How to Make $100 Per Day Selling in the SoapSell Marketplace - Part 2

How to Make $100 Per Day Selling in the SoapSell Marketplace - Part 2

NOTE: I am not a professional writer, I haven't taken classes (which I might) or studied to become a blog writer.  I am simple a small businessman who wants to help others grow their businesses.  So fair warning, this blog may not be perfect.  Sometimes I might wander a bit off topic, don't worry, I'll get back on track.  Sometimes I may ramble, I'm sure it's because there's a point I'm trying to get across. BUT the information is great and as time goes on, it will only get better.  Thank you for checking it out, don't forget to to subscribe if you like what I have to say. 😁

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This is Part 2 of a series of posts explaining how you can make $100 per day selling your products in the SoapSell Marketplace.  SoapSell is a new and exciting marketplace for handmade bath & beauty companies to sell their products around the world online. Unlike other marketplace site, SoapSell does not charge you to post your products for sale and you don't have to continue reposting every week, or even every month.  Once you post your products in the SoapSell Marketplace, they stay posted until you take them down.

Are you selling your products in another marketplace online? GREAT! You should just have your products for sale in one place.  Some marketplaces are crowded, filled with brands that have already established they're name.  You may think, how can I compete with that?  It's easy, you work 2-3 times harder then you normally would.  You also build your online presents.  When people search Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. for your company, or the types of products you sell, you want your company to show up in the results.  Not just once, but multiple times.

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To reach the goal of $100 per day, you need to build the SEO to your shop (SoapSell Marketplace, or any other marketplace site you have a shop on) as well as your website.  There are several steps to building SEO.  Link-backs are very important when building SEO for your shop/website.  These are links to your site/shop or products in your shop/site, from quality high traffic sites.  Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Reddit, local & national media outlets and high traffic blogs within your industry, are just a few of the website you want to get linking back to your shop/website.

This is one of the reasons using social media is so important. Within a few days of starting a Facebook Page for your business and posting photos of your products, etc. your company will start showing up in Google search results, via the links you have on Facebook, or other social media sites. (Try it now, open another tab to Google and search your company name.  What links show up first? Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Instagram?  Do you have an active account with each of those sites?) Of course this is just a start.  If people have heard of your business, this is great, they can search the name of your company, find your site/shop and make their purchase.  What you will eventually want to happen is have your company come up in search results, when potential customers are looking for the types of products you sell, not just your company name.  I will talk about this in another post, the focus when starting out is making sure that the search engines know that your company is out there.

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Post on social media daily.  Here is a great blog post, "6 Tips to Improve Your Facebook Posts", that will help you to create the most effective Facebook posts, ensuring the best traffic through your FREE posting.  (Remember, if you find that a particular post is doing will, BOOST THAT POST! You only reach 3%-6% of your friends/followers when you post on Facebook, the more interaction the post gets, the more of your friends/followers feeds it will come up in. So if you find that a particular post is doing well in your target market, with the few people that get to see it, then boosting it, to your target market can yield results that are astonishing.)

Remember, posting daily on social media will give you more quality link-backs to your site/shop, helping your company to come up in search results.  To get to $100 per day is a process, it's not something that will happen over night.  Can it, yea. Is it likely, no.  But if you follow these steps fully and completely, you will get to $100 per day, or more!  Remember, your shop online never sleeps! When done right, you will make money when you sleep!  There is nothing better then waking up to see that your company was working for you while you get to rest.

This will conclude Part 2 of "How to Make $100 Per Day Selling in the SoapSell Marketplace." If you didn't get a chance to read the first post, you can find it HERE.  To ensure you get the next post as soon as it's live, don't forget to subscribe to our email list HERE.

To open your FREE SoapSell Marketplace shop, CLICK HERE.

How to Make $100 Per Day Selling Your Soaps in the SoapSell Marketplace Part 1

How to Make $100 Per Day Selling Your Soaps in the SoapSell Marketplace Part 1

A quick search on Etsy.com and you will see that there are thousands of handmade soap makers around the world, working hard to build their brand online and make a decent living doing it.  Let me ask you this, could you live the life you want making $100 per day selling your soaps or handmade bath & beauty products? If you said "YES" then continue reading.

To start, this is nothing that is going to happen over night, so if you think that you're going to start making $100 per day on SoapSell Marketplace within a month, well you're wrong, and this may not be for you.  This is something that will take some time, but with hard work and dedication, you can be making $100 per day from your handmade soap business by the end of 2017.

