START YOUR OWN BUSINESS Archives - Page 6 of 10

3 Ways to Make Your First Online Boutique Sale

You’ve done the buying. You’ve set up your online boutique. And now the sales start rolling in, right? Oh, if only things were that easy.

Today is all about making your first online boutique sale.

Many years ago, when I set up my first online boutique (that was 2006), it was like the dinosaur ages of building websites. Ok, not quite – but when compared to how easy it is now to get your very own boutique up and running, I can’t believe how much time was spent on designing my own website from scratch.

It also was a lot easier to get traffic and sales to your website. I mean, really easy. All I had to do was put the products up on my website and somehow people found me through Yahoo or Google without me having to do anything special to get that traffic. And I didn’t even have to pay for it! At the time, I really had no idea how that stuff worked.

Fast forward to today and things are constantly changing in the world of SEO and online advertising. I am constantly taking online courses to stay up on my game of this ever-changing world and it’s really the only way to keep the sales coming in in the online boutique world.

Today, I’m going to go over my top 3 ways that I get traffic to my online boutique and make sales. These are the exact ways that I have personally used or currently use to make sales in my online boutique.

As a side note, I suggest choosing just one of these 3 ways to get started and once you have that going and have made your first few sales, take on another strategy to avoid feeling overwhelmed.

1. BLOG POSTS

Having a blog on your online boutique website is a great way to get traffic organically (and it’s free).

You will want to come up with various topics to write about that could ultimately bring traffic to your website and get you that first sale!

For example, let’s say you have an organic baby clothing online boutique. Some of your topics might be why organic cotton is better than regular cotton in baby clothing, the process of making organic cotton, or the latest fashion trends in organic baby clothing.

I’ve seen some great results with sales just from writing blog posts on an online boutique.

The more of a niche product that you can write about in your blog posts, the less competitive it will be for you to get traffic.

So, instead of just deciding to sell baby clothing in general and trying to write general articles about baby clothing (which isn’t going to work very well) you will want to sell something more specific like organic baby boy’s clothing.

Remember, the more specific and niched down you can be, the better when it comes to online boutique sales.

The down side to writing blog posts to get your first sale is that it may take more time than you would like to get that first sale.

First, you have to write all of the content, then post it, and then wait for Google and other search engines to crawl your site. This all takes time and will not be the way to go to make a quick sale.

But if you are looking for longevity for your online boutique for years to come, the articles you write will be on your site for as long as you’re open for business and will continue to bring your website traffic (and hopefully those sales).

2. PINTEREST

Pinterest is one of the greatest ways to promote your online boutique (and is also free to use!).

You can post your blog content in addition to your products on Pinterest. You can even use multiple images from one product to post multiple different pins, thus increasing the chances of your product getting repinned and bring more traffic to your online boutique.

I recommend having styled product photos instead of just a white background with the product by itself. If you don’t have the means to have a styled photo shoot quite yet with all of your products, pinning the product with the white background will be sufficient to get started. I still make plenty of sales with basic white background photos. J

Make sure your Pinterest profile is a business profile to follow your analytics and also that you have a professional looking Pinterest page. Potential customers want to see that you are a legit brand and most likely won’t click through to your online boutique if your page looks less than professional.

Pinterest is one of my favorite ways to make sales. My websites receive thousands of visits just from Pinterest alone.

3. FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM ADS

Facebook and Instagram Ads are probably one of the quickest ways to make your first sale, but also one of the most expensive.

There’s definitely a learning curve when it comes to running these ads, but once you have figured out what works for your online boutique, they can end up being quite lucrative.

The unfortunate thing about running ads is that things are constantly changing. What works one month for sales, may not work again the next month and you may need to try a new ad with a new audience.

It took me about $1,000 of investment on Facebook and Instagram ads to have figured out what worked for my online boutique. So, this will be an option for you if you have the money to invest and don’t mind testing out ads that may or may not work and don’t get frustrated when your one ad doesn’t make a sale after spending $10.00. That’s definitely not how these ads work.

Once you’ve learned how to use online ads in your favor, there’s no stopping you from getting your very first online boutique sale.

Remember, it’s all about testing, testing, testing and finding out what is going to work for your online boutique and your customer.

There are many different routes you can take when working on getting your first online boutique sale. It’s important to consider your budget, time you have to invest, and in general what strategy that you think will work best for your target customer.

