ONLINE BUSINESS

Online Business Ideas for Small Businesses from Successful Online ...

Bring in your business and tell us your story: How did you decide on what to sell, and how did you source your products?

My family has owned our business, Angelus Shoe Polish, for 108 years. They weren't taking advantage of the internet, so I (the grandson) came in with the strange idea to bring the business online.

Using social media, Google Adwords, facebook, twitter, instagram,linkdin, and a few apps I increased sales significantly. Here I am two years later selling over 11000 orders a month just in my own business without even accounting for my families which has doubled. They gave me an incredible foundation and I ran with it.

How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?

I remember starting our site on another platform - it was an awful experience. It looked terrible and received very few orders. I remember being disheartened because the platform was not very friendly with their customer support and everything required some level of coding. Then I found Shopify, which opened our world completely. Their robust platform makes it easy to pick and choose and make new decisions you would be terrified doing in another web  platform.

As for advertising, we went for artists on Instagram and Youtube then sponsored them to show off our product. They get our product for a great price in exchange for shout outs and general help. Social media is definitely what helped us generate our first sales and to bring in a majority of visitor traffic.

We then started to do Youtube videos, which were horrible, but people actually loved watching because it taught them about a new hobby they may have never known about. We have since obtained a video team who can make sure we work harder at striving for bloger professionalism in videos. Youtube is huge for sales in the arts and crafts world because people are scared to try new things nowadays without being shown how to do it first.