How to Easily Set Up Your Online Store

If you were setting up a stall to sell products at a market, what would you think about?

Where it’s located? Who will see it? How you’ll display your products?

There are a lot of different ways to sell your products online, but not all of them set you up for success. You want an online store that is not only quick and easy to set up, but also helps you market and sell your products online in the most advantageous way possible.

Selling digital products online is not quite the “passive income machine” that it’s sometimes made out to be—it still requires startup energy!—but it does have the potential to be an lucrative monetization channel for creators with excellent return on investment for your time and effort.

Once you know what you want to sell in your online store, there are three major considerations to set up a successful online store:

1. How will I showcase my products?
2. How will I market my products?
3. How will I get paid?

We’ve helped clarify how to tackle each question to optimize sales, with actionable tips for each.

How will I showcase my products?

The digital presentation of your products matters. When uploading your products, you want to think about:

• How can you communicate what the buyer is getting, and why they would want it?
• How can you drive your fans towards the items you most want to sell?
• How will you price your items?

Communicate your products’ value

Each digital product in your store should have the following:

• A clear, attention-grabbing image that showcases your product
• A product description that clearly states what the product is, what makes it special and/or different, and how it will benefit the buyer.
  For example, if you’re selling an eBook, you might write: “This 20-page eBook has helped over 100 creators grow their audience—it can help you, too! The eBook comes with special tips (that have personally helped me grow) that I don’t share anywhere else.”

• Testimonials and/or reviews of your product from other buyers to build social proof. These are especially important not to overlook—at Beacons we have seen that sellers who include testimonials and/or reviews drive 2-4x more sales than those who don't.

If you set up your Beacons Store, you can easily add each of these items—in fact, you will be prompted to do so for each new digital product you add!

At Beacons we have seen that sellers who include testimonials and/or reviews drive 2-4x more sales than those who don't.

Drive attention where it matters most

It may seem simple, but the order in which you list your products on your store has a big effect on what gets the most attention.

The first item you list will get the most eyes. Choose what product you want to put here thoughtfully—you’ll want to put your highest-priced item or your highest-converting item here. Whatever product is driving the most success for you in terms of quantity sold or revenue should get this prestigious placement.

Free products can be strong hooks to get people to check out your store. However, these should be placed at the end of your list of product offerings, so potential buyers see the products that will earn you revenue first.

Lastly, avoid overloading your fans with products and giving them choice paralysis. It should be easy for fans to quickly evaluate the different products you’re offering and choose one to buy.

Think of pricing as marketing

Pricing is not just about economics—it’s also an important part of your marketing! The prices you set actually help determine how fans perceive the value of your products.

Because of this, the price you list for an item is a critical part of the item’s presentation. To learn the different strategies creators use for pricing (and figure out which one is best for you), check out How to Price the Digital Products in Your Online Store.

How will I market my products?

The biggest lie in online selling is: “If you build it, they will come.”

The truth is, if you build it, they will NOT come. In order to set up a successful online store, you can’t just upload your products and call it a day. You have to tell your audience what you’re selling, where to find it, and why they want it!

Creators are, by nature, some of the most skilled marketers out there. You already know how to market yourself and your content to your audience. You can use many of the same strategies to drive attention to your store items:

• Create content promoting your products: Feature your products in “how-to” videos and build hype by telling your fans about exclusive drops, time-limited releases, and limited editions.
• Link to your online store on your social platforms: If you’re a creator with social followings already, you already have a strong audience of potential buyers. The easiest way to share your store is by linking to it on your link in bio page. This is super easy on Beacons, because your Link in Bio and Store apps integrate automatically!
• Share positive feedback and shoutouts on your social media: If you get positive feedback from happy buyers, repost or share these reviews to your social platforms and link back to your store. This shows fans that they can get noticed by you for shopping at your store—and provides valuable social proof for other fans that they should check out your products, too!
• Drive sales by creating custom links directly to your products: Make the purchasing process simple and direct. Your Beacons Store allows you to create custom URLs that go directly to your product’s description page, so you can direct fans exactly where they need to go to purchase.
• Email your most engaged fans: Use email marketing to tell subscribers about new product drops, exclusive content, discounts, and promotions. When you use Beacons Email Marketing and Store together, you can automatically pull your store items into your email broadcasts (and easily set up automatic emails after buyers complete purchases).

How will I get paid?

Once you start generating sales, the last thing you want to worry about is how to actually get your money.

The easiest way to get paid is by connecting a third-party payment processor to your store, like Stripe or PayPal. This allows you to quickly accept payments and get your payouts without managing any of the payment infrastructure yourself.

Both Stripe and PayPal are integrated through the Beacons Store—which makes it super easy for buyers to check out, and super easy for you to get paid.

When you start collecting payments, be aware of platform fees. Many platforms where you’ll set up your online store have selling fees that will be deducted from the proceeds of your sale. One of the benefits of Beacons’s Entrepreneur Plan is that you’ll have a 0% take rate across all of your digital products in your store, so you’ll never need to worry about platform fees even as you scale.

Ready to start selling?

It’s time to bring your creative work to your fans in a tangible way that lets you scale up your business and make more money!

Be strategic about how you present your digital items. Choose an online store platform that allows you to display your products in the best light and easily share them across the internet.

And once you’ve started to see your first sales, make a plan for tracking your income from your store. This is where you’ll start to learn what products sell best, how you best market your products, and where you can double down to grow revenue. This is just the beginning!