4 Best Ecommerce Podcasts to Listen to in 2022

When you're starting an ecommerce business, it can be difficult to develop effective online marketing tactics. You may want to seek out expert advice, but that often comes with an expensive price tag.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ecommerce podcasts out there that are free and can serve as a valuable resource. These programs are hosted by industry experts who offer actionable advice on how to start your small business.

In this post, we'll discuss why ecommerce business podcasts are worth listening to. Then we'll suggest 4 shows that may help you improve your online store. Let's get started!

Why You Might Want to Listen to Ecommerce Podcasts

Over the past ten years, the popularity of podcasts has been steadily rising. These audio shows tend to be personal, portable, and engaging. Therefore, listening to them is now one of the easiest ways to learn about new topics.

Programs in the online business niche usually cover a wide variety of subjects, from online marketing to networking. Additionally, ecommerce podcasts tend to come in one of the following formats:

  • Interview: A recurring podcast host brings in different industry experts to ask them questions about their niche.
  • Conversational: Two or more hosts have an organic discussion about a specific topic that is related to business.
  • Educational: This may include one or more hosts who provide offer structured content that can be useful to the listener.

No matter the style, you'll likely benefit from tuning in to these programs. From discovering new industry trends to getting practical advice on how to grow your business, they are often gold mines of useful information.

What's more, there are currently lots of ecommerce podcasts available for you to stream. Regardless of your business' niche or your experience level, you're likely to find one that meets your needs.

4 Ecommerce Podcasts Every Business Owner Should Listen To

Now, let's cover 4 quality podcasts that cater specifically to online business owners such as yourself.

1. Honest Ecommerce

If you've received bad business advice, the Honest Ecommerce podcast might be for you. It aims to reveal truths about the ecommerce industry through its honest interviews between Chase Clymer and successful business leaders:

Honest ecommerce home page

Honest Ecommerce covers just about every topic, from creating long-term business plans to writing better emails. By listening to this podcast, you can gain actionable advice for running an online store, avoiding common mistakes, and reaching your sales goals.

Where to start: Are You a Store Owner or a Brand Owner?:

Honest ecommerce episode

In this episode, Clymer interviews Josh Firestone, who founded the clothing brand Bearbottom. They discuss Firestone's progression from being a party DJ to launching his own startup.

For beginner store owners who might be discouraged with their progress, they offer advice on staying passionate and patient.

Where to listen: You can find Honest Ecommerce on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher.

2. Built to Scale

On the Built to Scale podcast, hosts Darius Kunca and Justin Gecevicius explain how they went from broke university students to founders of AdKings Agency:

Built to Scale home page

Together, Kunca and Gecevicius have helped to scale many eight and nine-figure companies. Any business owner or ad specialist can benefit from their experience in developing successful marketing strategies.

By listening to Built to Scale, you can gain valuable insights on how to grow and scale a business. This program specializes in providing straightforward marketing methods and growth hacks that you can implement in your online store.

Where to start: Learn From Our Failures: Plan But Don't Overplan & How Simplification Is the Key:

Built to Scale episode

In this episode, the hosts give an example of a time when they overplanned a certain area of their business. They own up to this mistake and explain how you can plan more effectively.

Where to listen: Built to Scale is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

3. My Wife Quit Her Job

In My Wife Quit Her Job, host Steve Chou shares how he grew his online store to replace his wife's salary:

My Wife Quit Her Job home page

This podcast offers a series of interviews with successful entrepreneurs. My Wife Quit Her Job offers tips on how to achieve your financial goals, improve your sales, and leverage strategic marketing.

If you're a beginner business owner, this podcast may be for you. In many episodes, ecommerce experts talk about their failures and how they overcame them to reach their goals.

Where to start: Social Media Strategy For New Ecommerce Store Owners With Alex Rossman:

My Wife Quit Her Job episode

In this episode, Chou brings Alex Rossman onto the podcast to share his social media marketing tips. Rossman is the founder of Rossman Media, so he gives credible advice on how to improve your website's sales and organic traffic.

Where to listen: You can find My Wife Quit Her Job on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher.

