Have you been hearing from every other friend of yours how he/she wants to start selling makeup online? Do you know that the cosmetics industry is growing very fast in 2021? And on top of that, with the easy tools available for people to build an ecommerce website these days, the e-commerce cosmetics industry is now more in trend than retail outlets that sell makeup. People are now more into selling makeup online than renting out shop lots that come with heavy overhead costs. The past decade has totally democratized the beauty industry which is no longer ruled by the few big brands. These days, anyone who has the basic know-how of makeup can sell makeup online.
Whether it’s a BB cream, a matte lipstick, a new mascara or a new shade of foundation, you can find someone selling it online. Besides, the makeup industry has a lot of room for innovation and newly explored niche markets. Trends in the cosmetics industry do not seize to change, and opportunities for those selling makeup online are simply uncountable.
If you are into cosmetics and are willing to make a move to start a passive income stream for yourself, you can also start to sell makeup online. All you need to do first is learn how to sell makeup online. There are many gaps in the cosmetics industry that you can fill. You wouldn’t need to create a demand for your makeup products. Simply do some research about the trending cosmetics and you’ll be able to penetrate through the existing market gaps. Many young entrepreneurs who sell cosmetics online are making good profit margins. They operate at minimum fixed costs and run marketing campaigns wisely.
Let’s discuss how to start a makeup line, and how to build a business from scratch in order to sell makeup online.
Steps to Take to Start Selling Makeup Online
Like any other business, you would need to follow a process to start selling cosmetics online. But it is simpler than you think, especially if you are passionate about makeup and already know a lot about the industry.
1. Conduct Market Research
The first step is to start selling makeup online is to find out which makeup products are in trend and high demand. You can do this by asking around in your social circle, as well as conducting surveys on social media and other survey-making platforms. Find out which cosmetics do people talk most passionately about. Next, try to figure out what products are high in demand but not enough in supply. Are there any types of cosmetics that people would love to have but cannot get in their locality? Is there a specific shade of makeup (e.g. lipstick) that many people are fond of but is always out of stock?
Get these answers questioned through your research. Make notes with the data that you collect, and then organize all the data to present it in charts and graphs. Once you have all this information, it will be easy for you to figure out how to sell makeup and decide exactly what makeup products to sell.
This step might feel a bit tedious, but it is the most important that you’ll need to take before you start to sell makeup online.
2. Get a Supplier
There are only two ways to sell makeup online or to sell any product, for that matter. First, you need to manufacture the product in your manufacturing unit. Then, according to your agreement, the other is to get a supplier who manufactures it and supplies it to you.
Before you start selling makeup online, you would need to find and negotiate with a cosmetics supplier who will provide you with the stock. For starters, you can get into agreement with a small-scale supplier who is willing to give you small portions of stock until you can build a sustainable customer base.
If you are short on budget, you can even negotiate with your supplier to provide you with stock as and when required. This means once you have an order and receive payment from your customer, you pay the product’s cost to the supplier and buy from him. In this way, you will not need to upfront any money to purchase stock in bulk. This technique is called dropshipping, and has recently gained popularity over the past decade as an effective strategy to make money with lean costs. You can sell makeup online as a dropshipper at first and gradually expand to other means of managing your inventory as you grow your business.
3. Build a Website
To sell makeup online, the best way is to have a platform for it of your own. First, you need to build a website for yourself. Don’t worry. Building a site is not as hard or technical as it used to be. Using a website builder, you can build a website from scratch that is easy and cost-effective to create and quite simple and cost-saving to maintain. Simply create a free account at Strikingly.
Image taken from Strikingly
That will give you access to your Strikingly dashboard from where you can choose a template from your web design, and start writing your web content.
Image taken from Strikingly
The easy-to-use drag-and-drop feature of Strikingly makes it very convenient for any ordinary person to create web pages without any programming skills. You won’t have to write a single line of code and will be able to make your website live in just a few hours.
Besides writing some basic information about yourself and your business, don’t forget to introduce your products and talk about their unique selling proposition. For example, to sell makeup online, you need to write a good sales copy to distinguish your products from the competition.
4. Add a Store to Your Website
To enable your customers to buy directly from your website, you would need to set up a simple store on your site. If you are building your e-commerce site in Strikingly, it is very easy to do this.
From your Strikingly editor, select ‘Add New Section’ from the left panel. Then select the ‘Shop Now’ section.
Image taken from Strikingly
In this section, you will be able to upload your product photos. Make sure to have quality product photography to make your cosmetics products look attractive. Often, the perceived value that customers place on products online depends on how good the displayed product photos are on the site. Since you are selling makeup online, your product photos would need to be colorful and show variety. Uploading different product shots for showing the different shades available in each makeup item would be a good idea. Make your customers feel like they can see the product in front of them to entice them to purchase.
Strikingly also has a beautiful feature to showcase the products you upload to your store to be showcased on your site’s homepage, giving an elegant look to your website’s landing page. To do this, click again on ‘Add New Section’ from the left panel of the editor, and select ‘Product Showcase’. The showcased products will appear as shown in the screenshot below.
Image taken from Strikingly
Write down a description for each product you upload and set up the prices. Ensure to set prices that allow you to have a margin and make a profit on every sale. Setting prices on your online store is a skill that you’ll get better at with experience.
Once your products are all set, remember to select a payment gateway through which you will receive payments. Have an option to accept credit card payments on your e-commerce website by connecting your site to Stripe, Paypal, or Square.
5. Promote Your Website
Now that you have an e-commerce website to sell makeup online, you need to promote it so people will find out about it and visit it to see your products. The best way to promote a site is to put in the effort to enhance its search engine optimization.
If you build your site in Strikingly, your website will get an SEO benefit of being promoted in the articles that we publish on our blog. We often mention our users’ websites in our blog posts to boost their search rankings. This method of promoting a site is called content marketing.
You can promote your site by other means, such as linking it to your social media pages and telling your friends about it. However, it is important to have traffic on your site to make any sales.
To keep an eye out on how your website is doing, use Strikingly Analytics to show you the number of visitors on your site at any given time. You can also choose to add your Strikingly site to Google analytics.
Image taken from Strikingly
Examples of Websites That Sell Makeup Online
Following are some good websites that you can look into as samples for selling makeup online, either in makeup products or offering makeup services.
1. Makeup Felony by Jen
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
2. Dav Beauty
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
3. WaooMart
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
4. Dhita Nerisa Makeup
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
5. Soorat
Image taken from Soorat
Now you know that selling makeup online is not so difficult after all. We have examples of so many websites that can successfully market and sell cosmetics online through their ecommerce sites. When you have a website builder available to you that neither costs much money nor effort, it becomes a fun experience selling makeup online.
Since makeup is a trending product these days, its competition will keep rising. But if you build a site with all the latest features, it will not be too hard for you to beat the competition and penetrate the market. So why not sign up for a free account at Strikingly today?
