Last week, I had an opportunity to attend a soap making class and discovered that it is quite an interesting niche. In fact, many of the students want to start a soap-making business from home. Are you one of them too? Great, because this article will show you exactly how it works.
Why Make Your Own Soap
First thing first, why do people want to make their own soap? I mean, you can get them easily from the stores and in fact, body shower cream seems like a more convenient choice. Well, here are some benefits to soap making that you need to know.
- You can custom made soap in terms of the ingredients, shapes, and smell.
- Homemade soaps are more tender to sensitive skin.
- It’s actually a very cost-effective way of producing good quality soap.
- They make great gifts for families and friends.
- It’s a blend of health and craft skills that people of all ages enjoy doing.
- And the process is actually quite easy (that’s why you can even do it at home).
Now that you know the benefits of this business, let’s get started.
Seven Steps to Start Soap Making Business from Home
Step #1 – Ways to Monetize
The best way to make money with soap is by selling them through a website. You can create an online store, conduct online courses/video tutorials or recommend the tools that you use for making soaps through affiliate programs.
Step #2 – Find a Business Name
What would you call your business? You can go for a brandable name or a keyword-rich domain. Either way, find something that’s easy to pronounce, remember and most importantly, available to use. SiteDomains is a great place to search for these names and they cost between $13.99 to $15.99/year.
Step #3 – Create a Business Website and Social Pages
My choice for a website would be to use the WordPress platform because it’s very versatile, powerful and it’s also free. SiteRubix hosting comes preinstalled with this software so you can set up a WordPress site easily with just a few simple clicks.
Now, go over to your favorite social networks, whether it’s Pinterest, Facebook or Google Plus and see if you can find a username similar to that domain. If they have not yet been taken, create a social account with that username for each network. It’s okay if you have nothing to post yet – your business brand will thank you later on.
Step #4 – Build Trust for Your Site
When it comes to running an online business, the first thing that you want to show people is that you are a real person behind the brand. Just like a business card, you should at least provide a contact name and email. If you are planning to extend your business to a physical location, consider adding maps on your contact page as well.
Besides that, you should also write an introduction about yourself and what inspires you to set up this site in an ‘About Me’ page. Adding a nice picture of yourself making some soaps is a great way to build trust with your readers too.
Step #5 – List Your Products or Courses
WordPress offers a lot of plugins and features for you to list your products online. If you are selling soap products, then setting up an eCommerce platform is vital. In the process, you’ll need to take pictures of your products, list the appropriate pricing and create a merchant account to receive sale orders.
When it comes to selling courses, it’s a good approach to offer a few free tutorials first so that people see the value of signing up to improve their knowledge of soap making. What you can do is to organize workshops in local hangouts because this would allow skills demonstration and improve interaction with your students.
Alternatively, you can also create a series of video tutorials and post them on your website or on YouTube (just like the one below)
Step #6 – Research Keywords in Your Niche
Whether you are selling your own products or recommending soap making tools, it’s important to find out what people are searching for online so that you know what to offer through your website. This can be done through 3 methods.
(1) Alphabet Soup Technique
If you are used to searching for information online, you would have noticed that every time you enter a word, Google would suggest a few terms in a drop-down box. These suggestions are based on popular searches and it is called the Alphabet Soup Technique.
In this example on ‘how to make soap f…’, Google is showing me four topic ideas that I can use for writing blog posts. Do you know how to make any of these?
(2) Related Searches
For the second method, scroll all the way to the end of the Google search result page and you’ll find a column that says ‘Searches related to…’ which looks something like this.
These are popular searches that you can use as keywords for your blogs too.
(3) Finding Your Competition
Now, we are going to go a bit deeper into the research by finding the level of competition for each targeted keywords. For this, I am going to use my favorite tool called Jaaxy. My first targeted key phrase is ‘How to Make Handmade Soap’.
The QSR column is the competition level, which means, you are going to compete with 158 websites that have been ranked for this term. Is that number difficult to beat? Most probably, since you are only starting out.