4. eCommerceFuel

eCommerceFuel is one of the most popular business podcasts. The host, Andrew Youderian, created this program to build a community for ecommerce store owners:

Ecommerce fuel home page

By listening to eCommerceFuel, you can discover predictions about the ecommerce industry and learn from reports on major brands. You can also broaden your knowledge about business development and management from deep dives.

eCommerceFuel can be ideal for more experienced business owners. Although it has certain episodes dedicated to starting a store, most of its content focuses on more advanced techniques, such as outsourcing or sophisticated marketing.

Additionally, Youderian designed an ecommerce forum for vetted store owners who need helpful advice from their peers. There, you can build relationships, get quick replies to your business questions, or search the archives to access past discussions.

Where to start: How Beardbrand Left Amazon and Grew 58%:

Ecommerce fuel episode

In this episode, Youderian talks with Eric Bandholz about the big changes he made to Beardbrand in 2018. Although they discuss specific content strategies and practical business moves, the entire episode feels like a casual conversation.

Where to listen: eCommerceFuel is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Conclusion

There's a steep learning curve for anyone trying to grow an online business, but tuning in to the top ecommerce podcasts can help. By listening to these free programs, you can gain valuable knowledge that may help you boost your bottom line.

To review, here are 4 of our favorite ecommerce podcasts you should consider listening to:

  1. Honest Ecommerce. This show advertises itself as a platform for sincere business advice. You can tune in to its interviews with business owners to gain realistic insights into your field.
  2. Built to Scale. On this podcast, the hosts chronicle their journey from being broke to founding an ecommerce growth agency. You can learn marketing tips and hacks for scaling your online business.
  3. My Wife Quit Her Job. This program is for those who are looking to grow their businesses as a substitute for salaried pay. The host offers advice on how to set and achieve your financial goals.
  4. eCommerceFuel. This podcast offers a community for more experienced entrepreneurs. By listening to its weekly episodes, you can learn how to form better business relationships.

What's your favorite ecommerce podcast? Let us know in the comments section below!

If you liked this post, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

How to Create a High-Converting Facebook Ad (3 Proven Tips)

As one of the world’s biggest social networks, Facebook Ads is the perfect way to connect with new customers and grow your audience. However, you’ll also face some stiff competition – in 2020, ten million advertisers used Facebook to promote their products and services.

Fortunately, there are tried-and-tested techniques that you can use to create high-converting Facebook Ads. By optimizing your advertisements, you should be able to attract the attention of social media users and convince them to interact with your ads. 

In this post, we’ll explore the reasons why so many businesses are investing billions into Facebook advertising campaigns. We’ll then share three tips for crafting show-stopping ads. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to Facebook Ads (And Why You May Want to Use Them)

With a built-in community of roughly 2.89 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the biggest social network in the world. Today, countless businesses use Facebook to promote their products and services.

Thanks to services such as Buy Now Plus, it’s even possible to sell on this platform directly, with no website required.

If you really want to drive conversions, then you may want to consider running a Facebook Ad. This is paid content that appears in the desktop or mobile version of the News Feed:

An example of a Facebook Advertisement.

Facebook also displays ads in its right-hand column. If you're a mobile app advertiser, then your ad may even appear outside of Facebook, via the Audience Network

When it comes to crafting the perfect ad, Facebook is a flexible platform. You can include everything from text and photos, to videos, special offers, and even events. This enables you to get creative and craft advertisements that will stop Facebook users in their tracks. 

With a huge audience, Facebook Ads can be very beneficial for new stores who are looking to secure their first sales, but also established businesses who want to grow their audience.

With the average internet user spending 145 minutes on social media every day, Facebook can also help keep your customers engaged over the long term.

As an established social network, Facebook has a wealth of information about all of its users. You can leverage this data to create highly targeted advertising campaigns.

This combination of a huge global user base and powerful targeting options makes Facebook Ads an excellent platform for driving sales. To get started, head over to the Facebook Ads Manager:

The Facebook Ads Manager dashboard

In this dashboard, select Create. Then, simply follow the onscreen instructions to craft your first Facebook Ad. 