Make sure you choose one strategy to get going so you do not get too overwhelmed and start to see some sales coming in before you move on to another marketing strategy.

Has your online boutique gotten its first sale yet? If so, let me know what strategy worked for you!

How to Start an Online Boutique Checklist – Free Download

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I am beyond excited to introduce this next series – How to Start an Online Boutique!

In the upcoming weeks you will learn all things necessary to start your own online boutique.

We will be covering the following topics (use this list as your checklist):

Budget
Buying & Inventory (including drop shipping)
Seller’s Permits & Business Licenses
How to Build a Website Using Shopify
How to Create Images and a Logo for your website with Illustrator & Photoshop
Uploading Products and How to Take Product Pictures
Social Media, Advertising, and Blogging

Once this series has completed, you will have all of the information and knowledge you will need to get your own online boutique up and running. You will be bringing in sales in no time!

I decided to focus on this series so that you are able to get started on your dreams today and at the end have something to show for it – your own business!

As long as you are willing to put in the hard work, I truly believe anyone can do this.

Everything that we are going to cover is from a package that I usually charge my clients thousands of dollars for. By writing this series, no one gets turned away since I can only take on so many clients! 🙂

Make sure to follow along on Instagram for daily inspiration and reminders of new posts so you can keep the ball rolling.

It’s a way to also ask questions, bounce ideas off of each other and hold each other accountable for making progress with your online boutiques.

Now let’s get started!

Print Monthly and Weekly “To Do” List

Printing out weekly and daily to do lists were very helpful to me when I was starting my boutique.

To stay on schedule, I would make a list of my weekly goals and things I had to get done. These weekly goals would then be broken down to what I had to achieve each day.

I have created a free PDF “to do” list for you that you can download here. Print it out and start thinking about what things you need to get done to get started on your online boutique.

Create a Budget, Contact Wholesale Suppliers, Set up Website, etc., are all examples of what weekly goals could be.

From there you can break down each of these goals by day. For example, some daily goals under Create a Budget would be: Monday – Decide on a price point for merchandise and research brands within that price point. Tuesday – Figure out how many and what merchandise to buy in your price point, and so on.

Plan Your Schedule

After printing your “to do” list and checklist, it’s time to plan your schedule.

Ask yourself – what hours of the day do I plan on working on my online boutique? What days am I able to invest in this project? What is the time frame that I want to accomplish this in?

In order to focus and achieve your goals, it is important to set aside this time in your schedule. Purchasing a planner can also help you to prioritize.

Research, Research, Research

Doing research is a point that cannot be stressed enough. Start researching everything you think you will possibly need to start an online boutique.

Look for inspiration from other online boutiques, Instagram accounts, Pinterest, brands, and so on. You should have a pretty good idea of your vision before getting started.

Make a mood board if you need to. When I was starting my boutique, I would keep a little book and any time something would inspire me I would print it out and tape it in my book. Be thinking about colors, images, and types of clothing for your online boutique.

Sign Up For Shopify

There are quite a few different services to choose from when creating your website. I’ve used a few different ones and found that I prefer Shopify.

I have been with Shopify now for many years and would highly recommend it. It is incredibly user friendly and if you choose to sell off line they have great options for that as well!

That being said, my post series will focus on how to start an online boutique with Shopify.

Make sure to sign up with Shopify (you get to try it for free for 14 days) and in the next few weeks we will cover how to set up your website.

Are you ready to get started? As always, let me know any questions you have in the comments below!

Disclaimer: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you decide to purchase through those links. I only recommend products and services that I personally use from companies that I trust.

How to Work with Celebrities to Promote Your Boutique

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In the ever-changing world of marketing, boutique owners are constantly on the hunt to create new ways to bring in customers, attract attention to their products, and promote both their online and brick-and-mortar shops.

As of late, the most popular and lucrative method that boutiques are taking on include hiring and partnering with celebrities to act as endorsers and ambassadors for their brand or boutique.

Working with celebrities helps to draw people into your boutique –whether online or physical – by providing awareness, credibility, and promotion.

Figuring out the correct and most lucrative ways to implement celebrities in your marketing strategies can be confusing, so we’ve laid out some of our tried-and-true methods for celebrity utilization to promote your boutique.

Keep in mind that strategies will differ slightly depending on what type of boutique you have – the nature of online boutiques versus brick-and-mortar boutiques are different, so you can expect that your strategies with working with celebrities might be a bit different as well.

