How to grow sales is perhaps the NUMBER ONE question we see asked across the many #sidehuslte and “Solopreneur” forums that we actively participate in.
Every single time it boils down to ONE key element – NONE of the people posting the request are “thinking like an entrepreneur” – which they SHOULD be!
If you’re not treating your sidehustle like a business then it’s just a hobby – and if it’s just a hobby then you don’t care about not getting any sales, right?
The requests are normally made by dropshippers that are selling via a third party platform like Etsy, Amazon (MBA and KDP), Ebay, Redbubble, Mercari, Teespring or any other dropshipping platform that you can think of – it’s always the same thing:-
I’m not getting sales, please show me how to grow sales to my shop
– virtually everyone
So here is something for you to think about – we’re going to use selling low content notebooks and planners on KDP (Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing) as an example for this exercise, but the concept is the same if you are selling tshirts, merchandise, digital downloads, vintage clothing, home made cupcakes, pet supplies – you get the picture.
If you want to know how to grow sales, think of Amazon as a HUGE (gigantic) outdoor market – think of the biggest one you have ever been to and think of it a hundred thousand times bigger than that!
Really visualise it with hundreds of THOUSANDS of “stalls” all selling books. Millions of people walk through the market every day, browsing for books – WHY should they stop and buy yours?
You can throw money at advertising – it may work, providing you have a great quality product at a good price. But most people wandering around the market are bargain hunters although some will pay more (for quality) than others – just like any real life market.
BUT – the buyers are overwhelmed by choice. There are literally MILLIONS of books just like yours (or at least they serve the same purpose) and if they don’t know where to find you in the maze of the market then they will buy from another stall …….. keep that visual in your mind – hundreds of thousands of stalls (KDP entrepreneurs like you) with millions of books for sale …… and people wandering around ready to buy.
NOW – what if INSTEAD of hoping and wishing they will find you only once they actually arrive at the market, you told them all about your stall and your products BEFORE they got there?
AND what if you showed them HOW your products FIT INTO THEIR LIFE in order to get them to WANT your products?
AND ……. what if you gave then an easy way to get DIRECTLY to your stall and buy your books?
THIS is how an entrepreneur thinks!!!
So how do you tell them?
SOCIAL MEDIA IS YOUR FREE FRIEND!!!!!
If you want to know how to grow sales then start with social media.
GO where your customers / potential customers / audience is!
If your niche is colouring-in books for kids then set up a Facebook page and post loads of colouring in pictures and things to do with colouring in. Talk about activities that parents can do with their kids with the colouring in books.
Then set up a gallery with NON-GEOGRAPHIC links DIRECTLY to your products – we use Booklinker for free to do this.
DON’T be SPAMMY!!!
Don’t just 💩 post “buy my stuff”!!!!!
Nobody will buy your stuff and you won’t attract any followers – don’t think about what YOU want, think about what your target CUSTOMERS want – fulfil a NEED for crying out loud!!
BUILD a community around your topic of interest.
Offer valuable information and interaction that your customers WANT and NEED and they will be more receptive to you dropping in an occasional promo post. In fact they will probably GLADLY support you if you give them something of value FIRST!!
Find out where your audience is – we can tell you right now that if you are publishing books on KDP and you aren’t on Pinterest then you are missing out on LOADS of free traffic!!! Pinterest is pretty much the second biggest search engine in the world!
Get on Instagram and if you’re targeting a youth segment and you’re not on TikTok then just pack it in now because that’s where they are spending most of their screen time and attention.
Get on YouTube if that’s where your audience is – I’m looking at those of you that target health / fitness / cooking / pets and a whole load more.
KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER – and figure out how to fit in their life!!
THEN – if you want to take it to the next level (and this step might cost you a bit of money if you decide to do it right) then buy a domain name, build a website to build your brand and post content regularly.
Learn SEO create quality posts that have images in them that are optimised for sharing on social media. Make sure you brand your images! Use your website to drive traffic to your store. Our best performing blog post was written 7 years ago – it STILL generates hundreds of clicks every day organically from Google searches – for FREE!!!
DON’T FORGET – when people land on your book, Amazon will show them other books with the same tags and those that are sponsored and “what other customers bought” – so you better make sure that yours is the BEST book for their needs – make it easy for them to hit that “add to cart” or “buy now” button by making sure you have a quality cover, unique interior and excellent description that makes them want to buy YOUR book.
None of this is “easy” – but if you’re after easy money then you’re in the wrong game I’m sorry to say.
Business is NOT about “making stuff” – it’s about SELLING STUFF – so stop making stuff and complaining that it’s not selling. Make a few quality products that fulfil a need and then show people HOW it fills that need – that’s the secret to success and you didn’t even have to pay for a course to learn it!
OF course as we’re in business just like you, we’d really appreciate it if you browsed around our stores on the links in the header while you are here (see what we did there? 😎)
Final word:-
“You don’t get what you wish for, you get what you work for.”