How to Create a High-Converting Facebook Advertisement (3 Proven Tips)

The Facebook Ads Manager does a good job of guiding you through creating your first ad. However, if you’re really going to smash your goals, then it helps to have some tricks up your sleeve.

Here are three proven tips for creating high-converting Facebook ads.

1. Run Targeted Campaigns

Your typical Facebook user shares a lot of information. You can put this data to good use by creating targeted ads. This can deliver higher conversions, by only serving ads to people who are likely to make a purchase.

When creating your advertisement, you’ll have the option to target users based on their location, age, and gender. You can also target people based on their interests. This includes everything from sports to vegan food, meditation, and even specific hobbies:

Selecting the interests of your target audience in Facebook ads.

You can also target users based on behavior data. This includes their prior purchases, political views, and whether they have an anniversary coming up in the next 61-90 days:

Facebook's targeted audience settings.

Alternatively, Ads Manager has a Lookalike Audience feature. You can use this to reach individuals who are similar to your most engaged existing customers:

Facebook's Lookalike Audience settings.

Lookalikes can be a powerful way to connect with people who are likely to be interested in your business. When creating your Lookalike Audience, you’ll be asked to choose a source audience. Facebook will then search for people who have similar qualities to the people in the provided source.

You can also choose the size of your Lookalike Audience. Opting for a larger audience increases your potential reach, but may reduce the level of similarity between the Lookalike and your source.

By contrast, choosing a smaller audience will more closely match your source, but it may result in fewer people seeing your ads. 

2. Experiment With the Structure of Your Ad

Many businesses choose to structure their Facebook Ads as a single image or video. However, there are other formats available, including carousel ads and collections: 

A carousel Facebook advertisement.

Carousel combines multiple videos or images into a single ad placement. This is ideal if you want to create a showreel featuring all your best products or most popular services.

You can also use this format to display social proof, including multiple customer testimonials or reviews. This can be an effective way to convince new customers to take a chance on your brand. 

Meanwhile, Facebook Collection is a group of items. This can be a dynamic and engaging way to highlight all the features of a particular product, or for displaying multiple items in a single placement. 

When the user clicks this ad, it will expand into a full-screen, scrollable Instant Experience, formerly called Canvas. This also makes Collection a great tool for encouraging new customers to explore your brand and learn more about what you have to offer.

3. Optimize Your Facebook Advertisement With A/B Testing

Creating a high-converting Facebook advertisement can be a challenge. Every target audience is unique, and it isn’t always easy to predict the kind of content that your customers will respond most positively to.

That’s where A/B testing comes in. This enables you to create variations of the same advertisement:

A/B testing in Facebook

You can then monitor the results, and pinpoint the variation that’s delivering the highest conversion rates. For example, you might experiment with different calls to action (CTAs) to see which one achieves the highest click through rate (CTR). 

Then, you can simply deactivate the under-performing variations and invest all of your time and effort (and advertising budget) into the ad that’s providing the best results. Therefore, A/B testing can remove the element of guesswork associated with designing a successful Facebook Ad.

By testing a large number of variations in quick succession, you can quickly build up a detailed picture of your target audience’s advertising preferences. This is an invaluable insight that you can use to improve your future campaigns.

Conclusion 

It’s impossible to overestimate Facebook’s potential for expanding your reach, building brand awareness, and boosting your bottom line.

If you’re not advertising on Facebook, you’re almost certainly missing out on dozens, or perhaps even hundreds of sales.

Let’s quickly recap three proven tips for creating a high-converting Facebook advertisement:

  1. Run targeted campaigns.
  2. Experiment with the structure of your ad.
  3. Optimize your Facebook advertisement with A/B testing.

Do you have any questions about advertising on Facebook? Let us know in the comments section below!

If you liked this post, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

How to Sell on Social Media – Even Without a Website

With an audience of over 3.6 billion, social media is a popular platform among online sellers. However, many fall into the trap of assuming that, before you can unlock the true power of social platforms, you need a website.

This is far from true. Today, many business owners sell to customers around the globe, without splashing out on web hosting, a domain name, or any of the costs typically associated with running a successful ecommerce site.

