What Is Wish.com? How to Buy or Sell on Wish.com

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Open the shopping site Wish.com, and you will find yourself browsing a vast array of items that you don’t know if you need them or not. Cheap perfume, handmade blades, and $10 winter coats were what I found on my first log-in. But that is for my own preference; Wish will provide a personalized list of items based on your shopping activities and demographics, making a set of outrageously cheap products only for you.

If you are a bit confused about the concept of Wish.com, I don’t blame you. That is why I wrote this article to review Wish thoroughly and let you know exactly what kind of eCommerce platform this site is.

In 2019, Wish.com was considered the third biggest eCommerce marketplaces in the U.S by sales, so if you know a thing or two, you may find a new marketplace to sell your products. In advance, I can say that Wish has quite a potential if you want to offer low price products to U.S buyers.

No more spoilers! Let’s see all we need to know about Wish.com!

What is Wish.com?

Wish.com is an online shopping website that allows consumers to buy directly from merchants. Users can shop through a mobile app or the website, but the company has indicated that the platform is resolutely mobile-first, taking inspiration from Instagram’s infinite feed.

Wish.com was founded in San Francisco in 2010 by Piot Szulczewski (current CEO) and Danny Zhang (former CTO). Since then, Wish has become popular across the world with its unique browsing technology. In August 2019, the company’s assets are estimated at around $11.2 billion.

The platform is known for offering a wide range of merchandise, which has gained much internet fame with bizarre advertisements seen on Facebook and Instagram. Users have seen themselves targeted with Wish’s ads about worms, adult diapers, and even sex toys (?!). That and the fact Wish’s products are often at unbelievably low prices by letting vendors sell directly to consumers.

The company has become a huge icon in the eCommerce industry, while hardly comparable in size to other marketplaces like Amazon or eBay. The site’s biggest vendors are from countries like China, Indonesia, Myanmar since sellers still find Wish.com a fantastic place for sellers to find buyers looking for a cheap product. There are more than 200,000 merchants listing their products on Wish.

Wish’s products are usually small items with a low shipping cost. Thanks to a mutual agreement between the U.S. Postal Service and China Post, goods weighing less than 2 kg can have fewer shipping fees. Often, these products have a standard shipping option that takes 2 - 4 weeks, but there is also an express shipping option in 5 - 8 days.

Another notable feature of Wish.com is the Wheel of Fortune-style game - Blitz Buy, which adds a layer of gamification to offer users additional discounts on top items. Also, if users successfully refer friends, they can earn $100 Wish cash. The site and app have acquired over 300 million users worldwide.

How did Wish.com become popular

Not every marketplace can have a place to stand on the eCommerce market unless it has something special to attract customers. Wish.com doesn’t have just one, but many notable features and benefits that made it popular. To have a better look at Wish.com’s success, let’s see what they are:

• Provide a unique shopping experience: Shoppers download the app or visit the Wish website to scroll through the shopping feed, personalized to each user’s buying and browsing behavior. This customized feed makes the marketplace more enjoyable and addictive for shoppers while making it convenient for sellers to present their products in front of more relevant audiences.

• Attract a new generation of consumers: Wish has more than 300 million users across over 120 different countries. It is popular among younger audiences looking for cheap and fun products, with Millennials and Gen Z being 60% of its customers. The shopping feed also makes the platform fresh, relevant, and enjoyable for all ages.

• Has a mobile eCommerce interface: A large part of Wish’s success comes from its mobile-first functionality. Mobile eCommerce is growing three times faster than traditional eCommerce, and Wish.com is both addictive and easy to use on the go.

• Offer special products: Wish is widely known for having niche products and budget items in all kinds of categories including fashion, beauty, electronics, gadgets, toys, and more. Users can easily navigate, browse, and buy from a wide range of products without being frustrated.

• Has a strong group of sellers: With over 200,000 vendors, there is always a big enough product selection to attract buyers. For new sellers, this group is still not too crowded so you have a good chance of competing with them.

