Make More Money by Selling it Cheap or Giving It Away

Each one of us - no matter what we sell - needs a cash injection sometimes.

I have needed quick cash myself. So I had to get inventive. As an eCommerce store owner, it took some brainstorming and a lot of testing to figure out how to make quick cash and how to make more money in general. Other than running sales on popular items...I was at a complete loss!

Sure, sales usually made me money. But they are far from being the only way a store owner can grab a lot of sales in a short amount of time. So I asked myself, “What else can I do?” Turns out there are a lot of ways to grab anything from a little extra profit per product to moving mass quantities of product in a short amount of time.

Expand marketing sales beyond the store. I’m not talking about just posting on your blog and sending out newsletters about sales you’re running. I’m talking about tapping into your social networks. You should already have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, etc. They are good for a lot of relevant traffic if you build your network right. Set up your page / product / offer for optimum conversion and invite your friends and fans to just "have a look." This can result in a flood of traffic and sales.

Now I know that’s more traffic than sales-related but social networking is something a lot of eCommerce store owners overlook or don’t take seriously. But you should. They offer a way to expand and connect your customer base in a highly effective and personal way.

Extra Products? Extra Opportunity!

Now we’ll move onto sales tactics. Talk to your vendors; let them know you are trying to expand both your business and theirs. Ask if they have overstock or leftover or discontinued items hanging around that they’re having trouble moving or that they would like to move faster. See if you can get a larger discount on these items so you can then run a super discount sale offering these products at a much lower cost. This is easier done if you have a track record and relationship with your vendor...but it’s worth a shot either way.

Along the same lines, if you have a product that sells regularly and some cash lying around, bite the bullet and place a wholesale order. 

As long as you can handle the shipping this is a great way to cut product cost so you can run a mega offer to get people into your store and buying. Keep in mind the main goal isn’t necessarily only to sell a lot of just one item. You get people in the proverbial door with the cheap product so they can see all the other wondrous things you sell and hopefully walk out the door with a couple items.

Sometimes customers don’t follow the proper return procedure and products come back to me rather than going back to my dropshipper’s warehouse. If the item is expensive I ship it back to the dropshipper for a refund and charge the customer the extra shipping. But before I send it back I take pictures of it to put in place of the image I was given by my vendor.

I like to take one that I can easily remove the background on, usually by placing it in front of a white sheet or drape, and I also take a few in-context pictures so my customers can see the product in action as it were. This is a great way to get professional looking pictures of your products without having to invest in stock to do so. This is also a perfect time to do video of your product. Just be sure it gets back to the vendor before their return period is over and in the same condition as when you received it. You don’t want to be stuck with an item you hadn’t intended to keep.

But, if it is a relatively inexpensive item or a product that sells on a regular basis I just hang onto it. (I charge a 25% restocking fee so I make some of my cost back.) Then I just simply wait until I get another order for that item and ship it myself. In the long run I make more off that product by 25%. This is a small strategy as the scenario doesn’t happen that often, but it’s a good way to squeeze out a bit more profit when circumstances allow it.

Give It Away, Now

Now let’s talk about giveaways. Giveaway doesn’t always mean a contest (although you can run them, too!)! Giveaways can also be freebies that you give away with every order or orders that meet certain criteria. They could be anything from product accessories (like tapestry rods) to tee shirts with your company logo on it. They are a great way to promote the “added value” of shopping at your store and in that way get more orders. They are also a great way to achieve a larger average order if you place a dollar amount threshold on them - Free Tapestry Rod with Orders Over $200. People will spend more to get the free item.

You can also wholesale order small items to do this. If you have a good relationship with your vendor they may even hold onto the products and ship them with your regular dropship orders. I can wholesale order say 100 sets of sword hangers and then offer them as freebies along with certain swords on my site. When I get an order for one of those swords I send it to my dropshipper same as normal and include a note to add one of the “pre-paid” sword hanger sets to the package and the customer gets what they were promised and I save a little extra on my value-added item, the sword hangers.

The same tactic can be employed using regular store items too if you’re not into the wholesale thing. Do you have a few items that only cost you a couple bucks? Give them away for free, with related products. Do you have big-ticket items you can stand to spare a little profit on per sale? Give away a less expensive item as an added bonus. Lose a little profit on each individual sale but make it up - and then some - by moving higher quantities.

