Online Store Visibility

Hello BHW,

Me and my wife recently bought some second hand clothes to try and sell online and I have some questions regarding Instagram and Facebook visibility.

Can anyone help me find some guides on how to build a local following, organically, for a store? Both on IG and FB.

First, make a website and start an Instagram and FB page. If you have some budget then boost it. You will get some profit for Sure. Otherwise, SEO is best. It will take time but worth it.

Thanks for the reply.

We are planning on doing it low budget and in the country we're living Facebook works better for selling second hand clothes.

What kind of SEO could work for Facebook? IG I guess hashtags and liking pictures of targeted audience around my area could work?

I'm not sure of a guide, but there are a few ways for you to generate a following.

• Consider searching for DIY/hobbyist/crafts subreddits on Reddit.
• Get a list or manually search for all of the "for sale" groups/pages, all of the hobbyist and crafty DIY type groups/pages, and casually advertise your page/group/website.

Create some fake facebook accounts. Try to use different IPs when signing up. There's a thread or two for that here:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/s...tating-proxy-with-your-android-phone.1100963/
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/never-buy-proxies-again-setup-your-own-proxy-server.872539/

Start interacting with your store on Facebook with these accounts and represent a fake buzz about your store. That's a cheap way to generate sales. Sometimes it really works.


Head on over to IFTTT and setup some facebook automation: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/how-to-use-ifttt-applets-for-social-media-automation.925869/

IFTTT can be used for many things. Do a search on the forum for some more info. I hope this helps you out!

If you want to build a local following organically, your best bet would be to pioneer the store yourself. Share it with your friends and family and have them do the same. Otherwise I would invest a small amount yo target your local area with ads.

I doubt IG and Fb is going to be of much help, try ranking locally and use listing sites like craiglist etc. Use ebay and other similar sites. Just my personal opinion.

InstaBen said:

If you want to build a local following organically, your best bet would be to pioneer the store yourself. Share it with your friends and family and have them do the same. Otherwise I would invest a small amount yo target your local area with ads.

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Thank you for your advise! Much appreciated.

Nut-Nights said:

I doubt IG and Fb is going to be of much help, try ranking locally and use listing sites like craiglist etc. Use ebay and other similar sites. Just my personal opinion.

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Thank you for your reply! As mentioned above,in the country I am currently residing, people are using social media to buy 2nd hand stuff. (Facebook's marketplace, groups and I've stumbled upon some instagram thrift shops)

Also Craigslist and E-Bay are kind of irrelevant here, although I will look into Craigslist now to see if it's worth it, thanks again!

In 2015 I started selling export surplus clothes (these are clothes of famous brands that have some minor manufacturing defect in them so we get them from the factory for very cheap). I used Facebook groups a lot. What I can suggest from my experience is that if your photography is high quality, you will get more people interested in buying from you.

You don't need a high end professional camera for this. You can use your phone camera with a little bit of editing on Snapseed before posting them.

I used to post pictures on the group from Thursday to Sunday. And I never mentioned prices. I would write "for prices and pickup location please WhatsApp: xxxxxxxxxxx) So when someone messaged me, I would save their number and add them to a WhatsApp broadcast list. Even if they didn't buy immediately because of the weekly new arrival update messages on Whatsapp sooner or later these people converted to customers (it's like retargeting ads).

Since these are used clothes you'd be selling, you can brand and market your business from an eco-friendly, sustainable fashion, upcycled etc angle.

One thing I would suggest is, get your stock of used clothes laundered, ironed and packed like a brand new apparel. Also put your own branded hangtags and price tags to them. Don't wait for "first let me sell this and make 500 dollars, then buy more and make 1000 dollars". Go all in. Invest a little bit of money into branding it right and if possible do pop up shops / stalls in any fair or event you can find locally. Also offer delivery service.

Don't let anyone convince you that this business cannot become big. I pretty much started the same way (except that mine was unused clothes with defects cuz in my country people are not open to th idea of wearing used clothes). Now my business has grown into a brand with decent sales online and I also have two offline shops.

Check "Uptown Cheapskate" on Google. It's a big business in USA that sells used high end branded clothes.

All the best brother