Notes on selling
How to sell from a link in your bio: photographs, pricing, delivery and the small decisions that turn a follower into an order.
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15 min read
VAT and invoicing anxiety
Three German obligations get felt as one lump of dread. The Impressum, the invoice rules and VAT have different triggers and different fixes.
11 min read
What a commission actually costs you, with the arithmetic
A 10 percent cut sounds small until you measure it against margin instead of revenue. Worked numbers at 10, 50 and 300 orders, and the crossover points.
11 min read
What a good first message to a customer looks like
Under fifty words, with the item, the price, the delivery cost and a question they can answer in three words. Here is the anatomy and the wording.
12 min read
What a good product photo background looks like
White is usually the wrong answer. What actually works behind a product, why contrast beats colour, and the four-minute test that settles it for good.
12 min read
What a storefront should load like on a slow connection
Your buyer needs a photo and a price in about two and a half seconds on their connection, not yours. Turn that into a kilobyte budget and cut until it fits.
11 min read
What online shoppers expect in different countries
Payment defaults, delivery windows and returns norms change enormously across borders. Three things do not. What to check before you take a foreign order.
12 min read
What conversion rate should you expect
Most quoted industry averages have no source you can check. Here is the one that does, why it is not about you, and how to read your own number instead.
11 min read
What creators get wrong about funnels
A sales funnel for creators is usually four extra pages between a warm buyer and a price. Why the model does not transfer, and what to build instead.
12 min read
What happens if the tool you sell through shuts down
Four things have to be portable: your customer list, your order history, your original photos and the address people type. Get them out before you need them.
12 min read
What receipts to keep, and for how long
Keep anything that proves money moved and what it was for. The hard part is the receipts you never think of as receipts, and the ones that fade to nothing.
15 min read
What should I sell online
Not a list of ideas. A way of deciding, built on what you can source, what you can ship without it breaking, and what people have already asked you for.
13 min read
What to do about a chargeback
Only card payments can be charged back. A bank transfer or a cash order cannot. What that means, what evidence wins, and how to stop the next one.