Ultimate Guide to Sell Services Online

Have you ever thought about learning how to sell services online? Most people think about selling products online, but sometimes selling services online gets overlooked.

In truth, it’s one of the best ways to make money quickly and legitimately online. You probably already have some of the skills already to be able to sell a service online. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first let’s look at some proven methods to use for success for selling services online, no matter what your skills!

What Are Services Online?

A service is something that you do for someone. It’s trading your time for money. You do work for someone and they pay you, but no product is actually exchanged. With an online service, your primary contact with the person you are working for is over the internet.

Why sell services online?

Blogging is a fantastic way to generate passive income. However, it’s slow. Blogs start small and can grow big. But sometimes you need to make money online faster than what growing a blog and selling your own products will allow.

That’s where selling services online comes in. It’s a much faster way of generating income online. Many people are buying online too. It’s estimated that 77.3 % of Americans make online purchases in 2021 which is expected to grow to 85.5% by 2025. Selling services online is not strictly limited to Americans. It’s estimated that in 2021 2.14 billion people will be buying goods or services online.

What can be sold online?

Almost anything can be sold online, but services are especially online friendly since there is no product to ship. Any service that you can do on a PC can be done online.

Related, to give you lots of ideas of what you can sell online:

• Social Media Jobs You can do from Home
• Online Jobs for Moms
• Jobs for Fast Typers

Services that cannot be sold online

Some obvious services cannot be sold online. For example, I’ve never gotten my haircut online, and I’ve never had my car repaired online either. If you actually have to put your hands on something to provide a service, you can’t do it online. Other than that -almost anything else is fair game! (Just make sure that you protect yourself legally.)

Pros and Cons of Selling Services Online

When you are wondering about “how to sell my services online” you should know about these pros and cons.

Pros	Cons
You get to pick who you work with and when you work	Some clients may be hard to work for
Good way to make money quickly	You have to adapt your service to fit the needs of different people
You are your own boss	Possible for people to take advantage of you
Less overhead costs	Lose the instant gratification that comes with selling a physical product
No need to buy inventory or stock up on product	You are responsible for getting and keeping clients
It’s easy to scale your services and make more money.
You can provide a large range of services

Services You Can Provide Online

In today’s online world, there are many services that you can do for people across the internet. It could be things like:

• Writing a blog post
• Responding to customer service emails
• Planning out social media content
• Editing videos
• Posting to Pinterest
• Designing a website
• Writing emails
• Setting up sales funnels
• Selling online courses for someone
• Setting up a marketing strategy
• Coaching
• Translating documents
• Graphic design
• Creating pin images
• Zoom meeting coordination

And much more! You have more skills than you give yourself credit for.

Services by Number has a huge list of 400+ Flexible Virtual Service Skills as a bonus if you want to see more!

What Are the Steps of Selling Services Online?

There’s no one right or wrong way to sell services online. However, some ways are easier than others.

Find the Right Service for You to Offer

The first thing that you need to know when considering how to sell services online are finding the right services to offer. Like trying to narrow down your blog niche, you need to strike a balance between what you’re good at, what you love to do, and what will make you money.

Consider your skillset and then create a mindmap to expand on one central idea. The example below takes the skill of writing, or health and fitness and expands on it.

Create Service Offerings

Once you have completed your mind map and figured out what service to offer, you can create customized service packages. For example, you might be able to create a blog post and charge an additional fee for creating the pin images to go with it as an add-on.

Finding Clients

There are many ways to find clients when you are learning how to sell services online.

• Content marketing
• Networking online or offline
• Cold emails
• Write guest posts
• Ask for referrals from other clients
• Partner with another service provider
• Search freelance job boards

Content Marketing For Getting Quality Clients

One of the best solutions for finding clients when you are learning how to sell services online is to create content that allows them to find you. 53% of people that are looking to purchase do online research first. That’s why you need content – so the people that need you can find you.

This may be YouTube videos, blog posts, podcasts, social media content – anything that helps establish you as an authority and boosts your reputation.

When clients find you through content marketing, they already have a degree of trust built up in you because of the blog post, YouTube videos, or other helpful content that you have put out there. These clients are ones that already want to work with you, which are excellent prospects for selling services online.

Get traffic, Build trust

When you create your content, it does much of the foundation work for building trust. You have generated trust with the helpful advice you have already given. To drive traffic to your content, you can use a variety of techniques including SEO, Pinterest, and social media.

You need to build your email list by giving away a freebie that provides value to your prospective client. Then, continue to build their trust through a series of emails that provide not only value but a way to contact you through a discovery call or sales call.

Sales call

Once you have found clients that want to work with you, you can meet with them over live video to discuss their needs. Sales calls can seem scary, but the most important thing to do in a sales call is to listen.

Listen to what your client needs and wants. Listen to their concerns, their purposes, their time constraints, and their struggles. Then ask if they have questions. Focus on how you can best help the customer.

