Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 10 Episode 5. This is a recap of my Facebook live video where I talked about how to create an online shop for your website.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
03:20 Why are we doing this episode
05:10 What can you put in an online shop?
08:50 How to put an online shop on your website
12:20 Subscription service
Whilst you’re here
Follow Boostly on the following channels to get more tips, tactics and knowledge on how you can increase your direct bookings
Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
It's really, really important that for your business. And this is something that I think we've learned, really in 2020 more than any other time. But it's really important for your business and even hospitality, that we have multiple streams of income coming in. And I think what has really impressed me with members of the Boostly Academy, members of the hospitality community, just people who tune in and subscribe is what they've done this year, to either maybe pivot their income or do something that they're not used to do. And, and that's been really, really, really positive. And it's something that has really impressed myself and so many of us it's, it's it's really has been like fantastic to see.
When it comes to having an online shop or an online product, it may seem just totally alien to so many people that are watching this right now who have got maybe a bed and breakfast or a hotel or even like a rental property. But if you can sort of crack this and if you can get online and get this part visible then it will just mean that you have got an extra revenue stream coming in to your business. And the beauty of it is, is what I'm going to show you is something that that you can do, and you can also build local partnerships in your area.
What can you put in an online shop?
While there may be some of you watching this, who have got cookbooks, recipe books, you know, your amazing chef, some people have commented saying how good your cooking is. And, you know, can they have recipes and have the cooking that you've been doing and the recipes that you come up with the dishes that you do. And you may have thought about having a, a recipe book. But it's all you know, you've just thought, well, it's printing costs. And all of that, well, what you can do is you can create a PDF of this, you can easily do it in Fiverr. Or you can go to somewhere like Upwork. So you can go to Canva. Or you can go to Upwork, or Fiverr, and have somebody do it for you, you can just tell them what to put in. And then they can create a very beautiful, stunning PDF that you can get put onto your shop. And you can sell.
So again, those are just some ideas that we can take from the world of hospitality. But if you're not a good chef, or if you haven't got, you know, the motivation to do something like that. And then here's another idea. And this is something I've seen people doing it. And it's such a good idea.
Whether we like it or not, from what 2020 has shown us is that every single business, every brick and mortar, especially shops, or something that's got a product to sell, is having to shift online. And there's some that have been really quick to this and have been super fast, they've got their products online, and there's some that haven't, and then maybe somebody in your local area, there may be a friend of yours, or just a business that you go to a lot. And you notice that they haven't yet pivoted online. And what I'm going to show you, I'm going to show you how super simple it is. But some people think that it's a lot harder than it actually is to get online. Now, if you are really proactive on this, and you can create this on your website, say over the course of the next seven days, then what you can do is you can pick up the phone, or you can go on Facebook, or wherever. And you can contact that person and just say, hey, so I noticed that you haven't gone online yet, have you got an online shop? Would you like to have a partnership where you would sell me the product and knock down costs. And what I would then do is I would then sell it online, and then you can sell it on your shop and and all that you would do is you would work together that rate or commission or whatever it may be. And you can leave them to take care of the postage. But it's it's a no lose for them. And it's a no lose for you. So all you're literally doing is you're talking about and promoting the service or the product. And they the person who doesn't have to do the faff of getting online, they can actually get income as well, even if they can't actually have people come into their shop right now.
And you can do it with one or you could do it with two or you could go get like a local group of use. If you know that as a network of local business owners who are really struggling and they've got these amazing products, but they're not got them online, then you can take the lead on this. And you can say, oh, I'll load it up. You just pay me a referral rate or sell on rate or whatever 10, 20, 30%. And I will go and sell it online. And again, this is something that you can do locally, you can go a little bit further, you can start to reach out to people and see if there's anything you can do on that. And again, these are the sort of things that you can put on on an online shop, you can put on whatever you want. That's the beauty of it.
How to put an online shop on your website
Your life is going to be so much easier if you have a WordPress website, and you will know if you haven't got a WordPress website, because just by the simple fact when you when you log in to the backend of your website.
So I use WooCommerce. So WooCommerce is a plugin that you add on to your website, your WordPress website, and is basically your online e-commerce shop.
Now, I've been using this for well over a year. And what I love about this service is that it's low cost to get set up. But it just makes life so much simple. And it connects to stripe, it connects to PayPal, whatever the payment system that you're using, it can simply connect to. And all that it does, it just sits within your Word Press website. So to get started with you create a login, you click on get started, what it will do is it will give you a plugin that you will go and add to your website. So and when you go to your back end. When you come into the back end, if you just go into plugins, and you click on add a new plug in this system will give you the download it will be a zip file. So you take it, you come into here, you click on plugin, and you click add new, and then you will load it.