First you have to open your shop, so if you haven't opened a shop in the SoapSell Marketplace, I suggest you do that now.  It's free to start your account.  It's free to post your products for sale.  The only time you pay is when you make a sale! (A small commission fee of 7% of the sale or less. Not including taxes or shipping.)

Once you have opened your shop, it's time to get some products uploaded.  The more products you have available the better.  But you also don't want to spread yourself too thin.  Starting with 4 - 6 products that are your best sellers is the way to go. The plan is to start building momentum, that's the key.  It's easier to make sales, when you're already selling. 

Once you've got your products uploaded, with great images to show them off online, you need to start setting goals.  First start with long term goals like, where you want to be in 5 years, and build backwards from there.  Break it down first into months, if in 5 years your goal is to sell $200 per day, slowly breakdown what it would take each month to reach that goal.  Then go a step further and figure out what steps you need to take each day to reach your goal.  Once you have a plan of action for each day, that's when you're really ready to get started.

Collect and Review your Data

If you read my post How to Make Your First Sale Online I explain the importance of reviewing the data that is collected by social media sites (i.e. post interactions) to find out what posts and images are working to drive the most traffic to your online store.  Once you figure out what posts are working, and drive people not only to your shop, but these people are also making purchases.

Once you've found a few of your posts that are working, BOOST THEM! If they're already working by driving customers to your site, customers who are making purchases (not all of them, but a good deal of them) then logic says if you get that post in front of even more people, your sales will go even higher. This is where you start to gain momentum.

 
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Recap

First, get your SoapSell Marketplace shop open.  It's free, so why wait?  That time that you're waiting, you could be building brand awareness, getting "LIKES" on your Facebook Page, and finding out what posts really engage your customers. This is something that will take a month or two to get the data you're looking for.  You DON'T want to just start advertising because so many people lose money that way.  If you don't know who your target market it, you'll just be wasting money.

This is just Part 1 in the series How to Make $100 Per Day Selling Your Soaps in the SoapSell Marketplace, a step by step guide to building your online soap or bath & beauty business.  To stay up to date with this post and more about starting and running a successful soap business, please feel free to Subscribe.

Thank you for sharing!

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How to Cut Your Costs Without Cutting Quality

How to Cut Your Costs Without Cutting Quality

A Guide to Help You Turn More of Your Revenue Into Profit

Ok so you've started your business, you've been going strong for maybe a month or two, or a year or two.  You're sales are steadily growing, and if you could just make a bit more profit, you could start to consider quitting your full time job and taking on your business full time.  But how can you sale more products, or better yet, how can you make more money on the products you currently sell, without raising the price? Easy . . . You cut costs!

 

If you've tried to cut costs in your business, without cutting product or packaging quality, you know it's easier said then done.  But by the end of this post, you'll have some fresh ideas on how you can cut costs so you can start making more money from the current sales you already have.  

Now to properly cut costs, you first need to find out exactly (at least within a penny) what your cost to make each of your products are.  What I talk about cost, I mean, ALL costs associated with making the product.  If you haven't done this already, and you're selling products, I suggest you stop making and selling products until you've at least got your costs figured out.

How to figure your costs.

To figure your costs you add up the cost of everything it takes to make your product, then divide it by the number of pieces you have, that will give you your Cost Of Goods (COG). 

Example

You're making bath bombs, the total recipe makes 20 bath bombs.  Take the cost of all your ingredients. To figure out the cost of your ingredients per batch, take the total cost of the ingredient to you (For instance Sodium Bicarbonate) you get 15 lbs for $15. You use 1 lb for your recipe. To figure out how much it costs you per pound, ($15/15 = $1) it costs you $1 in sodium bicarbonate to make this batch of bath bombs. Now you'll need to do this with all of your ingredients. (Below is an example of how to figure the cost of the whole batch, all numbers are examples)

• Sodium Bicarbonate - $1
• Citric Acid - $1
• Powdered Milk $1
• Coconut Oil - $0.40
• Fragrance Oil/Essential Oil - $0.55
• Coloring - $0.90
• Polysorbate 80 - $0.20
• Witch Hazel (for spraying, if you use it, you need the cost for it) - $0.10
• Packing (for 20 bombs) = $20