Make Money

When considering how to sell your services online, it’s fairly obvious that you need some way to collect payment. You need to make sure you have a way to collect payment and send invoices. There are more professional tools out there, and many ways to do this, but one of the simplest is Paypal when you are first getting started.

Sales Call DOs and DON’Ts that Can Make or Break a Deal When Selling Services Online

When you are going through all the steps of how to sell services online, discovery calls or sales calls might leave you with your stomach in knots. It doesn’t have to be that way! Approach it as your chance to get to know more about your prospective client and their business. If your services can honestly help them, then offer them. If not, be sure to tell them that as well. Just listening to them can help you build great rapport.

Do:

• Ask a lot of questions
• Seek to understand their business, their situations and their problems
• Ask yourself “Can I help this person?”
• Thank them for their time and ask how they found you
• Let them do most of the talking
• Restate what they told you and reflect feelings back
• Close the deal in a non-salesy no pressure way

Don’t:

• Give them a high pressure “buy from me now” sales pitch
• Dominate the conversation
• Try to work with everyone you land a call with, even if they are not a good fit.
• Come across as desperate

How to market and sell services online

You can market and sell services online in a variety of ways.

Service pages

You can set up a simple website with a page outlining your services. Be sure to include client testimonials, detail what services you offer, who your ideal client is, and how you can help their business.

Partner with another service provider

If you already know someone in the business or a related business, you can also partner with another service provider. For example, if you are great at maintaining websites, but don’t enjoy building them from scratch, you might be able to partner with someone that builds websites.

They could build the website, and the client that they built the website for might need you to maintain it.

Ask for referrals

When you complete a job for someone, ask them to refer you to other people they know. Word of mouth can be a powerful marketing tool.

Network with your target client

Networking is a powerful tool when you are considering how to sell your services online. There are many ways to network, both online and in person. Networking with your target client might look like joining a Facebook group where they hang out. It might also look like a more traditional in-person networking event like attending a conference or convention.

Establishing an Online Presence

When talking about how to sell services online, establishing an online presence is vital. How will people find your online service if you are not online? They can’t!

Create quality content consistently. Make sure that you optimize your content for search engines (SEO) so that you can cash in on organic traffic. You might also consider paid traffic through ads for your online services as well. Offer genuinely helpful advice and start building your email list with an opt-in of some kind so that you can keep establishing a relationship with the people that find you.

Organic traffic vs Paid traffic

Organic traffic is from people that are actively searching for you. The picture below is an example of how someone could find Start A Mom Blog through Organic Search. Notice there is no “Ad” on this search result and the search term was “how to start a mom blog.”

Paid traffic is through ads of some kind. They may be google ads, where someone has paid for their article to be at the top of the google search, as in the picture below. Paid traffic could also be ads through Facebook, or promoted pins through Pinterest.

In short, paid traffic is any traffic that you pay for in some way, usually by paying for ads. The site in this example is from paid traffic. When someone searches “how to sell your services online” the highlighted article says “Ad” before the web address. Shopify has paid for Google to put their result on the first page of the search results for this term.

Which is Better – Organic Traffic or Paid Traffic to Sell Services Online?

Organic traffic and Google rankings can take time, but they generate 53.3% of traffic. There are other ways to generate organic traffic, such as well worded YouTube descriptions, Pinterest, and other social media. The good news about organic traffic is that the people that find you are the ones searching for you, so they are more inclined to buy your services online if they like your content.

Paid traffic is faster, but has no guarantee that you will make back your money. You, of course, want a positive return on your investment (ROI). It’s not good if you spend $50 on Facebook ads to show your ad to 5000 people and none of them buys your service.

It’s best to balance paid traffic and organic traffic. Start with organic traffic first and drive it through Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, or your chosen social media platform. Then, once you start getting some conversions, start with some paid traffic.

How to Sell Professional Services Online

Many types of services can be sold online. The basic process is the same for all of them and is outlined in detail in the Services by Number Course.

If you’re curious, here is the software we recommend to sell services or digital products online.

How to Sell Online Marketing Services/Digital Marketing Services Online

Selling online marketing services and digital marketing services online involves helping a business increase its visibility and attract customers. You could offer several professional services under the online marketing/digital marketing heading. These include but are not limited to:

• Writing and managing Facebook ads for a company
• Creating Sales Pages
• Setting up marketing funnels from their company’s webpage
• Creating, and managing promoted pins
• Analyzing trends in their data from their sales campaigns to discover which activities have the highest ROI.
• Managing Google ads

You will need to have examples of your work or provide mock-ups of what you could do for a company before you implement the changes. Testimonials from past clients and proof of results are another secret of how to sell services online, especially with online digital marketing. These tips are also great for selling graphic design services online!

