Selling books, products and ideas on the internet
A list of 50 things I know now that I wish I'd known from the get go
Hi, I’m Sara and I’m an advisor to creative businesses. Helping you make marketing and sales a doddle is my jam. Over 10 years I’ve learnt how to be a business owner online, how to build a profitable online presence, and of course, how to sell products and services in a consistent way. It’s my goal to share as much as possible with you so that you can build an online presence that’s profitable, too.
Today, I’m sharing a list of 50 reflections from my journey so far.
This week, while I was in Spain with my boys, I found out I’ve been shortlisted for a Business Book Award. To have More Sales Please make the finals in my dream category (Sales and Marketing) is such a pinch me moment! Becoming a published author is my favourite achievement to date and one I NEVER would have believed when I first set up my business ten years ago! It’s got me feeling reflective.
For 10 years now, I’ve been packaging up products and selling them online. I’ve sold mentoring packages, group programs, masterclasses, courses, masterminds, books, challenges, and in person retreats. I’ve helped my clients build their offer suites, and together we’ve sold everything from £15 books to £10k mentoring packages.
This is what sales skills are all about: freedom.
Freedom from grinding it out doing work you don’t love, freedom from having to sell the same thing over and over, freedom to pivot and change direction as many times as you like, and freedom from doing life somebody else’s way. When you know how to sell, you make bolder choices. So, as I reflect on ten years of making sales in business, I decided to make a list of things I’ve learnt about how to sell along the way.
In no particular order, here goes.
50 things that have helped me that I wish I’d known from the start:
It doesn’t matter what you’re selling (books, digital products, new ideas) your how you present yourself as a personal brand is just as important as the product itself. It tells us what you want to be known for. And talk about it! This creates demand faster than any launch tactic ever will.
Would you rather have 10,000 followers to feed your ego, or 10 clients ready to pay you?
Despite what the internet says: there is no one way to have a successful launch. I repeat, there is no one way to do it. Find a way to promote what you do that doesn’t make you recoil in horror and stop overthinking it.
While we’re on the subject let it be known that I despise the word “launch” in the context of online marketing. NASA space shuttles, sure, launch those bad boys moonwards. Your new membership? Talking about it online will do just fine.
Proposal to cease and desist talking about ourselves in the context of singular job titles, solutions or set of skills. I don’t know about you but I’d rather explain what I’m doing in a way that brings in my myriad skills than try and squidge into a job spec.
Find your voice and let it be heard. Lop your interesting opinions, unique perspectives and experiences to date all over your online presence, they will do so much for you! THAT is what sells us on your stuff. Not whatever bells and whistles you’ve affixed to your 6 week group program.
The internet is cool, but do you know what’s even cooler? Meeting someone IRL who you can vibe out with in your home town, off screen. Ergo, don’t get so busy chasing followers across the globe that you forget to connect with potential clients in a five mile radius of where you live. Might get this one tattooed on my arm. Brevity schmevity.
Reminder: community doesn’t mean building an audience of gazillions of people who’ll never buy from you, it’s a handful of real relationships that align with the work you want to do.
One day, you’ll have a reputation to precede you and things will get easier. Until then, *selling is the job*. Before you have a proven process, before you’re known for your work, before you have a team, the first 3 years in business are allllllllll about mastering sales. Promote your way of thinking and talking about the work you want to do every day. Nothing else matters until this bit is working. Literally nothing.
Sales is 1% packaging and 99% breaking it down so we can understand what on earth is on offer. I love you and I want you to love your offers as much as I love a freshly baked scone with clotted cream and jam but please remember that your audience don’t want to buy 1:1 or group programs or workshops or any other wrapper you come up with. Packaging is boring. Roll up your sleeves and TELL US WHAT IT DOES FOR US. We need answers! How else are we going to fathom whether we’re stepping into our idea of fresh hell, or our dream situ?
The people making money online in 2025 aren’t the ones with the grandest offers, the biggest audiences or the fanciest get up. Rejoice! They are the ones who prioritise simple decision making for clients over fear of judgement. That’s it!
Wish your book would sell more copies? Talk about who you wrote it for. Craving more 1:1 clients? Explain how your process gets results. Wondering why she is getting booked for speaking events and you’re not? She has put her perspectives on the internet and you haven’t. Your approach to sharing ideas is the difference between getting paid and not. Join in!
The most magnetic thing ever is the energy of someone who knows exactly who she is, and isn’t interested in trying to be like everyone else on the internet.
If you don’t have a message that makes people sit up and pay attention, you don’t have a business.
The most exciting opportunity we have right now is getting paid for our ideas. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, AI pal.
Everyone gets to buy what they need, when they need it. That’s the beauty of the digital marketplace. We are no longer limited by proximity to what’s available.
Buyers buy 24/7, 365 days a year. If they aren’t buying from you (yet) its because they don’t know about you, they can’t see the need in what you’re selling, or they don’t connect with you and what you’re doing.
Everything gets to sell. You don’t need to create anything new, you need to work on the way you sell what you have already created. See point above!
The intention you have for the people who buy from you matters. If you don’t know how to sell your product, if selling gives you the ick or if you want to lead with integrity, start by telling us what you want everyone to “get” from being in your world.
Sales isn’t about finding one magic way to sell one thing. It’s having the tools, the skill set and the self confidence to ensure you can sell anything.
The more you show up, the easier it gets. Promise!
Social media is an amazing place for warming up your audience, especially in the first few years while you build your reputation. Little and often is key. Any more than 30 minutes a day becomes procrastination.
Sell ideas, not goods. That’ll get you buy in from people way faster than selling purely “solutions” ever will.
