There are many good things about living near plants, and the internet is full of information about them. Some people like to keep a plant on their windowsill or in the corner of their living room, and others like to grow a garden at home. But some people like to sell plants online as part of an online business.
And if you’re one of them, we’ve come up with the best tips to help you start and run your online business. Our complete guide will show you how to get started, what to think about when choosing a platform, and how to market your plants to reach the right people. We’ll also tell you how to price and ship your plants so that you can make the most of your online plant business.
Is it worth it to sell plants online?
It is a great idea to sell plants online. Ecommerce has grown a lot in the last few years and will continue to do so. You can make a lot of money if you sell plants well, because people want live plants all year long.
Also, selling plants not only helps you make money, but it’s also good for your health and fun to watch them grow. You’ll have to put some money into the business at the start, but it’s worth the risk!
How to Sell Plants Online: Useful Tips
So, if you’ve decided to sell plants online and are ready to start your own eCommerce store, the following tips can help:
Choose what to sell.
The first thing you need to think about is getting the right plants for your store. Before you choose plants, you should think about where you live, how easy it is to get to them, and how much space you have. You also need to think about how much money you can put into your online business.
As an example, you can choose from cacti or air plants as houseplants. Or, you can choose from plants outside. Choosing carefully is important if you want to sell plants online. Many common plants are easy to grow and sell to a large number of people. Some of the best examples are succulents, bamboo, landscape plants, orchids, aloe vera, and more.
Plants’ Sources
As you decide what kind of plants you want to sell online, you need to think about where to get them. You have two choices. One choice is to grow your own plants. It could be a choice for you if you like gardening and want to start a small business. Make sure you have enough time, the right tools, and the right equipment for the job so you can get to know the customer’s needs and meet them.
How to Sell Plants Online: Here’s Everything You Need to Know
The second thing you can do is work with a wholesaler. For example, you can talk to a local nursery about selling your plants together. They will sell your plants, but they will be marked with your logo. This choice is a bit cheaper and would be better for you if you don’t have much time.
Put the plants on display
No matter how hard you work to grow and take care of your plants, if they don’t look good, you won’t make any sales. To get people’s attention, you have to put in extra work to make your plants look great. If you sell plants online, you can show them off with great photos and descriptions of the products.
To get a customer’s attention, you need photos of your products. People will want to buy your plants if they look nice and have a lot of color. There can’t be any distractions in the photos, and you need good lighting, a good background, and everything else needed to make your photos look good.
The description of a plant tells the customer what they need to know about it and why they should buy it. You can tell them the benefits of having the plant in their home and other things that show how beautiful it is.
Prepare the shop
To sell your plants online, you can choose the best platform for you. Shopify is one of the best examples. There, you can set up a profitable dropshipping store and get your business off to a good start. Your online store needs to be built well, and platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce can help you grow.
Visit the platform’s website, sign up, pick a domain name, pick the best theme, add your products, and choose how your customers will pay. You only need that much to start your online store and keep it running well.
Price Your Plants
A very important part of your online business is the price of your plants. You should charge a fair price for your plants. Still, you should always think about how much the plants are worth on the market. When setting the price of the plants, the location of the nursery, the quality of the plants, and how much people want them should all be taken into account. If the price is too high, customers will be less likely to buy your goods. If the price is too low, it will hurt your profit or income.
Since where plants are grown affects how much people want them and how important they are, your pricing strategy should reflect that. If people want the products but there aren’t enough of them, you can raise the prices. If not enough people want it, you can lower the price.
Prices can also be set based on the time of year. If it’s summer, you can raise the price of the goods because there are more people who want them. If it’s winter, you can lower the price of the plants because people may not want them as much.
The Store’s Marketing
Focus on your store’s marketing strategies if you want to reach the right people and bring them into your store. There’s no reason to spend time on managing your store’s inventory and other tasks. If you don’t have a way to market your store, people won’t be able to find it.
One of the most important parts of marketing is getting people to visit your website on their own. Paid ad services and content can be used to get people to visit your website. You could also spend money on SEO, which does the same thing. SEO is a strategy that makes your website rank higher on the page of search engine results. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is another option besides these two.
If you want to grow your social following and email list without spending a lot of money, post regularly and offer incentives for people to sign up. Through social media or a blog, you can add value to your site by establishing yourself as an expert in your field and giving away free advice. Spend some time making a content marketing plan and learning how to make your content search engine friendly. Putting content on your website can help you get free traffic that you can turn into sales.
How You Wrap Your Plants
If a customer likes what you’re selling and decides to buy it, you have to figure out how to pack and ship it safely. But you have to figure out the best way to pack the plants before you can move on to the last step, which is shipping. When packing plants, you have to be more careful than when packing anything else.
Plants are living things, so you have to be extra careful with them and make sure they are safe while you move them. Then, when you’re done packing, choose how to send the item. Other than that, you need to figure out the shipping time, the right courier service product, and the shipping costs.
Shipping
As was already said, you need to pay close attention to how you package and ship plants. Plants, especially ones that were grown at home, are fragile and need to be packed well. The best thing to do would be to talk to a reputable shipping company about your worries and how to ship your plants safely.
Also, you should know that the speed of shipping is a very important part of your eCommerce store. If customers don’t get their packages on time, it will hurt your store’s reputation and cause you to lose a lot of money.
But when you decide how to pack and ship your items, you need to keep in mind the following:
- Shipping Soil: If you want to ship soil or other organic materials from one country to another, you may need permission from the state government. Even if that isn’t true, you should still read about the process.
- Depending on the climate, your plants may need to be kept at a certain temperature. So, if you are sending them to a place where it is either very cold or very hot, you must add heat packs or keep them in freezers to protect the plants from the change in temperature. If these plants are left out in very cold or very hot weather for too long, it will hurt them.
- Shipping Cost: If the shipping cost is too high, customers will leave their carts. One way to save on shipping costs is to not add much soil to plants that don’t need much.
When choosing a service provider, be sure to use a delivery service that is open seven days a week. Also, the service provider needs to know if the customer wants the product to be sent on a certain date.
Stability of the Plant: When moving a plant from one place to another, its stability is very important. To keep the soil from falling out, you can put a cardboard collar or wood excelsior around the plant’s base. Also, make sure the plant has enough water to last the trip and that the whole thing is covered with bubble wrap or something else.
Last Words
If you decide to sell plants online, it may seem hard, but you can make money if you plan and act in the right way. Even if you work hard to run the store and market it, you may run into problems or make bad decisions, but you shouldn’t give up on the business because of that.
Learn from the mistakes other people have made and use the tips above to start, run, and grow your online business. As you make mistakes and learn from them, they will help you track your progress and get better. Make sure to keep judging your work, and don’t make the same mistakes twice. So, show your love for plants, turn it into a great business idea, and start selling!