Sell your custom goods with Dubsado
Custom art, cupcakes, furniture, wedding cakes, t-shirts, cookies, wedding cakes, etc. This is the way.
“Hey! I love those cute ___ that you make! How can I get some?”
“Wow those ____ look sooooo good! Can you make some for my kids birthday party?”
“What would you charge for ___ and ___? Could you do it by next friday?”
If you are a creator of custom homemade goods, then you’re probably all too familiar with messages like this.
Stop competing in an online marketplaceI have an EASY way for you to sell your items, with NO additional fees that will streamline communication with your buyers and organize the back end of your office all at the same time. Ready for it?
How much more could you sell if you could cut out 95% of your back and forth and have a place to store (& organize!) all your client data?!?
More and more creatives are turning to Dubsado to sell their homemade goods! I see this in my message boards almost daily. They’re getting sick of competitors thumbnails on their product listing pages and want to raise their prices to reflect the value of the work put into it.
WHY YOU SHOULD SELL CUSTOM GOODS IN DUBSADO
3 reasons why you should sell your digital products (or homemade goods!) with Dubsado:
You’ll get paid more. Dubsado doesn’t add on extra fees or take any more out of each transaction. The only fees will be from whatever your payment processor takes out and your monthly subscription to Dubsado. No hidden fees or convenience fees, or the sky is blue fees.
No competition. If you sell on Etsy, Amazon Handmade or the Creative Market, buyers will price shop and compare. With Dubsado, there is no competing with other sellers in the marketplace because there are none. You won’t find thumbnails for similar items on your sales screen.
Sell what you want. You don’t have to adhere to the selling requirements of any marketplace. (is it vintage or not? Doesn’t matter!) This is perfect for bakeries, graphic designers, Just make sure you’re not violating anyone’s copyright! (no famous mice!)
Ok I couldn’t keep it at 3! Ha! Here’s a bonus: It’s easy to nurture your buyers. Ask for feedback, offer referral codes, discounts for future purchases, and just be more engaged - personal touches go a LONG way!
Have I convinced you yet?? I’m definitely biased with Dubsado! I started using Dubsado in my own business and loved it so much, I pivoted to offering Dubsado set-up services as my full time gig.
HOW TO SELL CUSTOM GOODS IN DUBSADO
Ok now that we’ve established WHY selling with Dubsado is a good idea, let’s take a look at HOW to get this done! I’ll go into more detail, but here are the basic steps:
Create a menu of packages with prices
Create a public proposal.
Write the delivery/initial response email
Create a workflow that connects the email to the proposal.
Ok now let’s break this down:
1. Create a menu of packages:
What will visitors have to choose from to purchase? Go to Templates > Packages > Add Package. Add in the name of each item, description, price, tax, category (for tax keeping purposes) and quantity per price. Save. Do this for each item the clients can choose from. Even if you have small add-on’s. They all get their own package.
2. Create a public proposal/check out form. This is will be an order form that you’ll embed on your website. If you don’t have a website, you can share the direct link with others via milkshake app, social links, or when someone DM’s you. Prior to having a website, I created a brochure of my services on Canva and added my links there.
Go to Forms > Templates > Click the + sign next to Proposal to create a new form. Name this form (this could be client-facing, so make sure it’s something that makes sense to both of you!), and then click on settings (gear icon on left).
Inside the body of the form, be thoughtful about what’s included and the order everything is laid out. You’ll want to take your clients on a journey. Make sure you give a timeline of what happens when, how you’ll communicate, and any FAQ’s if needed. Be very clear that they’re purchase is not complete until a payment is made and the exact steps needed to do so.
You will definitely want to include questions to automate as much as possible about the purchase. Add package buttons so they can make selections, then add short answer and/or free response questions to collect all the info needed to customize their purchase (colors, style, etc). You can even add a file uploader if you need images from them.
Next go to SETTINGS (top left) and do this:
Toggle on include contract if you have a service agreement (which you should!)
