"Can you Sell Food on the Internet"
Welcome back to marketing on foot online. I've got three fantastic subscriber questions that I'm going to dive into on this podcast. And what we're gon na do is we're gon na get this, we're gon na upload this on YouTube too. Okay, So we're going to get this podcast videotaped and then put up on YouTube. So we've got three great questions. "" Do I need a license to sell food oline"".
It's all about selling food, and specifically selling food online. I know there's a lot of misconceptions and misinformation about what I can and can't do, and where I could sell food products. So I know a lot of you as food entrepreneurs that are just starting. You have a lot of questions about the legalities of it, and of course, what you can and can't do. "Do I Need a License to sell spices"
"Do I Need a License to Sell Homemade Food in Texas"
So, in order to purchase a food product online, you must be in a commercial facility.Now, of course, as any business is concerned, you want to make sure that you've got the legalities correct. You want to make sure that you've got the right permits and business licenses, make sure that you're a registered business, you've got your EIN number, of course, and do that as well as make sure that you have a food business insurance policy, as well, to cover any legalities that may pop up if somebody is going to get sick or something to that effect. "Selling Food Online License".
Even if you're not going to make a food product, if you're simply going to buy products in bulk and resell those food products on the internet, yes, you need to make sure that you have all the licenses and food business insurance as well. I had an interesting question from a consultation call that I had with one of my clients. I did some consulting, I think it was about two weeks ago. And they had asked about having that food policy insurance, and they were telling me, "Well, Damian," I'm not necessarily going to be making anything. "" So even though I'm going to buy a food product and simply resell it, is that something that I can do and then not have to have a policy? And I told him, no, you need to make sure any type of food that's being warehoused, redistributed, if you're getting it in bulk and reshipping it, no matter what it is, as far as the warehousing of it and the reshipping of those products, even though you're not opening them or remaking them, you need to make sure you have a food business insurance policy. "Best Food Products to sell online"
That's really important, also just from a common sense perspective, you need to make sure you protect your business and your personal assets, because if you didn't have that, let's say you didn't have a business license, or even have yourself an LLC. If somebody gets sick, including you personally, then we're going to be held responsible for that. So even though the idea sounds like, oh, maybe I don't need it because I'm not making a food product, you're not going to be on the safe side of it. You're going to have a big problem. So definitely make sure that you can do that.
But the answer to that question is yes, you can sell food, obviously on the internet. You don't have to be a big, huge corporation like Amazon or Walmart. You could start a small business and then grow it from there. All right, so the next question we have is, can you make money selling food online? Is it really profitable? So can you make money selling food online? This is from Mark Scott. Mark, thank you so much for asking. Yes, it can be profitable, but you need to make sure that the actual transactions match up. I've mentioned this in a couple of my other videos, and it's good to refresh you if you haven't seen these other videos as well. "Is it Illegal to sell food online"
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You want to make sure that the transaction is profitable and that you're taking into consideration the fees involved with selling that transaction. So if you happen to be on eBay or Etsy or even Shopify or your own website, that's fine. But the thing you want to think about is selling a product for just a few dollars per transaction, which is very, very, not profitable at all. You'd have to turn out a tremendous number of transactions.
You want to get that customer to end up spending anywhere from about $25 to $35 or somewhere in between there. As I mentioned before in a couple of other videos, my average selling ticket price is around $27. That means out of all of the websites that we actually sell to, we get about 27 to $28 on average for those transactions.
That for me is profitably, because then after my fees and shipping, and whether I charged a customer or not, after all of that said and done, then yes, I'm putting in anywhere from about 15 to $16 in my pocket for that one transaction, okay? Of course, it depends on the product that we're making or the product that we're selling, but most of them are very inexpensive, only a couple of dollars to produce, but getting around a $27 price per transaction is very profitable for us. So can you make money selling food online?
You can, and you want to make sure, obviously, you're selling it in bulk and you're getting tremendous amounts of sales, but you don't have to sell a thousand dollars on a transaction or a couple of hundred dollars. Getting it up there to about 27 to $35 for each transaction, you can definitely mark, you can definitely make it a profitable business. The third question that we had was really interesting because it brought up a question about e-commerce, you know, and of course, what you define "good" as. So the question was, what is a good website to sell food on?
This is from Stephen House. Stephen, thank you so much for asking. So what is a good website to sell food on? I'm going to go through a list of websites where you could sell your products. Now, some of these are actually platforms that already have a built-in customer base. And I always recommend you do that first, building out a website, if you're going on like Shopify, if you're looking at Squarespace, or Weebly, WordPress, or even Wix, these e-commerce websites. Shopify is a fantastic one, don't get me wrong. But the challenge to doing this is that you're not going to have the traffic to your website. You're going to go on a website, like eBay, or go on Etsy, or go on to Bonanza, or even go onto walmart.com. Believe it or not, even target.com now allows you to sell as a third-party seller.
These are websites that have built an audience base. They have a customer base and they're in the millions. So you're not going to have to go out and try to find them or pay for Facebook ads to try to get this, okay? So you understand the concept? So when you ask the question, what is a good website to sell food on? These are great websites, but depending on whether you incorporate that with your own Shopify store, you're not going to get a lot of traffic, so that's not going to be a great place to start, but incorporating that with other websites, that is definitely a no-brainer. That's a good idea. You should have your own website, especially since you're selling food.
So you have an opportunity to be legitimate, and it looks like a legitimate business, and not somebody obviously, you know, buying products at home, trying to ship them out of their closet, which I don't recommend, but there are a lot of people who actually do that on eBay. There are a lot of sellers who actually go out and buy food products from like a Walmart or a local grocery store, and then flip them. There's a good and a bad thing about doing that. Now, if you're able to make a margin doing that, great.
The bad thing is that it's actually illegal. So, doing that from your home is completely not allowed. So a good website to sell food on would be, yes, eBay, Shopify, and incorporate Etsy, and then maybe Target or Walmart.com. But again, doing this from a commercial perspective, a commercial business, shouldn't be doing this from your house. So these are three great questions about food e-commerce and, basically, selling food online. If you've ever had that question, And of course, making it profitable, but what you can sell online is, yes, pretty much any type of food product. Make sure you do it legitimately. The other question that we had but weren't going to cover in this podcast was, is it illegal to make food at home and sell it? And that is, of course, not dealing with e-commerce, but selling food from home is definitely something that you can do. And you'll find that it falls under the cottage food laws, but you'll definitely make an extra side business doing that. I highly recommend it if you go the e-commerce route, because you need to definitely be in a commercial setting. So I hope you guys appreciate it, and that you get your answers.Chris, Mark, and Stephen, thank you so much for asking. If you guys have questions that you want me to ask on our next video or podcast, let us know down below. Like I said, this podcast, we'll go ahead and upload this onto YouTube, as we've been doing lately. We've been really helping a lot of people by actually uploading our podcast as well. So, down below in the description, if you didn't know, we have a handful of podcasts and different outlets you can find us on, so definitely check us out there. And I'll see you guys in our next video.