• Promote frequently: Wish is very active in promoting the site and the app while advertising third-party sellers. Wish often runs promotional campaigns on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or sponsor NBA teams to drive more traffic.

• Has many active users: On the platform, more than 10 million users have over 2 million orders per day, with an average customer spending about 20 minutes every day on the app or the site.

• Take advantage of psychological tactics: Wish implements psychological tactics to generate more clicks, engagement, and purchases. For example, the shopping feed doesn’t display product titles, making shoppers more curious and clicking on listings to find out more. The Blitz Buy wheel creates secret discounts and convinces customers to add more products to the cart.

• Receives many positive reviews: Wish has over 500,000 reviews per day, which helps sellers establish trust and consumers more likely to buy.

Pros & Cons of shopping with Wish.com

One of the biggest concerns for online shoppers is safety, not just for money but also for privacy. For Wish.com, the company collects data about the name, email address, payment method, phone number, shipping address, and social media accounts, as well as IP address, location information, social network profile data, type of browser, usage data, and time spent on pages.

These are normal personal data that a free marketplace often collects, so use that information as you wish. Keep in mind that all sites have the potential to be hacked.

With that out of the way, let’s see the pros and cons of shopping with Wish.com

Pros

Wide variety of products: The range of items on Wish is comparable to what is available on other big eCommerce sites. You can find gadgets, fashion, jewelry, kitchenware, and many niche items on the platform.

Low prices: The biggest claim to fame for Wish.com. The prices on the platform simply can’t be beaten. If you want to find a certain type of item (and aren’t too concerned about quality or brand as long as it works), then Wish offers fantastic choices for bargain hunters.

Easy-to-use: Wish offers a mobile app that makes the shopping experience easy on the go. The items appear in a feed that is similar to Instagram. Buyers can also spin to get limited-time deals. The idea of Wish.com is to make browsing the eCommerce app fun and buyers can see if anything catches their attention.

Cons

Long shipping time: The number one complaint about Wish is that items can take weeks to arrive. Some items have the Wish Express delivery option, which ships your purchase in five to seven days. Others might show up within five to seven days, but some may take over a month to arrive.

Poor customer service: The other downside of buying from factories in China is that their customer service support is not strong. With a retailer between you and the merchants, the customer service experience can be a lot better because the retailer has to uphold its reputation. The foreign sellers have less direct stakes to keep you happy, so it is up to communication between you and the seller.

Inconsistent sizes: Clothing sizes are a big issue on Wish since Asian and American sizing can be very different. Customers that want to buy clothes on Wish are often left frustrated whether the medium-sized shirt they ordered is really extra small or just a seller’s mistake.

Low-quality control: The Wish.com platform is just a host for individual merchants and manufacturers; the company doesn’t offer any products of its own. So foreign vendors use the cheapest materials to make products that can lack any type of quality assessment. Wish has mad statements about fighting fake items, but it is a hard-to-win battle.

Is it safe to buy and sell on Wish.com?

One of the most common questions about Wish.com is whether Wish is safe to buy and sell on. Well, the quick answer is: yes.

Wish.com is a popular and trustable marketplace that’s secure to buy on and, more importantly for you, safe to sell from. Some shoppers might have a skeptical eye about the quality or shipping speeds of products from foreign countries, but Wish is working hard to remove these concerns by offering faster shipping speeds of only 2-days, verifying more U.S. sellers, and authenticating more official brands through its brand registry.

Wish.com’s shopping tips

If you are a shopper, here are some things to keep in mind when shopping on Wish.com. These next tips will help you have the best experience with the marketplace.

• Check product descriptions carefully: Product images and descriptions may not truthfully reflect the quality of the product or the merchandise. This makes it more important that you read customer reviews and seller’s ratings.

• Read reviews as much as you can: If you want to avoid being disappointed by products sold on Wish, do some research before buying. Read customer reviews, look at their photos, and see the star ratings. The written descriptions and photos are the best social proof for you. Find as much information as you can about the interested product before buying.

