I was searching on how to sell on Facebook the other day and came across an interesting platform called Blomming (that’s the official name, not a spelling mistake). Curious to know what it is, I went to try it out and found that it’s an eCommerce program that allows you to sell across three different platforms. That sounds like a very creative tool, but is it efficient in growing your online business? Let’s find out more.
How Does The Program Work
Note; This program is meant for those who have physical products to sell. If you want to get involved in affiliate marketing, which is recommending other company’s product, I would suggest that you check out the Amazon Associate Program instead.
After signing up as a member, you can begin to upload your product list and set the descriptions, selling price and checkout options. When everything is in order, you can then publish your online store on the Blomming Marketplace, on your Facebook profile or on your website/blog.
How Much Does It Cost
The program offers 3 types of membership plans – Starter, Basic and Premium. All of them offer a 15 day free trial with no credit card required. Here are the features that can be found in each plan.
What I Like About This Program
- It’s fairly easy to set things up and convenient that you can use one store across different platforms.
- The paid plans are fairly reasonable considering that you can list unlimited products without having to worry about hosting capabilities.
- The knowledge base comes in several languages and their topics are covered in detailed.
But those are the only three points that I like about the platform. As I continued to experiment with the program, I couldn’t help noticing some obvious disadvantages.
What I Don’t Like
The eCommerce settings are pretty basic and what’s lacking is an inventory tracking system. This is an important part of an online store because you need to make sure that you have enough product supplies to meet sales demands. You don’t want to delay shipping as this will give your customers a bad shopping experience.
When including the online store on your website, you are actually combining two hosting into one, that is Blomming’s service piggybacking on your website hosting. This could increase page loading and if they are not compatible at any point, your online store will not be shown on your website. I would recommend to set things up within one publishing platform such as WordPress or Shopify to avoid any conflict and minimize your hosting maintenance fee.
I tried connecting with their Facebook profile and it seems like this program is more frequently used by non-English speaking users (Spanish, Italian etc.) which I don’t know how to communicate with. This could be a disadvantage if you are targeting English speaking audience on social media.
Now, here’s a fundamental concept that you need to understand. Building more online stores doesn’t necessarily translate to more traffic. You can list as many products as you want across various platforms, but if you don’t do any marketing, nothing would sell. And I am disappointed to find that Blomming doesn’t provide a lot of information on this in their knowledge base.
When I checked out their support system, there’s no live chat and the link to their email doesn’t seem to work. In fact, when I look at their blogs, the last post was dated on June 2014. Something tells me that this program is not up-to-date anymore.
So, Is Blomming Online Store Worthy of Your Time?
By now, you must have heard me saying ‘traffic’ a couple of times. I don’t want to sound like a marketing expert, but the truth of the matter is that, without learning how to acquire proper traffic online, you won’t get any customers regardless of how many online stores you create.
This is because search engines like Google are constantly updating their algorithms to deliver ‘rich and helpful’ content to the audience. By this, I mean textual information that people can read, engage and leave comments – not just a bunch of product images and description. Pure eCommerce sites like the one that you create with Blomming are considered ‘thin content’ that will have difficulty in ranking hence, less chance of being visible online.
When no one sees your store, you won’t get any customers or generate any sales. Since the techniques are quite outdated, I don’t think that this program is worth your time and money. So what is the better option here?
Well, the most fundamental way of driving traffic to an online business these days is through a proper website. Of course, you can still do promotions on social media or marketplace listing, but the ultimate goal is to funnel visitors to your website and make them buy from there.
Here are some advantages that you should consider;
- A built-in online store is more solid, easier to manage and flexible to the changes of web technologies.
- You can keep most (or all) of your profit since you are the owner of the site. When you list on online marketplaces, they usually take a small cut from your sales transaction.
- When people buy from and checkout on your website, it gives them a good shopping experience and it helps to build stronger customer relationships.
- From there, you can acquire your customer’s contact details, grow your email list and use that for future promotions.
- Most importantly, you can publish articles using targeted keywords to attract the right kind of audience and get better search rankings. The sum of all these? You create more traffic to your online business (there I go again).
Hey, I hope that this review has helped you understand what Blomming online store is all about and you are now more knowledgeable on how to grow your retail business. Look, if you need any guidance – whether it is creating a website, finding a profitable niche or trying to increase sales – you should check out this program called Wealthy Affiliate that has all the training to help you get started.
Here’s a glimpse of what you can benefit from their resources;
This program will change the way you approach online marketing and hopefully, help you become more successful in your business.
Have any questions or thoughts about this topic? Please leave them in the comment area below and I’ll get back to you soon.
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How to Promote Your Online Store
Hi there, this post is very informative.
People such as yourself who provide produced reviews are doing a great service to the online community. I myself work online for a living so naturally, I find in interest in anything that has to do with the topic.
It seems as though this program would have to get themselves updated in order to serve the online community better.
I too will have to agree that Shopify sounds like a better alternative. I have never used Shopify myself, but my brother-in-law did and he was doing pretty good, so much that he recommends it to others.
By the way, I am wondering what is your number one recommendation to make money online? As in what kind of approach? Thanks.
Hi Shlomo,
It very much depends on what kind of experience and resources (time/money) that one might have. For a college kid without any business skills, affiliate marketing would be the best approach because it’s cheap and easy to start with. For someone who runs a physical store, he/she could consider expanding the business online. If you have been blogging for a while, then PPC (paid advertising) is probably the next level you want to get into.
Instead of focusing on ‘the one method that will work’, I would encourage people to learn the various ways of acquiring online traffic and start with one that matches their resources (time/money/skills). Any kind of traffic can make money once you have a good grasp of your foundation.
At first, Blomming appeared to be a viable option for setting up an online store, but then I figured that setting up your own WordPress eCommerce site to sell physical products would be a better option because it is a better platform to reach a wider audience.
If no one ever sees the store, no money will ever be made, so therefore an emphasis on generating traffic should be the primary focus than just selling something.
Great information you have shared. Shopify is definitely one of the better options. However, Wealthy Affiliate is not an eCommerce solution. How do you compare them to other platforms?
While WA isn’t an eCommerce software, it offers hosting, website platform and training that can benefit people who want to get involved in selling products online. Shopify is a popular solution, but running a successful business of any kind is more than just creating an online store. You need to learn how to drive targeted traffic to your site and that’s where the techniques thought by WA will really be helpful.
Hey Cathy, thank you for the review about the Blommimg platform.
I agree that marketers need marketing knowledge to run their online businesses effectively and one of the best ways to acquire traffic is through the techniques thought by Wealthy Affiliate. Once you have a good grasp of the basics, you can build anything on top of your business.
Also there are many outdated programs online, so by shedding light about Blomming, one will know whether it’s worth putting in his/her money for the product.
Hello there,
Never heard of this site, really and judging from your description, Blooming is not really worthy of someone’s time. I have been in affiliate marketing for a while and got a good training/support from Wealthy Affiliate.
I mean, I don’t know what special does this site has to offer. Is it a an eCommerce site?
Hi Bruno, Blooming is an eCommerce software that works on 3 places – their own marketplace, on your Facebook page or on your website. Having said that, I’ve tried and their integration isn’t the smoothest out there. Very outdated if you compare with the current eCommerce platforms like Shopify or Volusion.