Total Cost of Ingredients & Packaging - $25.15

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!  If you add just those ingredient prices, and think that's your COG, you're wrong! You also have to figure in labor costs.  Either you or an employee is going to make the bombs, so you're going to have to pay them. (This is a BIG mistake a lot of small business owners make, they forget to pay themselves!)  You also have to figure in electricity (this is a fixed cost you should already have for your business.  Take your monthly electricity bill, divide it by 30 days and you'll have your daily fixed cost. Divide that by 12 hours (or how ever long your work day is) and that's your cost per hour for electricity.  The same thing needs be done with the rent, and all of your other base costs for the business.  (Below is the continued example of the bath bomb costs. For the example we are using a 12 hour work day. Also we are basing the recipe on 3 hours to make AND package)

• Rent ($600 per month, divided by 30 = $20 per day, divide by 12 hours= $1.67 X 3 hours) - $5.01
• Electricity (if the monthly bill is $120) Total for 3 hours = $1.02
• Insurance ($275 a year, broke down to the hour) = $0.10
• Labor (Base labor on what you WANT to get paid, for the example $15 and hour.  If you figure it for you as a base, when you're paying someone else less, you're making more profit, just by having someone else do it and cutting your labor costs) 3 hours @ $15 = $45

(Don't forget to figure in shipping costs with ingredients, or, labor if you or someone is going to the local wholesale shop to pick the items up.  This is all associated with the cost of making the product. Think of anything you can. For this example we'll stick with these)

Total fixed costs $51.03

The total cost to make the bath bombs (in this example) = $76.18. That comes out to $3.81 per bomb.

Figuring out the price to sell your product (bath bombs in this example)

Now that you have the total cost to make your bath bomb (product) it's time to figure out what to sell it for.  You want to make sure you maximize your profit, while still being competitive.  When figuring out how to price your product you want to do a couple of things;

• First decide if you're just going to sell the products in your own shop or online store, directly to your customer. Or are you also going to wholesale them to other shops?
• Study the competition.  Checkout where you're going to sell your items.  Maybe it's an online marketplace like SoapSell Marketplace or Etsy.  Don't stop there though, do Google searches, browse other companies websites. Takes some notes, and figure out the average price.
• Decide if you want to price average, above average or below average.

Now that's you've got this all figured out, you can price your product. (Below are some examples with the previous bath bomb example) 

Here are some ways you may price your products depending on your choices and information above. For this example we're going to say the average bath bomb is $6.50.

If you're just going to sell your products to the public, then decide on what you want your profit margin to be (60% or higher is suggested, but when sales are directly to the customer, some products are sold as high as 200% to 300% or more over the cost) At $3.81 per bomb (from the example above) and the average price being $6.50, you could reasonably price your bombs at $7.50 and receive almost 100% markup.  But you may find that you sell many more just by lowering the price. That's what you want to do, is find the price where you make the profit you want, but they still fly off the shelf.  You can always cut costs to increase profits.

If you are going to sell your product wholesale to other businesses, you really need to look at your pricing model different.  Most companies want to purchase your product at 50% cost of what the advertised retail price is.  This is where some businesses make mistakes.  If your cost is $3.81 per bomb, you're advertising on you website or SoapSell Marketplace shop that they're $6.50 per bomb, when a company approaches you to purchase your bombs wholesale and wants them for $3.25 per bomb (half of the advertised retail price) you now have to tell them no, or lose money on the order (unless you know how to drastically cut costs quickly to adapt for the order. i.e. you can order packing in bulk and get it for half the price, you can order your ingredients in larger amounts and save another 50%, etc.)

So what you will need to do if you are going to wholesale your products to other shops, is decide how how much you want to make on your wholesale bombs.  What's good is while you don't make as much profit selling wholesale, you can have minimum order amounts, making sure the order is worth your time.)  So if your minimum purchase is 50 bombs for a wholesale order, you could charge a 25% increase ($0.95 per bomb) and still profit almost $50 off of every wholesale order.  (What's great about this too is the order is larger, if you can pay someone else to make them for you, less then what you pay yourself, you could increase profit on the wholesale orders only, and you wouldn't have to spend the time making them. That's why I suggest when figuring out your costs, you figure labor for what you would pay yourself, 25% or more higher then what you will pay someone to do it, that way when you hire people it can cut your costs)

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The retail price of the bomb (if you wholesale) would be $9.52, much higher then other shops.  This could result in slower sales on the retail side.  These are all important things to think about when figuring the price of your products.  It's important that you know what it costs to make each product you make, it's the life blood of your business.  

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.  You can also email me at Info@SoapSell.com