Growing as a Vendor

Explore the top ways to increase your volume as a P2P vendor and a range of ways you could be enhancing your trading business.

Not everyone is a marketing genius, but that doesn't mean you can't increase your reach as a new vendor or an established one. There are always areas you can increase your efforts to aid in growing your customer base and visibility. You may not have considered many things that could help you take your trading to the next level.

Dealing with Payment Providers

Unless you are making cash trades such as cash-in-person or cash-by-mail, you'll commonly be dealing with payment providers as a vendor. These payment providers can be a significant bottleneck for you if you rely too heavily on one or start to have problems with one of them you are using heavily. Disputed transactions are a time you may need to interact with a payment provider, do your best to minimize disputes as much as possible to avoid this situation. Finding the best payment providers to suit your needs can significantly help you grow as a vendor and reduce headaches and downtime.

Payment providers like PayPal are commonly less than accommodating to cryptocurrency traders. Even just the average cryptocurrency investor wanting to send some money to a centralized exchange to buy bitcoin can have their transactions blocked or accounts frozen by banks. Payment providers, including banks, have been slow to adapt to the existence of cryptocurrency, and if you have to deal with them due to a transaction, it can be problematic. Even when you conduct fully legal transactions, many payment providers and banks will decide to close your account or cause you other issues if it's discovered you are dealing in cryptocurrency, especially as a vendor.

Ways to Avoid Problems With Payment Providers:

• Avoid mentioning bitcoin or cryptocurrency in memos or transaction notes.
• Request in your trade terms that buyers don't mark trades as related to crypto either.
• If you are going to operate under a registered business name, consider something discrete.
• Fully verify your accounts to reduce the odds of being flagged as suspicious.
• Avoid relying too heavily on one payment provider or bank account as you grow by expanding your options, also aiding you in receiving more trade requests.
• Ensure you are compliant with local regulations, so it's less likely to result in account closure if you have an issue.
• Look for crypto-friendly or at least tolerant banks and payment providers.
• Keep records of all transactions and trades, so if required, you can present this later.

Optimizing Your Trading Terms

Creating your terms is something that some new vendors rush through, and this can not just lead to poor conversions and fewer customers but also lead to confusion and time-wasting. The more you can do to ensure that a customer comes into a trade knowing your expectations and how you do things personally can be incredibly helpful in streamlining the process.

Even if you've been a vendor for a little while now and are looking for ways to increase your business or reduce your dispute rate, spend a little time looking back at your terms and see if there's anything you can improve on. Growing as a vendor isn't always about what new things you can do, but what you could be doing better, and one of these things is very often improving your trade terms.

Trade Terms Checklist:

• Is it clear how you are willing to accept payment? (e.g., with PayPal friends and family only)
• If you are performing cash-in-person trades, are your terms for meeting safely clear?
• If there's anything you won't accept from your trading partner, have you made it clear?
• Are your terms concise yet clear?
• Is the formatting pleasant on the eye to help encourage thorough reading?
• Are your spelling and grammar correct?
• Do your terms stand out?

Increasing Your Efficiency

Doing all you can to ensure you are efficient helps you avoid burnout and create a great customer experience that can also generate good reviews. Leaving positive feedback that reads as more than average takes time and effort; this isn't something people are often willing to do unless they have a seamless and positive experience. There's a range of things you can assess to help you increase your efficiency to help you grow as a vendor in the P2P trading space.

One thing is ensuring that your working hours are times that you are actually able to trade. Do you have specific responsibilities outside of your trading that make you unavailable for several hours? Pause your trades or edit your trading hours. Few things will stop a trader from coming back for the 2nd trade than a slow acceptance or expired trade. First impressions are crucial, so make sure you can commit to the times you specify, at least with a reasonable degree of certainty.

Another way to improve your efficiency as a P2P trader is through templates. As you start clocking up trades, you'll quickly begin to notice that you're repeating yourself a lot when dealing with customers. Are you finding yourself typing out the same information or looking up the same account details to give out again and again? Create some templates. A folder of templates can be a huge timesaver for both you and your trading partner. Having blocks of text to copy and paste into the trade chat at the right moment can have you speeding through trades without risking mistakes or having to fumble through your bookmarks just to grab the same info for the thousandth time.

If you have to write the same thing more than three times, you can probably make a template for it.

Marketing Yourself On & Offline

As you can probably imagine, marketing is quite a broad topic, but nothing is stopping you from exploring this avenue when it comes to your cryptocurrency trading. As a trader, there are two avenues that you can explore when you want to increase your customer base and revenue. In the offline world, there's likely a range of people you know that are getting more interested in buying bitcoin to get involved in crypto but just don't know how to. There's a range of ways (many of them free) you can increase your reach as a P2P cryptocurrency trader when it comes to online.

Expanding Your Reach Locally: When dealing with your local environment, you can, of course, take various approaches both on and offline, so be sure to explore both. However, if you want to focus offline to make some real-world trading connections, you can do a few things. While many of these are pretty basic in nature, you might just be surprised what kind of snowball effect combining a few different approaches can have. When it comes to dealing locally, the most crucial part is getting in front of your local community and showing cryptocurrency in a positive light.

• Start a local bitcoin meetup or cryptocurrency group (or join one).
• Put on small educational events to help others understand bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
• Let your friends, family, and colleagues know about what you do so they can refer people they know talking about buying bitcoin or other cryptos to you.
• Put an advertisement in the local newspaper or community newsletters.
• Advertise your services on local notice boards or in other similar public spaces.
• Become a more significant part of your community by taking part in the various events and community groups so that people get to know you, and in turn, get familiar with your business as well.
• Be a positive advocate for cryptocurrency to those around you.

Growing as a Vendor Online: Just like when trying to get more involved in your local community, the key to increasing your visibility to potential trading partners online is to get in front of those with interest in cryptocurrency. While you can pay for advertising online, many people in the crypto space are suspicious of many forms of advertising, so you may find building a solid reputation may be far more beneficial to you.

• Get active on Twitter and engage with the vibrant crypto community there.
• Join crypto focussed groups on Facebook and get involved in the discussions.
• Be open to sharing your knowledge with those that you see asking questions online.
• Add links to your trading account to your profile bio on any websites you use that allow it.
• Start a small website to talk about yourself and showcase your services.
• Contribute your skills and get involved in the broader cryptocurrency space.
• Don't be afraid to promote your trading online; just take care not to be spammy about it.
• Expand your online presence while using the same username to build broader visibility.

As you can see there's a range of direct and indirect ways for you to engage with other traders, who could make great potential customers later. You don't have to be a marketing expert to get out there and make a little noise in whatever way you feel comfortable. Make waves and make yourself known by expanding your horizons into new areas to help grow your trading opportunities.