• Check out shipping information: Shipping info tells the shipping cost and a general timeframe of when your package will arrive. You should also look at reviews on Wish’s pages and see if any buyers mention a long wait time.

• Know good merchandise to buy: Wish.com may not be the best place to buy high-end electronics or designer clothes, but it is a fantastic marketplace to find casual clothes and small gadgets at a great price. My suggestions are smartphone cases, screen protectors, sunglasses, socks, tank tops, slippers, cosmetic bags, home decor, cheap watches, and other fun toys that you just want to try buying with a few bucks.

• Use your common sense: There are some amazing deals on Wish.com, but if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. A 4k tv is mostly never for sale for only $20. With Wish, you often get what you pay for.

How to sell on Wish.com

If you are a seller, Wish operates in a quite similar way to other online marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay. I will go through the most essential knowledge in this article, but if you want a more detailed guide to being a seller, check out this article on How to Sell on Wish.com?

Signing up to sell

To sell on Wish, you must be a brand owner, manufacturer, retailer, crafter, creator, or artist of the products you want to sell on the marketplace and own the rights to do so.

If you meet the eligible criteria, your brand can sign up through the Wish merchant registration page.

Selling fees

Unlike other online marketplaces, Wish.com doesn’t require a monthly fee. Instead, the marketplace retains a revenue share percentage of your total order value whenever your store makes a sale, typically 15%.

For example, if your store sells an item for $8.00 + $2.00 shipping, Wish will let you have $8.50. That number comes from: $10.00 – $1.50 (15%).

Adding products

Wish sells a very wide range of products with multiple categories, but niche items with competitive pricing tend to do especially well on the site. Note that any products you sell must not fall within Wish’s list of prohibited items, which includes virtual goods, counterfeit products, gift cards, and services.

After knowing what to sell, adding products on Wish.com is pretty much like any other online marketplace. However, take some time to do research and find out what you want to sell.

Promoting products

Wish has many seller tools that help promote your products on the marketplace and increase sales. These include:

• Wish Express – An exclusive shipping program that increases exposure for your products and helps ship faster. The most stand-out shipping option is the 2-day delivery, based on the customer’s location and real-time inventory location.

• Promoted products – Product promotion campaigns on the homepage run by Wish.

• Product Boost – A promotion campaign for best-selling products to stand out in the search results and reach more audiences.

• Intense Boost - Another advertising tool that can increase your product exposure over a short period of time at a higher spend. Products boosted with Intense Boost have highly visible locations on the website and the app.

• Trusted Store – A proof program that rewards successful merchants with a Verified badge by Wish branding. The badge increases your store’s impressions, helps get high search result placement, and lets you handle tickets from customers directly.

Fulfilling orders

Wish.com’s sellers must fulfill orders in 1-5 days after order placement, otherwise, the platform will automatically issue a refund. You have a few different options for order fulfillment with Wish.com, which are:

• Fulfillment by Wish (FBW): Like Fulfillment By Amazon, FBW lets you package and ship your inventory to Wish.com, then they handle the fulfillment for any orders placed. The service has the benefits of storage ability and automatic qualification for Wish Express. However, it charges inbound and storage fees.

• In-house fulfillment: If you are starting small or already having an existing process, you can fulfill orders by yourself. This involves packaging, shipping, and tracking orders within the five-day limit.

• Outsourced fulfillment: If you sell on many sales channels or you can’t meet the eligibility criteria for Fulfillment By Wish, you can outsource your order shipment to a Wish fulfillment partner. When choosing a fulfillment partner, look for companies that can automatically qualify you for Wish Express.

Conclusion

And that is all you need to know about Wish.com - the top marketplace that you can buy or sell from with many potentials. You can either find cheap niche products or find a new site to promote your products and make a success with Wish. Remember to check out our guide on selling on Wish.com if you are an eCommerce seller.

Did I miss anything with this review of Wish.com? Let me know your suggestions on Wish.com in the comments, and thanks for reading on AVADA!