The Savvy Seller with Kristen Doyle

132. Simple Steps to Selling on Your Own - It Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated!

• Kristen Doyle, TPT seller, SEO coach, and web designer

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Thinking about selling on your own but feeling overwhelmed by the tech or the idea of building a massive online store? I’m here to show you that starting small is not only okay - it’s often the best move you can make!

You don’t need hundreds of products or a fully built-out website to begin selling independently. With tools you likely already have, like your email marketing platform, you can take your first steps toward creating a streamlined, manageable sales process. I’m breaking down how selling on your own can be simple and stress-free by focusing on your best selling products. 

This episode is all about taking those first steps, testing your setup, ironing out any wrinkles, and ensuring you’re ready before scaling up! Whether you’re using an email platform like Kit or launching a minimal online store, selling on your own doesn’t have to be complicated. Let’s simplify the process and get you on the path to selling independently as soon as today!

03:07 - Why simple systems are best when selling on your own

06:17 - Familiarizing yourself with your platform’s policies on how you price your products

07:14 -  Options for selling on your own if you don’t have a website

10:20 - Actionable steps you can take this week to start selling your resources (and helpful tips for your messaging when marketing these products!)

Links & Resources:

Show Notes: https://kristendoyle.co/episode132

Tired of constantly hustling to sell your digital products? Check out my free 19-minute training where I show you how to turn all those products you already have into a profitable, automated business. 

 

Get more freedom and less stress ➡️ watch now at kristendoyle.co/training 

Check out my Everything Page at https://kristendoyle.co/everything

Kristen Doyle:

