What and how you can sell on the Internet. Additional income on a permanent basis in your free time for enterprising men. Placing goods in Yandex.Market

The Internet opens up wide opportunities for promoting your business. Especially for those entrepreneurs who would like to establish direct contact with customers and clients. But the legends about the penny costs of online sales are from the realm of fantasy.

Not all online promotion methods are created equal. Much depends on the specifics of the business and the tasks that the entrepreneur sets for himself. Social networks, for example, work well for brand awareness and help gather a crowd of loyal buyers/clients and establish feedback with them. Marketplaces are more suitable for increasing sales, essentially without investing in advertising. Auctions and catalogs are convenient for studying the market; with their help, you can assess demand and set a fair price for a product.

But the main advantage of online sales is that even with modest financial investments compared to traditional advertising, it allows you to reach your target audience, achieve an increase in sales and achieve payback.

The face of the company

Having your own website, even the simplest one, is an essential component of a business of any size. A web resource is a kind of business card where the buyer can get acquainted with the company, its products or services, including making an order. In addition, organizing sales through your website is not so difficult. For example, a ready-made “engine” for an online store (CMS system) will cost from $200 to $1,000.

Some platforms are completely free. There are no particular problems with integrating the function of accepting payment cards into the store. In this case, the commission of the acquiring bank will be, on average, 2-3% of the payment amount. Another advantage of a selling platform is that it does not require a huge staff of specialists to support it. The entrepreneur himself can administer the CMS, or hire an IT specialist on a contract basis. However, if 5-7 years ago launching an online store was justified in almost any case, regardless of the scale and turnover of the business, now turning a website into a platform for online sales is not always advisable.

Interesting video on the topic:

Why not?

Firstly, competition from other sellers is very high. It is especially difficult to fight for a buyer when the online store offers not scarce, but popular goods that have many analogues.

Secondly, if the product range is quite narrow, it will not be possible to achieve impressive sales volumes without constant investment in advertising. And in any case, you will have to spend at least 100-200 USD to support the site. per month. Otherwise he will hang out somewhere in the outskirts search engines.
But the main disadvantage is that the online store has a low conversion rate. That is, the ratio of resource visitors and real customers. 1-3% conversion is considered a good indicator, 5-10% is excellent. And there is no guarantee that an increase in the number of site visitors will lead to a proportionate increase in sales. Conversion is also influenced by a lot of other factors: the demand for a product or service right here and now, product quality, reviews and reputation, price, accompanying advertising support in search engines and social networks.

Bottom line: you shouldn’t turn your website into an online store at any cost. There is a risk that it will get lost against the background of stronger and more experienced competitors. Sometimes it’s better to turn a web resource into a beautiful online showcase that will attract potential customers. And send them where? This question must be given a clear and reasoned answer by the entrepreneur himself.

Is it a panacea?

Plus, advertising in social network Provides fine targeting. That is, it helps to highlight exactly those users who may be interested in a product or service. There are plenty of selection criteria. By age and territory, by professional activity and interests, etc. At the same time, the entrepreneur does not spend extra money on promotion, since investments go to attracting the target audience.

And in order to convert this audience into real customers, it is necessary that the page not only arouses interest, but that the content posted there brings benefit to the visitor. It is very important to respond to questions and comments. Then users will have trust in the company and motivation to purchase the product or service. With this algorithm, 2-3 months may pass from the moment of meeting on a social network to the actual sale. But the return will be much higher than in the case when an entrepreneur thoughtlessly pours money into advertising and expects it to bring hundreds of clients. Bottom line: an entrepreneur cannot do without social networks. Just don’t put high hopes on them. Facebook and its analogues provide an opportunity to expand your customer base and study the market. But from the point of view of online sales, they are not a panacea.

Don't overcrowd

Domestic marketplaces are not yet on par with global monsters such as Amazon or Taobao. Although some sites have already reached decent sizes. And with their help, you can achieve considerable sales volumes throughout the country.

A marketplace is essentially a trading platform. But she does not sell on her own behalf, but provides this opportunity to a large number of stores and sellers.

For entrepreneurs, this partnership format is beneficial. After all, the seller gets access to a platform that is visited daily by tens, or even hundreds of thousands of potential buyers. There is no need to allocate a large budget for advertising. Although promotion within the marketplace, of course, will not be superfluous. Trading platforms operate on commission terms. For each unit of goods sold, 1.5 to 5% of the selling price is charged. In addition, the marketplace can act as an auditor. For example, a buyer pays for a purchase by bank card, and the amount is frozen until the seller completes the order. This ensures the safety and integrity of both parties.

