5 things to do before you make your first sale online

If you were thinking about starting a business this year is a great time to do it. Being your own, being controlled of your life , and your own money but here are things you need to do before you make your first sale. I’m not going to talk about taxes, accounting or Anything legal related because I am not licensed to do that, nor do I know enough to talk about it confidently so I definitely recommend you seek professional counsel if you need it. This article is going to be more about the business and marketing side of things. like how you set up your own online shop there are a million things you need to do and I just want to highlight that you don’t need to have all your ducks in a row and if everything be perfect before you launch your website and your beautiful awesome product there for the world to see. My goal for you is to launch ASAP the sooner you get out there the sooner you can start making sales. You only need these five things to get ready before lunch. so this list works if you follow it. the first thing you need to do is

validate your product.

You need to have 100% certainty that strangers will pay your price for your product. A lot of creators who get into starting an online shop without doing this really struggle. It will make making sales for you so much easier later on if you invest the time initially to do this carefully, and to do it right . So get feedback from people about your product from people who can give you an objective unbiased opinion . For example when you start making things you can go onto message boards online and share photos of your work. it might not be for the intention of selling it, to promote it, but to ask people what they thought about it and if they are going to buy it. Another thing you can do is spend some time researching. The question you have to answer is this “are other companies selling something similar and doing well with it?”. If they are, you have the proof that your product will sell well as well. Competition is a good thing and you can use it to your advantage. You don’t want to be the only person in the world selling some sort of proprietary product because it takes a lot of resources to make a business like that work and is not easy, so just do what already works. Some places you can do research online, just Google it. go onto Instagram and Facebook, check out Etsy and even pick up some magazines to get a good sense for what is out there. number two is

you need to have great product photos , a great brand and website.

People shopping online, they can’t touch, feel, smell or experience your product like they could if they walked in a gift store on the street. That means you have to make sure that despite not having the benefit that you are still communicating what your product is , what size it is, what it feels like, what it smells like in the formal picture and words. So it is imperative that you do a good job with this because it is the only way people will ever buy from you. I’m not going to lie that this is a time consuming step but is part of building up your shop so take your time to learn how to do product photography to set up your website, get a good logo and Branding color , things like that. It’s easier now than ever to do all of those things because there are different kinds of resources. and if you don’t want to learn then pay someone to do it for you because it is so easy to do these things now, it becomes a lot cheaper to hire help. Fever is a great place to start looking for help. number three is

Email marketing is going to be a huge asset for your business.

So you need to set up the foundation for now, from the very beginning. don’t wait until you get popular and become famous because you have lost out on a lot of potential sales. so all you need to do is set up signup forms on your website to make it easy to capture your website visitors' email addresses. That way you can continue building that Relationship with them over email. Otherwise,if you don’t do this, after they leave your site, they’re gone forever and you just have to hope they remember to come back again later . That’s called “Hope base marketing” and You will not build a consistent income or living off of that. Then you want to have automated emails written out into email service providers so you can have a reason to show up in a person’s inbox, say hi and start building a relationship with them. you want them to get to know you or your shop in your product , why your products are special , what are who they should buy your product for. Number four is

Do a campaign of influencer marketing

send your product for free to influencers. It can be even smaller influencers. The goal here is you want to get their feedback so you can put it on your website for proof that new customers visiting your site in the future feel that they can trust you. the second goal here is to potentially get UGC ( user generated contact) can either be photos or all of your influencers with your product. UGC are so powerful for your marking and it's a great way to build trust and social proof as well. you want to use these videos or photos on your website, on your product listings and any of your marketing where it makes sense and the cool thing about all of this is you don't have to pay the influence for any fees to do this. frame your email to them as an exchange for your product for their time if they love your Product enough , the right Influencer will say yes. Number five is

Social media is such an imperative part of online businesses these days.

It’s important for you to set up your Instagram and Facebook account for your shop. The reason I suggested is because you have some sort of social presents in case you get that small percentage of people who go to your site but they’re not sure if they trust you enough to buy from you and they go to your social media to check you out there as well. you want to give them a reason to feel comfortable buying from you so have your profile set up and load it up with some content and schedule for the future so you stay active there. If you’re starting a business I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

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