How to Start Selling Online Services in 2021

The year 2020 simply confirmed that digitization is not the future — it’s the present. The businesses that survived and thrived last year were those that were able to bring in their customers online. Even doctors, who always made it a point for patients to ‘come in’ learned how to set up online consultations.

Even as mass vaccinations continue on successfully, it’s difficult to imagine businesses and service professionals going back to the way they used to conduct their business or practice. So whether you’re a doctor, a lawyer, a tarot reader, or an industry consultant, you are going to need to start selling your services online if you want to remain relevant in 2021 and beyond.

Unfortunately, selling services online is much more complicated than selling products, where customers can simply order from a catalog and wait for you to ship their goods. You would need a lot more technical know-how to start peddling services online. Creating a ecommerce website with WordPress and WooCommerce to sell physical project.

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Here’s a guide on how you can start

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Selling Online Services in 2021

Identify Your Niche and Target Market

If you already have an established offline trade such as if you’re already a licensed dermatologist or a seasoned content writer, you can go ahead and skip to the next steps since you’ve already identified your niche and target market. However, if you just know that you want to start selling services online without a specific target in mind, you first have to decide what service you can sell, and to whom you can sell it to because all your next moves and decisions will ultimately depend on these considerations.Are you patient with kids and have a passion for teaching? Then you may consider selling private tutorial services with elearning visuals. Do you have a knack for visual communication and a powerhouse computer that can run editing software? Maybe 2021 is the year you become a freelance video editor. Dig deep and find out where your strengths lie, and your niche will be in that general area.

Decide Which Platforms to Use

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There are a lot of free and paid digital platforms through which you can reach out to clients, meet with them, or render your services. For example, there’s Zoom or Discord for online group sessions; or even Youtube to share video content; and a host of other sites to market and offer services in. You can opt to make your services available on multiple sites, but it’s best to keep it simple at first because all these platforms will have learning curves that you need to master in order to run a successful online trade. For instance, you need to master video gallery plugins if you want to use the platform to share pre-recorded videos.

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Put up Your Main Site

After deciding on which platform to use for every aspect of your online trade, you can start planning your main site. Your website should contain all relevant information about you, such as the services you’re offering, your rates, and relevant customer reviews to entice new clients to trust your track record. Your website can make or break your online business, so if you’re going to pay for web design services, make sure it’s worth it. Your web developer must have a firm grasp of your niche, as well as your target market. For instance, if you’re trying to sell virtual therapy sessions in the greater Kansas City, you need to look for a Kansas City web design company that is very familiar with the local scene but is also capable of making your site aesthetically pleasing bringing your business to potential clients nationwide.

Create Necessary Pages to Build Traffic

Aside from your main site, you would need social media pages and other secondary sites to share content with links that will drive more visitors to your main commerce site. Conducting business online is all about leading potential clients to your main site of business. You can try producing content on your own, but if you find that to be too time-consuming, there are a lot of freelancers you can hire to write and publish content — or run entire marketing campaigns for your business.

Establish Your Credibility

As mentioned earlier, your website must contain reviews from your previous customers. This is a good way to establish your authority as a professional service provider, as well as your expertise in your chosen niche. Keep in mind that offering services online is now part of the new normal, which means you would have to compete with a lot of other professionals just to get noticed online. Credibility and glowing reviews from past clients will be your means to stand out and succeed above the competition.

Make Yourself Available

If you’ve done all the steps herein mentioned successfully, the only thing left for you to do is to make yourself available for clients. After all, the efforts you made in driving visitors to your site will ultimately go to waste if interested customers can’t get a hold of you to buy your services.

That’s all the steps you have to do in order to start selling services online in 2021 and beyond. The earlier you start with these steps, the earlier you can start taking in clients before they are snagged by other service providers who have already mastered the art of selling their services online.

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