13 Nov
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How does it all work, and do I need an online store or website?
Online sales is a simple concept at its core. It's all based on the fact that you showcase your products somewhere online and allow people to buy those products right here and now.
How to sell online - the easiest way to make
The most obvious, but also the most advanced way to sell online. With your own ecommerce store, you have complete control over the platform, how you present your products, the prices you charge, and how payments are handled. At the same time, this is often the path that requires the highest initial investment. In most cases, having your own online store is the final step in building an online sales operation. Your online store is an important center of operations, and you can connect all other online sales channels to it.
Social media sales
Selling through social media allows you to create a more personal relationship with your customer. The idea is to create a social media presence (company profile), get followers, and then offer your products to those followers directly through the social media platform. Whether you need an additional system to receive orders, process them and accept payments depends on the specific social media platform you choose. For example, with Facebook store pages, you get almost everything in one place.
Sales through partnerships
This way of selling online is to partner with other business owners and either pay them for access to their audience, or trade something of yours in return. If you are just starting out and learning how to sell online, it can be difficult to create joint ventures. However, it's definitely an option when you're a little further along and can offer your partners something of value in exchange - something they'll want.
Sales via e-mail
A lot of people these days say they don't read emails. They're lying. Email is still one of the most effective ways to contact someone online for both personal and business reasons. The only downside to being able to sell via email is that you need to have access to an email list in the first place. This is not always easy. Ideally, you should build your own list - offering a newsletter or adding your existing customers to your list as soon as they buy from you. If you don't have such a list, you can technically experiment with buying access to someone else's email list, but you generally won't get too cool results from this.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping is when you act as an intermediary between the supplier of a product and the buyer. In other words, the buyer buys something from you, but everything they buy is actually shipped directly from the manufacturer to the buyer (without touching you with their hands). With dropshipping, you can offer a huge catalog of products without even having to worry about stocking any of them. The earning potential per unit sold is usually lower with dropshipping, but the volume of sales can make up for it.