In this post, we’ll look at why Twitter, Facebook, and other popular social platforms are revolutionizing the ecommerce industry. We’ll then share three ways to sell products on social media, with no website required. Let’s get started! 

Why You May Want to Sell Products on Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool for building brand awareness and promoting your products. However, you can take things one step further and sell products directly on social platforms – even if you don’t have a website. 

There are several reasons to use social media as your primary ecommerce channel. First, you can sign up for all of the major social media platforms for free.

Even if you have zero budget, you can create a Facebook account and promote your products to 2.80 billion active users.

By contrast, launching an online store requires you to purchase a domain name and invest in web hosting. You may even need to enlist the services of professional designers and developers. 

In addition, social platforms often come with built-in analytics and tools. This includes Facebook Audience Insights:

Facebook Insights can help you sell products on social media.

By using these tools to continuously analyze and evaluate key metrics, you can identify the content and activities that deliver the highest conversions. You can then use this data to optimize your future social media strategies and secure even more sales.

When you operate an ecommerce site, you’ll often have to invest time and effort into implementing third-party analytics. For example, many website owners use Google Analytics with their WordPress website:

The Google Analytics dashboard.

This setup requires time and effort. Depending on the tool you choose, you may even need to purchase a license or pay a subscription fee. 

In addition, social media is a time-sensitive platform, which makes it ideal for encouraging impulse purchases.

Someone scanning social media may spot your product and decide to purchase it before it gets lost in their timeline. By tapping into this spur-of-the-moment decision making, you may be able to boost your sales.

How to Sell Products on Social Media (3 Ways)

Social media offers an opportunity for online sellers to make more money. However, it’s not enough to simply publish posts about your products.

To help you make the most of this golden opportunity, here are three effective ways to sell products on social media.

1. Post to Facebook Marketplace 

Facebook Marketplace comes with a built-in audience of one billion customers. You can use this peer-to-peer marketplace to sell your products directly on Facebook:

You can sell products on social media using Facebook Marketplace.

Users will see Marketplace ads in their timeline and in their recently viewed items. This gives you a chance to catch the eye of potential new customers, without relying on them to specifically search for your products or brand. 

There’s no fee for listing items on this platform. This makes Facebook Marketplace one of the most affordable options for selling products on social media.

Facebook Marketplace is far from unique, as there are hundreds of online marketplaces to choose from. However, not every customer will feel comfortable purchasing from strangers on sites such as the Craigslist classified ads site.

Some websites even have a reputation for being filled with scammers and people pretending to be someone they’re not.

Here, Facebook Marketplace has a huge advantage. Each buyer and seller is connected to a personal or business Facebook account. This level of transparency can make even the most suspicious of customers feel comfortable making an online purchase.

2. Join an Affiliate Program

It’s possible to sell products without an inventory. By becoming an affiliate partner, you can promote a merchant’s products to your followers and get a cut of every successful sale. 

A quick search will reveal hundreds of affiliate programs that you can join. The key to generating the maximum revenue is finding the affiliate program that’s the best fit for your target audience

To start, it helps to consider the platform’s general user base. For example, 41% of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24. If you’re planning to post your affiliate links to TikTok, then you’ll need products that appeal to this demographic.

It’s also important to find products that fit with your established brand. This will make your promotions feel more authentic, which can help drive conversions. 

Most of the big platforms have built-in analytics that you can use to learn more about your followers. For example, you can use Twitter Analytics to explore your audience’s locations and interests:

The Twitter Analytics dashboard.

This information can help you find brands and products that resonate with your followers. After enrolling in a program, your merchant will provide affiliate links.

However, these URLs can be long and complex. To make these links more shareable, you may want to consider using a link cloaking plugin such as Pretty Links

3. Add Buy Now Buttons to Your Social Content

Social media is designed to be a rapid-fire tool, where people discuss events and respond to posts in real time. This time pressure already makes social media a great platform for promoting your products.

However, you can increase this sense of urgency by adding buy now buttons to your posts:

An example of a Buy Now button.

