Can I Sell Starbucks Online? Oh Yes, You Can

If you are a Starbucks enthusiast, you have landed on the right page. Do you know that you can sell Starbucks online without having to own a franchise? This would save you thousands of investment and allow you to start a business from home. Sounds exciting? Well, read on to find how you can get started.

How To Sell Starbucks Online?

You simply do this through affiliate marketing. Most of you might not know this, but Starbucks actually offers two types of affiliate programs through Rakuten Linkshare;    

• Starbucks Canada – 5-7% commission
• Starbucks Store Online (for the US) – 3-5% commission

All you need is a website with some good quality content before submitting the application. Once approved, you can place the affiliate links on the site to generate sales. The links come in 3 formats; 

• Text and Email
• Individual Products
• Banner and Images

For example, you really love the Starbucks Breakfast Blend, Ground Coffee and wrote a product review about it. In your blog, you can add this gorgeous product image and the product link at the end of your review to direct readers to the Starbucks merchant site for them to make their purchase.

It is that simple 🙂

What Other Items Can You Promote?

While coffee is the star of Starbucks, there are other things that you can monetize through the online store.

• Tea
• Equipments
• Drinkware
• Syrups and sauces
• Instant Coffee
• Promotional Sales

How do you promote these items on your blog? Writing an article entitled ‘Starbucks Coffee Equipment’ is fine, but this phrase is too broad and doesn’t suggest any purchasing intent. Anyone looking for coffee equipment could be just curious about coffee making technology, not necessarily wanting to buy from Starbucks.

Hence, when it comes to keyword research, you want to look for something more descriptive that has selling potentials so that it’s easier to convert readers into consumers. Remember, you are a marketer, not just an informer.

Now, let’s do some experiment here using my favorite keyword research tool, Jaaxy. Using ‘whole bean coffee’ as the root keywords, I’ve elaborated to “what is the best Starbucks whole bean coffee”. People who search for this phrase are likely Starbucks fans looking to buy whole bean coffee online. For me, that’s a purchasing intent.

But is this a good keyword to use on a blog?

In Jaaxy’s result above, I would like you to focus on 3 metrics;

• AVG – Average number of searches that the keyword receives per month.
• QSR – The number of competing websites ranked on Google for this exact keyword.
• SEO – The score system for ranking; the higher the score, the better.

The rule of thumb is to select keyword with some amount of AVG, high SEO power and minimal competition. Hence, this keyword is a good choice. What’s more exciting is that, it has zero QSR which means no one is competing with you for this keyword. How cool is that!

Now that you know how the basics work, you can tap into each product’s potentials. For example, when recommending travel mugs, you could look for “travel mug that keeps coffee hot”. Here’s the result from Jaaxy;

In this case, you can still write a product review even without the brand name and point readers to the range of travel mugs available at the Starbucks online store.

Sometimes, people go online to search for solutions and their queries usually begins with “how to…”. I find that this goes very well with equipments and right off the bat, I thought about “how to buy a coffee machine”.

Look at all the 3 main metrics. Again, this would make a good keyword to write a product review.

How Much Can You Earn?

When looking at a single product, you can estimate your earnings based on the commission percentage. For example, if you are an affiliate with Starbucks Online Store, here’s how much you can get when selling the following items.

Starbucks Breakfast Blend Ground Coffee – 5% of $12.95 = $0.65

Starbucks Reserve™ Stainless Steel Tumbler – 5% of $24.95 = $1.24

Keurig® 2.0 K400 Coffee Brewing System – 3% of $159 = $4.77

If you add the numbers, you’ll earn a total of $6.66, but you are probably thinking that’s not a lot of money. Well, what if for every product review, you get 10 visitors/day and they purchase through your affiliate links?

You’ll be earning $66 ($6.5 + $12.40 + $47.70) a day in sales commissions. That’s about $1980 – not just a couple of dollars – in a month, from Starbucks. The good news is, as the traffic to your site continues to grow, so will your profit. Can you see the potential of this niche already?

What I Like About The Starbucks Affiliate Programs?

1) The brand speaks for itself. Everyone knows about Starbucks and you are probably addicted to their coffee too.

2) They provide great product images that will make your coffee blog look super-professional.

3) Apart from coffee, you can also monetize from other merchandise and promotion. This is something that you can leverage, especially during festive seasons when people are out there buying gifts for themselves and for their friends.

4) They even have a YouTube Channel where there is a ton of videos that you can use to promote products on your blog. Here’s a great example on “How to Make a Brewed Coffee” using the Verismo® System Brewer.

What Limitation to Expect?

The product shipping is currently available only in the US and Canada. Therefore, your targeted audience would be limited to those residing in these countries.

So, Is Selling Coffee Worthy of Your Time?

Well, here are some interesting facts about coffee, if you haven’t already know. 

• Coffee is the most sought after commodity after crude oil.
• More than half of the American population (over 18 years old) drink coffee every day.
• The average the American coffee drinkers consume 3 ½ cups daily.
• Starbucks practice ‘fair trade’ coffee, which means, the company provides growers with better working conditions and higher profit margin.

In my opinion, the coffee niche and the Starbucks affiliate programs is a great combination, especially when you want to start an online business on a minimal budget.  This is an industry that can sell forever, so why not be part of it, right?

If you want to learn how to sell Starbucks as an affiliate marketer, here’s a great online training program that you should check out. Have any thoughts or questions about selling coffee online? Let’s hear about them in the comment area.