One of the steps of running a successful soap shop is taking time to engage with your customer base online. Engaging and posting articles on Facebook, Twitter, and the like are fine, but you might want to consider something more. Many soap entrepreneurs can benefit by starting and maintaining a blog.
Having a quality blog on your soap business can help potential customers and interested parties get a window into who they’re buying their soap from. You’ll be able to discuss soap and other related topics freely to encourage your customers to return again. Continued visits to read articles can easily turn into return patronage to your online soap shop. For tips on how to make an effective soap shop blog, click here:: 5 Things to Know Before Starting a Blog
Owning and running your online soap shop can be time consuming. You have to make the soap, fulfill orders, ship orders, manage your shop’s social media, and much more. It can easily eat away at any free time you have for yourself if you let it.
That doesn’t have to be the case, though. By respecting your time and making a routine schedule focusing on the top priorities, you’ll be able cut off any unnecessary steps. Start with the stuff that is making your money and work your way down to the side, fringe parts of your business. You’ll be able to manage your time better and not feel overwhelmed. For a full article about business time management, click here:: How to Stop Your Business From Sucking Up All Your Time
A common ingredient in most soap recipes is lovely cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is a hard vegetable fat that have a chocolate-y aroma that is extracted from the cocoa bean. So why is it that cocoa butter is used in so many soaps?
Cocoa butter is your skin’s best friend. It’s properties make an excellent moisturizer to skin. It makes a fine ingredient in not only soaps, but in body butters, facial creams, foot creams, and lip balms to moisturize dry, damaged skin quickly. That’s what makes it a great addition to many soap recipes. For a full article on the wonders of cocoa butter, click here:: Sunday Night Spotlight: Cocoa Butter
When you are making soap as a hobby, following the recipe is easy. However, when you are making soaps for your soap shop you’ll need to make larger batches in order to efficiently meet your demand. In order to do so, you’ll have to alter the soap recipe measurements, which can be tricky at times.
It’s important to know how much your soap mold can hold. It’s also important to measure out the oil ratio with water and how much lye in order for them to properly mix. If done incorrectly, too much oil can prevent the soap from hardening and too much lye can be harmful to skin. For a full guide on how to resize and covert soap recipes into bigger batches, please click here:: Resizing and Converting Soap Recipes
When making soap it’s important to have a quality soap mold. It’s the best way to easily shape and cut your soap into cubes and bars. However, it can tricky to calculate the amount of soap you need to fill your soap mold without being too short and without overflowing it.
First, when you get your soap mold, measure the amount of space in your mold by cubic inches. Next, take that volume figure and multiply it by .40 to determine the amount of oils needed in the recipe. Enter that amount into a lye calculator and you’ll know how much soap you’ll need to fill up that mold efficiently. For a full article about filling up different sized and shaped soap molds, click here:: Calculating the Size/Amount of Soap to Fill a Soap Mold
Marketing your soap shop is nearly as important as making the soap itself. Keeping up with email newsletters, tweeting, posting on Facebook, and other means to promote your soap can pile up. It doesn’t have to be stressful though.
First, each day give yourself some down time. It will help you reassess your needs and calm yourself to create a plan for yourself. Set some blocks of time aside for each of your social media and marketing so you can address them every day without becoming consumed by it. It will help you attack from all sides without exhausting you. For more on organizing your marketing, please click here:: Getting My Day Organized – Marketing Calendar
Silicone molds are great to use to make soap. They’re durable, flexible, and make unmolding easy. In order to keep your molds in tip-top condition, however, you’ll need to learn how to clean them.
Silicone molds are fairly easy to take care of. Once soap is removed from the mold, use a sponge and dish washing liquid to remove any leftover soap, then spray the mold with rubbing alcohol, wait 20 minutes, then spray the mold with alcohol again. Wipe it all up with a paper towel and your mold will be ready for the next batch. For more on soap mold care, click here:: How to Care for Silicone & Wood Molds
There are a number of fragrance oils to choose from that can add lovely scents to your soap. However, many fragrance oils can alter the color of your soap to a less appealing hue. What can be done about this?
The majority of fragrance oil discoloration is due the oil having notes of vanilla in it. The vanilla naturally darkens most soaps into a shade of brown over time. There are some color stabilizers for melt and pour soap, but it will only delay the browning for a short time. Your best bet is to double-check the ingredients of your fragrance oil to prevent discoloration from happening. For a full article about soap discoloration and solutions, click here:: Best Selling Bramble Berry Fragrance Oils and Discoloration
Friends and family have complimented your soap enough that you decided to open an online soap shop. You spent a pretty penny on quality ingredients and hours to make the best soap out there. So in the end, how much should you charge for your handcrafted soap?
It is important not to overcharge or else you’ll shy away customers, but at the same time you have to be able to pay for your materials and profit something for yourself. Basically, follow the formula:
Take the total price above and divide by the number of bars of soap you’ve made. This will give you a good pricing starting point. For more details and suggestions on soap pricing, click here:: How to Price Your Products for Profit
Running an online soap shop can be rewarding, but is far from easy. Making the soap you want at a high quality, interacting with customers online, and shipping out orders can be taxing. It is easy to fall short, even when you try your hardest. However, ask yourself if your “trying” is effective.
Ask yourself what “trying” really looks like. Not internal struggle or stress, but what physical evidence or visible efforts can you display to prove your effort? If you can point to a pile of made soap, a list of orders, or a Facebook post with a myriad of comments, then you can rest easy to know that you tried your best and there is no need to question your work ethic. For a full article on trying, click here:: What If You Tried Really Hard?
