Online store on Instagram: how to start and not “score”?
At some point, you may come up with the idea that it would be a good idea to start your own business. If you are, say, an electrician or engaged in finishing apartments, you will not have any special difficulties with the selection of personnel or tools, or with other points. Big problems in everyday life, except for the current ones, will not arise. But here’s what to do if you, like many other people in Russia, decided to go a new way for yourself and decided to start an online store in and instagram. What should I do? Where to go and where to start?
Let’s put everything on the shelves so that there are no difficulties with this. So it will be easier for me to convey information and you, I hope, very clear. In any case, you can always leave comments with questions that I will answer.
First, choose a niche. You might think that everything is simple and clear. The hell with it. Let’s just say that it will be very difficult to sell crushed stone in inatagram. No, of course, you can try, and hire a team of specialists who will work for you day and night, and “unfasten” them every month a rather large amount of money. As an option, why not?
The first thoughts that come to a person who has decided to create an online store in istagram are that:
- You need to “mess up” and make a beautiful avatar that you will like (but not the fact that everyone else does);
- You need to put hashtags to each item of your product, for example: # sneakers, # cosmetics, #cats. Only here’s the bad luck, everyone is not lazy to put such hashtags to their posts on instagram.
- Install special software that will automatically subscribe people to you and put down likes.
All this is complete nonsense and obscurantism. But! Partly 🙂
So, for example, if we consider the case of selling sneakers, do you think they are in some apartment, in a warehouse or in an office? Not at all, or rather, not necessarily. A person who runs an online store on instagram may not own the specific positions that are presented on his page at all.
Why? Because it uses such a thing as dropshipping! В чем прикол?
- You have an instagram page;
- You post photos of “your” sneakers on it;
- An interested customer arrives;
- Tells you what model he needs and his foot size, respectively;
- You contact the supplier, find out the cost of this pair, throw “your interest”.
- Get money from the customer if they agree, pay for the sneakers from the supplier and send them to the customer.
- Все, что сверху добавили, за исключением стоимости отправки товара почтой, – ваше.
Now let’s talk about what you can sell in your online store on instagram. At the current time, there are several most active directions, I will list them for clarity:
- We sell what we understand, or what we personally like;
- Продаем то, что в тренде (электросамокаты, обычные детские самокаты или пресловутые спиннеры);
- We sell what you can make with your own hands (bouquets of sweets, cat racks, clay pots for handmade flowers);
- We sell nice little things (socks, gloves, pens, bracelets);
- We sell goods to which you have direct access (a friend carries goods from China and can give you a significant discount on them).
Once you have decided on what kind of product will be sold through your online store on instagram, you need to decide on your supplier or suppliers. Here are a few options for searching and following up.
Суть заключается в том, что рынок в России и в данной социальной сети в целом постоянно набирает обороты, – это хорошо. There is room for action. You have three directions:
- Websites of wholesale companies;
- Avito and analogs;
- The same vendors on Instagram.
There are certain criteria for selecting a future supplier, and better suppliers. First, the price for the product – it should be comfortable for you. Secondly, and this is important, the adequacy of the supplier. Believe me, the network has enough characters who can afford to behave like idiots. And most importantly: no 100% prepayment.
Online store in Instagram – create a project page.
The first thing you need is to name our page. With the name you can not bother, the main thing is to write it in capital letters. You can edit it at any time. For example, “SCOOTER SALES”, “CANDY BOUQUETS” , etc.
It is best to put something bright and eye-catching on the avatar of your online store. Do not put your product, it will be lost among other stores and will not be remembered in any way.
Product description: only the specifics and nothing superfluous, such as the words of parasites, which are so blurred all eyes that they are already sick. There is, by the way, an excellent book for those who would like to write high-quality texts. It’s called “Write, shorten. How to create strong text“. Your potential buyer should immediately see all the information about your store: prices, delivery, dimensions, amenities, contacts, and so on. Unfortunately, the number of characters in the description is limited, but you can use the address string, do not forget about it.
After you have filled out the preliminary information about the online store in instagram, upload 9 images of your product so that they fill the screen of the future customer’s mobile device when opening the profile of your store. For the description, you can not worry much, as it can be changed at any time. Here it is important that there are no watermarks on the photos.
You can take photos from the accounts of other stores, from a supplier, or sit with Photoshop for a while and make your own images. There is an important point here. You need to place products for which there is a constant demand, or those that are now in trend. You can track this by monitoring the number of likes and comments.
If you plan to take photos from other accounts, then this bot will come to your aid: @saveasbot – it allows you to download photos, videos and text from Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok in a couple of seconds!
Now a few words about the style of images of your products. As I said earlier, it is possible not to suffer, but simply to lay out pictures from the vendor. Но я бы на вашем месте трансформировал их. There are a lot of templates for this purpose. You can buy them for $, or you can download them for free. You just need to search. If you don’t want to search, you can try to get access through a subscription, as, for example, it is implemented on this blog.
You have placed your first 9 products. See, the description below the picture consists of 125 characters, and then there is the word “More”. So, it is these 125 characters that will attract the visitor’s attention. Put the most important things in them: price, description, delivery.
When describing the product, be sure to make paragraphs and accents. The text, which is continuous, strains the eyes.
The best way to use another useful bot: @text4instabot – it makes “correct” paragraphs for Instagram. And also the text in the center, red lines, and also crosses out and highlights in bold.
Write or not write the price of the product under its photo, where is the description of your product? In fact, this is a rhetorical question 🙂 There are two types of people, those who point and those who write: “If you have any questions about the cost, write in the comments or in Yandex. Direct.”
In the first case, the one who went to your online store on instagram, went purposefully. He saw the price and may order what he needs.
In the second case, the interest from users who put likes, write comments (by the way, it happens here that you can skip a comment with a question about the cost) and write to you in Yandex. Direct, is only good for you, as it increases activity.
Online store on Instagram and #hashtags.
Here the situation is quite interesting. It consists in the fact that the buyer will not search for your product by one word, for example, # iphone. Number of posts with this hashtag HUGE! Use the words and phrases that best characterize your product for the buyer. For example, by geographical feature: “buy an iphone in Yekaterinburg”:
Would you like your online store on instagram to look something like the screenshot below? So that it has additional features that you can use for your own benefit. Such as:
You can read about how to do this in this article.
Which sections to create in this menu is already at your discretion. Practice shows that the sections “Promotions”, “Discounts” and “Reviews” go best.
Как насчёт заглянуть на ТЕМНУЮ СТОРОНУ ЛУНЫ?
Yes, here we will talk about cheating and mass-liking. Whatever you say, but you will have to use it. Why? Well, what do you think? Who will have what to buy if under knitted mittens with deer is worth 5 likes, and 15 people are subscribed to the account.
We’ll have to spend a little. There are special services for this, of course. There is also free software (works under Windows). If you want to use the cheat, write to me – I will help you in any way I can.
Where to get subscribers, in addition to cheating?
Send the link to your friends and ask them to subscribe.
Go through the competitors ‘ online stores and choose an active audience – gather a base of users + make them an offer that will be more interesting than the competitors.
Hold a contest when the base of live subscribers will be more than 200-300 users. Someone makes dishonest contests (this is when the prize goes to your friend and you do not spend money by agreeing with him). Draw interesting prizes. The contest conditions are simple and banal: leave a comment, subscribe to your online store on instagram, specify 3 friends in it and publish a story.
That’s all for today. Continuation: “Shop on Instagram: continuation“.
