10 ways to get your first 10 sales

You may think that 10 sales is nothing and clearly not enough to make your store succeed. Yet, it is important to understand how challenging starting a new online store is: you need to bring strangers to your store, gain their trust, and convince them to take money out of their wallets. Every sale counts and those early sales will give you the confidence to continue this entrepreneur journey.

While an online store has the potential to reach thousands or even millions of people – much more than a brick and mortar store – it has its own set of challenges and requires trying out various methods to succeed.

Here are 10 ways to get your first sales:

1.  Share with Friends And Family

Let your friends and family know about your online store including its brand, website, and products. If they are interested, don’t hesitate to ask them to share on their social media. You can also sell them your products in person. If they buy your stuff, you would know if your strategy and selling points are working. And don’t forget, give them an even bigger discount to show your appreciation and ask them to share your store/products online, with their friends, or even write a testimonial.

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2. Opening Discounts

When your store just goes live, you can give big opening discounts to drive traffic to your site. People nowadays are constantly overwhelmed by digital information but a good 30% off deal always gets get their attention. While those discounts could eat into your profit margin, remember that the goal in your early days is to gain early customers and test out your strategies.

3. Selling in Offline Events Or Join Digital Communities

Sometimes it is easier to make your sales pitch in person as you can go in much more depth about the products you’re selling. A way to grow your brand in the early days is physically selling those products in events like local markets, trade shows, or relevant networking events. You’ll have a chance to meet customers face to face and gain their trust that way. Another way is by joining online communities. You can share your knowledge in the specific domain and let people know how your products can solve certain problems they may have.

4. Launch a Few Facebook/Instagram Ads

Facebook or Instagram ads are often an effective way to drive sales. But ads alone are often not enough: if you don’t have an optimized website and if your products are not relevant, you may be wasting your money on those ads. That being said, we strongly believe ads can be an effective tool to experiment with different products and different target audience to see what is the most effective combination for your business

5. Work with Micro-Influencers

Working with influencers can generate sales rapidly since they already have followers and believers. However, the really famous ones may be too expensive for an early store. So instead you can look for “micro-influencer” who has fewer followers but can still be an effective venue to market your products in the early stage. You can send them free products in exchange for posts, or pay them a certain percentage of your sales if people purchase through their channels.

6. Detailed Description and Sizing Information

Because your brand is not established and you are selling new products, your customers can only learn about them from your store. So having as much detailed information is critical to gain trust. Be clear and specific on the product information, on the color, material, and any information that the customers should know.

If you are selling apparel, ensuring you have clear and intuitive size charts is a requirement. By installing Kiwi Sizing, not only can you set up professional size charts, but you can also offer a Size Recommender Tool which uses AI to recommend which size is good for them. Kiwi Sizing also comes with an international size converter so your shop can sell effectively to your global customers.

7. Create your Social Media Channels

Creating social media channels is one of the ways to reach your potential customers directly. Depending on who you sell to, and your target market, you can choose from Facebook Page, Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, YouTube, LINE, WeChat, or all of them. However, don’t forget that maintaining these channels also takes effort and money.

8. Put Your Products on Other Marketplaces

While your store is new and has no traffic yet, you can try to put your products on other e-commerce platforms, such as Amazon, eBay, Wish, or Lazada to reach more people. You don’t necessarily want people to buy there but these platforms already have millions of daily traffic, so they can help generate sales and grow your brand awareness.

9. Create A Blog

People usually search for answers, not products. If you can share your knowledge and related information on a blog along with your e-commerce store, it will reach more people from Google Search and possibly generate sales since these readers believe in your profession. Blogging is a long term game, as it can gradually increase your website ranking on Google, but you may not find immediate results.

10. Offer a variety of payment methods

Giving people different payment methods increases sales too. Imagine yourself shopping online and the store doesn’t offer the payment option you prefer, what would you do? You would probably abandon the shopping cart and go buy somewhere else. This may sound trivial, but any potential hesitation during the shopping funnel can turn people away.

Starting an early business is hard and there is no fixed formula to succeed. So don’t be afraid of trying different things until one sticks: running ads, trying different marketing tools, experimenting with your website design, or trying to sell in person. Every attempt can be a valuable learning experience. With this attitude in mind, you will easily get your first 10 sales and many more!

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