The agriculture sector is one of the oldest industries in history. With man’s insatiable need for food, agricultural businesses would always keep generating high revenues.
Starting and growing a farm is one thing, but getting your agricultural products to the customer is another. While there are many ways to sell your farm products, one channel most farmers never explore is the internet. Many may wonder how a farmer could get agro products to sell online, but the reason most people have no answer to this is because they probably never knew it was possible.
Successfully selling-off your agricultural products within a short period of their harvest is not just ideal, but is essential to your overall agribusiness growth and survival. While you try to sell your farm products offline as usual, these online channels with not just help reduce the quantities lost to both spoilage and other factors, but would ensure you maximise your agricultural product sales to the highest value possible.
Here Are 5 Ways To Sell Agricultural Products Online In Africa & Anywhere In The World:
1). Online Market Place:
With the proliferation of online market places, selling agricultural products online just got a lot easier. Many online market places in India and Africa, are tailored for farmers. Some examples are Kisanmarket, Farmersonlinemarket, Rhomarket, and a couple of others. Listing your farm products on these platforms is another way to get more exposure, and subsequently sales.
The first thing to do if you want to sell your agricultural products on an online market place is to read their terms & conditions. These would usually contain their charges and general rules and regulations. You wouldn’t want to get kicked off the online market place because you violated their terms whether knowingly or unknowingly.
See Also: 10 Ways To Find More Customers For Your Business Without Spending Any Money
2). Online Grocery Store:
Online groceries stores are a good place to sell off some of your agricultural products. According to wikipedia, “A grocery store is a retail store that primarily sells food”. While the food items online grocery stores sell may differ per store, if you’re a farmer that probably grows agricultural products like potatoes, poultry product (e.g chickens & turkeys), aquatic animals (e.g fishery products), and a couple of other farm products, many online grocery stores would be a good fit for you.
The market size for grocery shopping online is huge. This has been proven overtime by the two largest online grocery stores in Nigeria; Gloo, & Supermart. They have shown that online grocery shopping in Nigeria, and in many places in Africa can be highly beneficial to producers of grocery products.
Taking advantage of online grocery shopping to sell your agro products faster is a smart move for any farmer. Simply contact the online grocery store of interest to you to let them know of your possible constant agricultural products delivery rate. Offer them a good price (maybe better than their already existing offers), and your agricultural products could be listed in a short time.
See Also: Don’t Make Any Of These 7 Dangerous Sales Mistakes!
3). Social Media:
The success of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many other social networks has helped many small business owners reach millions of more customers without leaving their computer screens. Social media marketing is growing stronger everyday, and has the potential to either explode your sales, or destroy it.
Many have failed to realise that they could take advantage of a social network like Facebook to sell their agricultural products. With millions of people using these social networking sites in your own country, you could play out a good social media marketing strategy with the help of a social media marketer to create strong awareness for some of your farm products.
Not all agricultural products can sell via social media, but poultry products like frozen Chicken & Eggs, fishery products like Catfish & Tilapia, and a couple of other quick consumable agro products could be promoted via a social network like Facebook.
Simply create a Facebook page for your farm products, use a great looking banner, and a good page profile photo. You could curate creative video around your agricultural products, so as to make them more appealing to people. Since videos are really big now on Facebook, you can take advantage of the trend to build a brand around your agro products.
See Also: 6 Ways Social Media Will Help Your Business
4). Personal Web Store:
While it could be great to sell your agricultural products on social media, an online grocery store, and an online market place, owning your own web store is ideal to closely control your farm products sales on your platform, incase you get kicked off the rest.
An online store is ideal for any internet entrepreneur that has some items to sell. Their popularity has greatly risen to the extent that a lot of people around the world prefer to sit in their home and use online shopping sites to make their product research, rather than going out into the market.
Taking advantage of online shopping to grow your farm product sales is a way to sell more of your agro products quickly. You must have appealing product images, promote your website by narrowing the reach to only those that absolutely need your products & services, and deliver an exceptional customer service.
It’s important that all through the process of trying to sell your farm products online, the value of online shopping through your web store must exceed the offline means people offer, else you’d have a problem closing any sales at all.
You can set up a personal web store quickly on WordPress. Starting for as low as only $3.95 per month, anyone can follow this link to create a WordPress site in minutes for a really cheap rate (this low price is only through my link). In addition to the low pricing, you will receive a free website domain (a $15 value), a free site builder, and a 30-days money-back guarantee through my Bluehost link if you purchase, at least, 12 months of web hosting.
