No matter the size of your capital, you can begin selling online. Just as there are different forms of marketing ranging from the simple sharing of fliers to large shopping complexes and business firms in the physical market, e-commerce offers anyone various forms of selling from Facebook walls to managing websites.
General requirements for selling online:
- Set up an online platform for reaching your target market.
- Set realistic prices. Because it is not face-to-face, buyers can get apprehensive if prices are too high or too low.
- Take good-quality pictures and give precise descriptions of the items you want to sell.
- Set up a payment and delivery plan. It includes paying on delivery or via credit cards.
Where to sell online:
- Social media
Facebook, WhatsApp, BBM, LinkedIn, Twitter and the likes, offer affordable and flexible platforms for putting out information on your product/service. They also create opportunities for you to build your customer base and which in turn will generate traffic for your blog and website. To sell on Facebook, for instance, create a page from your account for your market. Upload descriptions and images and invite friends to like your page. The more the likes the more people get to know and the more you sell.
- Your blog
You can create blogs even without paying on blog sites like WordPress and Blogger. You can attract a wider audience by creating interesting content on your blog. It is important you blog regularly on why your product and service is beneficial to your clients.
- Online stores
You can sell on online stores like OLX, Jumia, DealDey and Konga. To sell, register with any of the online stores to create an account with them. After that, you list and upload the items you want to sell so customers can buy. For every sale you make on the site, you will be charged a commission.
- Your website
To sell on your own website, you will need:
- To buy a domain (the home of your website example www.yourname.com)
- Hosting (where you create pages, blogs and email content for your site)
- An online shopping cart like Shopify.
- Credit card merchants such as Paypal.
Attend seminars on e-commerce.
This will build your professional network and keeps you abreast on new trends in this field.
Connect Nigeria organizes business seminars annually that focus on growing small and medium scale enterprises via e-commerce.
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This article was first published on 24th February 2016
nnenna
Nnenna is an editor and writer at Connect Nigeria. She loves fine art, books and places.
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