Your Guide To Selling More On Yaga

Yaga is an app that allows you to sell and buy secondhand items across South Africa. The cool thing is that Yaga holds the funds of the sale until the buyer confirms via the app that they have received the order, so it significantly reduces scamming.

Here’s how to boost your profits.

1. Be aware of extra fees for buyers

When buying something from Yaga, buyers have to pay a “Buyer Protection Fee.” This is R14.95 + 5% of the cost of the item. This fee, along with a shipping fee, immediately makes an item almost R100 more expensive.

Keep this in mind when pricing your items. You might feel that your offer is fair, but it doesn’t make sense for buyers to buy from you with the additional fees taken into consideration. 

2. Your item is probably not worth as much as you feel it is

Studies have shown that we value an item more when we own it. In other words, you may not be making sales on Yaga because your prices are too high.

Consider reducing the prices to be more aligned with what people are willing to pay for your items, rather than just what you think they are worth (but also check out Tip 3 before doing this!).

3. Reduce prices slowly over time

If someone finds something on your Yaga store that they like but don’t want to buy straight away, they can “like” the item. This adds the item to their Favourites tab and makes it easy for them to find it again.

Every time an item someone has liked is reduced in price, they receive a notification that there has been a price drop. So start with a slightly higher price (if you sell the item at that price, great!) and reduce it slightly every few days or weeks to keep sending notifictions to interested buyers.

4. Encourage people to like your shop

When someone likes your shop, it gets added to their Shop Favourites.

Also, every time you add new items to your shop, all people who have liked your shop will receive a notification, bringing people back to your store.

5. Take good-quality photos

Make sure your product photos are well-lit and not pixelated to increase the chances of people wanting to view the post and possibly buy the item. Also try to include more than one photo per item, for example from different sides or angles.

It can help to have a setup where you photograph all your items, to let people recognise your posts as being yours.

6. List as many items as possible

When people buy an item on Yaga, the shipping fee is often a deterrent. But if they have the option of buying more than one item for you, they may be more likely to justify the shipping cost.

Firstly, turn on “bundling” on your items. This means that if someone buys something from your shop, they will receive free shipping for any additional items for the next hour, letting them add items to your order.

Someone may also contact you to create a bundle for them. This is to reduce the Buyer Protetion Fee. If you get a request like this, simply create a new “product,” on your shop page, make the price the total of all the items the person wants to buy and call it “Bundle for X” where X is the name of the Buyer. That way, they can complete one transaction but you can ship them all of the products they asked to be bundled.

7. Make use of coupon codes

Like on an ecommerce website, you can create coupon codes for your Yaga shop. You can use these codes to run sales and specials. For example, you can DM everyone who has liked your shop and send them the code to encourage them to make a purchase.

To create a code, click on the 3 bar hamburger menu in the app, go to My Shop, click on Discount Codes and Create a new discount code.

Try it out!

There is a Yaga website, but you’re going to get the best experience through the app. 

Download the app and check out my Yaga store here to get an idea of how to list items, how the features look and work, etc. 

Karin Meyer
Karin Meyer
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