How to Sell Watches Online: 6 Steps to Profits on Time

Intro

Selling products online can be a rewarding hobby, or possibly a very profitable career change if done right. But there are a few steps involved to pursue this type of adventure. I’ll show you how to sell watches online as an example, and various ways to go about it.

The online world has given all of us these types of opportunities, the ability to create a passive income from our home PC or laptop. But it’s those that see out the journey that succeed and prosper whilst the majority drop away.

By this I mean that it’s not a venture that can be created in a week, and have money coming through the door from week 2 onward. It doesn’t work like that. Yes, anyone can achieve it, but it does take a bit of time and education to profit and thrive.

There are 2 variations on how to sell watches online and both are viable options.

The affiliate marketing option will not make you as much money per sale, as it’s commission based. But there are so many other benefits to the affiliate marketing model.

Building your own store, with your own branded watches is the other method. This can be much more profitable due to your own price mark-ups. However, you will have to deal with some obstacles such as shipping, taxes, international currencies and inventory storage (unless you’re drop-shipping).

So, let’s check out these two options in more detail.

Alternative 1 – Affiliate Marketing Model

Step 1 – Choose a Brand & Model

Here’s a question for you. How many watches are there on the market at any one time? Think about the genres of watches if you will. Sports watches including fit-bits, smart watches that link to your smartphone, designer watches, analogue or digital watches and so many other types like roman numeral watches, nautical watches or aviation watches.

Now think about the brands such as Piguet, Cartier, Longines, Tudor, Omega and of course Rolex. What about watch works movements like the ever popular Quartz, mechanical or automatic.

What about themed watches like military, cartoon, vintage, novelty or collectable.

Can you see where I’m going with this? There’s so many types of watches on the market that it would be quite difficult to sell all types to all people. Not that you couldn’t, it’s just that the big players have these multiple markets covered.

If you’re contemplating starting up a website to sell watches online, I’d suggest you narrow your focus to a niche market. This way you can either target advertising to people that are interested in a chosen niche, or focus your SEO efforts in this direction.

Step 2 – Setup a Website

As this is an online enterprise, you’re going to require a website. So how is this achieved when you’re a beginner, where do you start. A website is not that difficult to setup, especially if you have access to a website builder.

You could head over to a hosting provider, purchase a domain and sign up for them to host your website for an additional cost.

Alternatively, go to Wealthy Affiliate and use their website builder to create a website. This can be done for free. You can keep your free website on the free plan, or go premium and get all the affiliate marketing training provided. There’s also training on setting up and building out your website.

Step 3 – Create Content

The most tedious part of creating any website is the information you provided to your readers. However, it’s also the most important as it’s what is going to get your web pages onto page 1 of the major search engines.

Write a few blog articles about different types of watches to get the search engines to notice you. Google doesn’t particularly like websites with just affiliate links, it’s possible that they may even ban you, but unlikely.

However, good content will give you brownie points with search engines and place you in a better position than if you have no written content on your website. Learn how to write website content here.

Step 4 – Join Watch Affiliate Programs

There are many affiliate programs that you can join. Once you’ve been accepted into the affiliate program, you can grab your own unique affiliate links. These will be linked to your content review.

You can also add images of the watch which can also have your affiliate links connected to them.

It’s possible that you may have to go through a third party program to join some of these affiliate stores. This is totally fine and very common. Third party affiliate sites may include shareasale.com, Max Bounty or AWIN.

Step 5 – Write Reviews With Links

You’ll want to not only provide information about each watch but also offer a review of your own. If you can purchase the watch, great. If not, then go through the reviews from other websites of the same watch you’re reviewing.

Browse through the question & answers to see if there’s any additional information you can provide. This is a great source of information to see if there’s any oddities in the watch, or any unique features.

Step 6 – Wait for The Profits

So, you’ve built a website, created good content, joined some affiliate programs and added links to your products. Awesome, now it’s time to watch the profits roll in! Well, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news but it’s not always as simple as this.