Online sales: Experience of entrepreneurs

When deciding to promote online, many entrepreneurs make several mistakes. Firstly, they believe that online advertising and online sales in general are cheap. But with a serious approach to promotion, nothing can be cheap in principle. Secondly, almost no one in small business thinks about IT infrastructure, established business processes, or even about creating a normal customer database. Thirdly, many entrepreneurs are not mentally prepared to hire qualified specialists. But what can you expect from an Internet marketer? who gets $200 a month? Therefore, successful online sales can be achieved both through a personal website and through social networks and marketplaces. All of these are complementary channels. The main condition is a systematic approach and understanding who your client is. or B2C. And, first of all, you need to learn how to sell to existing customers, and sell well. And also to reach those users who are looking for a seller and a product, right up to the formation and updating of their needs.

Also, some marketplaces have their own staff who process the order. Therefore, the seller receives an already confirmed application, without being scattered among those customers who refuse to purchase at the last moment. The disadvantage of marketplaces is high competition. It is very easy to get lost among other sellers who offer the same or similar products. At the same time, the audience of visitors to trading platforms is also very diverse. And many people use them only to compare prices and find the cheapest offer.

The experience of entrepreneurs suggests that marketplaces, on average, generate from 5 to 10% of total sales. If you spend money on advertising a store inside the trading platform itself, then this figure can be increased to 20-30%.

Selling goods online is an alternative way to sell products. It involves searching for potential buyers in worldwide network.

Every year, millions of people around the world successfully sell products online. But there is also back side medals engraved with the same number of sellers whose efforts went unjustified. Therefore, do not rush to rejoice and dream of millions, even if you do everything correctly and smartly - the chances of successful transactions are reduced due to high competition in this segment of making money on the Internet.

Before writing this article, I looked at many publications from other sites (on this topic), as well as videos. Most often, I came across posts from people who, most likely, had never sold anything, but simply copied texts from other sources (with some modifications to add uniqueness to the text). The remaining authors talked about the speed of generating income from this type of income. But is it?

Let me give you a simple example using potatoes. There is a regular food market where anyone can sell either their own crops or those bought from someone else (previously called "speculation" and now "market economics"). So you took the second path, brought the purchased potatoes early in the morning, laid out the scales and waited for buyers.

Next, your competitors come, who, just like you, bought potatoes from that same supplier. And by 9 o’clock in the morning there are already five to ten people on 50 square meters. Same potatoes, same price (based on costs and the desire for more or less profit, prices may vary, but not on a significant scale).

Why should buyers choose your product? Quality and price? It’s possible, but if you sacrifice price, some buyers may decide that you resorted to such a step because of the low quality of the vegetables. Or competitors will see your price tags and also correct theirs.

Do you think that this situation does not apply to selling goods on the Internet? You are wrong. On the World Wide Web you will face even more competition.

How to sell goods online correctly?

Let's start with choosing a site for implementation. In fact, there are not so many of them. This could be a personal online store (which, by the way, you can create absolutely free to begin with), auctions and message boards, and social networks. Perhaps this is all, there is no point in listing the rest.

1. An online store requires at least minimal knowledge of SEO (fortunately, there is a lot of information about this on the Internet now, but it’s best to start by reading the recommendations from the search engines Yandex and Google), unique photographs of the product and their descriptions. Advertising is an indirect and individual, but very useful weapon in finding buyers.
2. Auctions and bulletin boards require perseverance (you have to work hard), unique photographs of goods and their descriptions (but shorter than for a store).
3. Social networks - requires the seller to have thousands of friends on the page or a “promoted community”, the above-mentioned photos and also descriptions.

Based on the above, you probably already understood that no matter what path you choose, you need to have unique photographs of it and describe it in text form. Unique, and not copied from the Internet, photos will help the buyer understand that you are not a deceiver and you have the product in stock (or was, but already in stock). Unique descriptions perform a similar function.

Unique descriptions do not mean texts that have been checked through various services for “uniqueness,” but those that contain elements not described by the supplier. Completeness of information about the product (sizes, composition, application, etc.) is the key to “selling text” (I hate this expression, but here it is very laconic).

Without these two components for buyers, you are one of thousands of identical sellers from which they can choose anyone. And so at least you will be different from other shushvali.

Why don't people buy anything from you?

1. Online store – we study a potential buyer, choose one for him advertising platform, set it up and go ahead.
2. Auctions and bulletin boards are similar advertising, only the services themselves will serve as a platform.
3. Social networks - your friends and subscribers do not need “anti-aging foot cream” and therefore we are looking for buyers either on message boards and auctions, or creating an online store.

Advertising drives sales, it doesn't do it for you. On the Internet, you should resort to it only when you are sure that the money for its implementation will not go down the drain. If you have an interesting product, the page for it is beautifully and competently designed (contact details, price, description are indicated, there is an image or video), then a buyer will be found.

A small example from life

The father of one of my friends decided to sell his old car, which he had previously used for work purposes. Due to its age, the cost of the car was not high. He decided to make the sale through a well-known website created specifically for this purpose (a message board for the sale of used cars).