See Also: How To Start An E-Commerce Business In Nigeria: The Comprehensive Cost
5). Online Food Delivery:
Just like several other products and services, people now order food online. The question now could be; how does selling agricultural products relate to online food delivery? The answer is processed farm products.
After your agricultural products are harvested and either sold or not, they are then cooked into various fast-food and household meals. These meals sold online or at fast-food restaurants show another source of agricultural products sales. Even if they’re not in their raw forms.
By processing agricultural products to edible form, they can be sold online via a food delivery service. There are also many restaurants that deliver when customers order food online. The food delivery is usually done via online food shopping sites like Hello Food, Food Panda, and the likes.
Just as people can order pizza online, fast food delivery of any meal at all is an extension of several agricultural products grown, harvested, and successfully sold.
See Also: 10 Amazing Small Business Growth Strategies
What are your thoughts on these ways to sell agricultural products online? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
Image Source: smallfarm.about.com
[…] 5 Ways To Sell Your Agricultural Products Online […]
is it possible to market maize in large quantities through online.if d answer is yes,which site am going to use.
Hi Francis,
I’m not certain of the viability of selling maize online. But the model has a higher chance of working in India than in Nigeria.
Thank you for asking.
Am from kenya and looking where to sell my ginger and garlic.could you Stan Edom show me how to go about it.local markets aren’t doing well.
Hi Karanja,
Talking to the local export council in Kenya is the best place to start. They usually give insights into which international markets are purchasing what type of agricultural products from the country.
Thank you for asking.
am planning on starting a large poultry far of about 40 hens is it possible to see buyers here in nigeria online an how easy will it be
Hi Daniel,
Finding agri-product buyers online is a lot more difficult than it seems.
But follow through the article to increase your chances.
Thank you for asking.
I need books on poultry farming;i will so much appriciate it if you could recommend very good ones.
Hi Femi,
We have a poultry farming eBook in the works.
Do lookout for it.
Thank you for asking.
[…] your own market. You can start by marketing your rabbits online through the techniques listed in this other article, selling to restaurants and bars that prepare rabbit meat, and most especially contacting […]
Hello there! Rios Dianna here, from Anderson, Indiana, USA. I’m a bio medical researcher by profession, I’m seeking for a farmer or herbal material seller for business partner who can stand has the direct dealer from India to my company in UK for some herbal material in India.
Hit me up if you’re interested.
[email protected]
Hi rios your email address isn’t correct
Contact me for well grow cashew nuts. Already nursing ready for planting 07060702574
thank you sir, pls i want to know how to source for farm produce and take it to were is needed in a large quantity
i want to change my business but i have no big capital.
Hi Ola,
You can reach out to farmers or farm associations to give you a list of their registered farms, so you can approach them and explain you want to distribute their products.
Thank you for asking.
Hello Stan Edom. My name is Francis, i work with growsel.com. Its an Agtech company here in Nigeria. We connect under-financed smallholder farmers with supporters and investors.
Please i want to enquire if i can get information of those people requesting for online Agric marketplace to sell their farm produce and farmers requesting financial empowerment.
We have solutions for both challenges.
my email is [email protected]
Hi Francis,
We currently don’t have that data.
Thank you for asking.
I have pumpkins whole seeds and casavas to sell
Hey! I have read all your Blog this is so nice and awesome service you have provided, I have learned so many new things from here and want to implement on my website. If you also want to know something new related to our services then visit my website.
I want to start a large rabbit farming but am concerned about international buyers I don’t know if you can assure me of it.i started in small scale but I want ton extend it.
If you stay in Nigeria, I don’t think we have a large Market for rabbits in Nigeria yet because only few knows Rabbits are consumable, Most think they can only be use as pets as portray in Movies.
If you are really serious about it, you should consider International Buyers in countries like Italy, China, Egypt, North Korea, Spain and France.
You can as well consider value addition.
Hello Mr stand,I am Mr yakubu from Jalingo, taraba state.Guide me on how to maximize agricultural potentials that we have in the state online to cover wide coverage.We have Agri products such Yams, melon,cassava,rice,poultry,fish etc,I want to establishe online business,how do I proceed?
Please send an email to [email protected].
Thank you.
Hi,I’m Timothy,I sell,rear rabbit and train how to rear rabbit