With so many opportunities to sell your services, plugins and themes to a wide audience, here’s a little advice on how to be the best vendor whether you have your own store, are selling on a Marketplace like ours or others like Envato – here’s our top 5 of what makes a great Vendor.
- Produce well thought out products that have a long shelf life. It is very easy to come up with an idea, but, it is not so easy to make a product that lasts, is relevant and can sell for a price that makes it all worth it for you and for the customer.
- Keep your plugins and themes up to date. Ensure that your products work with the latest version of WordPress, the particular page builder you have chosen to work with and ensure that WordPress protocols on security are adhered to. There is nothing worse than a user feeling let down because your product doesn’t work with the latest version of either WordPress or your chosen page builder. If you cannot do this due to API issues or the theme or page builder updates too often – tell your users the truth and make sure they know how to use the version you are selling properly in your product descriptions.
- Support, Support, Support. This means a lot to everyone, if you give dreadful support, are rude to your users or just plain ignore them, you are heading down a rocky road. Support also means being flexible. Of course, the best way to avoid support issues is to build a product that has detailed documentation and just works, right? Here is a great book written by a friend of mine – it highlights the need for great helpdesk habits – let me assure you – each member of my team have to read this as well – I urge you to buy it and absorb the content – it will pay you dividends.
- Make sure your demos are perfect! If you want users to buy your product – ensure all your demos work, have no errors and are mobile responsive at the very least. It’s a great idea to make sure your demo URLs are also HTTPS – so many reasons why – and if you don’t know why – think about getting another career – you are web developers, – make sure you show your customers that you do things the right way – all the time.
- Pricing – assign a value to your products that allow you to give great support, innovate and update. It’s no good selling something for 5 bucks if it costs you 6 bucks to support, price it right for you AND your customer.
In closing, the above will help you and the marketplace of your choice sell your products consistently, at great prices and keep your customers coming back to your products because they KNOW they work, have great documentation and support when needed.
Remember – 1 Bad Review goes a lot further than 10 good ones – be the very best you can be and your products will sell – like the proverbial hotcakes.
Andrew is the founder of Elegant Marketplace.
