How many of you have come up with the brilliant idea of setting up an e-commerce to start your business online and as soon as you have requested a couple of development budgets, have you seen your dream vanish? If you have found yourself in that or similar situation, we have great news for you: you can sell online without an online store! What’s more, it’s not that there’s one formula or two or three to do it, it’s that There are up to 6 different ways to sell on the Internet without the need to develop an ecommerce platform.
There is no doubt that an online store has its advantages when it comes to creating customized product catalogs, managing payments and centralizing all your online commerce, and in the long run you will probably consider developing one. But to begin with, if what you want is to test the market, you can do it without having to invest in this element of online sales. The options that we are going to propose to you to sell online without an online store, and thus save a good budget item from the launch, are the following: sell through social networks (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram), sell through marketplaces, take advantage of crowdfunding possibilities or sell thanks to a good email marketing and automation strategy.
Next, we show you how to use each of these formulas to sell online without an online store. Take note and ask any questions you have in the comments section of this post!
Sell on Facebook
As you well know… everyone is on Facebook! And although it can be somewhat counterproductive to make an entire business depend exclusively on a foreign platform such as Facebook, the truth is that it is probably the best way to start. If you are still wondering why, we are going to give you an example:
If there was no Internet and you had to sell some lettuce from your garden… where would you go to sell it? We give you two options: a) To a deserted island. b) To the most central square in the city, where there are always people walking around. I guess the answer is clear to you, right? The best place where we can sell is where people spend their time!
That said, let’s see the steps to follow to sell on Facebook without an online store:
- If you don’t have it yet, you will have to create a fan page.
- Go to “Settings” and “Edit page”.
- In the “Templates” section, click on “edit” and select the “purchases” option. Thus, a series of pre-established tabs will appear to have an online store on Facebook. Also, you can change the order of the tabs simply by clicking and dragging.
- Click on “Settings” in the “Shop” tab and make sure it is activated.
- Access your main page and click on “Shop” to configure it. At the top you can describe what is sold in your store and by clicking on the “add products” button you can create your catalog with a photograph, name and description of each one, as well as being able to add offers and variants (eg color, size…) of the same product.
With this you will have created your online store on Facebook with your product catalogue. Also remember to create a Paypal account or find some other way to manage your orders. The operation of this store is that when a user is interested in your product, they will write you a private message to resolve their doubts and manage the shipping and payment of the purchase. This issue turned out, now all you have to do is explore all the possibilities offered by this social network to promote sales through Facebook Ads and the facebook bot.
If you are interested in using this Facebook formula to sell online without an online store, I recommend our previous post How to sell on Facebook? Ideas, tricks and strategies as well as ADC training:
Sell on Twitter
Another social network where we will also find many users, and through which we can sell online without an online store, is Twitter. Although it has removed the famous “Buy Now” button from among its features, if you already have some visibility on this social network, perhaps you can use it in a simple (and traditional) way to get sales.
The idea is to promote your products through the Tweets themselves. In this case, we give you four tips to make your Twitter sales strategy work:
- Creation of tweets: Remember to clearly show the product (with an image), its name and characteristics, making the most of the limited space that Twitter allows us.
- Links with more information: In the case of Twitter, it would always be important to have a support website to expand information that can be a simple WordPress where we upload our product catalog with extended documentation, information on payments, shipments, prices…
- The 10 x 1 rule: Do not focus your communication exclusively on sales, or users will get tired of you and you will lose followers. According to the 10 × 1 rule, for every 10 tweets of value to your followers, only 1 should be a promotion or sale.
- Bet on advertising!: trying to sell on Twitter without hardly a community and without investment in advertising can end in a total disaster. Take advantage of the possibilities offered by Twitter Ads to get your products and promotions further.
