A while ago I told you I won Top Blogger at Gmarket and as a reward I got to spend 50,000KRW ($50US). YAY for winning!! It’s been a while since I ordered, because the first time I wasn’t satisfied due to the huge amount of extra import duties I had to pay. This time, however, I didn’t have to pay anything extra. WIN! As you may know, I decided to order from the lovely shop Etude House (just like last time) and because Feelo asked to do a tutorial, I will include a step-by-step order process. I wanted to include my haul (+small reviews) as well, but this post turned out longer than expected, so I will save that for another post. If there are any questions, let me know! I’m not an expert at Gmarket, but it seems like I’m getting the hang of it after hours and hours of browsing.

GMARKET
If you go to you will go to the English version of Gmarket. It’s not that easy to navigate at first, but you will get the hang of it. This is the screen you will see first.

REGISTER
It’s best to register when you first visit, you won’t be able to add anything in your cart until you have an account. This is free btw! Click register and follow the steps. When you are done, you can go to your account by clicking My Gmarket.

MY GMARKET

This is what your account will look like. As you can see I still have 2,100KRW cash (Gcash) in my account from the gift voucher I received. You can only add Gcash if you have an Korean bankaccount. So us foreigners are out of luck.

You can find discount coupon browsing gmarket yourself or sometimes you will receive one when you are placing an order. Usually this is 10-20% off ONE product or a discount on shipping costs (between 10,000KRW-20,000KRW). There are a lot more discounts that you can find, but to my experience you will have to have an Korean shipping address in order to use them (as in, you can’t use it if they have to ship overseas). In order to get 10%-20% off certain beauty products (Etude House, Holika Holika etc.) you can become a Beautifuler. You can find an how-to here as well as direct pages to get coupons for said discounts. BARE IN MIND certain stores don’t ship overseas, Lioele, Skinfood and Innisfree for example. *sobs*

Gmileage are miles that you sometimes get from certain stores or products that you end up buying. You can exchange them for Gcash. You will have to have at least 10,000 miles earned within 1 month. This is something we aren’t able to do, unless you spend thousands of dollars on Gmarket. From my experience you only get 1-2 gmileage for some products (not all). Imagine how much you will have to spend?!?!

You can collect Gstamps and trade them in for a discount or you can “gamble” for a higher discount, which is something I don’t recommend. I think the rest is self explanatory, if not, let me know!

HOW TO SEARCH?
If you want to search for something, go to the search field and type it in. For most things you will need to Korean translation, but sometimes you will be able to find it when you use the English word. You can also type in a shop you want to visit, I want to go to the official Etude House store, which is etudegmark.

And after searching, you will see all the products of the official shop. This is not the official home page of the shop yet, to go there, you can click on the seller (the pink logo that says Power Seller) and you will go to the official page or you can click this link.

THE OFFICIAL SHOP
This is what the official Etude House shop looks like, very basic but easy to navigate.

Let’s say I am looking for a mascara. I would like to try out the Black Volume Mascara, you click it and it will lead to it’s product page.

HOW TO ORDER?

Sometimes the checkbox next to “Please check, if shipped to Korea” is checked, which means it won’t ship internationally. You can also see the red Coupon Box, if you click that a new window will open.

BOOM! I got a discount! GNA GNA GNA!

I got a coupon from the Beautifuler page. Click on the checkbutton next to 750KRW and click apply. The window will close and you have to add the product to your cart (add to cart). Again, a coupon can only be used on ONE product. Unless it’s a shipping discount coupon. Feel free to browse Gmarket some more and add various items to your liking.

OTHER PAGES

Sometimes you will have a listing for various things, for example shoes. What I like to use then is Google Chrome because it has a built-in translator. Trying to see if the Korean words matches up will get tiring after a while, lol.

SHOPPING CART

This is how your shopping cart will look like. I know it looks kind of sad with one product, but hey… I have to resist the temptation of ordering something, lol.

See how CRAZY shipping is?!?! This is just for one product. What happens with your order is that it will ship to Gmarket Headquartes. There it will be wrapped and packed in order to ship out. There is a CHANCE that you will get some of that high shipping costs back, but that’s highly unlikely. It’s not Gmarket’s fault though, it’s the stupid EMS that charges those insane amounts. Anyway, if you order twice you can combine both shipments and Gmarket will ship it into one package. You can change all that in “My Gmarket“. On the bottom of the page it will say “Place an Order”. This will lead to a page where you have to check your information and select your method of payment. You can pay using Paypal!

TIPS
1. Become a Beautifuler. Even if you get 10% discount off of one product, you’re still saving a bit. That’s always a plus, right? Read how-to here.

2. Lotus Palace did a lot of hauls on Gmarket. You can see what she ordered and where, might come in handy to see if the stores are trustworthy. There’s also a list of all Korean Makeup brands written in Korean, this helps searching for a brand that you like. Be sure to check if they ship overseas!!!

3. Blair is another blogger with a lot of hauls. She also has a blogpost on how to order from Gmarket. Be sure to read as much information as you can.

4. I am not sure if this works, but this girl says there’s a way to avoid paying import duties. Click here to read.

5. Use a internet browser with a built-in translator. Always comes in handy.

6. Asian sizes run very small compared to Western sizes. Check to see if it will fit to avoid disappointment.

7. Enjoy the world of Gmarket! Be sure to check every now and then to see if there are any sales going on!

I will edit this post whenever I find new information. Hope this was helpful. If you have any more questions or if there’s something you don’t understand, please let me know!