How to Sell Homemade Soap

Have you made your first batch of soap? Did all of your friends and family oooh and aaah over it? If your friends and family were like mine, they had never tried any homemade soap before. And they instantly fell in love with it. So now you are thinking about how to sell homemade soap. Well, it couldn't be any easier than just what you have already done. Give some free samples away and let people try it. The good news about soap is that it is consumable. So when they run out, they will be back for more.

You can begin to sell soap by starting a customer list of people who already like your product. Next, brainstorm who else you can give a sample to. When you give out a sample ask them if you can follow up with them so see what they think of the soap. You can prepare a few general questions about the soap and how their skin felt. Be sure to ask them if they would purchase your soap as you are building a customer base. Get their permission to add them to your customer base and email list. I like email because it is cheap and efficient. You can offer them a special introductory price as a new customer.

You can also sell your soap at craft shows. Again, try to build your customer base. When you are able to build a relationship with your customers, they will become repeat customers. That will make you very happy. Then you will have people calling you for more soap and you will build your sales each month.

You can ask your customers for referrals as well. You can give a free sample to the referred person and again, ask if you can follow up with them to get their opinion about your soap. You will be surprised how, with effort, you can build a good customer base in a short period of time.

If you are thinking about how to sell homemade soap, but haven't made your first batch yet, please check out my website at How to Make Soap

Spa Gift Basket Supplies

In another post, I talked about how to encourage others to purchase more for you, thus resulting in higher sales/person. Another idea is to create custom one-of-a-kind spa gift baskets. What can you put into your spa gift baskets?

soap
bath salts
body butter
lip balm
massage oils
loofah sponges
netted poof scrubs
washcloths
small hand towels
coffee
flowers (I'd use artificial)
tea
biscuits
any type of organic edibles
and so on...........
I'm sure you can think of many good ideas. You can theme the baskets and add the specialty products for that theme.

One resource that I will recommend for spa gift basket supplies is Quinessence. They offer products that can help you expand your product line to create beautiful one-of-a-kind gift baskets. I do a lot of soap with Fragrance Oils because so many of my customers love them. But they also love good quality Essential Oils (especially lavender). Aromatherapy is very beneficial and many customers want those benefits. So you can list your features and ingredients in your products, but be especially sure to list the benefits -- THE BENEFITS SELL THE PRODUCTS!!!!!!!

If you know of a good business to add to my blog directory that is in the spa gift basket supplies area, please leave me a comment and I'd be happy to get their link on my website!

Remember, you can use aromatherapy benefits to sell your soap! And if you need any help learning to make soap check out my website at How to Make Soap.

Why Do Customers Buy More at a Lower Price?

Have you ever noticed that customers will buy more when you give them a deal? Why do customers buy more at a lower price?

I have noticed that grocery stores offer "deals" all the time. For instance they don't say everything is a dollar. Rather they will say 10 for $10. Even though they usually give you each item for $1 whether you buy 10 or not, the suggestion of 10 for $10 usually gets people to buy 10 and not just one or two. Why do you think this is?

I will give you my reason for this. In today's economic condition, I will always buy more at a lower price if it is something consumable, so that I don't have to buy it again next week at a higher price. (For more information on our economic condition you can visit my husband's financial website at Economy Carberator). But if I get to thinking I need to buy ten to get that price, then I will buy ten to get that price.

So I ask you, how are you doing in your sales this week? Do you need to get things going? It's a perfect time to get rid of some extra soap that may be laying around and offer a deal. What kind of "deal" can you offer? Some suggestions would be
buy 5 bars of soap and get an extra bar for FREE
put a soap package together where YOU get to choose the soaps (include one or two that didn't sell super well) and sell the soap package for special price. This is especially a nice idea for Mother's Day ( we are already past Valentine's Day)
Offer ALL customers a punch card where if they buy X number bars of soap they get one or two free. This can help build new repeat customers. If you are at a craft show and someone buys a few bars of soap from you and you give them a punch card and punch the card for them, they will very likely call you again (be sure your co. info is on that card!) Give your customers EXTRA punches when they buy five bars or more or a soap package from you at one time.
Give your customers an incentive if they sell a soap package for you. You know how those direct selling companies have "outside orders only types of classes"? You can offer a "hostess" a free bar of soap for every soap package she sells for you. You give the hostess a form that each buyer fills out so you can follow up with them and add them to your customer base. Make sure your form asks for name, address, phone number, and email. Also, helpful, if they are purchasing for a gift or for themselves.

I am sure you can think of even more incentives to get customers to buy more from you than just one bar of soap. I would love it if you would post your ideas in a comment. We can all help each other grow our soap making businesses.

Check out my website at How to Make Soap.

Can you make money selling hand made soap online

If you make soap, you may ask yourself, "Can you make money selling hand made soap online?" I will attempted to give you a few thoughts in regards to this endeavor.

First, do you know how to create a website and manage the website yourself? Website design is costly. If you do not have knowledge in this area, you could spend all of your profits creating, maintaining, and running the website (unless you have a huge volume of sales). I have heard many many individuals say they love their websites, but they do not make any money on it.

Do you know how to draw customers to your website. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of competing websites out there. How will people find you? Believe it or not.....you have to work daily on finding ways to draw people to your website. And you have to know how to capture these people to bring them back to your website. This takes consistant work.

Some ways to draw people to your website include:

Linking to other websites and having backward links with your keywords embedded in the link on their websites.

Listing your website in directories (again with backward links to your website with your key words embedded inthe link)

Writing articles for free newletter article directories that contain your website backward link

Paying for advertising (like pay-for-click)

Paying for directory listings

This is the tip of the iceberg. If you have the desire, time, and knowledge to promote your website, then selling online may be a good idea.

Can you afford to sell your soap at a price that will bring in customers and create repeat customers? Soap is very heavy, so it may not be easy to price your soap at a price people are wanting to pay and then add shipping on top of that. Are you willing to work for less profit if your soap doesn't sell at the price you normally sell it at?

One last thought. Many people have something they want to sell, so they decide they want to sell it on line.

But the real question is......"What do people want to buy?"

Selling something you want to sell is like putting the cart in front of the horse.

Rather, ask yourself....what do people want? And how do you find out what people want?

Can you make money selling hand made soap online? .....The answer is.......If there a demand for it.

If you can find a niche that is currently not being satisfied, you can do great. But...... you have to offer something people are looking for. Maybe it is a specialty organic baby soap, or a bug repellent soap, or an ordor reducing soap, or something else. It just needs to be something that people want, that no one else (or very few people) are selling. Otherwise you may be building a costly "lemonade stand" that is sitting at the same street corner as 1,000 other lemonade stands.

I hope these questions help you consider for yourself "Can you make money selling hand made soap online?"

You can check out my website at How to Make Goat Milk Soap