How to Get Your First Online Sale

Almost everyone dreams of starting a website and earning money “while they sleep”. Think about it. People from all over the world visiting your site, falling in love with it, and buying from it… All while you’re having the most amazing dream about your next holiday destination.

The product is automatically sent by e-mail or shipped from a warehouse, the payment is automatically transferred to your account, and you wake up with the best notification ever: “Notification of payment received”. Now that’s the life…

It can be that easy, but you have to work to get there.

The Beauty of Selling Online

Selling products is no easy task, especially when it’s your first sale. If you do it in the real world, selling products to potential consumers can be tiring and stressful, and some consumers may even yell at you for just doing your job. Fortunately, selling products on the internet is a different kind of experience. You don’t have to holler for people’s attention or start your pitch from scratch for each new customer.

Selling online can be passive with strategies like SEO and Content Marketing, and once you perfect the copywrite, you can sit back and watch the magic happen.

This ease has attracted a large number of people to test their skills in the online markets. And it all starts with that first sale.

Here are some strategies to help get it:

1. Get a professional domain name

You want your new business to look professional. Although there are dozens of free hosts that let you use an extension of their domain name, like:

[yourstore].myshopify.com

People won’t take your business seriously if you use one.

These days internet domains and hosting are so cheap, that the investment shouldn’t require a second thought.

To make it even cheaper, we have an exclusive offer with

When coming up with a domain name, you can use one of two strategies. You can either go for descriptive and self explanatory, or creative and unique. Both have their benefits:

Descriptive and Self Explanatory – Tells people exactly what they’ll expect to find. Can show authority, and can provide a minor boost to SEO.

Creative and Unique – Great for branding and to create something truly unforgettable that can help you stand out. Can be created from mashing words together, or by making up an entirely new word!

2. Optimize website design to increase conversions

Your website’s design isn’t just about creating a “pretty face” for your business. It also plays an important role in whether or not you’ll get any conversions.

Keep your website design minimal to remove distractions and keep the focus on your products and content, and make everything easy to find with a simple navigation menu and comprehensive search features.

This article has many other strategies to optimize website design for conversions.

3. Pick or Create Great Products

If you’re a good enough sales person, you could literally sell refrigerators in the arctic. But, it is a lot to sell if you have a great product, that will actually benefit the people you’re selling it too.

If you’re creating a product, take the time to make it great, and a lot of the sales work it will do itself. And if you’re reselling existing products, test the product yourself, to make sure it’s great.

The great thing about selling good products is that they market themselves. When people buy great products and enjoy them, they can’t help but tell their friends, who might purchase them as well, create a cycle of free sales and advertising.

4. Communicate

Now that you have a great product, hosted on a great website with a great domain name, it’s time to tell the world about it.

Once you’re starting to make sales and have an income to use, you can start experimenting with paid advertising, but, for starters, there are many ways to get traffic for free.

Social media websites and forums are excellent platforms to show off your expertise and products. Answer questions and provide advice with knowledge and confidence, and people will become naturally curious about what you have to offer.

5. Create a List

Your website should have a place to collect the email address of your visitors. This is usually a simple form with a heading like “Subscribe to our free newsletter” or “Here’s our free report!”. On that note, entice your visitors to give their email address away, by offering them something in return. This could be an information product like an eBook, or a discount off their first product purchase.

Not many people purchase a product when they first visit a website, so you need this information so that you can talk to your visitors and get them to return after they leave.

Through email you can show your expertise and build trust over time. Create an email funnel, a process further described in this post, so that after trust is built you can start suggesting some of your products.

6. Give Away Free Samples

Give away a sample of your product, such as a chapter of an eBook, if you’re selling one.

People that can get a preview of what you’re selling, and judge the quality for themselves, are much more likely to come back and make their first purchase with you.

So even if you only do this with your introductory product, you’ll have given potential customers a risk free way to make sure that you’re credible, making purchasing a much easier decision for them.

Take the time to study these techniques and get everything right, and you won’t be disappointed. The great thing about getting everything right the first time, is that everything should keep working thereafter. For the 2^nd time, the 10^th time, the 100^th time… And so on.

Once you put the gears in motion, they’ll keep on spinning. So, choose the right gears, and assemble them correctly.