How Can You Sell Stuff Online?
In no time at all, the internet has swept the world and is now our greatest means of communication. There is nothing we don’t do online anymore. It runs the gamut from sharing information to online shopping. One aspect of the online world we often overlook, though, is selling things online.
Many people get a Google adsense account on their blog, hoping to make a little money on the side. After awhile, they barely notice it, other than to occasionally wonder how Google manages to place ads that are related to their blog posts. They don’t sell anything, though and even if they did, the commission amounts to pocket change at best.
The general attitude is that unless you’ve got a lot of money and an established name, you can’t make money online. A company that makes men’s watches will make money online because the only reason people go to their site is to buy their watches. The website is just an incidental marketing tool for them.
The ‘rest of us’ don’t try because they don’t think it’s worth the effort. They may briefly try selling online, but when nothing comes of it, they stick with their day job and forget about selling online.
Still others are social media purists who believe that trying to sell things on their blog would somehow sully it. They are focused on socializing and don’t want to ‘hustle.’ That’s just fine, but there is another way to look at what they’re doing.
Let’s take the example of a young woman who shares celebrity gossip and fashion news on her blog. She is always promoting products on her blog, even though she may not be trying to. She buys a new crystal necklace that she loves so much she takes a picture of it and uploads it to her blog. She’ll write a post about it and mention the brand and where you can buy it. It’s a good bet that some of her readers will want to buy one, too.
She has just done the most effective kind of advertising there is - word of mouth. Yet, because she doesn’t have an affiliate link with the seller, she does not get a cut of the profits. That company may not even have an affiliate link, but if they did or if she did some research and found a way to profit from her free advertising, she could make a well earned commission from her blog.
All it takes is a little research and she could be making extra money doing what she is so good at. When she writes a blog post about the latest shirts for girls, she could find a way to make her backlinks pay, rather than just offer her services to the manufacturer for free. If you’ve got a blog, don’t make that mistake. Make it pay.