BenWalters
Junior Member
- May 21, 2014
- 127
- 76
I know I am new here but I have used this site a ton to learn and grow my business(es) over the years and feel obligated to give back in a meaningful way. If an admin/mod wants me to verify any of this, I have no issue with doing so in private. This is not a get rich quick scheme, involves a good deal of work, and is not really a business you can leave on autopilot. That being said, you can make some serious money at it 
My main business involves selling physical products at premium prices, usually around $1500-$20,000 a pop and I leverage a large, organic, social media following on Facebook to do it. In short, using my model involves the following:
To do what I do, you will need the following:
So, step by step, lets go through each of the points in my first list. Number 4 can be executed while you do the rest, but that depends on your niche.
1. Finding Your Niche and Product:
You need to find out what you will be flipping. A GOOD niche to be in is one where:
2. Branding Yourself as a Guru:
You will be using your personal Facebook account to do this. Lets pretend you are a solid mechanic and decided to flip cars (although that would be a horrible idea because the market is too transparent). You need to:
3. Building an Organic Facebook Following:
You will need a network to buy and sell to and Facebook is going to give it to you! This is the longest and probably most useful section of this post as it can be applied to just about any business and/or niche.
2. Pre-promo Following & Content:
3. Aggressive Growth:
Buying and Selling Product + MISC
Feel free to ask questions. Like I said, I just want to give back to the community because I have leveraged a lot knowledge I learned here over time. I think there are a few things I may have forgotten as I whipped this out pretty quick.
My main business involves selling physical products at premium prices, usually around $1500-$20,000 a pop and I leverage a large, organic, social media following on Facebook to do it. In short, using my model involves the following:
- Finding YOUR niche.
- Branding yourself as a "guru".
- Building an organic following.
- Leveraging your social media network and following to sell physical products. For the purpose of this guide, lets pretend I am selling cars. Basically I'm using a social media network to "flip" cars. I buy low, and sell high. My network allows me to buy lower, sell higher, and do both at a much faster rate than anyone else in my niche. I'm sure you could sell info-products using my method as well.
To do what I do, you will need the following:
- Good English skills.
- You should probably be located in Canada, the US, or Europe.
- A small amount of capital. This will depend on the niche you decide to get into. I used about $1800 to start in my niche.
- Natural proficiency at handling peopl
- In-depth knowledge about something. I'll show you how to figure out what that something is later.
- Willingness to work hard. This is not a get rich quick scheme. More of a get rich sorta-quick scheme.
So, step by step, lets go through each of the points in my first list. Number 4 can be executed while you do the rest, but that depends on your niche.
1. Finding Your Niche and Product:
You need to find out what you will be flipping. A GOOD niche to be in is one where:
- Market transparency is low. This means that it is hard for potential buyers and product suppliers to figure out what they should be paying you, or selling to you at.
- A variety of well-populated forums about your niche exist. Users on these forums should have money. A broke niche is a worthless niche.
- Several marketplaces for your product exist. You will primarily be buying your product off forums, your social media network and maybe sites like eBay - although the excessive fee structure on eBay is making it less and less viable.
- Your product is easy to ship. My product is about $80-$200 to ship, its quite a bit, but not horrible.
- Your product does not spoil or decrease in value overtime. The best part of my business is that I can often hold onto product without it decreasing in value, in fact it often does the opposite.
2. Branding Yourself as a Guru:
You will be using your personal Facebook account to do this. Lets pretend you are a solid mechanic and decided to flip cars (although that would be a horrible idea because the market is too transparent). You need to:
- Clean up your Facebook by getting rid of anything moronic you've posted in the past. This includes petty fights, most of your inane drunk selfies, posts with horrible grammar, and anything that makes you look broke. Nobody is going to believe you know what you're doing if you're broke.
- Acquire knowledge about your product.
- Decide on the image you would like to portray. Research personal branding, and figure something out.
