With the booming development of global cross-border e-commerce, more and more manufacturing companies hope to take advantage of this opportunity to expand the market, but in the absence of experience and time in the field of cross-border e-commerce, they often choose to outsource the task of agency operation to professional companies. This article will explore the costs of cross-border e-commerce agency operation and different charging models.
1. Pure service fee.
In this model, the agency operation company usually charges a basic service fee. However, there are two situations in the market: one is that the basic service fee is too high, requiring merchants to pay tens of thousands of service fees per month; the other is that the service fee is too low, only three or four thousand yuan per month. For the latter, this situation may cause the agency operation company to suffer losses, because considering the labor cost, they may not be able to cover the operating expenses. Therefore, merchants need to consider carefully when choosing.
However, with the gradual maturity of the e-commerce agency operation industry, this single service fee model has gradually been eliminated by the market. Because this model does not have obvious incentives for the sales performance of the agency operation service provider, the operator may not have enough motivation to achieve better results for the merchant, so it is not very friendly to both the merchant and the service provider.
2. The model of basic service fee + sales commission.
Under this model, the agency company usually charges a certain basic service fee before the contract is signed, which is equivalent to the cost of recruiting and training the operation team. This part of the fee is usually reasonable. In addition, merchants should not only pay attention to the cost issue, but also consider the overall strength of the agency company, because a strong company can reduce the risk of merchants. In addition to the basic service fee, the agency company will also charge sales commissions, which are usually extracted from sales rather than from profits. This is because the agency company usually does not understand the specific cost of the product.
Third, pure commission.
Generally speaking, only those agency companies with strong strength and internal relationships in Taobao dare to adopt the pure commission model. Therefore, they usually select customers instead of waiting for customers to choose them. For novices, the pure commission model may not be the best choice, because this model needs to consider not only the cost issue, but also the investment in the early paid promotion, which may be risky for merchants.
Fourth, charge service fees in the early stage and only charge commissions in the later stage.
This model is still in the exploratory stage in the market, and only some agency companies with strong strength adopt it in practice. This mode of cooperation requires merchants to have certain product strength, because in the initial stage, merchants need to share operating costs with the agency operation company and pay a relatively low sales commission. After a certain period of cooperation, both parties can consider switching to a method of only charging commissions or even profit sharing to achieve the greatest degree of win-win.
5. Cooperative operation.
In this model, a deep cooperative relationship is established between the agency operation company and the store, and both parties jointly bear various investments. This model is a stable way of cooperation for the agency operation company. Usually, the agency operation company will adopt this model after a period of time, which is a combination of operating technology and product supply chain. This model requires the agency operation company to cooperate deeply with merchants, so for the agency operation company, this is also a stable cooperation model.
In summary, different cross-border e-commerce agency operation charging models are suitable for different merchants and agency operation companies. When choosing a partner, merchants should not only consider the cost, but also comprehensively consider the company’s strength and cooperation model to ensure that both parties can achieve a win-win situation. At the same time, the agency operation company also needs to choose the most suitable charging model according to its own situation to meet the needs of different merchants. This reasonable way of cooperation will help promote the healthy development of the cross-border e-commerce industry and allow more manufacturing companies to benefit from opportunities in the international market.