If you’re one of those creative people with a talent for making useful things by hand—decorations or other objects, perhaps paintings, crafts, clothing, or furniture for the home or office—the internet can be an excellent way to sell your products.
Once you realize the web’s potential, you’ll probably wonder why you didn’t start using it sooner. In fact, it’s not just for selling; there are many more ways to make money online.
On the other hand, perhaps you don’t make your own products and want to resell items, or you have a lot of new or second-hand things at home that you want to get rid of because you no longer need them—or because you realized buying them in the first place was a mistake. Whatever the case, the internet can help you too.
If you’ve never sold a product before, there are several things to keep in mind. But if you’ve shopped online before, you may already have an idea of what to expect. There are several ways to sell products online, including:
1. Create your own online store: An e-commerce store is your own business, and you’ll need to invest time, energy, effort, and money to see results. It’s not something to take lightly, because otherwise it’ll be much harder to get off the ground—if it survives at all.
The good news is that there are many platforms where you can create your own store without investing much money. These platforms provide tutorials and all the information you need to manage your store successfully.
2. Sell through marketplace on Facebook: If you’re one of the 2 billion monthly active Facebook users worldwide, you’ve probably seen an icon that looks like a small market stall. That’s Marketplace. More than 400 million users have already made transactions using this feature.
It’s very simple: all you need to do is take good photos of your products and keep a close eye on questions from interested buyers. One advantage of Facebook Marketplace is that users can search by product category, and listings closest to them always appear first, making transactions easier.
Also, when you sell or make any transaction using this platform, you are not charged a commission or required to pay anything to use it. This is quite appealing to people who do not have established businesses and sell independently.
This is a slightly more informal way to sell than having an online store, but it can help you conduct market research and diversify your sales, making it an excellent option worth exploring.
If you need a guide to using Facebook Marketplace, Gananci has a comprehensive one that will help you get started.
3.- Set up a Pinterest shop: More than 200 million people use this social network every month to find inspiration, discover and share new ideas. A significant number of these users also use it to sell their products. To make Pinterest a good place to showcase them, however, your products should be visually appealing.
You can use Pins as catalogues and sort them into categories on your boards, so people can see everything you offer, attractively and neatly organised.
Since you cannot make transactions on Pinterest, one good idea is to add codes to your images so people can send you the relevant code and arrange payment, delivery and other details.
To protect yourself and avoid scams, it is best to ask for digital proof of payment before shipping anything. Write a short document explaining your policies and share it with users who are interested in buying your products. This way, everyone will know their responsibilities and you can avoid misunderstandings.
4.- Use Instagram: Many people use this platform to sell because of its many advantages. It is very easy to use and brings together a substantial audience (more than one billion monthly active users). Many businesses started with an Instagram profile and now have a website and even a physical store where they sell their products.
Instagram is an excellent option because you can create a business profile, giving you access to paid advertising, analytics and other valuable information that you can use to improve your sales.
As with Pinterest, you should write down the rules you follow for commercial transactions so that neither you nor your customers encounter any unpleasant surprises.
5.- Promote your products on Mercado Libre, OLX, etc: These are traditional websites for selling, and they work well because, although some charge a commission, they generally have strict safeguards to prevent scams and fraud, which are common on the Internet.
