Financial Blog

Do you love baking or making desserts? Do you get many likes and reactions on social media every time you post about your baked goods? If yes, these are good signs that you can commercialize what you do best—baking. This can also be the answer for the additional income you’ve always wanted and eventually can be your gateway from your current job.

The beloved recipe that you’ve made before could be the answer to your dilemma and solve your financial problems. Repeated compliments, likes, and reactions from your family, friends, and mixed audiences on social media indicate that your baked goods have market potential.

Now, if you’re interested to know how to start an online business from home because you’re thinking of selling those savory and sweet delights, below are the things you need to know.

7 Start-up ingredients for your online home bakery

Determination

Selling online needs courage and focus. Your strong will to sell your baked goods is what you initially need. You can test the waters by making it a side hustle first then who knows if you keep your interest and passion, your part-time hobby could turn into a lovely, lucrative full-time baking business.

Capital

You will need resources like any other online selling business. You don’t need to start big. Determine how much you need to start your part-time business. Capital may include money for buying ingredients, a good oven, baking tools and equipment, and packaging. Capital for ingredients may vary depending on what baked goods you will do.

Here’s a sample initial capital breakdown to guide you.

• Kwowa KW-3332 Electric Oven for ₱ 3,500.00
• Oster 2532 Hand Mixer for ₱ 1,420.00
• Eurochef stainless steel mixing bowl 2.5L for ₱ 299.00
• JBT Baking Pans Set of 6 different sizes for ₱ 207.00
• Baking tools set includes wire whisk, scrapers, measuring cups, measuring spoons, spatulas, mini weighing scale, pastry bags, and piping tips for ₱ 750.00
• Baking sheets 205 sq. ft. for ₱ 180.00 per roll

Note: Prices listed above may vary depending on what brand you will use.

Business Name and Logo

Think of a catchy business name and a logo that is easy to pronounce and remember. This will be your identity that will set you apart from other competitors. You don’t have to pay for this, you can ask around or do social media crowdsourcing for your business name and you’ll be surprised with their suggestions. There are also free tools online that can help you create your logo, or you can ask help from your artistic friends for the logo.

Read more: 7 tips for choosing a business name

Set up your Social Media Page

To sell products online, you need to create a social media page, as this will serve as your main channel to reach potential customers.  Facebook and Instagram are the way to go. Make sure to ask your customers to rate your baked goods and post them on social media to attract more customers.

Create your Pricing and Promotion Strategy

Research a little bit about your competitors’ product pricing. Market penetration pricing might be the best starting strategy for this. Kick-off with a low-price product as you introduce it online. Once you develop a reliable customer base, you can start raising your prices.

Note that your goal is to earn money, so you need to carefully compute your cost of sales or production cost and add an incremental amount to your finished product as your profit.

You can start with the following:

a. Announcement –Announce in all channels that your shop is open for orders to your friends and family. Ask them to help you spread the word.

b. Posting on groups –Post your product and services to group pages that allow the online selling of products.

c. Offer your product via private messages – This may be tedious, but you can also send private messages to your online friends offering your baked goods.

d. Facebook and Other social media ads – If you have a little budget to spare, you can register your business to paid social media ads. This will help you reach more target audiences.

Read more: Online Business ideas in the Philippines

Take Photos

Bake a few goodies you want to start selling and use your smartphone to take pictures of your products. It doesn’t need to be professionally edited. Once you’re good with what you took, it’s time to post it online. Images will help you attract customers when posted on social media whether it is your baked goods or screenshots of your customer’s testimonials.

Build long-lasting relationship with your customers

Customers can easily switch to other sellers if they don’t like your services. Sometimes even if your product is good, they tend to choose sellers with good customer service.

As an online seller, you need to know how to start conversations and get your buyer’s interest. Make sure to follow your committed delivery time for small and bulk orders too. Integrity is something the customer looks into, so be careful not to overcommit.

Now that you know the main ingredients you need to start your online bakeshop, nothing can stop you now. Don’t be afraid to take your first step. We can’t guarantee that you’ll be successful on your first try but whatever happens, whether good or bad, the most important thing is you learned and never stop trying.

Remember that all big business once starts small, but they thrive to be better. They also face rejections, but they make it an inspiration to do better.

‘If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door’ – Milton Berle