How to Utilize Celebrities for Your Boutique’s Promotion

Before we break down the individual strategies for each type of boutique, we’ll go over some blanket advice that applies to both.

Before you decide to commit to a celebrity, and they to you, it’s important you’re asking yourself if they’re truly the best fit for you. Ask yourself, “does this celebrity have the morals, brand association, and following that I’m looking for?” If you can answer yes to those questions, and you have a celebrity on board who you’d be proud to be associated with, it’s time to get going on your strategies.

First though, we recommend having a drawn-up contract laid out for both you and the celebrity that determines a mutually beneficial agreement. Lay out what they’ll be doing, what they’ll be receiving, what you anticipate receiving, what you expect from them, and how you plan to compensate them as well.

Now that you’ve got your basic bases covered, it’s time to work on strategies for each type of boutique.

Online Boutique Strategy

In a digital-run world, having an online boutique can be a blessing and a curse all at once. You’re able to develop new ways to promote traffic to your website, like using a celebrity, but you’re usually battling far more online shops than you would with your brick and mortar boutique – there’s good and bad, it’s just the nature of the beast.

When it comes to celebrity strategy for promoting your online boutique, there are a few different approaches you can take.

Social Media Takeover

One of the best ways to draw people to your boutique is to utilize a celebrity’s reputation and have them do a social media takeover. This means that this celebrity will run your social media accounts for a specific amount of time – a day, a week, a month – giving people the opportunity to interact with them on your boutique’s account. This will draw attention toward your online shop as people are typically drawn to interacting with celebrities they follow and admire.

Have the celebrity post this on their account, and post on yours as well in the days leading up to the takeover. Make sure you’re using a specific hashtag and your celebrity is tagging your boutique’s account in all of their pre-takeover and post-takeover posts.

Endorsement Ad and Product Review Series

A creative way to drive traffic to your online boutique is to feature special videos, commercials, and ads exclusively on your boutique’s website that feature your select celebrity.

You can set up a variety of different campaigns, but one of the best strategies is to have your celebrity do a string of endorsement videos for your boutique and products, and even do online review videos of your products as well.

Feature these exclusively on your boutique’s website so people have to visit your site to see them, but definitely make sure that you and your celebrity are promoting these ads on your social media and letting your followers know where to see them.

Guest Appearances and Guest Talks Online

Another wonderful way to get customers to your site is to promote special, boutique-exclusive videos of the celebrity on your boutique’s webpage.

You can feature your celebrity on video, in your boutique, answering questions, talking about their lives, and promoting your boutique’s products.

People love to hear what their favorite celebrities have to say, and they trust their judgement. Having a celebrity people trust discussing your products in a free-wheeling, casual way adds credibility to your boutique and your products, encouraging people to visit your site in order to watch.

Brick-and-Mortar Boutique Strategy

Although this type of boutique is a bit more traditional, you can still think of innovative, effective ways to use a celebrity to promote your physical boutique.

Guest Appearances

Just as you’d schedule a social media takeover with your favorite celebrity, it’s important, if you’re a physical boutique, to schedule events with guest appearances from the celebrity you’re choosing to work with.

Assigning a specific time and date where your celebrity will be in boutique, answering fans questions, signing autographs, and talking about their favorite products from your brand can increase the traffic to your boutique immensely.

This won’t just apply to that day, either. If properly promoted, people will flock to your boutique before, during, and after the celebrity promotion.

Photo Posting and Promotion

You can still utilize a celebrity on your social media to draw people into your brick-and-mortar boutique.

If you’re not promoting about a special guest appearance, you can always take photos of the celebrity you’re working with inside your physical boutique. Show your followers that the celebrity they admire goes into your physical boutique to buy products, hang out, and find their new favorite items.

People tend to copy celebrity behavior and seeing a star in your boutique is likely to encourage them to pay your boutique a visit as well.

Physical Endorsement Ads

Not everything is all about social media these days, though. You can run successful celebrity endorsement campaigns through old-fashioned billboards, commercials, and even photos in your boutique.

If you hang photos inside your location with the celebrity you’ve chosen to partner with, it’s likely that word will get out that that celebrity shops there. This will drive traffic to your boutique because people find celebrity opinions credible, but also because they’ll want to try to get a peek at the celebrity shopping at the same time as they are.

