HOW TO START AN ONLINE CHILDREN’S CLOTHING
STORE
Questions:
Why, Where, How, When
Your Research, Competition, Your Funding, Your
Experience, Your Time
Beginner's
Guide to selling Children's Clothing on Ebay
Seven Ways to Make Money Off Your Child's Outgrown Clothes
Clothing E-commerce Site Business Plan
Selling
Clothing on-line Using Shopify
Shopify Execllent
Clothing Website
Wholesale
Children's Clothing Auctions
Entrepreneur,
online marketing guru and startup addict
Offers the following Advice
Having your business listed on online review sites is
important not just for driving traffic and sales, but for protecting your online reputation.
The following sites are some of the most influential, as well as the most
cost-effective (free!).
- Set
up a Google My Business page: This listing will get
your business on Google Search, Maps and Google+ and enable customers to
review your business. Local business reviews tend to receive high rankings
in the search results, giving you some great (free!) real estate. Google+
Local reviews also influence the search rankings of people you’re
connected to, meaning your business’ reviews may also appear when your
connections perform relevant searches on Google.
- Create
a listing on Yelp: As the biggest online review site, creating a Yelp listing is
definitely worth the effort. It’s free, and gets you in front of the
platform’s more than 140 million monthly visitors.
- Create
a free Angie’s List page: Users pay a monthly fee to use the platform, but listing a
business is 100 percent free. Available for service-based businesses only.
- Get
listed on Yahoo Local: Yahoo offers local businesses the opportunity to get a basic
business listing in its directory for free. Listings are integrated with
other Yahoo products like reviews, maps and events.
Social
Media
- Join
industry Facebook and LinkedIn groups: Become a valued member of two or three groups in your business’
industry, offering advice and support. This helps to establish you as an
expert in your field, and ultimately builds your reputation and sales.
- Create
your own Facebook group: Create a free Facebook
group for customers or prospects to get help or support with a problem
related to your niche. (For example, a social media consultant could start
a “DIY Social Media Mastermind group.”)
- Use
images to offer discounts on Facebook or Twitter: Using images to offer discounts or coupon codes is a great,
non-threatening way to promote your products without being too “salesy.”
- Promote
a free, no obligation 15-minute consult to your followers: Reduce the risk your prospects feel by offering a risk-free
consult.
- Monitor
brand mentions: Use a social listening tool
like Social Mention to monitor and contribute to
conversations happening in your niche.
- Create
and share an original infographic: A tool like Piktochart requires no design or coding
skills, and costs start at only $29 per month — much cheaper than hiring a
designer to do it for you.
Blogging
- Contribute
guest posts to a well-known industry site: To find blogs to contribute to, do a search for “your niche” +
“guest post”.
- Hold
free webinars on your site: If you’ve investigated webinar software, you already know how
costly they can be. Not to mention that most require a monthly
subscription — not exactly small business-friendly! A great, low-cost
alternative is using a WordPress webinar plugin like WebinarIgnition. It has a one-time cost of $97
for unlimited webinars with unlimited attendees.
- Partner
with a complementary business to co-sponsor a contest: Co-sponsoring the contest gives you access to each other’s
audience, maximizing your efforts. Submit your contest to popular sweepstakes sites to extend the reach of your
contest.
- Install
a free social sharing plugin on your site: Using a free WordPress plugin like Share Buttons ensures all your blog content can
be easily shared by your readers.
- Comment
thoughtfully on blogs in your niche: It’s perfectly acceptable to leave your website URL in the
appropriate field, just be sure to use your real name or business
name, not keyword-rich anchor text.
- Create
an award for businesses or products in your niche: Create a simple badge using a free program like Canva,
and then write a blog post of the Top 10 _______ (e.g., Top 10 websites
for Web designers). Award each of the winners with a badge that links back
to the post. This strategy works best once your site has built up a
reputation in your niche.
Other
Channels To Get Yourself Out There
- Join
relevant industry forums and respond to questions with helpful advice:I’m not talking about
writing spammy, thin comments just to gain links back your site. Make
meaningful contributions to conversions to capture the attention of other
readers.
- Sign
up with HARO (Help A Reporter Out) to get free PR for your
business:Respond
to relevant media queries and land free mentions and links in publications
like Huffington Post, Forbes and other popular outlets.
Haro - Sharing your expertise may land you that big media
opportunity you’ve been looking for.
- Email
a well-known business or influencer in your field with an authentic
testimonial: Businesses love receiving
testimonials, and many times will post them on their website (along with a
link).
- Invoice
your business like a pro: Make sure that you’re billing your clients on time each month
as well as keeping track of everything. I personally love Due invoicing as it’s a free option
that invoices clients, and for a small fee you can bill people over
PayPal.
- Answer
questions on a Q&A site like Quora: These sites consist of real people looking for answers to
questions. Search the site for relevant questions you can answer
intelligently.
- Etsy,
Pinterest, Instagram