Increase Online Monetization Possibilities with Facebook Stores

by: Stella 0

Small online business owners are always looking for free (or really cheap) ways to promote their products and/or services. That’s why it comes to no surprise that most turn to the popular social networking site Facebook to get their name out there and create a steady flow of costumers—after all, with more than 600 million active users worldwide, you’d definitely want the opportunity to use the site as marketing platform.

How can You Self-Market?

There are several ways to do this. By far one of the more popular choices is creating “fan pages” to self-market. Not only can these fan pages direct loyal customers to your main web site where they can make purchases, but it’s also a great SEO technique since Google indexes Facebook pages.

You can even add additional apps to your fan pages that allow you to promote special deals and offer coupons exclusively for your fans.

Filming and uploading video testimonials of your product or service to your fan page is another option.

But if you are really looking for a way to increase your online sales then you need to diligently work to transition your “fans” to “buyer”. An easy way to do this is to get Facebook Store.

What is a Facebook Store?

Before anything else it said, a Facebook store should not to be confused with other e-commerce apps which simply direct potential customers to third party web sites when ready to purchase.

A Facebook store actually allows users to purchase products directly from Facebook via credit card. There are quite a few services floating around on the web, but most charge you to “set up shop.”

For example, one of the more popular ones is Social Mall. This service allows vendors to sale merchandise at a special “exclusive” rate for its customers as an incentive to draw in more costumers.

But if you would just like to test this kind of service out before you buy an online Facebook store with all the bells and whistles, then you can check out a similar services at no cost at all.

By far the best free service to use to build a Facebook store is Shopping Mall. This app, which is a byproduct of Payvment, allows small business owners to develop a functional retail store within a network of online business and works similar to a real-life-mall—customers can make multiple purchases at one time from different “stores.”
Even if the customer has a variety of products from different vendors during check-out time, each individual vendor will get compensated accordingly.
And no worries; the app will not take a cut from the total sale price.
As a bonus, the costumer’s shopping bag will appear on their friend’s mini feed which means your store can reach an extremely large audience.
Customers can also add comments and reviews to your products.

The best part? The app is free to use. Granted there are some restrictions, due to Facebook policy, users are not allowed to sell “adult” merchandise, firearms, tobacco products, alcoholic beverages or any items that promote hate crimes.

How Can You Set up a Store?

So what do you need if you would like to use the app? You’ll need a PayPal account (both personal and business); you’ll then need to create an account with Shopping Mall. After you fill out the short questionnaire, all you need to do is add the app. Follow the directions on how to upload images and data content and viola. Your store is open for business. Setting up shouldn’t take longer than 15 to 20 minutes.

image: kellyseo