You can use our Buy Now Plus service to create a range of cross-platform, social media-friendly buy now buttons. This service integrates with Stripe, so your followers can fast-track straight to a Stripe-powered checkout and complete their purchase within seconds.

Thanks to this integration, you can even accept credit card payments without a website:

The Stripe checkout.

The complexity of the checkout process can have a huge impact on your cart abandonment rates. In fact, 34% of shoppers will abandon their cart if they’re forced to create an account. By helping you simplify the checkout process, Buy Now Plus can also help you boost your conversion rate. 

Conclusion 

We all know that social media is a powerful tool for raising brand awareness and promoting your products. However, you can take this one step further and complete the sales transaction entirely on your chosen social platform. 

In this post, we looked at three effective ways to sell products directly on social media, without having to set up an online store:

  1. Post to Facebook Marketplace (for free!).
  2. Join an affiliate program and promote products to the right audience.
  3. Add buy now buttons to your social content, using a tool such as Buy Now Plus.

Do you have any questions about how to run a successful ecommerce business without a website? Let us know in the comments section below!

If you liked this post, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

How to Improve Sales With Social Media Content (4 Tips)

Social media represents a huge opportunity for any business owner. After all, there are over 2.7 billion monthly active Facebook users and 69.3 million Twitter users in the US alone. However, if you don’t plan your social activities carefully, it’s easy to let that opportunity go to waste.

Fortunately, there are tried-and-tested methods and tips proven to help improve your sales with social media content. By leveraging this advice, you can ensure that the time you spend on these platforms has a direct, positive impact on your profits.

In this post, we’ll discuss why social selling is more than simply posting your products across Facebook and Twitter. We’ll then share four actionable tips that you can implement today to maximize your profits. Let’s get started! 

An Introduction to Social Selling (And Why It’s Important)

Despite its name, social selling isn’t always about posting your products and services to social media. While it’s smart to keep your followers in the loop regarding new launches, discounts, and other product-related developments, this is only part of a successful social strategy. 

If you really want to smash your sales targets, we recommend using these platforms to build brand awareness and connect with prospects. You can also develop relationships with both new and existing customers by responding to their comments on platforms such as Twitter:

An example of a brand interacting with clients on social media

By actively engaging with your target audience in a positive and helpful way, you can increase the chances that yours is the first company that person considers when they’re ready to make a purchase.

Social selling can also be an effective way to keep existing customers engaged and encourage them to remain loyal to your business, rather than defecting to your competitors. 

How to Improve Sales With Social Media Content (4 Tips)

Social media has grown into a powerful marketing tool. If you’re ready to improve your sales, then here are our top tips for success:

1. Do Your Research

Today, there are countless social media platforms. With so many channels to choose from, it’s difficult to maintain a presence across every single site. 

To achieve the highest number of conversions, it’s smart to focus on the platforms where your target audience is most active. Some platforms are more popular with certain demographics. For example 41% of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24. By contrast, 80.9% of LinkedIn users are aged 24 or over.

If you’re unsure about your target demographic, you can learn more about the people who are visiting your site and purchasing your products using a tool such as Google Analytics:

The Google Analytics dashboard.

Once you know where your audience is spending the majority of their time, you can focus all of your efforts on those platforms. This should have the greatest impact on your sales.

2. Avoid the Hard Sell

While it may sound counter-intuitive, it’s a bad idea to focus solely on driving sales. If you treat social media as an advertising channel, then you’ll probably struggle to attract a following.

Instead, we recommend building your social strategy around sharing valuable content. Ideally, you’ll already have a company blog.

These posts are great material for your accounts, but you can also create content solely for social media, such as infographics that you post directly to Twitter, Facebook, and other popular sites.

You might also share the occasional third-party resource, such as informative blog posts written by industry experts. 

With social media, the clue is in the name. Therefore, it's a good idea to always look for opportunities to engage with your audience. This may involve liking and sharing customers' posts, answering questions, or responding to comments: 

An example of a brand engaging on social media.

All of these activities can position you as a helpful, valuable person to follow on social media. Then, when you do post purely sales-focused content, your audience should be far more receptive to your message. 