And when this page loads up, you'll see at the top, it will say upload the zip file, upload the plugin. So it's right there. All you do is click on that, and it will come into your system. And when it is into your system, it will look like this.
My WooCommerce online shop has brought in at 4137 pounds worth of online sales. It tells me how many orders have come in, it tells me what has been the top seller, it tells me all the information that I need. And again, the cool thing, what I really like about WooCommerce is that not only can you use it for one-off products, and I've spoken about this quite a lot recently, and it's something that I think everybody should be having a having a look about.
Subscription service
And I've definitely been speaking about it within the Boostly Academy is talking about developing a subscription service. You'll notice, and you'll hear about this a lot at some of the big chains in the world of hospitality is trying to create subscription services.
Now just because the big chains are doing, it doesn't mean that those smaller independents can as well. If you are fortunate enough to have a very good social media account, or social media page and email following, you've got regular guests who know like and love you, then try and think of a monthly subscription service that you could create, that somebody would pay to to be part of, you could call it your inner circle, you could call it your VIP group, you can call it whatever you want to call it. And in now you will just have maybe recipes, if you're gonna do the cookbook route, you can do exclusive discounts, and people want to come and stay with you, or whatever it may be. But you can set all of this up in WooCommerce. So again, the beauty of this service is that number one, you can have it for one-off purchases, or number two, you can have it for a subscription.
Now, once you've added it in, then you want to get started. So what you do is you come into WooCommerce, and you come down to products, and you will just click Add New. And if anybody has ever loaded anything into any online website before, then you will know how easy is to add-in. And you literally give it the product name.
And again, you put the price. So if it's going to be a one off cost, you just call it what it is if it's going to be a subscription, you've got simple scripts subscription here. So if you're going to create your Grainary VIP group 599 every month for example, and you will set it up that way or if it's going to be a one off product you create as a simple product. You will tell him if it's virtual or downloadable, we've got the downloadable virtual product right there. regular price 9.99 if you want it to even have a little sale, so 5.99 if you want to have it as a little sale, too.
Once you've created your PDF, so you've gone on Fiverr, or Upwork, and somebody has helped you to design a fantastic PDF, you could put it in there quite simply and upload it. There's no download limits or anything like that, obviously. And then again, you would give it just a super quick bonus subscription here.
And the final things to do is I'm just going to move some boxes out of the way there in my way, it was way to add your image, product gallery, which is down there, once you've added the product gallery, once you've added the image, you will hit Publish.
I'm gonna hit the Preview button. And when the page loads up, it will show you exactly what it looks like.
And then all that the user would then do also all the customer would do, click on Add to basket and they would check out and it says easy. And as simple as that. And within a matter of minutes, you have got an online product that is for your business, you've got a chance then to email out to your list, you can put a post out on on social media and you can inform people of your new online product, whether it is a recipe book or whatever you decide to do.
And again, the reason why I wanted to do this episode and the reason why I wanted to show everybody the simplicity of it is that right now, if you are on lockdown, right now, if you can't open and if you can't take guests for whatever reason. And if you're want to make full use of your time, then on your WordPress website, right now you've got the ability to go and sign up to WooCommerce, you can either upload something that you can easily sell. So if you've already got, say, a farm shop, but you haven't been able to get the things online, you can add the option to upload it online.
Or you can start to network in your local area, start asking around on Facebook groups, if you don't know anybody just start googling local shops that have got big reviews or good reviews in your local area, reach out to them, give them a phone call, send them a message I'm sure that right now they would love to have some extra ideas or ways to get income into the business. And again, if they haven't done so already, they haven't done so for a reason. And you construct a strike up these partnerships and business relationships.
And, and the cool thing about all of this is that when locked down to do and, and when you can reopen and when you can take on guests is that all of this has been created, all of this has been set up. So you've generated for yourself an extra income. And whether it is just gonna make a small needle of a difference maybe two or 3% to your monthly or your annual revenue, then it's something that you've already created. And for the most part, depending on what the product is, it can be hundred percent passive, which is what every business owner wants to strive to be is have passive income coming in into their business.
Before you leave
Please go and rate, review and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify Google Play or Anchor or visit Boostly Hospitality Podcast for the full list of episodes!
