When you’re on the internet (and really in many cases off the internet as well), it’s important that you be assertive when trying to make money. People on the internet will run right over you if you back down, so you need to be really careful. The hard part is that if you’re too assertive, you can scare off prospective buyers or cause sellers to give an arbitrary refusal to any future offers you may make.

Hold By Proven Prices
Unless you are running a temporary sale on your website, or if you’ve had trouble making any sales at the time, hold strong by your prices. People will try and negotiate a lower price many times. However, if you’re already making plenty of sales at your full price, there’s no reason to lower your price just to get one more sale. By doing that, other people may come to expect to get that discount as well, and your current customers may wonder why they aren’t deserving of your special deal. Try and be equal across the board; if it gets out that a few people were able to convince you to cut them a deal, everyone will want you to cut that deal with them.

See If Their Price Is Too High
If a site is making tons of sales and doing just fine, you probably shouldn’t try and negotiate a lower price. (For example: TechCrunch has no problem filling their ad spots each month. Negotiating a lower price with them would be futile. For TC, it would be better just to wait a few more days for someone who’s willing to buy at full price) However, there are plenty of sites who are overcharging their ad spots. If you notice that a site has tons of “buy an ad here” boxes with no ads sold, you should try and see if you can get a lower price.

Fight For What’s Fair
There are some people online who will run right over you if you let them. If someone lies to you, steals from you, or treats you unfairly, address them about it. It’s always best to go to that person first and calmly address the situation and see what’s happened. If they refuse to apologize and/or correct the situation, then you should mark them off of your list of places to buy from or people to sell to. However, always keep in mind the possibility that you are at fault and be ready to apologize if you have wrongly accused someone of something.

Don’t be rude or overbearing, but be assertive. Make sure that both you and your customers are being treated fairly. Remember that in order to be successful, you can’t let people run all over you!! Be kind but don’t be weak.