Whether you’re selling your old clothes or you’ve got a talent for making something that you’d like to sell, it can be quite confusing finding the best method to sell them, so we’ve put together a short list of ways to sell stuff – don’t forget to check out our tips about holding a blog sale as well!)
Blog sale
Blog sales work best for selling your own belongings (rather than crafted items) and targets your readers who probably already like your taste in things! You can use Paypal to invoice people, or set up a separate bank account where they could pay directly into (Paypal is much easier for both parties and give the buyer some protection which is reassuring, but there are fees involved)
Instagram is another good way to sell your own things to people who already enjoy what you do, but you have a choice whether to put the items on your main account (and risk annoying your followers) or opening a separate account. With Instagram sales, then you have the choice whether to set a price for the first person, or allow people to bid until a certain time that you have set.
Depop
Depop is very similar to Instagram in that it’s super easy to create a post by taking a photo, adding your filters and a description – but it also allows you to add up to four pictures on one post and have buyers pay as soon as they click buy. Downside is that there’s no web version (at the moment) so your buyers are restricted to those who have the app.
eBay
Ah, eBay. It’s been around for so long, that you’ve probably already used it but here’s the quick run down – easy to use, huge audience so you’re more likely to sell something, but there are fees for lots of things and there can be a lot of timewasters!
Etsy
Etsy has been around for quite a while as well and is aimed at people who create something for sale, rather than selling barely used cosmetics. There are various rules that it’s worth checking if your work falls into the specific guidelines, but it’s a great place to sell one off items. Fees are $0.20 per item plus 3.5% of the item price when it sells.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel is aimed at smaller stores – there’s a maximum limit of 300 products (but you can sell as many as you like) Our friends at Black Heart Creatives use Big Cartel for their site which works well for them. There’s a few pricing options available for users, including a limited free version. This would be quite a good way to sell ads on your site if you didn’t want to use a service like Adproval.
WooCommerce
We use WooCommerce over on the Bonjour, Blogger! Shop and have found it to be pretty useful! We use it for digital downloads and affiliate linking products that we find are useful, but obviously you can use it for actual items that you sell. There’s no initial fee for the plugin, but you would need a WordPress site to install it on and there are various plugins that do have a fee.
Squarespace
We’ve covered Squarespace in the past as a blogging platform, but it also has a very good integrated shop platform! This means it’s neatly tied together with your site, but there are fees involved in having a Squarespace site, even if you don’t use the shop part.
Have you tried any of these? Do you sell any products through your blog?
