How to avoid losses in Pinduoduo

On Pinduoduo, a fiercely competitive e-commerce platform, merchants often face the challenge of how to avoid losses after a surge in orders. This article will explore in depth how Pinduoduo merchants can ensure the profitability of their business through refined after-sales management, optimized pre-sales strategies, calculation of investment-output ratios, and leveraging the power of activities during operations.

Anyone who has worked on Pinduoduo should know that it is very easy to increase the volume on Pinduoduo. As long as the price is low enough, it will take only a few minutes to get a big order. So, don't tell me how to play or what techniques I have. As long as I offer the lowest price on the entire network, who dares to compete with me for traffic? In practice, just create a new link on Pinduoduo. As long as the price is low enough, you will definitely get a big order within 7 days.

The problem now is not whether there will be a huge sales volume, but how to make back the investment and avoid losses after the huge sales volume. Although low prices can bring huge sales volume, it does not mean that everyone can offer low prices. How many of you here are manufacturers or industrial belts?

To take a step back, even if the manufacturer has the lowest price on the entire Internet, if the 40% after-sales service comes into play, it will still lose everything.

Therefore, when doing Pinduoduo, you should not only study how to make a lot of orders, but also how not to lose money. This is the most difficult part of doing Pinduoduo. This article will share a few experiences based on my understanding of this topic, and I hope you can learn something from it.

01 The key to avoiding losses is after-sales service

Almost 99% of Pinduoduo merchants suffer losses from after-sales service. After-sales data is not as intuitive and clear as the through train. If you do not have some data analysis capabilities, you have no idea how much money you have lost in after-sales service.

Pinduoduo is different from other platforms. It pays more attention to user experience. Its purpose is: if you are not satisfied, just return it! If you don’t like it, just return it! If you have no money, just return it! As long as the buyer wants to return it, the seven-day unconditional return policy is useless. If the product does not affect the secondary sales, it will be returned.

Pinduoduo's main selling point is the convenience of returns. With the addition of shipping insurance, the convenience of returns and refunds for buyers has reached a new level. It depends on what kind of products you make. If it is a standard product, it is better, and the refund rate is not that high. If it is a non-standard product, do you know what the buyer's psychology is like when buying things? Place an order and see, anyway, you can return it.

It is because of this kind of thinking that the return and refund rate of some of the links I made exceeded 50%. This is the return and refund rate, plus the instant refund before sale. I completed 100 orders in the background, but the actual sales may be less than 30. How can I avoid losses under such circumstances?

After-sales service must be treated as a top priority, especially when new products are first launched. You must pay attention to the reasons for the high return rate of new products. If it is a quality problem, improve it quickly. If it cannot be improved, replace the product. Products with a high return rate will find it difficult to increase sales.

If it is a selling price issue, for example, the actual value of the product is lower than the buyer's psychological expectation, that is, the buyer feels that the product is not worth the money, he will also return the product. Last time, I bought a box of game cards on Pinduoduo for 8 yuan, and I felt that it was average. Later, I found a link that bought 3 boxes of game cards for 6 yuan. Do you think if other buyers encounter this situation, they will return the 8 yuan card.

There are also after-sales refunds caused by reasons such as buyers not understanding the operation, being in a bad mood, moving, etc. When facing after-sales issues, try to assign someone to a specific position and find reliable customer service to handle it. Remember, if you reduce one after-sales refund, your profit will increase by at least two orders.

02 Avoid losses by making good decisions before selling

This is aimed at players who pay a lot. Where will the pre-sale losses occur? It is here in the through train. Since I just learned to walk, I knew that Pinduoduo has a 10~20% second refund rate before the sale, and it can even be as high as more than 30%.

This refund rate is directly deducted from everyone's advertising fees. For example, if there are 100 orders completed on the same day through the through train, 20 orders are pre-sales, and 80 orders are actually sold, you did nothing, but you paid 20 extra advertising fees for the pre-sales in vain.

So can this problem be solved by pre-sales? The answer is no. However, don't be discouraged. Although pre-sales cannot solve the problem, it can be optimized. The effect of optimization is that the previous 20% pre-sales can be optimized to 15%. It is still okay to reduce it a little bit.

So how to optimize? The prices of the products in the first store should be unified, or the span should not be too large. I played high price + low price in a store. As a result, many indirect transactions were made through the high-priced through train, and they were all bought at low prices. It seems that I am not losing money, anyway, they are all bought from my own store, but my bid for the through train is different.

The high-priced product has an investment-output ratio of 5, and the low-priced product has a ratio of 10. So the buyer buys the low-priced product from the high-priced product, which is equivalent to me using a low investment-output ratio to sell the low-priced product. No matter how you calculate it, it is a loss. This is the situation in my own store, and there is also a comparison with other stores that leads to instant refunds.

After a Pinduoduo buyer places an order, the system will push a link to a lower price. If your selling price is high, you are likely to receive many pre-sale refunds with the reason of "seeing a cheaper price". It is difficult to solve the problem before the sale, and optimization depends on the situation.

If the selling price is high, differentiate yourself, don’t let the buyer think there are cheaper products after placing an order. If the selling price is low, don’t make things difficult for yourself. You can link to the same high-priced product, but don’t drive the cart. Just serve as a price anchor.

03 To avoid losing money, you must calculate the investment-to-production ratio clearly

After all the pre-sales and after-sales are resolved, you need to study your through train costs. You should know that if you cost 20 yuan to make a product, sell it for 30 yuan, and make a profit of 10 yuan, and the through train actually deducts 10 yuan for each transaction, it will definitely be a huge loss.

The platform also charges technical service fees, false delivery deductions, quality problem compensation, etc. These fees must be included in the cost of the product. With this calculation, the cost of completing an order on your through train may have to be less than 4 yuan to avoid losing money. Remember, not losing money is not making money.

Now when I run a through train, I bid as low as I can, and I will run within the limit if I can. I need to reserve enough buffer space, so that Pinduoduo can make money. This tests everyone's ability to lower prices. For the product above, the cost is 20, the selling price is 30, and the profit is 10 yuan. How can the through train run without losing money?

Then we have to make use of the power of activities. Now the platform has flash sales that are exempt from review. After the product is put on the shelves, directly put it up with a high production price, and then report the flash sale. The price of the flash sale cannot be 30 yuan, it can be 29.8. Buyers will feel that this is only about 20 yuan, which will reduce the risk of buyer loss.

Once the activity is launched and high-investment production is started, the through train may not be able to move at this time, so you can turn on the rapid promotion. After testing, it is possible to enter the pool after completing the first stage in 2 days. The advantage of entering the pool is that after the first stage is completed, the bid for the through train does not need to be changed, and the flow will not be interrupted in the second stage.

You can enter the pool smoothly by selecting good products and making good links. Remember, good products are the prerequisite for driving without losing money.

04 Last

Money is just a number. If you want to avoid losing money in Pinduoduo, you have to be sensitive to data. If the pre-sales and after-sales express trains are a mess in your eyes, then you will most likely not make money in Pinduoduo.

I have met Pinduoduo operators who particularly like to pay attention to details. The number of orders sold every day, the after-sales fees and unreasonable deductions, and the transportation costs are all calculated clearly. With such an attitude and good quality, it is difficult for Pinduoduo to lose money.