When it comes to being successful as a business owner, it’s not about time in the game. Everyone is on their own personal journey, and therefore a different timeline. What matters is how willing you are to keep going, and staying curious to the different ways you can explain what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it.
Get people on board with the concept and they’ll be on board with the product. Nobody cares about your products as much as you do. What we care about, is why you created them and how much you believe in them.
Launching is a made up term that marketing gurus love. If you’re a regular human, you can just call it “talking about what you do” if you like. As I do.
Everything you have created would sell more if you prioritised explaining it well, and being prepared to break it down for people way more than your ego is telling you you should.
We live in a convenience economy where simplicity trumps all. The easier you make it for us to buy something from you, the more money you’ll make.
Most women are doing business, making money and selling their products with less time available to them than men. It might not be fair, but it still gets to work. We can still participate and strong sales skills make it easy to do more with less. I for one wouldn’t still be here otherwise.
The majority of business owners I come into contact with aren’t striving for million pound businesses - and neither am I. What we want, is to pay our bills comfortably, with plenty of time left over for what matters most: creative living, family and relationships, and time NOT working.
Sales are the gateway to your creativity. It’s not easy to find creative inspiration while your mind is consumed by how to create stable income: creativity thrives in freedom. Sharpening your ability to make sales and pay your bills gives you the space you need to let your creativity flow.
Most people don’t get into business aiming to work absurdly long hours a la corporate, and yet it happens even when you’re the boss. Go figure!
Kidding. I know exactly why this happens and I’ll never stop being a proud normaliser of NORMAL WORKING HOURS and strong boundaries.
Your belief system is running the show whether you realise it or not. Prioritise mindset work, proximity to those doing things the way you want to do them, and self awareness so that you can make choices that are actually working in your favour.
A bad experience is hard to forget. Being known for being a good egg is always worth it. Ultimate sales hack: be a decent human!
If selling was manipulative, sleazy or pushy, then how come millions of happy buyers are purchasing exactly what they want, all on their own, everyday? That story is old, it needs to get in the bin. Reeks of patriarchy and isn’t helping anyone here to believe such tripe. Sales is lots of things: information sharing, idea promotion, concept building - but it’s only sleazy if you’re taking instruction from 1985 corporate boardrooms!
Business is a team game. Don’t try and figure it all out alone unless you want to feel overwhelmed and constantly over complicate everything without moving anywhere fast.
Everything is always changing. Just when you think you have everything exactly as you want it, surprise! Plot twist. That’s the whole point of being creative: doing things in new and different ways, and not staying the same.
Ditch anything that isn’t serving you. If you’re an aged millennial, like me, 99.9% of what you learnt at school was preparing you for a long and singular career in an established industry that may or may not have been a perfect fit for your working aspiration. I’m already on my fourth career so I can certifiably say it’s discard season for the meticulous notes I made in all those economics classes…
Turns out there is no magic way to “make it”. There are thousands of ways to be paid for work you love to do. The best way for you won’t be the same as the best way for me, and that’s OK! Pick your own adventure (I always loved those books!).
Promoting your ideas helps you stand out, makes you easier to pay, gives us a human connection we’re all craving and brings your books, your products and your services into context. When’s the last time you shared one of yours?
Sales skills are *the* great leveller of our time. Before, your career progress relied on a steadfast-if-a-little-linear path + how much your boss liked you vs the next guy, how many hoops you were prepared to jump through, your contacts and how many jobs came up in your eyeline. Now, you can present yourself online, talk about what you want to do more of and be paid in whatever way suits you best. Whatever your background, marginalised group or amount of available time, the strength of your ability to sell your products gets you seen, paid and allows you to increase the level of freedom you have from a system that really wasn’t serving you. As someone who grew up with no money, no fancy connections and no real clue of what I wanted to do I could cry with relief TBH.
More women than ever now have brilliant, freedom creating micro businesses that allow them to work in a way that fulfils them AND pays them well.
Why not you? No really!
Building your business around personal preference is still very new and it’s OK to have moments where you feel like you have no idea what you’re doing! We are still in our first decade or two of being able to reach buyers remotely, work from anywhere and package up our thoughts in myriad different ways. Finding support and staying in environments where this is the “new normal” will keep you feeling motivated, supported and calm.
Build for the business you want, not for the business you have right now. It’s a long game!
Context sells! If everyone with a book, a course, a creative idea or an exciting project devoted just a few minutes to explaining why it matters to them, thousands and thousands of sales would be made more quickly every day.
If you can’t explain who your product is for in under 10 seconds I don’t care what it is you’re selling, it’s not clear enough. Sorry not sorry.
My mind is blown by the advancements that are going on in the digital landscape in 2025. Will I be branded a dinosaur for stubbornly refusing to let AI write my emails? I don’t know but writing is my favourite thing and I won’t be giving it up for any human, robot or other life form (are robots a life form now?) and that’s one thing I can say for sure.
Having a business is legit like creating your dream career. If I’d have known when I’d started that ten years in, I’d have written my very own book, be hosting in person retreats and have dream clients who genuinely feel like friends, I’d never have believed it. Whatever you’re dreaming of happening one day will be here before you know it when you start building.
What a cool moment to stand here and look back on ten years in corporate, and ten years of making money on my own terms. In the last decade I’ve been a photographer, a mentor, an educator and an author. And I’m just getting started! I can’t wait for the next ten years!
See you soon,
Sara x
PS Alicante is awesome, the perfect Spring getaway! This is my favourite beach: San Juan. If you get the chance to go, it’s a 20 minute bus ride from town and so worth it!
How exciting! Thank you for the wisdom as always and congrats!
You KNOW I’m here for 5!! 🔥 also congrats on the nom, so well deserved x