3. Building an Organic Facebook Following:
You will need a network to buy and sell to and Facebook is going to give it to you! This is the longest and probably most useful section of this post as it can be applied to just about any business and/or niche.
- Set up.
- Decide how you want to portray yourself. It?s important to be authentic, responsive, and consistent. Put up personalized content such as photos of your day, respond to comments, and do so in a consistent manner.
- FFS, don't set up a business page. You are flipping things as a person, not a dealer. This is crucial because Facebook has reduced the visibility of business page?s posts to only 1% of people who have ?Liked? the page. However, the amount of people that see posts made by a personal account ? even if they have them ?followed? ? is much higher. This strategy saves you countless dollars on heavy advertising and lets you engage your audience more effectively. If, for whatever reason, you decide to you would have preferred to use a regular business page instead of a personal account, then you can convert your profile into a business page in about 5 minutes.
- Make sure any online content you have posted before that you are proud of, links back to your personal FB. Encourage people to follow you on that content too.
- Fill your fb out properly, make sure its not missing anything. Don't be stupid and put out too much info though.
- Make sure your profile picture is clear and professional. Bonus points if it is the same as your other social media accounts like Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Create accounts on forums in your niche, and start posting the occasional comment. Don't spam, ever. Its stupid and doesn't do anything for you. Your goal is to be an authority.
2. Pre-promo Following & Content:
- Before you start aggressively building your following, it is crucial that you have pre-existing content on your personal page. The last thing you want is traffic arriving on your page and not have them sub to you because there was nothing relevant on your page.
- Post one or two updates per day for about a week. All status updates should include a high resolution photo, be short in length, and easy to understand. This means higher engagement and more people reading your material.
- Ask close friends and family to Like anything you post. This provides social proof for traffic arriving and makes them more likely to friend or follow.
- Search for Facebook pages that are relevant to what your niche is. Use a tool such as Social Lead Freak or Fanpage Karma to find the most active ?fans? on these pages and add them. After adding them, send them a brief and honest message that explains to them why you added them. Here is an example:
?Hi! Thank you for accepting my friend request, I saw you post on [name of page you pulled their name from], [qualifier for adding] [niche of Facebook page you pulled their name from]. Stay in touch!"
3. Aggressive Growth:
- Pitch various pages related to your niche about posting you and some content you have created. It might be a cool picture of product you recently acquired to flip or an article about the niche. They must link to your personal profile when posting and include a call to action in their post. You might have to pay people for this, but its WAY WAY WAY cheaper and more effective for building an organic following (aka people with money) than wasting money on ads.
- Remember the forum/reddit accounts you created in the set up phase? Start posting more actively. Do NOT spam forums, make sure anything you post is useful, usable, content that builds yourself up as an authority in the niche. They should all link back to your fb and encourage people to follow you in the sigs.
Buying and Selling Product + MISC
- Again, this depends on your niche. I usually buy off eBay, Craiglist, Forums and my social network, then resell on the same platforms. Although its important not to sell a product you bought off the same platform as you will likely be blasted for reselling at a higher price.
- Never ever do anything that would jeopardize your reputation. Your reputation is what is going to enable you to buy at a lower price than anyone else, and sell at a premium price!
- I like buying product that is going up in value over time. When I post selling product on my fb (very sneakily!), and I get leads on it. I follow up with each lead with a phone call, I clearly demonstrate how the product has gone up in value and beat the S&P 500 in some cases. My product has nothing to do with finance, but it impresses people.
- You cant tell anyone you're flipping, they should feel like they are just buying off a famous guy who wants to get rid of some stuff.
- Only offer product once a week or less.
- Use your guru status to make connections with people that are HUGE in your niche, promote product in exchange for discounts, etc... I used my connections to be friends with people who have organic followings of around 40k+. They post my product for sale and I can usually move it fast that way.
Feel free to ask questions. Like I said, I just want to give back to the community because I have leveraged a lot knowledge I learned here over time. I think there are a few things I may have forgotten as I whipped this out pretty quick.