3. Partner With Relevant Influencers

An online influencer is someone who has a significant digital following. Similar to a traditional celebrity endorsement, an influencer can promote your business to their fans and followers.

This can be a very effective sales strategy, with around 34% of Instagram users admitting to purchasing something due to an online influencer:

An example of an influencer partnership, which may help improve sales.

The key to a successful partnership is finding the right influencer. Ideally, there will be an overlap between the person’s fanbase and your target audience.

In addition, when there’s a relevant link between the influencer and the content they’re promoting, you can capitalize on the assumption that they only promote products they genuinely like. This can further increase your sales. 

Although it’s easy to get star-struck by the large follower numbers of social media’s heavy hitters, it’s worth noting that micro-influencers often have higher engagement rates.

This is most notable on TikTok, where micro-influencers receive 17.96% engagement, compared to 4.96% for mega-influencers. If you can identify a micro-influencer who appeals to your target audience, then you may be on to a winner.

One great way to recruit and manage social media influencers is to start your own affiliate marketing program. There are several tools that allow you to do this easily. One of our favorites is Easy Affiliate, a WordPress plugin that works beautifully with all kinds of membership and ecommerce sites.

Easy Affiliate WordPress plugin homepage

4. Leverage the Power of Buy Now Buttons

Although it shouldn’t form the core of your social content, you’ll want to spend some time promoting your products and services. However, even if a follower decides to make a purchase, they’ll still need to click through to your store in order to start the process. 

This gives the customer plenty of time to change their mind. In fact, studies show that 69% of customers abandon their shopping carts. Therefore, it’s important that you simplify the purchasing process in order to encourage people to complete an order.

This is where buy now buttons come in. When you create a button using a flexible service like Buy Now Plus, you can post them across all major social media platforms:

You can improve sales by posting Buy Now buttons to social media.

Your followers can then access the checkout process directly from their favorite social networks.

To create your first buy now button, simply connect Buy Now Plus to Stripe, then follow the onscreen instructions:

The Buy Now Plus dashboard.

We’ll also provide everything you need to post your buy now button across your social media networks. This includes dedicated Share to Facebook and Share to Twitter buttons. 

Conclusion 

Social media is a powerful platform for promoting your products and services. However, it’s important to use it wisely in order to maximize your conversions.

Let’s quickly recap four ways to improve your sales with social media content:

  1. Choose the right platform for your business, based on your target audience.
  2. Share valuable content and avoid hard selling.
  3. Partner with relevant influencers to reach more people.
  4. Add buy now buttons on your social media pages, using Buy Now Plus.

Do you have any questions about how to improve sales and engage with potential customers on social media? Ask us in the comments section below!

If you liked this post, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

How to Sell on Social Media With Buy Now Buttons (In 3 Steps)

A buy now button can be a powerful addition to your ecommerce site. However, your ability to generate sales is still reliant on people visiting your site.

Fortunately, with the right tools, you can post your buy now button across multiple platforms, including social media. This strategy enables you to turn some of the biggest global social networks into additional revenue streams. 

In this post, we’ll discuss how buy now buttons can help you boost revenue directly from Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social networks. Then we'll show you how to create a buy now button and share it with your followers in three simple steps. Let’s get started! 

An Introduction to Using Buy Now Buttons on Social Media

A buy now button is a call to action (CTA) that brings customers directly to your checkout page. By removing multiple steps from the purchasing process, buy now buttons can be an effective solution for driving conversions:

A Buy Now button on the Amazon website.

If you create your buttons using our Buy Now Plus service, you can use them across multiple channels, including on social media. By incorporating buy now buttons into your social media posts, you can transform these networks into additional revenue streams and monetize your existing followers

Buy now buttons can minimize the time between customers becoming interested in products and entering the checkout process. In other words, this feature can encourage impulse purchases. 

Time-sensitive social media platforms are particularly great for incentivizing spur-of-the-moment decisions. Someone scanning social media may spot your product and use your buy now button to make a purchase on a whim. 

