Selling physical products online is a great way to make money to the most common platforms to do this on our eBay and Amazon these platforms are great as the generate huge amounts of traffic/shoppers that all come ready to buy/spend the money however one downside to both of these websites and others like them as a terms conditions that come with selling on them. They do not want you taking the customer away from them and in most cases they prevent you from seeing the customer’s email details or asking the customer to buy anything outside of their platform.
At the end of the day the main interest of these companies is to make money. If you want to see your business grow and take your income streams to a new level you need to consider building an online presence for yourself and not relying on anyone else’s platform. To create your own online store is a lot easier than you think and there are many companies online that will help you do this one of the main examples being shopify. For quite a reasonable monthly payment they will supply you with a full e-commerce solution allowing you to accept credit card payments etc. from your customers. Once you have your own site can begin to build customer lists you can send email blasts for special offers cross sales, up sells or anything else you desire. You no longer need to worry about “winning the buy box” and your product showing further down the rankings etc. On the other hand you obviously know need to work harder to generate traffic to your site but you growing list of highly targeted customers will be well worth it. When you open your online store you can continue to make sales on the other platforms but when you send the products to the customer you should always look to advertise your brand and your online store and try to have them sign up to your mailing list. This will allow you to build a long-term relationship with the customer as opposed to selling them on one off item.
