8 Easy Steps of Selling Plants Online — Ultimate Guide for 2024

Why Should You Sell Plants Online?
If you are passionate about plants, you can easily turn your interest into a profession with an online plant store. Online plant sales are not just a trend; they are the way of the future for plant commerce. According to research, the market for online plant nurseries is worth $100 billion.
In addition to purifying the air in our homes, houseplants can lift our spirits, stimulate our creative thinking, and encourage us to unplug from electronics. That might have been the main driving force behind millennials who were stuck at home purchasing plants in the first place.
Simple accessibility, low upkeep requirements, and cost efficiency are boosting demand for online plant purchases. Customers have the opportunity to locate better prices, more plant varieties, and species that are unusual or exotic in their areas by shopping for plants online. Moreover, selling plants online provides the vendor with increased exposure, sales, and earnings.
Although the offline industry may be greater, the expansion of online plant sales is a positive indicator for those looking to begin selling plants online. There is a burgeoning market for the sale of plants online.
Therefore, if you have a deep love for the natural world and a passion for gardening, you might consider launching an online plant startup to help others realize their desire to spend as much time as possible around plants.

How to Sell Plants Online in 8 Simple Steps:

1. Finding a niche and the right set of plants to sell:
People will expect that since there are so many different kinds of plants, your business should sell them all. But incorporating every plant in your store is not possible, so it’s crucial to decide what specialty or types of plants you would like to sell via your online store.
Therefore, the first step in learning how to sell plants online is to decide what you want to sell.
Your ability to access wholesale greenery or growing space, your local environment, and the amount of money you’re ready to put up front will all influence how you define your plant products.
For starters, consider the following selection of plants:
Houseplants (If you’re a beginner, succulents and aloe vera are your best bets. They can withstand shipment and need little care. But you can also choose cacti, air plants, etc.)
Therapeutic plants
Herbal Aromatics
Decorative grasses
Garden plants
Water plants
Vegetable and flower seeds (they have the highest profit margins and are the easiest to ship).

2. Stocking up:
Option 1: Cultivate your own plants
If you want to sell plants on a modest budget (usually as a hobby) and have the time and space to grow seedlings into healthy plants, cultivating your own plants is a great choice. It’s ideal if you want to keep tight control over your supply.
Additionally, it reduces the additional expense and complication of using several suppliers to fulfill demand.
In addition to renting space at an allotment, you can also grow plants in your own garden or build a greenhouse. It takes extensive knowledge of how to care for various plant species to grow plants. If your order volume goes up, you’ll also need to think about how you’ll scale up production.

Option 2: Purchase your plants in bulk from a wholesaler
Another option is to purchase your plants from a nearby nursery or a wholesaler. You can find a nursery nearby as your supplier. Since they can grow plants at a much lower cost, buying from a wholesaler or a nearby nursery can often be less expensive.
The following are a few things to keep in mind when trying to choose the best source of plants:
1. Compare prices: Different benefits may be provided by different suppliers. There are some with minimums for the number of plants you must purchase. Others may provide further consulting, assistance, or services.
2. Discover the local farmers: Since local vendors don’t have to invest as much in shipping and storage, they frequently offer better prices.
3. Make connections: Make an effort to establish a good rapport with your provider. Better and long-term deals could result from a positive supplier connection.
4. Research wholesalers online: Look for online vendors if you reside in an area where a dependable place to buy wholesale plants isn’t available.
5. Understand seasonality: Think about the varieties of plants that various suppliers will have on hand at specific times of the year. You could also need to switch suppliers during the course of the year.
6. Have a variety of vendors: You’ll be in a lot of trouble if you exclusively work with one supplier and then something unexpected happens with your products. By using several providers, you may access a greater variety of products and ensure that you have a backup. Work with multiple vendors to ensure that if one vendor is out of a popular plant, another might have it in stock.

3. Inventory management: keeping your stock alive and thriving:
After successfully sourcing your plants, the next thing you must decide is where to put them. It’s essential to maintain your inventory while selling plants online.
It is necessary to ensure that your inventory contains the necessary quantity of plants and saplings. You can prepare for future demand more efficiently if you have a positive relationship with your suppliers.
Keep in mind that the plants must be placed in locations where they will have adequate space to grow and breathe. Additionally, you’ll need a space that can not only hold them but is also climate-controlled.

4. Pricing your plants:
If your company is new, pricing any product, especially plants, can be a challenging task. Overpriced plants will be difficult to sell, and you won’t turn a profit if you price them too low!
Take into account the following when determining plant prices:
How much does it cost to buy or grow the plants?
How much does it cost to operate your business, including the cost of storage, your website, marketing, and shipping?
How much time do you spend working on your company? Be sure to account for labor expenditures when determining your fixed costs. Even if you aren’t paying someone to help you grow
and take care of plants, your efforts should still be considered.

5. Setting up an online store:
The aforementioned topics highlighted the groundwork required to sell plants online. Let’s now look at how to put together your store’s internet component.
Setting up an online store is the first step. The most prominent choice when it comes to selling plants online is to do it on your own eCommerce or online store.
Using a platform like eBitans which will assist you in creating your online store without having to write any code is the simplest way to get started.
The goal of eBitans is to make it as simple as possible for anyone to launch an online business. It’s simple to launch your online store with eBitans.
Register with eBitans.
Choose a theme for your store and make it unique to represent your business.
Upload your product portfolio.
Configure the payment gateway.
Start selling by going live.

6. Photograph your plants:
Product photography are essential to capturing the interest of your audience. This is particularly the case for visually appealing and bright objects like plants! Your online clients can not touch the plants and view them from all angles like those who visit your actual plant nursery.
Therefore, it is important to provide the visitors with a good sense of the plants so that they may understand what to expect from their purchases.

7. Marketing your store:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You can achieve good results by adhering to a few fundamental SEO best practices. These comprise:
• Publishing excellent quality content on a regular basis.
• Including in-text links to other reliable websites and your own.
• Ensuring that your website loads quickly and is easy to use.
Social Media
A terrific, cost-free way to grow and involve an audience is through social media. Social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok attract a lot of customer attention and offer excellent channels for interacting with your target market.
Paid Ads
By using paid advertisements, you can immediately connect with the individuals relevant to your electronics business. The number of people you can reach with paid ads is only constrained by the amount of money you have to spend, as opposed to SEO, social media, and email marketing, which depend on the gradual growth of an audience over time.
There are various forms of paid advertisements, including:
• Social Media Ads: These include paid ads that appear in your audience’s social media feeds.
• Search Engine Ads: These include paid ads that appear at the top of search results on search engines like Google or Bing.
• Sponsored Posts: Paid advertisements that promote your goods at the top of listings on well-known online marketplaces are known as sponsored posts.

8. Packaging and shipping plants:
Finding a reliable shipping partner is an essential step to selling anything online. However, this aspect of selling online is a little more challenging when you’re selling plants.
Most plants are delicate and need special packaging material and should be packed carefully. Fortunately, when it comes to packaging plants with care, there is a ton of help available online.
Since plants require special packaging materials, the cost of such materials will also have to be accounted for when you are deciding on selling prices.