Selling an item online might seem like a very straightforward process at first, with lots of websites available where you can put it up for sale. However, millions of people have the same thought process, which can make it hard for your particular advert to stand out. This is largely the case for popular products such as those related to technology, cosmetics, clothing, etc. You’ll need to put in the additional effort if you want your online sales to be successful – the following five resources/apps will aid you greatly in this process.
Five Utilities To Help You Sell Immediately
- Use Selling Platforms Smartly
Just because Etsy, eBay, Shopify and other mobile and web platforms are highly competitive, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use them. In fact, they’re the easiest way to showcase your product to thousands of potential buyers in a matter of minutes.
Putting the item up for sale is very easy, and you won’t have to spend a lot of money to do so – for example, Amazon charges a mere $0.99 per item sold or $30/month without any additional limitations. If you were to try to reach the same amount of people on your own, the costs would likely exceed the price of your item. Make sure that your advert is attractive and that it will spike the interest of anyone who sees it.
If you’re interested in learning how to effortlessly sell anything online, like selling printables on Etsy, make sure to check out Gelato which provides valuable insights and discusses five simple mobile and web tools that can streamline your online selling process.
- Start Your Own Blog
If you’re only looking to make a one-time sale, a blog is probably not worth your time. However, for someone who wants to do it on a regular basis, this is one of the most efficient methods in the long run. With your own blog, you have complete freedom over what you want to post and how you want to present the product. You can create dedicated pages about the benefits, use cases, as well as why they should choose your product instead of someone else’s.
Creating a blog has become very simple in recent years thanks to WordPress. With the help of this very popular CMS, you have the ability to use one-click installs – the only costs are related to hosting and domain name, which in total turn out to be around $35 for the first year.
- Promote Through Social Media
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are all good options when you want to spread the word about what you’re selling. If you have a lot of followers, this can be even more effective than the aforementioned selling platforms. Of course, it won’t be enough to simply make a post with the link leading to the page – you’ll have to include some additional information so that the people who see it have a reason to click on the link. This popular advertising method can lead to a very powerful snowball effect. For example, your followers like the post, share it to their followers and so on until you get a bunch of new people who are interested. There are no downsides, which is why you should take advantage of this method the most.
- Find Out Your Competitors’ Social Networks
When you see a seller who’s more successful than you, it’s almost entirely due to the fact that he’s utilizing social media better than you are. In these cases, it’s important to find out which one it is and how he’s doing it. Manually, this is extremely hard to do, but Spokeo is a perfect tool that could get you precise results immediately and automatically with one single input.
A reverse phone lookup is a process that takes a phone number, analyzes it, and matches it with other information such as a full name of the owner, their address, criminal records, social media accounts, etc. All that Spokeo needs from you is that number, which sellers usually leave visibly on the page of the item that they’re selling. If that’s not enough, Spokeo is also able to run an email search to reveal any additional details. From there, you could see what they’re doing differently and implement those methods in your own strategy.
- Regular Sales/Giveaways
People love getting new things, but they hate spending money on them. Forcing yourself to put an item on sale can be very difficult, especially when you know how much work you put into it and what it’s truly worth. Nevertheless, this can be more than worth it, since the people will notice high quality and will remember you when they need to make a similar purchase. Similarly, organized giveaways on Instagram are notorious for attracting a lot of new people, especially for high-value items. Since you won’t be able to do this regularly, make it as organized and as simple as possible.
Now that you have the tools that you need, it’s up to you to make the most use out of them. Combine, experiment, and you’ll surely start selling in no time.
Maguire Haigh is a marketing manager for Spokeo. He is interested in the latest technology trends, marketing strategies and business development. He also prefers travelling, exploring the world and meeting new people. Maguire has great experience in creating and editing articles on different topics.