Every time you post on social media, you have the opportunity to introduce your brand to an entirely new audience. With over 2.7 billion monthly active Facebook users and 69.3 million Twitter users in the U.S. alone, social media is a powerful tool for getting your products in front of more people.

However, there's no need to be content with simply raising brand awareness.  By adding a buy now button to your next post, you may be able to immediately convert these new followers into paying customers. 

How to Sell on Social Media With Buy Now Buttons (In 3 Steps)

Now that you understand more about the potential of leveraging social media to increase sales, let's take a look at how to go about it. Below are three steps you can take to create buy now buttons for all your social media accounts.

Step 1: Sign Up for Stripe and Buy Now Plus Accounts

To get started with Buy Now Plus, you’ll need a Stripe account. If you don’t already have one with this popular payment processor, you can create one on the Stripe website:

The Stripe homepage.

After enrolling with Stripe, head over to the Buy Now Plus login page. You can then select either Login with Stripe or Connect to Stripe: 

The Buy Now Plus service.

Follow the on-screen instructions to set up your Buy Now Plus account, which includes securing your account with a mobile number:

How to sell on social media using the Buy Now Plus service.

During the registration process, you’ll be asked to provide a statement descriptor and shortened descriptor. This information will appear in payment statements, invoices, and receipts.

If a customer doesn’t recognize your descriptor, they may request a chargeback. Therefore, it’s important to provide a clear statement and shortened descriptor:

Add your statement and shortened descriptors in the Buy Now Plus dashboard.

After registering with Buy Now Plus, you’ll be transferred to your dashboard. To create your first button, select Add New. 

Step 2: Create a Buy Now Button

To start, enter a value in the Terms field. This is the text that will appear at the top of your payment screen:

The Buy Now Plus checkout screen.

Payments can either be fixed or variable. Variable purchase buttons are useful if you operate on a “pay what you want” model or accept donations.

You can also set the currency and add a description that will display on your payment screen. Next, specify the Stripe account where you’ll accept payments using the Stripe Account drop-down menu.

You can access additional settings by clicking to expand the Advanced Options section. Here, you can enter the button text.

For fixed payments, it often makes sense to display the cost of the purchase or a generic message such as “Buy now”.  Alternatively, if you’re creating a variable button, you might use a label such as “Donate” or “Buy Me a Coffee”:

The Buy Now Plus dashboard.

To provide a better customer experience, you may want to create a dedicated page where customers will be directed following their successful payments.

Similarly, you could point visitors to a different page if they choose to cancel their payments. After building these pages in your WordPress dashboard, you can copy and paste their URLs into the Return URL and Cancel URL fields.

Buy Now Plus has many other settings that are worth exploring in more detail. However, for now, this is all you need to create a simple buy now button. Select Create to continue.

Step 3: Preview and Share Your Button on Social Media

If you navigate to the main Buy Now Plus dashboard, you’ll see the button you just created. You can see how this CTA will appear to customers by clicking on Preview:

Create a Buy Now button, ready to sell on social media.

If you’re happy with your button, you can select the Sharing icon. This will launch a popup containing buttons for all the major social networks, including Facebook and Twitter:

A share button, ready to sell on social media.

Clicking on any of these buttons will create a new draft post containing a link to your Buy Now page. Your followers can send you payments by following this URL:

Sell on social media with Buy Now Plus.

If you’re posting to Twitter, your tweet can easily get lost in the timeline. To help drive conversions, you may want to pin the tweet to the top of your profile: 

Sell on social media with Buy Now buttons.

Buy Now Plus provides dedicated sharing buttons for several social networks. However, if you want to post to an alternative platform, simply click on the sharing icon and copy the provided link. Then you can paste the URL into any location that accepts text, including other social channels. 

Conclusion 

By posting your buy now buttons on social media platforms, you can remove an additional step in the checkout process and enable customers to make purchases without having to explicitly visit your site.

Let’s recap how you can sell on social media in three easy steps: 

  1. Sign up for Stripe and Buy Now Plus accounts.
  2. Create a buy now button.
  3. Preview and share your button on social media.

Do you have any questions about using buy now buttons on social media? Let us know in the comments section below!

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