A Full-Guide for Beginners to Learn What, Where & How to Sell Online

Whether you’re planning to start your own business or a side hustle, you must’ve heard of selling online. Despite being a highly competitive field, people have an unquenchable thirst for running a business online and the reason is simple and obvious.

Just imagine you have a profitable online shop. You won't be afraid to leave the demanding office work that burns you out anymore. You’ll become one of the digital nomads who work for their passion, anywhere and anytime. Best of all, cash will flow into your bank account automatically even when you’re sleeping or traveling around the world.

However, not everyone knows how to sell online. That’s why this blog is going to navigate you through the beginner guide on everything about creating an online business. Stay tuned!

On This Page

• What Products Should You Sell Online?
• Where to Sell Your Products Online?
• How to Sell Online?

What Products Should You Sell Online?

First and foremost, you need to pick a product to sell online. This step sounds overwhelming but it will be worth the effort once you’ve found the niche. If you’re still clueless about what to sell online, follow the tips below.

Brainstorming

Every project starts with brainstorming. When you’re brainstorming about what to sell online, you should focus on quantity over quality and ignore criticisms. That being said, you’re supposed to think freely about all the possible products without the worry of being judged.

Next is to document all your thoughts with a mind map. You should write down as many things as you can whether you know them from social media or friends. The more ideas, the better. With so many options and the help of a mind map that allows you to connect dots, the inspiration will strike when you least expect it.

In the end, according to your interests and intuition, it is not difficult to select three to five products for selling online.

Validation

Selling online with something you like is not a guarantee to success. What’s more, you have to find out whether your ideas actually work or not.

One way is to use Google Trends to check your potential customers’ interest over time. You can enter the keyword of your product and select the region you plan to target in Google Trends. Then you’ll see how popular this product is over the years. Google Trends also allows you to compare different keywords so you can figure out which of your pre-selected products is the most profitable. Additionally, Google Trends offers insights about your potential customers’ search behavior, which can be used for further research.

The other way is to check social media as almost everyone has an account on Instagram, Twitter or TikTok. With your products in mind, you can do a hashtag search to find out the popularity of each one. More importantly, social media helps you collect information about customer demographics because you can easily find out their age, gender, appearance, personality, etc. through their posts.

Competitor Analysis

After the brainstorming and validation process, the last step is to do a competitor analysis to decide on your final product to sell online.

Firstly, you should find out who your direct competitor is. You can search related keywords in Google and check those high-ranking websites. Then you need a marketing tool like SemRush to figure out how much traffic your competitors get monthly, what content brings them the most traffic, how they are advertising, etc.

If you find that all your competitors are mega businesses with millions of traffic, you’d better give up on this product as an individual seller. Instead, you should focus on a less competitive niche. However, if you see that you can provide a better solution or content than your competitor, just go for it.

Where to Sell Your Products Online?

Now comes to choosing where to sell online. Nowadays, e-commerce has grown so prosperous that numerous online selling platforms are waiting for you to join them. You can check the following recommendations and find out which one is the best for your product.

Amazon

Amazon is the go-to e-commerce platform if you want to sell online. With more than 400 products sold per minute, your chance to make money is promising. Amazon also saves your time of marketing as people around the world trust this platform and they come to this online selling platform willingly. To open an online shop on Amazon, you need to apply and pay a $39.99 monthly fee. Amazon also takes a small part of earning on every piece you sell.

eBay

eBay is the original online selling platform founded in 1995. Though eBay is less trusted than Amazon, it still attracts 135 million users in the world. And you can almost sell anything on eBay no matter how weird it is. However, you should be mindful of the charging fees when selling on eBay. You have to pay a non-refundable fee to list an item and pay it again if you list it in another category.

Etsy

Unlike Amazon and eBay, Etsy is a niche online selling platform where you can sell your unique stuff such as jewelry & accessories, clothing & shoes, home & living gadgets, art & collectibles, etc. The cost of Etsy is $20 for each item you list. When you sell an item, Etsy takes a 5% transaction fee and a 3% plus 25 cents processing fee.

How to Sell Online?

After you've decided which product and the platform to sell online, it is time to think about how to sell online! While it is not difficult to find a name for your online business ans purchase a domain, you need to follow a few more steps to run a successful online shop.

Build a Website

Selling online is building your brand so you need a website first. Shopify is a perfect tool that helps you create an e-commerce website without coding. It has various templates and the whole process is easy like making a PPT.

Work out the shipping

The second step of how to sell online is to work out your shipping. It is important to figure out your shipping cost so you won’t lose money because of expensive shipping.

Market

It is crucial to choose the right product while selling online but marketing is even more important. And the quickest way to reach more customers is through micro-influencer marketing. This is done by using specific hashtags on Instagram or TikTok to find those micro influencers with several thousand followers. Then you try to collaborate with them to increase the exposure of your products.

As a small business online, you can’t miss video marketing either as videos play a significant role in today’s life. Vidnoz Flex is an all-in-one platform that allows you to record, edit, market, and analyze videos at one place. Small businesses online can leverage Vidnoz’s interactive features like customize poll, CTA, and form to improve video click-through-rate and gather information for customer analysis. There are also AI features such as Text to Speech and Talking Head to add some fun to your video for marketing.

Trial and Error

There is no guarantee that you’ll earn big money with one shot. How to sell online successfully also takes a lot of trials-and-error. You market your product and analyze the performance. If it works, congratulations! If you notice that you’re investing something that’ll never bring you an avenue, it doesn’t hurt to pick another product and start it over again.

Conclusion

How to sell online is lucrative but competitions and challenges exist too. You need a brave heart to take risks and experience failures. But with careful analytics and trial-and-error, you’ll have your own profitable online shop too.

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