Selling Plants Online

This thread is to help anyone wanting to sell plants online. From listing, packaging and sending to dealing with customers positively.

Its easy once you decide to do it.
And the more put in the more you will be rewarded
(Repeat customers and a healthy portfolio of diffrent plants makes it worth while)

I sell less than part time on a well known ecommerce platform/marketplace
And i earn atleast 1k a month during the growing season
About 7k a year.


So
Task no.1:

The first thing you need to do is write down what plants you want to sell and in what form you will be selling them in ie. Rooted cutting, full plant from seed, unrooted cutting, seeds and so on

Then go on ebay and search for one of the plants you wish to sell.
Once you confirm your search term is correct by viewing the results , select from the search refinement section a check box for Sold and Completed items
This will show you if your plant will sell and how much you can charge per transaction.
This will also show you the competition on the marketplace and the reviews left for those sellers

I will be adding how to package in the next installment so stay tuned

 

That's a good idea, especially if you have so many cuttings that you're running out of room to keep them ... like me lol
I have so many succulent cuttings and pots of garden plants, I was thinking of giving them to a charity shop.

 

I won't be selling them, I'll be giving them to a charity shop. They will sell them to customers in the shop.

 

I would sell them

 

I've never sold anything on E bay,it always seems like trouble waiting to happen.
I'm not good at wrapping plants, and there are too many things out of your control for my liking.
Like damage and delayed delivery.

Half the time stuff on e bay seems reasonably priced, but as usual with online, add delivery charges and it's a RIP off.
Not saying that happens all the time but in a lot of cases if you can buy it locally it works out cheaper.

 

Thats exactly the same reasons that i used to, stop my self from starting to sell online:
How do i pack plants?
What if the mail is delayed and the plants die?
What if the buyer claims falsely that the plants are dead on arrival?

On day i thought lets just see what happens and listed some plants that i grew at home early in the season.

They all sold for £15 a set
Out of 200 sales i had 3 people contacting me saying that some of the plants died.
This year the same people from last year did the same thing. Lol
So i now know they are that type of buyer.

So i just sent to them some more plants.
And that was it.
But there are other protracted ways of dealing with that type of issue.

It turned out that:
All my fear of 100% returns were unfounded
My fears of delayed or lost delivery were unfounded as RoyalMail actually refund you the postage costs as well as the item costs in credit for posting other items.

And yes you are correct about some items on ebay being very expensive but people pay if you are selling somthing that is not available in the local markets or if your item is of exceptional quality.
If a buyer really dislikes you then there is nothing you can do to stop them from making a malicious claim but luckily that is not an issue for me.
As long as you sell quality and provide decent customer care the rest is easy peasy.

Thats why i started this thread to show others who are apprehensive that it isn't as that difficult.

But my main advice is to list quality plants and the rest will fall in to place

 

How do you know if the plants, such as cultivars, you want to sell are under patent?