Hey, hey, if you have been thinking about selling your digital products independently of the marketplaces that you're already on, like TPT or Etsy, but you're feeling overwhelmed by all the tech and the setup involved, then today's episode is just for you. Y'all selling on your own doesn't have to mean building a big online store with hundreds of products or figuring out complex shopping cart system. In fact, and this might surprise you, especially coming from a web designer, but starting with a full website store might actually be the wrong direction to go for you. Today, I am going to share how you can start selling your products yourself, using simple systems that you might already have, and how you can start small and it might actually be the smartest approach. Are you a digital product or course creator, selling on platforms like teachers pay teachers, Etsy or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I'm Kristen Doyle, and I'm here to give you no fluff, tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process. Things like SEO, no stress marketing, email list building, automations, and so much more. Let's get started y'all. You know, as a website designer, I talk to digital product creators all the time who feel like they need to have this perfect, complete store with every single product loaded into it before they can even think about launching. And I get it, we all want to put our best foot forward and give our customers the best possible experience, and that professionalism and that drive that you have is important. But here's the thing, and I've learned this from working with lots of clients on launching their website stores. Sometimes trying to do everything at once is exactly what keeps you from doing anything at all. See, I see clients over and over spend time and money getting a store set up, but then they get overwhelmed with loading all of the products or needing to create FAQs or whatever else is on their to do list. Maybe they think all their products need new photos, and so what happens is they never actually launch, because it doesn't feel done enough to share with their audience. So today I want to challenge you to flip that narrative. I'm going to show you how you can start selling on your own with as few as 5,10, 20 products using the tools that you might already have, like your email marketing platform. We'll talk about exactly what you need to get started, how to handle some common concerns that people have about selling on their own, and most importantly, how to start small but smart. So let's start by talking about why those simple systems actually work better, especially when you're first shifting into selling on your own. Y'all know that I am all about working smarter, not harder, and this is one place that that mindset really does come into play. So when you start with something simple, you're actually setting yourself up for success in a couple of really important ways. First of all, you're creating space to set things up and test everything before you get a ton of sales. Think about it, if there's a hiccup in your process somewhere, would you rather find that out when you're getting two or three sales a week or when you got 50 sales today? See, starting small gives you that chance to make sure everything is working smoothly. All the wrinkles have been ironed out, from how customers check out to how they get their files to how you're handling any customer service questions that come up. It's almost like soft launching your independent store. And here's something else really important that I want you to hear, and it flies in the face of the advice that you've probably gotten about how to set up your store on your marketplace platform. But that's because a marketplace store and your own website or your own checkout process are very different. See, the success of your own store is not about how many products you have listed in it. It is about how you market what you do have available. I've seen sellers get absolutely stuck with trying to load hundreds or even 1000s of products when they could have been making sales and building some momentum all along with just their top sellers. In fact, you don't even have to start with an actual store on a website. We'll talk about some options in a minute to start even smaller than that, but let's talk about what it can look like to start with a website store, but not quite a full website store. Let me give you a real world example of what this might look like. Say you have 200 products on teachers, pay teachers, and they're doing pretty well. You might think that in order to open your own store, you need to move all your 200 products to your website store right away. But instead, what if you just started your shop with your top 20 best sellers? The ones that already convert really well, the ones that you know your buyers love and recommend to each other. And then when you launch that smaller store, you send an email out to your list. But instead of saying something like, my website store is open, which sort of implies maybe that your entire store is going to be there. You say something like, find my best selling resources now available at a special discount just for you. And you offer an exclusive discount code as an incentive for those people to buy directly from you, instead of from a marketplace. So this approach is really manageable, a lot more manageable than trying to move everything at once, and it lets you start building that direct sales income without overwhelming yourself or your customers, not to mention the wording in that email you send out can make your email subscribers feel like they are getting something extra special for being on your list. One quick note about pricing, but it is really important, if you are selling on multiple platforms, you do need to familiarize yourself with all the different platforms policies around how you price your products. For example, TPT requires that your list price, that means the regular not on sale price can't be higher on their site than it is in any of the other places where you sell that same resource. So if you have a product on TPT and it is listed at $10, when you list it on Etsy or on your own website, or you sell it in some other way, it cannot be priced lower than $10 as that list price. But here's the good news. List price means regular price. That doesn't mean that you cannot run special sales or offer exclusive discount codes when people buy directly from you, rather than through that marketplace platform. Now, what if you don't even want to start a store yet? Maybe you don't have your own website at all, or you're on a platform that doesn't have shopping capability. Let's talk about a totally different way to get started, because this is where I see a lot of people get stuck. They think that they need to build a brand new website, or move platforms or set up a whole complicated tech stack in order to start selling, but you actually might already have everything you need. Here's something that a lot of people don't realize. If you're using an email marketing platform like Kit, that is what ConvertKit is called now, or even Flodesk, who I know, I have not made it a secret that they're not my favorite, but you actually can do this through them. With either of those and lots of other email marketing platforms, you actually have the ability to sell products straight through your email They will let you process payments securely, typically by platform. You don't have to build a full website. And yeah, I know that might sound strange coming from the web designer, especially one who builds customized WooCommerce stores, but it's true. Here's how it works. Those email platforms have built in integrating with a well known payment processor, someone like features that let you build a simple sales page without having to know anything about web coding. Stripe or PayPal. And then they will facilitate delivering the digital files to your customers through their emails. And you can usually even track your sales, though, sometimes that data can be a little on the simple side, but you usually can at least track basic information about how your sales are doing. And all of that is already included in a platform you might already be paying for and using for your business. So if you aren't ready for a store yet, you can start right where you are with something that you do already have set up. Now I know some of you are thinking, but what about customer service? What about people sharing my files? How do I make sure everything gets delivered properly? Those are all valid concerns, and they're actually some of the most common fears I hear when people start talking about selling on their own. But here's something I have learned over the years. Some of those things like file sharing, you can't actually control. And you can't control them on the big marketplace platforms either. Once somebody has downloaded your file, they can do whatever they feel like with it, regardless of what we want them to do, what we hope they're doing, what our Terms of Use say they're allowed to do. There are certain things that we just don't have control over. So instead of worrying about those things, let's focus on what we can control - creating great sales pages with a clear checkout process, setting up an automated system that will deliver the purchase to your customers, and the good news for you is, whether you use WooCommerce or your email platform, that part is pretty much done for you. And then having some simple customer service processes in place, even if it's as simple as email us if you have any questions, just a simple way to handle any customer service that pops up. All right now, let's talk about exactly how to put this into action. I really want you to be able to take what we talked about today and actually start moving forward with it. So I'm going to break it down into some simple steps you can take, starting this week. First, I want you to do a quick audit of what you already have. Go into your email marketing platform right now. Pause this episode if you need to, and check to see if you have the ability to sell products through it. Look for things like connecting your payment processor, being able to deliver things digitally, ability to create landing pages, or any other sales page tools that they have for you. Next, pick those products you're going to start with. If you're thinking about email marketing, I would say just maybe five products. If you're going to open a store on your website, maybe more like 10 to 20 of your absolute best sellers. These should be products that already convert really well. They get great feedback from your customers, and they solve a clear problem for your audience, one that you can really talk about in your emails and on your sales page. Then set up a simple test purchase, even if it's for just one of them. This part is so, so important. Go through your own checkout process as if you were a customer, and use real dollars. I purchased my own products with a 99% off coupon, so it's not much money that I'm spending, and it's a tax write off anyway, but it's really important that you do this with money, so that you are seeing the full checkout experience. Make sure that you can easily complete the purchase. You get the delivery emails, you can access the products without any issues. And when you do this, use a different email from your business email, so hopefully you have a business and a personal email address. Use your personal email as the customer. And if you can, do it in a different browser profile or an incognito window, something like that, just to help make sure that you're getting the exact same shopping experience as the typical buyer would. And then, when it comes to marketing these products, make sure you're being really clear in your messaging. Instead of saying things like, "shop my store" if you're only putting a few products out there, use phrases like, "Get my most popular resources directly from me". "Shop my best sellers with exclusive discounts." "Get instant access to my top resources." Keep in mind you don't have to list hundreds of products. You don't have to build out a complicated system to start selling some products on your own. Start small, test everything out and offer discounts to people that purchase directly from you. And you can always grow your catalog gradually over time. The key is really just to start. Get going with something functional and then keep building out from there. If you're ready to start selling products on your own, here's what I want you to do right now.Check that email platform and see if it has built in sales capabilities. Just that one step will help you understand what tools you already have that you might be able to start with. Then send me a DM on instagram@kristendoyle.co and let me know what you found. I would love to hear what platform you're using and help point you in the right direction for your next steps. And if this episode helped take some of the stress out of selling on your own, then I would be so, so grateful if you would take a screenshot and share it in your Instagram Stories. Don't forget to tag me at@kristendoyle.co so I can thank you and share your posts with my followers. Sometimes we just need someone to tell us that it is okay to start small. And I bet you know another digital creator who needs to hear that same message too. Thank you for listening today, and thank you for sharing. I'll talk to you soon.

Unknown:

Bye.