Selling Online Through Instagram

I started my Instagram shop - Instashop in mid August. The first paid reviews went up on the last week in August, also known as payday week. I gained about 300-400 followers from those reviews and zero sales.

It is now end of October. I had one interested query but that was a backout buyer, therefore no sales yet as of now.

I looked online everywhere and most people only reccomend using instagram to promote your products and services as opposed to using it to SELL. I want to SELL damnit, SELL!!

I tried to break down the best ways to get sale through instagram and from what I see of what other non-branded instashops did is paid reviews bg someone with more followers than you. Basically two things contribute to sales;

1) Number of followers
2) Number of likes per photo

Number of Followers

Of course, if you have a lot of followers then it means that you are a trusted seller. If you are a trusted seller then people are more likely to buy from you. I can understand this very well, but there must be like a lower limit to this. I got my first (backout) buyer at 600 followers, but I am really trying to reach 1k follower first because I saw that many online sellers in the 1k-2k followers group swap reviews with each other for free. So there must be some success here at least.

Number of Likes per photo

As a buyer, it doesn't really motivate me to buy when a picture has a lot of likes. It just means that that product is popular. And may be put of stock. Maybe it is just my nature that I have a very specific taste so it doesnt matter if a product is popular and has a lot of likes. I won't just buy it because of this factor.

My ultimate goal is SALES. So whatever I do, SALES is the end goal. Therefore my logic right now is, the more followers you have, the more likely people are going to buy from you. And so my focus is then to increase followers. How to increase followers?

I even bought a book for this topic but I dont see succesful instashops doing anything in them. Ill update another time. What a lot of them ARE doing is swap reviews and paid reviews. That is, paying other sellers with more followers than them to advertise their instashop. Because I started with 10 followers, it was very slow going in the beginning and nobody told you what is the amount you shpuld spend, what kind of IG shops you should advertise at, and what kind of pictures work best. And also if paying celebrities to review your instashop is worth it.

So many things to cover and ponder!

However, after dealing with other online sellers I engaged for IG reviews, some of them gave me some valuable advice. I dont follow all of them, but these people have over 100k followers, so clearly they are doing something right. Among them:

1) single picture of a person wearing your merchandise works best, as opposed to cluttered  group pics
2) Fill up your Instagram account with 'stocks'. At that time I only had 10 pics in my account, being quite new. So she reccomended that I fill it up as much as I can with pics of stuff I'm selling. I suppose it makes your instagram looks like a catalogue. The more stuff to see, the longer people stay, and the more motivated they are to buy?
3) private your account during a review. So you can monitor how many followers you obtain during each review session.
4) There are peak hours to doing IG Reviews. To some it's 6pm, but mostly it is 8-10pm. You can see some sellers charge differently for each time slot. And when they do, the 8pm-10pm slot is always more expensive.
5) provide caption with the most information in the first 10 words. Because Instagram has this new thing where they will shorten your long caption and you have to collapse it to read the full thing.
6) Capture 'moments', not 'pictures'. I got this from the book on how to do promote your business through instagram. Because this is basically what instagram is about, capturing moments.
7) of course, be firm with your customers, always answer enquiries promptly and politely. Be professional and do not be overly familiar. Treat them with as much respect as possible. Online buyers tend to be very impatient. So set yourself "business hours" during which time you are available to answer queries and what not, and shut off after hours. It is important for your sanity. Of customers start spamming your IG becausr you didnt answer them quickly enough, simply be courteus. Answer them politely anyway because how ypu handle this situation will significantly affect your current and future buyers. Learn some customer service skills, just like in any retail and selling jobs.

I personally havent reached 1k yet, and I am trying to implement in some changes in strategy and hopefully I will be able to get some sales. Sad.

I shall keep you updated.

All the best!