How to Sell Bags Online: As an Affiliate

Intro.

Have you ever had the idea of selling fashion products such as bags online. Do you actually know how big this type of opportunity is? Like many other fashion niches, you’ll need to do your homework, but it sure can be achieved.

In fact selling bags is a more diverse niche than you may first think. Imagine the possibilities, there’s the obvious is ladies handbags, but what about travel bags, toiletry bags, man bags, totes, beach bags, day-packs, shopping bags.

Then there’s all the accessories such as purses, wallets, umbrellas and all the other small bag fillers.

If you have a passion for bags, then this is one online opportunity that may just be up your alley. But how do you get started and what’s the best way to setup a store?

I’m going to run you through how this can be achieved and what options are available.

Which Setup Suits You

When it comes to creating an online site to sell bags of all sizes and types, you may want to consider how you’re going to setup this venture. Are you going to create your own bags to sell online, or use someone else’s bags.

As much as I admire anyone creating their own products, there are easier ways to make money online selling fashion products. If you do have your own bags ready to sell, I’d suggest setting up a Shopify or Big Commerce store. This works for products you create yourself, or items you can source from manufacturers for dropshipping. You can read more about setting up an online store here.

If you choose to sell other merchants products, you can receive a commission for each product you sell. This is known as affiliate marketing and is a rapidly growing industry. By promoting merchants products on your own website or blog, a percentage will come to you for your efforts to get a sale for approved companies.

So, the basic options you have are setting up your own store selling bags that can be obtained from manufacturers, or promote bags that can be purchased through merchants websites, earning you commissions. This is my preferred option, and I’ll allude to why later. It’s also the method of selling I’ll be concentrating on in this article.

Become an Affiliate for Bag Merchants

So, lets check out the affiliate marketing way of selling bags online. The idea here is to sign up to affiliate programs that are provided by companies, that require help with selling their products.

There’s a basic process that you’ll be required to follow, and the steps are as follows:

1. Create a website
2. Write content and reviews about bags that ranks in Google
3. Sign up to affiliate programs
4. Once approved, add affiliate links to your content.
5. Visitors click on your product and are taken to the merchants website
6. Visitor purchases the product, you make a commission.

That’s the basic process that will earn you money in the affiliate marketing business which can possibly earn you more than in your current job pays you, if done correctly.

Affiliate Marketing Education is a Must

I mentioned earlier that you require an education to become successful at this business, you may be thinking, where can I get this education. Well, you have a number of options.

When I began as an affiliate marketer, I thought I was pretty clever and knew it all. I messed around for a couple of years creating websites which had very little success. I decided that if I was to succeed at this, I needed to learn how others did it correctly. So I joined a few affiliate marketing educational programs, which opened my eyes to a few things I was missing.

I tried 3 programs and each had their benefits, but the best affiliate marketing educational program by far is Wealthy Affiliate. I’m still a member there, so if you’re considering becoming a member and learning all there is to know, read this review, then sign up. I can then help guide you with any questions you may have.

I did try other programs including Chris Farrell membership and Affilorama. Chris Farrell is great at teaching newbies with blank expressions! Unfortunately, he’s chosen to add up-sells to the program, something WA refuse to do. An up-sell, for those unaware, is an extra course of product for an extra cost.

Begin Writing Informative Content

I’m not too sure about you, but I don’t want to have to pay for visitors to come and visit my site. I’d prefer they found my blog organically via search engines, meaning it’s free traffic.

The only way this can be achieved is through a little hard work. When I say hard work, I don’t mean difficult. I mean rolling up your sleeves and writing great content that your visitors will appreciate.

Google loves fresh unique informative content, so if you can keep your website ticking over with articles like this, you’ll be in a good position to get ranked. Ideal content can be product reviews or comparison posts. With so many types of bags to write about, you’ll never be stuck for content.

Now, these written articles need to be SEO friendly. By this I mean they need the correct technicalities that all posts that rank highly encompass. Each post requires a particular keyword that people search for when surfing the web. Wealthy Affiliate will teach you all the intricacies of search engine optimisation. I should know, it’s how you found this page.

So, the number one factor to rank highly in the search engines, is great informative content written for SEO purposes.

Join Fashion Affiliate Programs

Once you’ve got a few posts up on your website, it’s time to apply to join some affiliate programs. Don’t expect to be accepted by all of them, some require you to have a certain amount of visitors to your website before being considered. Don’t be discouraged by this, you can come back and join these when you are getting more website traffic.

Many others will gladly accept your application. One of the best places to begin is Amazon, through their Amazon Associates program. Most people are accepted immediately but if you don’t get 3 sales within the first 6 months, your account will be shut down. I always recommend waiting 3-4 months before signing up to Amazon. This gives your website time to mature and rank.

Remember, this is a long term online business, it’s not a sprint. The more you put into this venture in the beginning, the more it will pay off down the track. The more articles you have indexed in the search engines, the more opportunities for sales. So keep on writing reviews and other content. Here’s where you can learn how to write website content.

When you get accepted into an affiliate program, you’ll need to login to your new account to get your affiliate links. These are just a small piece of code that you can add to your images or text. Each product you promote will have a different code, that sends a visitor to the correct page on the merchants website. You don’t want to be advertising a tote bag and have your visitor be sent to a page selling suitcases.

What Happens When You Get a Sale

So you’ve done all the hard work. You’ve written many product reviews and blogs about various bags, now is the time to cash in. Once you’re starting to gain more traffic, you’ll begin to get more clicks on your posts. Your visitors will be sent to the merchants site to hopefully make a purchase.

If a purchase is made, you will make a commission based on the payout terms for that merchant. It may be percentage based or a set fee.

The link you were initially provided from the merchant will have your ‘ID’ within it. This is how the affiliate program can track which website makes which sales. Don’t forget to add your payment details to the affiliate program, or you won’t get paid.

I mentioned earlier why affiliate marketing is my preferred method of selling. The reason is, that there’s no need to deal with taxes or shipping, inventory or customer complaints, returned items or refunds. With affiliate marketing, you may not make as much profit (although you can still make a pretty packet), but there is no stress involved with these other issues. This is all incumbent on the merchant selling the actual product.

Wrapping Up

So, what do you think? Is this for you, or are you not disciplined enough to follow through. Maybe you’re searching for a quick buck to be made on the net. Unfortunately, there’s no real option for this. Those websites promoting quick riches for little work are full of crap. They are scam sites and you need to steer well clear of them.

Affiliate marketing is a genuine online business opportunity that anyone can achieve, but you’ll need to work for it. You only need to set aside an hour or two each day to build out a website. Without you knowing it, your site will gain authority over the time if you’re consistently adding content.

This is not just an opportunity for those wanting to sell bags or fashion items online. It’s for anyone wanting to sell anything online! There are affiliate programs in just about any niche you can think of.

So if you think you’ve got what it takes to build your own empire and leave your job, read on below for more information on getting started.