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How to Create an Online Store Within Your Blog

How to Create an Online Store Within Your Blog

How to Create an Online Store

Starting a blog is undoubtedly hard at first but you will find more challenges on your path ahead. Fixing how your blog looks and how you can grow and build a solid audience is one thing, figuring out how to make it profitable is another thing.

Selling products on your blog is one way of turning your audience into a customer that can provide you with a consistent flow of revenue.

Setting up your store on your blog is only a small step towards a long journey so we’ve listed these tips below to help you:

The role of blogging on how to create an online store

[bctt tweet=”If you’re burned out from writing posts in and out, then it’s time you learn how to create an online store and make even more money.” username=”blogherald”]

Know what to sell

Are you going to sell your own products or do you plan on getting sales through referral commissions? Whether you do any of the two or even both, you need to know the products yourselves so you can plan on how you will promote them on your blog.

Then, we’ll head over to this next tip below.

Make your items relevant

Since you are building your store from your blog, you can’t just place anything and everything to sell. Remember that your audience is there because they are your target market based on your chosen niche for your blog alone.

The products you sell must be related to what your blog is about.

For example, you blog about lifestyle, makeup, and hair care, obviously you are most likely to be successful in selling makeup, hair care products, and other beauty kits.

Doing the opposite can confuse your readers and harm not just your sales but also your blog traffic.

At the same time, make their packaging relevant as well. Using custom cardboard boxes to pack your products, they need to have the logo and matching colors of your blog. This ensures consistent branding across all fronts.

Prepare the basics

Prepare the basics - How to Create an Online Store

These are the things you need to prepare before opening up your store:

Product name, description, and photos

These factors seem to be basic but their importance is of top priority. Just by using low quality photos can turn off your potential buyers.

Product names can be based on anything you want but writing descriptions is a different matter. Here’s how you can write your product descriptions that sell.

Delivery and fulfillment

Selling physical products would require you to ship your items. It’s entirely up to you if you want to handle it on your own. You can have a third-party fulfillment service do it for you or stock your items using a self-storage facility.

However, there are services capable of managing your inventory and delivery so you can just focus on building your brand and doing the marketing efforts.

There will be instances when you can’t fulfill the orders on time due to limited stocks. Before this could ever happen, you need to learn how to manage ecommerce backorders to keep your customers happy.

Payment gateways

Collecting payments can be a hurdle if not done well. There are lots of tools you can use in order to process payments from your buyers. For example, you can use tools like 2Checkout to handle your payments for you in a more secure way.

Customer support

Your support team serves as your frontline whenever buyers have questions about your products and their orders.

The most logical solution to this problem is to install a chat widget where people can people can send you a message whenever and wherever. While it’s faster than email, much to the benefit of customers, you will need a dedicated support staff to make this happen. So, expect recurring fees when subscribing for a reliable support team.

Once your business gets bigger, consider using VoIP solutions so you have full control of incoming calls to your business. You can check out GetVoIP to find the best service providers that match your needs.

See Also
Start A Blog

Install e-commerce tools and plugins

You can easily place buttons or widgets strategically throughout your blog. This can increase your conversion rate because sometimes your readers want something you mentioned on your blog and want an easy way to get it from you. If you host your blog on WordPress, here are some of our plugin suggestions:

You’ll probably have to use and pay for even more plugins and add-ons to your online store moving forward. While they may seem like an additional cost (which they are), their goal is to make selling much easier for you in the long run. As these tools are part of managing business expenses, they should help you make money and break even for you, if not more!

Focus on providing value to your blog readers

“You are your brand. Honesty, transparency, and authority build consumer trust, so do it well,” says Jason Acidre, owner of Avaris.io.
People have grown tired of having to deal with blogs whose main purpose is to sell to them. Most of it doesn’t look genuine and you can lose your reputation by doing so.

Always make it a point to give value to your readers because they are on your blog to read about your posts. Selling your merchandise is of less priority unless that’s where you want to focus on. However, if all you do is sell, people aren’t oblivious and you risk losing a loyal audience you’ve worked hard to build.

Remember what your audience really want and make sure their needs are well-accommodated.

If you value your audience, they will value you.

Do you now know how to create an online store?

If you don’t want the hassle of selling from your blog, you can go to Amazon and sell your products from there. Amazon does give a lot of benefits to new sellers just by having a greater traffic that will boost your selling possibilities.

Putting up a store within your blog can be difficult at first, but when you do the things above right, you will develop momentum and soon you’ll see growth in your revenue flow.

Related posts:

How to Build an Online Store on WordPress Using WooCommerce

10 Things You Should Do When Starting an Online Store

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