Ready to learn how to sell essential oils online?
It’s not a very typical business model in ecommerce. At least, not like the ultra popular apparel or skincare markets. With that said, this means there is untapped opportunity in the essential oil market that you can exploit.
You just have to know what to look for.
So let’s get right into it…
Contents
Is The Essential Oil Business Profitable?
The answer to any question like this is that it always depends.
Profitability is a function of COGS, pricing power, and marketing. How you manipulate these variables will end up dictating if your essential oil business is profitable and by how much.
With that said, it’s pretty safe to say that it is.
There are tons of essential oil businesses out there that sell both to consumers and creators. So if you love essential oils and are wondering if it’s worth learning how to sell essential oils online, then you have your answer.
Whatever you do though, do NOT join any of the popular MLMs.
With MLMs, it’s easy to get started. However, the numbers just don’t work in your favor. Worst yet, you don’t even actually get to own the business. You just become a gloried salesman or saleswoman.
So if you want to learn how to sell essential oils online, focus on private label.
Is It Legal To Sell Essential Oils?
Whenever legal questions pop up, it’s 100% always best to ask a lawyer.
With that said, based on my research, there is no law against selling essential oils. You also don’t need any special certification or training to do so. Just order inventory and start selling.
There is one caveat though…
There are laws that say you have to be careful about the claims that you make. In other words, stay away from claiming that any essential oil can cure or prevent any sort of health problem. Once you do this, you open yourself up to a ton of liability.
Luckily, it’s not hard to stay safe with your claims.
Just stay away from selling your essential oils as a health product. Instead, focus on other attributes like smell, size, cost, origin, and basically anything else that focuses on the actual product. These types of claims are 100% provable and have nothing to do with health.
The Best Essential Oils To Sell From Home
Here’s the great thing about business… success leaves clues.
Basically, if other businesses are doing well selling a certain type of essential oil, then it’s likely you’ll also do well selling it. You can take advantage of this simple fact by researching your top 10 essential oil competitors and see what sells well for them.
Many of these companies will let you organize by their best sellers.
If they don’t allow for best sellers, then organize by reviews/testimonials.
Repeat this process for all 10 competitors and see what’s the common denominator. Typically, you’ll find a pattern between all of them. So if you see a particular essential oil that appears on everyone’s best sellers list, then that becomes a great candidate for you to sell as well.
I would also consider competition.
Stay away from any overly popular essential oils that everyone knows. Instead, pick the best selling essential oils that you don’t normally hear about. By looking for this “surprise picks”, you’ll have a much easier time selling it at full price.
How Do I Start An Essential Oils Business?
Learning how to sell essential oils online.
At the end of the day, you only have to worry about product and marketing.
With product, all you have to do is find someone who can create a private label essential oil for you. If you have the budget, then a custom essential oil with a unique element to it would be even better. To find these manufacturers, just type “essential oil private label” and you’ll end up with a huge list of potential partners to contact.
You can also opt to make essential oils from home.
With marketing, there are really only 3 things to focus on.
The first is owned media, which is when you do things like build a blog or an email newsletter. The second is earned media, which is when you look for PR opportunities or get shared by an influencer. Last is paid media, which is when you do pay to promote your essential oils through ads like Facebook ads or even something like sponsoring other health blogs.
So if I’m looking to sell essential oils online, I would want…
1/ Unique or low competitive essential oils
2/ Build an audience on social, blog, or email
3/ Get my oils in the hands of every influencer
4/ Slowly scale with ads
How To Sell Essential Oils On Amazon
Amazon is a great place to sell essential oils. Once your product ranks there, you’ll see a surge of sales you won’t really get anywhere else. So it’s worth the trouble to get on there.
You just have to keep an eye out for their terms.
Amazon is a bit quiet when it comes to them too. So for best results, always stay on the safe side. Essential oils are an oil that can cause problems during the shipping process. This makes it a HAZMAT product. So do your research and apply for that because it’s the only way Amazon will allow you to sell your essential oils on their platform.
Beyond that, the rest is actually just selling on Amazon.
This comes down to optimizing your listing with the right keywords and creative as possible. You want to use something like Jungle Scout or Helium 10 to tell you what keywords are worth targeting. Then make sure to add really great product pictures and great copy to sell the product. This is the foundation to making Amazon SEO work.
How To Sell Essential Oils On Instagram
Back in the day, Instagram was a powerhouse.
Today, most of the opportunity is in Instagram stories. That’s because it’s still the highest engaging content placement there is on Instagram right now. Plus, it’s the only content placement that allows for a direct call to action through the “swipe up” function, which is critical to maximizing sales.
All you need to do is either…
1/ Run Instagram story ads
2/ Produce organic Instagram story content
3/ Hire Instagram influencers
In all cases, you want to focus on being able to quickly tell people what your product is, why they should buy, and why they should swipe up right now.
What about the Instagram feed though?
I honestly wouldn’t worry about it much. If you’re great at creating visual content, then by all means try to build an organic audience there or even run ads. But if you’re on a budget and need to maximize every dollar, focus your resources on stories.
How To Sell Essential Oils On Facebook
Like Instagram, Facebook used to be an organic powerhouse. Not anymore.
Instead, Facebook is now a paid ads powerhouse. Some people even say Facebook has the best ad network that has ever existed. Bold claim, but it’s not too far off from the truth.
These days, Facebook relies on high volume and high quality pieces of creative.
At this stage of your business, I would focus on UGC content. This is primarily going to come down to hiring influencers to review products in under 30 seconds. It can also be you talking about your product for 15-20 seconds.
If you have a budget, then nice photography and graphic design would help too.
The important part is to remember that “angles” are what matter. So don’t worry about making small, iterative changes between different images. Instead, look to make ads to focus on different reasons why they should buy your essential oils. So if you come up with 10 specific reasons, that should end up being 10 ads you can test.
Besides that, always use the conversion objection.