Our Final Thoughts on Celebrity Promotion

Above all, it’s important when you’re choosing to work with a celebrity, you’ve done the hard-work beforehand determining whether you and the celebrity will be a good fit. Partner with someone who fits your brand, has a positive reputation, and will gain a following you’re lacking.

Whether you’re looking to attract clientele to your online boutique, your brick-and-mortar boutique, or both, it’s important that you’re carefully strategizing and creating effective campaigns to fully utilize the partnership you’ve agreed upon.

Work together with the celebrity of your choosing, heed their advice, but above all, create custom campaign strategies that will work best for your boutique.

Billy Bones is the founder of Booking Agent Info and Moda Database. Booking Agent Info provides businesses with the contact information for the official agents, managers, and publicists of celebrities. Moda Database provides businesses with the contact information for the stylists of celebrities, in addition to the brands that they have worked with and agency info.

How to Build a Photo Studio for Less Than $100

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Wouldn’t it be great to have your own photo studio at home (or at your boutique) to take your own photos?

What if I told you that it could be done for less than $100?!

Great and professional looking photos are the single most important thing for your online boutique. You will need awesome photos to be able to compete with other online boutiques and to be at the same level of so many other online boutiques out there.

The good news is that you don’t need to be a professional photographer to take professional looking photos!

And if you’re anything like me, you don’t want to spend a fortune on trying to achieve professional photos.

I’m always trying to come up with ways to do a lot of things for my boutique with a “DIY” mentality without having to incur a high cost.

Recently, I have been creating listings for my Poshmark closet to sell unworn items from my closet. I have been taking these photos with my iPhone 6+ so I can upload them right of way in the Poshmark app. Here are some of the photos I was able to take with the items I purchased for my photo studio:

When just starting out, you don’t need to purchase an expensive camera and really can use any smartphone or other camera you may have to take your photos with. If I’m not using my iPhone 6+ for photos, I also have an Olympus that I use.

In order to build your photo studio for less than $100, here’s what you will need to get started:

Choose Your Lighting

Since I was planning to have my photo studio in my home which has (and I’m not kidding) the worst lighting ever, I knew I was going to have to purchase some additional lighting to really help make my photos look great.

I chose the Photography Photo Portrait Studio 600W Day Light Umbrella Continuous Lighting Kit by LimoStudio LMS103 for $49.50 (pictured below) mainly because it was a cost effective option and it got good reviews on Amazon because quite frankly, I don’t know much about photography lighting. I also love that it comes with a storage bag and when it’s broken down it takes up very little space.

I set up the lights and umbrellas at different heights adjusted to hit the garment at the right angle for the best looking photos. I tested out a few photos before figuring out how to exactly angle the lights for the look I wanted.

Choose a Backdrop

The good news is that there are a TON of different backdrop options available. You can choose just a plain white background or choose colors, textures, etc. I liked the distressed wood look, so I chose a printed paper background.

I went with paper instead of vinyl again for the low cost and because I wasn’t sure if I was going to totally love it or maybe want to try out a few backgrounds before finding one that I really liked.

I chose the Ella Bella Photography Backdrop Paper, 4’x12′, Vintage Wood (pictured below) for $10.39 to try out for my first photo shoot.

Since the backdrop was 12′ long I cut it to the size I needed and taped it to my living room wall. I’m sure there’s a better way to hang it, but I was too excited to take some photos to think too much about it and the tape worked out just fine. The piece of the backdrop that I cut off I used for the floor to take photos of accessories or shoes.

Optional: Hangers

I decided to purchase some nice wooden hangers to hang my merchandise. It just looked SO much better than my plastic hangers could have ever looked 🙂

I used the hangers for listings in my Poshmark closet, but I also have a mannequin that I plan to use for my boutique’s website.

The hangers below were a pretty good deal at $6.99 for the top hangers and $9.99 for the pant hangers. (For the link, click images below) I casually hammered a nail in the wall to hang the hangers on – again probably a better solution for this, but it worked just fine for me.

For a grand total of $76.87 I was able to build my little photo studio and get some pretty great pictures using my iPhone.

I am very happy with how my photos turned out. I plan on buying another contrasting backdrop soon to take more pictures for my boutique’s website.

As you can see, there is a lot you can do for under $100 to take awesome photos for your boutique’s website. You can even use your new photo studio for your child’s portraits, art projects, showing off your baking skills, or so many other things!