highly scalable stuff, catch a new trend and milk it until it dies out - think fidget spinner
b) Test multiple products to find one that can engage with your niche audience for future sales
C) Drive awareness to your store, and feed the FB pixel some crumbles for future audience targetting.
c) Create an email list
d) Hopefully cross and upsell to increase AOV (average order value)
Having said this, dozens of stores make a killing with this model alone. Your product should be very small and weight very very very little so cost + shipping is really low, so your profit margin is very high. Say it actually costs you $1.2 to buy and ship, but you charger free + $4.99 = 3.75 profit
Building funnels around this works really well, though as everyone said it's probably not worth your time now, too many people jumped on that train and the number of grumpy customers and negative feedback is nerve-wracking.
Also note that everything is set in motion to work against this model:
- There are VAT reforms currently taking place, specifically aimed at all these packages coming in under the radar. This is creating huge amounts of lost import duties and VAT. As such, this practice has become a target for the authorities
- The burden is now being placed on forwarders to take care of this and I believe Sweden was the first country where a huge handling fee was imposed for these sort of shipments (It is something like 15 euro, see here: https://www.thelocal.se/20180119/you...more-expensive).
All-in-all, not a sustainable model and not something I'd look to build right now.