First steps: composed a description in which he indicated not only technical characteristics car, but also listed the repair work that was carried out on it (as well as a list of parts that were replaced or restored during the repair). Is this correct if you think that this is how it should be? Have you often seen descriptions of lots with winter boots that indicate that they were made in China and that they are made from very cheap materials? Let's move on.

After the text part, he moved on to photos: more than 10 pictures were taken, which allowed buyers to view the car from all angles. And finally, he made a video in which he showed the interior of the car, the open hood, started the engine, etc. The video gave the potential buyer the opportunity to see his future purchase practically with his own eyes (which is impossible to do through a computer, looking only at photographs).

The lot was posted around 6-7 pm. The next morning the buyer called, and in the evening he drove home by car. Don't ask about re-registration and so on, this is not relevant. I described a situation that I saw firsthand and in which I personally took part.

Afterword

I did not discover America for the majority. Didn’t fully answer the question “how to sell goods via the Internet?”, but whoever caught the trick understood everything. I wish you successful and profitable transactions.

Trading goods online, without having an online store, is a very real idea in modern realities. This is because there are many ways to attract customers, and no less options for selling goods via the Internet. To do this, it is not necessary to have a website, and even more so, it is not at all necessary to have a large staff of employees. You don’t even need an agreement with a transport company for the delivery of goods - if you wish and have a little skill, you can sell goods yourself (alone) without an online store website.

What to do if you don’t have a website - how to attract clients

As already mentioned, a website (or an online store is) just one of the options with which you will tell your potential customers about your products.

Here alternative ways sales without online stores:

1. Selling through bulletin boards
2. Using specialized forums
3. In social networks

By selling without using a store, we, first of all, mean the absence of those standard schemes for selling goods that stores use. That is, there is no need to work with delivery services, it simplifies work with suppliers, etc. It is based on these features that we will consider the methods indicated below.

Notice boards

This is one of the easiest free ways to sell goods. The method is simple - register on sites, add advertisements and continue to update them regularly. For this method of attracting a client, it is not necessary to have a website - just indicate your contacts, and post a photo and description of the product.

Forums

On specialized and thematic forums there is a higher chance of finding your target audience. The method of finding clients is similar - you place detailed description about the goods sold, and also leave your contact information.

Social media

You can organize some kind of online store - we have a detailed article about. It is very convenient to create photo albums where you can store photos of your products with their descriptions. Another advantage is Feedback with users.

Landing Page

A landing page is, of course, a website, but it cannot be called a full-fledged online store. Essentially, you create one page where you talk in detail about the products you sell - post a photo and description. Through the Landing, you can accept orders by leaving contacts or a feedback form on it.

Methodology for selling goods without an online store

Now let's move on to the fun part - selling goods! It doesn’t matter where you attract your potential customers (to a website, a social network, an online store) and how (with the help of advertising), you will still have to sell :).

Here is a solution for those who do not want to open a department and are going to do everything alone:

1. Find a supplier and negotiate individual terms with him.
2. You yourself accept orders by mail or by phone.
3. You pack each order yourself and control the payment process.
4. You send orders yourself by mail or courier.

1. Communication with suppliers.

It doesn’t matter whether you are an individual entrepreneur or an individual, suppliers are interested in working with everyone, if it is beneficial for them - the main thing is to know. As an individual, you can place relatively large orders of something and resell them at a retail margin. That is why, without an online store, it is better to sell something that is not bulky and not perishable - there is one for you.

2. We accept orders.

The ideal option is to use a landing page through an online order form on which users will place orders. Then all you have to do is call everyone interested and confirm your purchases. The work is not difficult, but it is better to make calls not once a day, but several times, so that people do not think that you have forgotten about them and do not turn to your competitors.

3. Order collection.

When you are responsible for purchasing yourself, collecting an order will not be difficult - you can do this either at home, or rent an office or apartment for this task. If the product is not large, then ideally it can be stored in the pantry, or in the corner of one of the rooms in the apartment. You will need to stock up on wrapping paper, film, etc.

4. We send orders!

The order has been collected, you have the delivery addresses - all that remains is to send them to the customers. To do this, you can go to the post office and collect several parcel orders (5-10) at once. Of course, people in line may swear that you are taking so long :), but that’s their problem. Another option is to work with courier services. In general, it’s easier for someone. But it is also important to understand the needs of customers: if the vast majority are not, in principle, ready to receive goods by mail, then it is better to abandon this delivery method.

Delivery services are important when working in other regions, but when working only in your city (region), you can deliver orders yourself, and delivery can be designated as free, and the cost of expenses included in the price of the product.

It's not that complicated, the main thing is not to forget to pay taxes :). And for this it is not necessary to be registered as a legal entity.

If the product is relatively inexpensive, then you can shift the delivery costs onto the shoulders of customers. Free shipping may be offered for large orders.

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