Make sure you tell people about your offer as well. Yes it’s good and helpful to talk about the free offer on the product page where you get it but you’re relying on the customer to find that product page before they could ever know there was an offer to begin with!

Promote, promote, promote!

You’re trying to draw people to your free offer not just surprise those who stumble across it. Think of it in terms of a brick and mortar store. If you run a sale you would at the very least put a sign outside your shop to bring in passersby who might not otherwise be inclined to come in. If you didn’t put out the sign, only those who were coming to your shop anyway would know about it. Sure you’ll make a little more money from those visitors but you’d be doing absolutely nothing to encourage new shoppers, which is a large part of expanding your business!

Do you have a product or product line at your disposal that you haven’t added to your site yet? Try a product launch to get sales the very same day you add it to your site. You might want to let your vendor know you’re planning to do this and find out the stock situation. I would try and get an estimate of how many are expected to be in stock on your chosen launch day. The closer you work with your vendors, the more they will do for you.

Start talking about the "coming soon" products in your newsletters, on your blog, through your social networking outlets, and in any other medium you use to talk about your store or to your customers. Put a nicely designed ad about it on your home page so visitors will have an image to think on while they’re anticipating the launch and deciding if they are going to buy. Humans are very visual, so give them a juicy image of your product to remember and you’ll have an easier time keeping their attention and interest as you lead up to launch day.

You can take this idea a step further and offer a launch-day-only discount to encourage people to visit on that day and foster excitement about the products. Make sure people know the sale date and talk your products up. Explain all the features and benefits, describe the ownership experience, and show them pictures. The more excited you come across about your products the more people will respond to your marketing. They will relay the message to their friends and come launch day you will have people visiting your site with their minds already made up to purchase.

"Super limited time!" sales work in a similar way except instead of focusing on the newness of a product or product line you focus on the limited time discount you’re offering on an item you already carry. What I consider limited time is a one to three days. I make the discount as high as I can while still comfortably profiting and run the sale, depending on stock quantity, as a 24-hour sale or a weekend blowout sort of thing. For major holidays I run storewide super limited time sales, the rest of the year I discount only vendor overstock and popular products. You can usually make the discount higher with single item discounts than blanket storewide coupons, which is why I focus on those during periods of regular commerce. You market this the exact same way you would a product launch.

Another type of limited time sale I like to run is an ongoing featured "product of the week." I worked out a deal with a few of my vendors where I get four products a month at a larger discount than my normal dropship price. I discount these products higher than I normally could and feature one each week on my homepage. I put in product requests each month and my vendors let me know the stock on each so I can decide what will be featured. Once that is decided I let them know and the higher discount goes into effect on my chosen items.

As with all of these tactics, you can run a limited time sale without an extra discount from your supplier. Just make sure you choose products with a high enough profit margin so you can make the discount large and check stock with your vendor before you run the sale. These sales are great not only because they bring business to your store, they also entice customers to come back regularly to see what you have on sale.

Finally, focus on content. You probably have a lot of it floating around in different areas of cyberspace. Articles, blog posts, newsletters, stuff on sites like HubPages and Squidoo. This is all good, useful content that is largely related to your products. It’s definitely doing you good outside your store and it can also be helpful as part of your store. By this I mean it can be something you give away to your customers.

Say for example I have a bunch of articles, posts, and newsletters related to tapestries and interior design. I could put these together in a PDF and give it away as an added bonus for orders or use it as a giveaway to get more opt in subscribers. It’s a relatively easy way to add a little more obvious value to your customer buying from you, rather than your competitors.
When it comes to squeezing a bit more profit out of your goods or getting more people through your front door - the key is creativity. Running a sale is a great start but you have to think more broadly to get the most out of it. The more reasons you can offer customers to buy from you, the higher your chance of getting that sale over your competitors.

Checklist
- Tap into your social networks for marketing.
- Use vendor overstock and discontinued items to run super discount sales.
- Bulk order regular sellers to cut product costs.
- Take pictures and video of returns to spruce up those pages on your site.
- Keep inexpensive returns and resell them to make a little extra profit.
- Offer a giveaway with your orders to Add Value to your store.
- Do a product launch for new items and discount them on launch day to get a sales boost.
- Run super limited time sales to move more product.
- Run regular limited time sales to provide everyday discounts and reasons for customers to keep coming back to your store.
- Pull your store related content together into a pdf and give it away with all orders.