Facebook Marketplace is a side shoot of Facebook and offers a place for artisans/regular folks to reaches a huge audience so it is easy to get your product to your target audience. This Facebook Marketplace Review will tell you what you need to know to get your key products to your audience without having to spend a penny on advertising, unless you choose to do so.

You can drive discovery of your product, and so increase sales for your key products in a place where consumers already are looking. Facebook offers marketing tips, tricks and knowledge to help you be successful. They also offer promoted products, but this is something you have to pay for. They will tell you the size of audience you are likely to get with the promotion and the cost.

On the Facebook Marketplace, you can post your products and sell them through the Facebook platform. This platform makes it so much easier for you to reach your local audience as your customers can set the filters to locate products in their area. Its also possible to set filtering by catagory and price but for the artisan business, being able to directly attract a customer who may be within 50 miles of you, is of a great advantage, especially if your product is large.

The Facebook Marketplace offers a quick and simple way of selling your products without fuss and without having to set up a Facebook Business Page – you may want to do this at some point so you can sell on Instagram too but for the start up, the marketplace works well to attract customers to your products and get them over to your website. Its a good place to start if you are new to the business, getting your products out there as soon as you can, to start getting some revenue back without having to fork out money from the outset. It also gives you a chance to see what your audience think of your products.


Categories on Facebook

Facebook has various categories in which your product should fit. There is a huge list. So it is more than likely you will find one that defines your key product perfectly.

There are products that CANNOT be sold through Facebook :
Adult Products/ Services – so no sex toys or services !
Alcohol
Animals
Digital Media/Electronic Devices
Event Tickets
Gift Cards
Healthcare Items – First Aid Kits
Illegal/Prescription/Recreational Drugs
Body Parts/Fluids
Tobacco Products/Paraphernalia
Unsafe Food Supplements
Weapons/Ammunition/Explosives
‘In Search Of’ Posts
Lost & Found Posts
Jokes/News

To be honest the list makes sense, knowing what we see on Facebook. Its not intended for news or lost and found – if you are looking for products, you don’t want to be trawling through extraneous material.

How To List Your Product

 

If you hop over to your regular Facebook page, you will see on the left hand side that there is a tab for ‘Marketplace’.

 

This is where you need to click, it will take you over to the marketplace…..

I love resin tables and they are super expensive, but definitely something I would look for on the marketplace. A local artisan that I can give work to, makes me quite pleased ! You can see how the page works for customers searching for your products. They will put in where they live and how far they are willing to travel in the filters, then search. If you produce a product that can be posted, it has to be posted within 3 days and delivered within 7 to fulfil the requirements of the marketplace. More on the rules and regs later.

 

So for you to post your product. Click onto the +Sell Something Button —–


 

The screen that is brought up asks what kind of product you are wanting to sell…


 

Choose your Catagory

 

Fill in the details of your product. I chose one of my soaps for the example. This of course could be posted so whilst my local audience will find it, because it is something that can be posted, it doesnt matter how far away people are. You can post as many photos as you want, there is no charge for adding photos, so the more the better ! Get your images presenting your product at its best.


 

Select your Audience from the choices offered on the next window. There will be local choices if you are selling resin river tables that cannot be posted, or countrywide choices if you are selling soap or small items.


Once you have sorted all this out, you are good to go and once you have clicked ‘Post’ your product is out there ready to be bought by your audience. Remember that you have to have the product posted by 3 days and delivered by 7…. So for the likes of me, where the soap must cure for 6 weeks before posting, they have to be ready to go before they’re posted for sale.


 

How To Get Payment on Facebook

Well as far as shipping costs and payment goes with Facebook, its down to you and your customer to agree how they will make payment, whether they are going to collect or you are going to post – what will the postage cost? These are questions that Facebook leaves to you to decide. They step back and its down to you and your customer to come to an agreement.

 

A word of caution… Do NOT post anything until you have cleared funds in your account for your product +agreed postage. Alternatively, cash on collection. I have been burnt a few times with dodgy customers and whilst you may really want the sale, its not worth being short changed on the funds not clearing and you wanting to get your product to them as quick as possible so you post before the funds are cleared through your bank, or by not setting a suitable postage price and being out of pocket. You can always use Paypal easily and send a money request. That will clear as soon as they have paid it and you are good to go.

 

I hope this has been helpful in understanding what a simple process it is to set up a product on Facebook Marketplace and whilst I dont really like the way they leave you to it as far as payment is concerned, I think with caution and the use of Paypal or Stripe, you can keep any issues to a minimum.

If you need more help with setting up Facebook or your website, why don’t you have a look at Wealthy Affiliate? They host, support and offer tutorials in everything to do with websites. If you are new to this, they will be invaluable, and they offer a free week trial to see if its what you want.

 

Follow this link to Wealthy Affiliate and get your business off to a perfect start !

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