Why you Should add an Online Store to your Blog

Do you have a blog? Do you want to make more money from your blog? Have you ever considered selling a product your blog? Why not turn your blog readers into your potential customers and make money from selling to them. You mustn’t depend only on affiliate marketing – the online store you’re promoting their products might introduce new policy that won’t fit well with you or just decide they longer want you as their affiliate partner because you disobeyed their “don’t drink water” policy.

Or AdSense – if AdSense doesn’t accept your blog into their monetization program, what next? Does that mean you will give up your blogging career? Does that mean that without AdSense or Affiliate Marketing you won’t think of venturing into blogging.

A good percentage of bloggers around the world today depend solely on AdSense as source of income from their blog. On this post, we will discuss another means of blog revenue which is adding an online store to your blog, although this quite depends on the niche you blogging on

As a fashion blogger, why shouldn’t you have a store on your blog? Yes! a store, Just as I always say, you must not have a warehouse loaded with goods before you can start selling online.

Are you interested on this on making more money online? Do you own a Fashion blog, Tech blog, Event blog, or do you blog on any physical product, or even aspiring to?

What you must do;

1. Add a store section in your blog.

Adding a store to your store should be quite easy for those using WordPress, you can just search for “Woo Commerce” plugin, install and activate it, then customize it to your taste. Make sure to add the store link to your blog menu for easy navigation for your users. For those blogging with other platform which is not WordPress, if your platform does not support plugin or widget which can be used for an online store, the service of a web developer may be needed.

2. Add products to your blog store.

For instance, as a fashion blogger who has no real product to sell, simply meet so good fashion designers who are out for business and partner with them. If the deal is good, add their products to your store and sell either at a price higher than what they sell and make your profit or sell on commission based (more like affiliate), this depends on the partnership deeds entered. Also make sure that each products has a price tag with different varieties in bulk, so your customers will know the actual price they are to pay. Tech bloggers can as well add hot selling devices like Tecno camon 12 device and make good profits.

3. Payment terms

This is based on what is most convenient to you and also the kind of products you are selling. But if you are new, and still trying to build customers or readers on your blog, I will suggest your customers pay on delivery, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t integrate a payment system.

Having a payment gateway in your store is great although getting accepted by payment gateway providers can be hard for new blogger.You should just give your customers an option to choose between cash on delivery or paying online.

4. Advisement

Since the blog is yours, you are expected to advertise your most attractive products on strategic positions within your blog. You may also create nice featured posts that are well written to attract your readers to your product. Also start commenting on other niche related blogs, with links linking to your blog store, this will not only direct readers to your blog but also make your store a bit more popular.

You can also offer discount coupons to you new customers, big online shopping giants like Gearbest and Jumia have successfully used this strategy to grow their customer base by offering gearbest coupon and Jumia coupons in Egypt and various other African countries.

Blog Niches and Marketable Products

1. Fashion Blogs
Can sell; Clothes, Shoes, Bags, Cosmetics etc.

2. Tech Blogs
Can sell; Phones, Laptops, Camera, Household Appliances, Software etc.

3. Event Blogs
Can Link people looking to event centers, Rent cars and wedding gown and other things used for wedding, connect people to event planners, souvenir production etc. Having this kind of blog you can easily act as an intermediary to lots of occasions. All you need is to know those who can do the job, partner with them and promote their products and services for yourself.

Event blogs store should be properly customized in a unique way to be different from others. This is because you may not really have direct product to sell, but rather display services in an attractive manner that will appear irresistible.

Wrapping it up

In conclusion, I see no reason a blog should solely depend on third party platforms to generate income. Creating an online store will create more opportunity for a blogger to engage into a more physical business, if your online blog store get so successful, you can then develop a big time online store just like Jumia and Konga from just integrating a store on your blog. You mustn’t start big when it comes to ecommerce, you may start from a blog store and then migrate. Check out best online shopping tips.