Selling online – when you think you have nothing to sell

Robert Gerrish

For many solo and micro business owners, the topic of ecommerce is dismissed as either being irrelevant or a firm resident of the ‘too hard basket’. Frankly, in many instances, it should be neither.

Ecommerce is simply the buying or selling of products or services via the internet and it’s so easy to get started these days that it’s something of an error to fail to, at least, explore some options.

Let’s do just that.

1.The application of ecommerce to support low cost trial

Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re a consultant supporting small businesses in the optimisation of websites, you help make them more search engine friendly.

Clearly this would be a complex and fast changing industry and inevitably your prospective customers are going to have lots of questions. As a sole operator you don’t want to spend all day educating people, when what you need to do is sell your services and start earning some fees.

An ecommerce solution may well be able to help by:

Giving you the means to sell a little ‘info’ product

In this instance, it wouldn’t be too difficult to create a small electronic report or ‘white paper’ – that you regularly update – outlining the ‘10 essentials of search engine optimisation’. This could be sold for a low cost (just a couple of dollars maybe) and would allow prospects to:

• Get a good indication of your area of expertise
• Get a sense of who you are and how you work
• Educate themselves and ‘ready’ themselves for your services.

Allow you to streamline and package your services

Sticking with the same website expert example, rather than selling a product you might consider selling your time in a short and very efficient manner. Just imagine selling a ‘20 minute intensive search engine coaching’ package.

In reality this would allow you to ‘sell’ what you previously gave away and thanks to readily available ecommerce solutions, all the logistics - invoicing, payment and booking can be automated. An email simply pops up in your inbox announcing an appointment and confirming payment.  

2. Using ecommerce to open up new markets

With the internet being a truly international marketplace it’s never been so easy to get your products or services seen around the world.

Whether it be via Google’s relatively low cost ‘Google Adwords’ advertising system or the plethora of other avenues available, if you have something of value to international audiences, ecommerce will help handle the transaction.

3. Ecommerce as a measure of consumer demand

An ecommerce solution can allow you to experiment, or at least ‘research and develop’.  Gone are the days when you needed printed price lists and signboards before you could sell anything.

Today most sales collateral in the world of ecommerce remains solely online and can be amended, updated, even withdrawn, in an instant.

As such, ecommerce can be used as a pre-cursor to offline sales, allowing you to track consumer interest and buying patterns, allowing you to determine new product offerings and revise sales propositions before spending fortunes on point-of-sale material.

4. Seller beware: An online shop still needs marketing

For every successful ecommerce business, there are many more dying a slow death. Having a shopfront on the internet does not guarantee you’ll get in front of any prospective buyers or indeed sell anything.

Certainly embrace ecommerce, but make sure it comes with a clear, strategic plan for marketing.

 

Robert Gerrish is a business coach and professional speaker, the co-author of Flying Solo – How to go it alone in business and founder of Flying Solo, Australia’s online community for solo and micro business.