Let’s look at the second targeted keyphrase – ‘How to Make Soap from Coconut Oil’
The QSR for this term is only 14 and it certainly feels like an easier number to outrank, isn’t it? So the main point is, find a keyword that’s in demand and target the one with the lowest competition to get a more specific audience to your site.
Step #7 – Get Online Engagement
Once you’ve published the blog post, share them on your social networks (remember the social profiles that we created earlier?) and encourage people to leave comments on the article. When people see how active your site is, they would be more interested in buying things from you.
Rinse and repeat steps 5 to 7 every day and you’ll be on your way creating a successful soap-making business from home.
Is Soap Making Business Worthy of Your Time?
So what did I learn from my soap making class? It’s very addictive and everyone seems to have their own bar soap recipe that they are proud of. Out of curiosity, I checked out Google Trend for ‘homemade soap’ vs ‘commercial soap’.
I think it’s quite obvious which one is the winner here 🙂 So, if you are starting a business in this niche from home, the opportunity is going to be huge if you know how to leverage from keyword research and social engagement.
Can’t wait to get started? Check out my awesome online business program to learn more.
Do you have any thoughts or questions about this topic? Just leave them in the comment area below and I’ll get in touch with you.
Alex says
Hi Cathy,
I have always wonder how I could monetize my skill and knowledge in home-brew beer. I knew I can share my interest on a website but never know where to start.
Although this article is about soap making, I can relate this with my niche. It is a great guide as it is easy for me to follow, especially I am new to the world of online business.
I like the “keyword research” and “Google Trends” that you are sharing here. These are totally new to me and I am glad to learn something new here.
I guess I will pop by again to get some inspiration from you.
Thanks!
Alex
Cathy says
You are thinking out of the box, Alex. Good for you! It never fails to surprise me that people learn best from seeing/reading examples. Google Trend is a free tool that you can use and incorporate into your keyword research technique. Use the exact upward trend keyphrase and transport it to Jaaxy Keyword Tool to do some digging. You’ll usually find some great ideas in the process.
Forrest Finch says
Hi, Cathy.
Great article here. I’ve been contemplating using Shopify for my next project and have gone there just to see what it entails. It definitely looks doable to me but not for my two current sites. One of which is quite new yet and ranking very well in both Google and Bing as a new site. A direct result of honing my keyword research skills.
I’m already a student of Wealthy Affiliate University which is where I picked up those skills. Shopify will be my next venture for sure. Bookmarking your site for future reference.
Thanks for the awesome information!
Cathy says
Hey Forrest, Shopify is well known for their good eCommerce layout (some even think they are better than WordPress) and customer service, so it’s definitely worth checking out if your business is eCommerce oriented. I wrote a post about how to create an online store with Shopify not long ago. Perhaps it could be some help to you.
Cyril says
Great training. Making soap as our own online business is a great idea. But aside from the “soap” niche, I see you also provided great technique to do keyword researches and hosting websites.
I am totally new to make money online and I was finding way to create an online business. However, I would like to know more about the success-mark of an online business. How long will it takes to make my first sale? Thanks!
Cathy says
I wish I could give you a straight forward answer to this type of question, but as someone who has been doing internet marketing for 2 years, I’ve yet to find one. Essentially, it depends on how much effort you invest in understanding your niche, mastering keyword research (this one is very important) and creating content frequently on your blog.
The learning curve varies among individuals and most people give up when they don’t see the money in their first year. But that doesn’t mean you can never make money online. All I can say is that, with a proper online training program, you are more likely to be consistent in your actions, thus producing better results, than roaming around the internet searching for a quick formula for success.
Melinda says
Nice post Cathy.
Handmade soaps are definitely better than store bought. I agree that making your own is best if you have allergies or skin sensitivities. My sister makes her own soaps and lotions due to that and gives me some. I love them.
You show the trend is there. But is there a decent profit margin as so many are starting to make their own?
Cathy says
I guess it depends on how you market your products. If you are going to sell at markets (like what most would do), sales and brand recognition would be slower because that’s the traditional approach. If you put in the effort to market them online, along side creating online courses, blogging or a fan page, you’ll get a bigger audience and likely make more profits.