Although this process is spot on, the competition on the internet is fierce these days, so any further education is a bonus. Adding keywords and learning how they are used is also critical to your ranking. To learn from the best in the business, check out my No.1 recommendation.

Alternative 2 – Your Own Shop Model

This second model involves setting up your own online store. This can either be a website, through a content management system such as WordPress, or via a specialised ecommerce web setup like Big Commerce or Shopify.

The second method would be more preferable as it’s much easier to create. It basically means the shipping, taxes, inventory calculations, payments and any other shop related functions are already included in your store. This can be more difficult to incorporate into a WordPress website, especially the payment gateway.

Step 1 – Choose a Brand & Model

Ahh, this is exactly the same as the affiliate marketing model. If you’d prefer not to sell a particular type of watch, simply don’t include it in your selling model.

Step 2 – Setup a Store

Head on over to Big Commerce or Shopify, and sign up for an account. You’ll be offered several themes to choose from to give your website a designer look.

You’ll have to setup your shipping options including whether your shop will facilitate international customers. Payment options will also need to be configured.

To help you with certain scenarios such as returned items or customer service, there are various plugins to help you out. Some of these plugins are free, others charge a monthly fee.

If you get in trouble with running a store like this, Adrian Morrison runs a great course called Ecom Success Academy.

Step 4 – Sign-up With Ali Express

Now, where do you think you’re going to get all your watches from? Well you could go into production and learn how to become a watchmaker, but that’s probably going to take more time than you’ve got.

There are two main options which are both viable. The first is to come up with a brand for your watches. You can then buy your watches in bulk from a website called Alibaba. When you purchase these watches, its possible to have each watch branded with your specific logo. Minimum orders are usually 100-200.

The alternative option is to sign up to Ali Express and use their AliPlugin to add watches to your website quicker. Ali Express is the offshoot store of Alibaba where you can purchase in lesser quantities. Running your store as a drop shipping company is a very popular model which can be done by purchasing a single item at a time.

Ecom Success Academy shows you exactly how to run your store as a drop shipping company.

Step 5 – Add Content to Your Store

Once you’ve worked out your business model of drop shipping or your own branded watches, it’s time to add them to your store. This is a fairly simple process of uploading photos of your watch, adding a description and any variables such as colour or size.

Obviously you’ll also need to add a price for your watches. This is the greatest part of your own shop model. The profits can be large as it’s up to you to dictate a price. You may purchase each watch for $20 each and sell them for $50 each. I’ve seen bracelets bought for $10-$15 and sold for over $200!

Not everyone can achieve these results, in-fact it’s highly unlikely. But it has been done before.

It all comes down to how you brand your store and how well you run it.

You can also include SEO information so that you categories and products can rank in search engines.

Step 6 – Promote Through Advertising

As this selling model costs more in setting up due to the actual store itself, various plugins and inventory, you can’t afford to to wait months on end for your website to rank highly in Google. For this reason, you’re going to have to advertise.

Facebook and Adsense are two of the more popular advertising options, with Facebook being my preferred choice. That’s because Facebook know everything about everyone. Every FB subscriber ‘Likes’, ‘Shares’ and ‘Follows’ so many posts and articles, and FB use this information for advertisers to target their audience.

And yes, if you intended learning how to advertise on Facebook, Ecom Success Academy teaches this also.

Wrapping Up

Selling watches online is not much different to selling other products online, like weight loss or bag products.. It can be a great choice of product because the mark-ups can be quite generous.

First, you need to decide the following. The two models of selling I’ve explained are very different. The affiliate marketing alternative has less risk involved, less expense and in my opinion, less stress. There is no need to deal with customer complaints, taxes or shipping issues.

On the other hand, running your own Big Commerce store can offer larger profits, which is what an online business is all about.

Both models can make good returns though, so give it some thought and make a start. You won’t make money without action!