How to Sell Subscription Services Online

Subscription services are a very fast-growing online service. Selling subscription services online can be in the form of actual products, such as a subscription box, or it could be monthly access to digital products, such as a course library, or a monthly subscription to a private Facebook group geared towards support or coaching. One of the biggest benefits of subscription services is that it provides somewhat stable monthly revenue.

Best tips on how to sell subscription services online:

• Use a sales page to provide details and value to your customers, explaining not only what they are getting but how it will benefit them, as well as save them time/money.
• Make sure you have reliable sources around a central theme or niche if you are selling a subscription box with physical products.
• Ensure that your payment system is easy to navigate for your customer and will bill in a recurring cycle.
• Be sure that you get your products/services to the customer on time!

How to sell Interior Design Services Online

It can help to think outside the box when you are trying to figure out how to sell services online. Many people need help making their spaces more beautiful and functional. If you are a mom that has some interior design skills, you can sell those services online. You could offer virtual home interior design consults.

Your client could walk you through a virtual tour of their home using pictures or a live video on their phone. They could tell you what spaces they are having problem areas with and you could offer helpful advice to make their spaces more beautiful and functional.

Related: Top 12 Interior Design Blogs You Need to Know About

How to Sell Writing Services Online

Writing services are one of the most popular services that people can offer to sell online. Many people need content for their blogs to help them generate traffic. If you enjoy writing, it’s a great service to offer online to make some extra money.

Magazines and sites are in constant need of quality content – which you can write for them for a price! Our best advice for how to sell writing services online is to have examples of your previous work and to bill by the word, the project, or by the hour.

How to Sell Coaching Services Online

If you are a coach or have expertise in some area, then you could sell coaching services online. You can either offer individual coaching or group coaching. As a mom, you could coach things such as:

• How to run sucessful playdates
• Positive parenting
• Life coaching
• How to meal plan
• Fitness coaching
• How to manage mom anxiety
• Improve your communication with your spouse

This online service also works well as a subscription service so that you can have reoccurring revenue. Make sure that your payment system will do recurring billing and use an online calendar for your booking system.

How to Sell SEO Services Online

The first page of Google search results are golden in terms of organic traffic. If you are good at writing search engine optimized posts (SEO) and can help a company get seen, you can sell SEO services online.

First, find the company that you want to help, and send them an email analyzing one of their articles that’s on the 4th or 5th page of search results. This gives them genuine value. Invite them to contact you for further information.

SEO can sound intimidating, but it’s one of the many marketable skills that you can learn from starting your own blog. It’s also a great idea for a service that you can do on your own schedule. You can work during nap time or after the kids go to bed.

How to Sell Postpartum Consulting Services Online

When you are thinking about how to sell consulting services online, postpartum consulting may not be the first thing that comes to mind. Every momma remembers what a shock it was after they brought their first baby home from the hospital. It’s totally life-changing! The changes are not bad, but especially for first-time mommas, they can be hard.

If you are a been-there-and-done-that momma, then you could sell postpartum consulting services online and help all those new mommas adapt to all the changes in their lives that come with the arrival of a new little one. You could have a video chat and check-in with the new Momma every week. You could offer consulting services online for new mommas like:

• hormone management
• meal planning
• lactation/breastfeeding help
• how to reconnect with your husband after baby
• baby sleep training
• managing toddlers with baby
• encouraging sibling bonding with baby
• and more!

Your support could be invaluable!

How to Sell Online Tutoring Service

Ready to put your brain to work? You could start selling services online by offering online tutoring sessions. Often, kids need extra help in school, and parents may not have time to help them, or feel qualified to do so. You could offer an online tutoring service.

You could meet with a student over video and help them improve in an area that they’re struggling with. It could be anything from helping kids learn to read better to helping with Algebra II. You get to pick what works best for you!

Frequently Asked Questions About Selling Services Online

Why is Services By Number the Best Course to Teach You How to Sell Services Online?

Starting anything new can be intimidating, the same can be said for selling services online. It feels like a lot of putting yourself “out there.”

But why should you consider starting with services?

In short – passive income takes time to build, but you don’t always have the luxury of waiting for it to make money. Selling services is the fastest way to replace a full-time income.

There are other benefits as well:

• Get paid to become an expert
• Clients pay your worth from the beginning
• Enables you to prove your expertise before you become “an authority.”
• Gives you testemonials to help you sell and build your confidence
• Flexible work schedule that you are in charge of
• Blueprint and launch your digital service business in as little as 30 days.

Services by Number walks you step by step through the process so you never wonder if you are doing the right thing.

Check out Services By Number Here

The Last Thing You Need to Know About Selling Services Online

If you want to be able to work from home, selling services online is the quickest path. It doesn’t matter what kind of service you offer or which industry you are in, marketing your business on the internet will help get more customers for less money than any other form of advertising.

What is your biggest challenge when it comes to offering services online? Leave a comment below!