A trick that works very well on Twitter to sell is… active listening! Despite the fact that we have spent years talking about the importance of brands listening to the user online, not all of them do it properly, and for this reason, those that do are praised by the user. Many users raise their problems and needs online, so if you manage to detect them in time and offer them the solution (your product) before anyone else, they will surely value your contribution very positively. For example, if you sell mobile phones whose most outstanding feature is the high durability of the battery and you see how a user complains on Twitter about how short the battery life of his mobile is… this is your opportunity to offer him your product!
Remember that Twitter does not offer us anything related to the payment and shipping system either, so we will have to organize that elsewhere, creating a Paypal account or requesting payment by bank transfer, for example. As well as looking at different shipping possibilities with courier companies.
Sell on Instagram
This social network that is growing by leaps and bounds is also another of the channels through which you can sell online without an online store. And although you could try to sell like on Twitter, the biggest problem with this network is that does not allow generating clickable URLs except for posts promoted with Instagram Ads. So, investment in advertising is practically essential.
However, there are platforms specially designed to sell on Instagram, such as: like2buy, liketoknow or soldsie. All of them facilitate the entire sales process, although another somewhat more “archaic” solution if you do not want to use them is to put your website with a complete catalog of products in the profile URL and indicate in the description that orders are accepted by private message. There are many small businesses that do it like this today on Instagram, but obviously if your business takes a certain caliber it will be important to change the online sales system soon to optimize the process.
The power of marketplaces
We could say that a marketplace is the market of a lifetime taken to the online world. A place where everyone can set up their product showcase and start selling. There are general marketplaces for all kinds of products (such as Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, and Rakuten) and others specialized by theme (Etsy for artisan products, Skillshare for online courses, or Directodelcampo.com for natural and organic products).
It is important that, before deciding in which marketplaces to present our products, we analyze the type of customers that go to each of them. Also, keep in mind these advantages and disadvantages of marketplaces:
- Advantages of marketplaces:
- Traffic and visibility assured. If you do not want to invest in advertising or do not have experience in marketing, this will probably be one of the reasons that most convinces you to sell through marketplaces.
- Management of transactions with guarantees thanks to the anti-fraud systems that all marketplaces usually offer. However, it is important to find out about the particular characteristics of each one in particular.
- You do not need to invest in developing an online store, so cost savings are guaranteed.
- Some marketplaces also offer logistics, so you can practically forget about everything and simply dedicate yourself to product development.
- Disadvantages of marketplaces:
- The reduction of margins, due to the commission that the marketplace will keep and that is different in each case. There are also fixed quotas, regardless of sales, which is important to take into account.
- SEO positioning in favor of the marketplace instead of your own website. The marketplace generally has SEO experts and special measures, in addition to much more content than your website, therefore, if you start selling on a marketplace and then set up your ecommerce, your products will probably continue to be better positioned to sell through the marketplace than through your own ecommerce.
- Lots of competition and “the war of the highest bidder”. Especially if you sell generic products that are also offered by other distributors, you will enter into a price fight that is not recommended at all. Probably in the marketplace itself there will be several sellers that offer the same product at different prices and the end user will be clear: the cheapest!
- You do not have the freedom to display the products as you wish, you will have to adjust to the size of the images and descriptions that the marketplace offers as a standard, something that will work against you if you want to generate a brand.
Crowfunding to sell without any investment
Although with its particularities, crowdfunding is another way of selling online without an online store, and even better… without any investment! For those who have not heard this concept before, I will explain what it consists of. Crowdfunding or micropatronage consists of requesting money to start a project, but going to people in general and not to banks. And although this system has existed for a long time, the truth is that the Internet has revolutionized and expanded it, creating truly complete platforms that allow all the management of the entire process, from the project proposal with the different participation and sale options, to the sale itself, payment management and consequent shipments.
In this case, we are talking about a one-off and massive sale that it has to be really attractive for users to feel interested in it, so they should be exclusive products and really original ideas.
Some of the online crowdfunding platforms through which you can sell online without an online store are:
- Kickstarter: international platform for all kinds of projects.
- Drip:…