Allow client to choose multiple packages: Yes
Toggle on invoice (this allows the buyer to pay immediately after making selections)
No payment plan (we’ll do that later)
Create new project once proposal is completed: Yes
No expiration
Project title: Use the smart fields for the clients name. You can add a tag in the workflow if you’d like, or add it ahead of the name. Ex: Branding | {{client.name}}
Make sure legacy mode is OFF
3. Write some emails. You definitely want a response email, and perhaps a delivery email and a follow up email. Go to Templates > Canned Emails to do this. Include smart fields where it makes sense. *client name, payments made, etc
INITIAL RESPONSE: This is what will be sent immediately after the proposal (checkout form) is submitted. If you need to review the form before you can get started, let them know when they’ll receive a personalized email back. You can also include smart links for invoicing if you want to show amount paid.
DELIVERY EMAIL: Is your product something you would email? Or snail mail? Either way, let them know it’s here or on the way and how excited you are for them to receive it.
FOLLOW-UP: Check in a few days after delivery and see how they’re doing with their purchase, how they felt about it, make sure the process was smooth. You can ask for reviews or include a feedback form here, or wait another week or so and do that then.
*These are ideas to be used as a jumping-off point. Consider the journey your clients will go on and when it makes sense to send them an email. Write all the templates you need. Even if you manually send some of them, it’s soooo help to have the emails already written and edit the copy on the fly.
4. Create a workflow:
Create Templates > Workflows
You want your first step to be SEND EMAIL and the trigger to be AFTER WORKFLOW STARTED. Select the initial response email you already wrote. You could end the workflow after this, and manually send any other emails, or add a pause into the workflow and then the other emails you wrote. This way, they are queued up and ready to go when you unpause it.
*Note if you require full payment and only want this email to be sent after the product is paid in full, then add in a HOLD ACTIONS UNTIL action with the trigger AFTER INVOICE PAID IN FULL. You can do the same for the contract. Make this the first step(s) of the workflow, with the response email going after.
*If you are using an abandoned cart sequence, you can leave out the hold for the invoice. This will be the workflow you start from the abandoned cart workflow. More about that HERE.
Once you have the workflow how you want it, go back to the proposal and connect it. You’ll find that option in the settings area.
SET YOURSELF APART FROM OTHER MAKERS
That’s all you NEED to sell a digital product online…but while you have your buyer’s attention, why not set yourself apart from everyone else even more? Or make more money? Here are some ideas:
Check in. 2-3 days after the purchase, send another email. Ask how it’s going and if there is anything you can help with.
Upsell: If you have an appropriate upsell that would benefit this particular customer, then let them know in the delivery email or in a follow up. I love to throw in a discount code that is only available to friends (because once someone purchases from me, we’re friends)
Testimonials: After the buyer has had time to hang it/implement it/write in it/etc, ask if you can get their feedback. Create a form and send it at the end of your original workflow that you used to sell the product.
I hope this was helpful! I absolutely LOVE using Dubsado for selling custom products because there is ZERO competition. Gone are the days of marketplace competition and underpricing your products.
Want to give this a try, but need some help? Click that button if you’d like someone (aka me) to create your checkout form for you, or that button on the right & to schedule a 15 min kick-off call to talk about a VIP Day.
Happy Dubsado-ing! ☺️
For all my creative friends who create tangible, custom creations for clients.
Do you like a [free] challenge?
DIY your Dubsado in 5 steps 👇🏼👇🏼
1 | Settings & Client processes
2 | Packages & Discounts
3 | Forms
4 | Emails
5 | Schedulers
Here’s what else you’ll get:
🎥 Video tour
🛠 Order of operations - building sections in the wrong order can make things much harder!
💾 Instructions & homework for each step
👯♀️ Access to a Certified Dubsado Specialist (hi that’s me! 👋🏼)
Best for those who…. are pretty tech-savvy and need someone to grab them by the shoulders and point them in the right direction.
Investment : free
Did you know Dubsado is free for your first the 3 clients?
Use the code paradise for 30% off your first year or month when your trial is over!