Someone over at Yahoo Answers asked:

If i were to open an online scrapbooking store with really great low prices, a whole variety of products both old and new and barely any knowledge on the materials, how sucessful will my business be?

Low prices and wide selection of great products are key ingredients of a successful retail tore — any business that provides these two elements can expect reasonable chances of success.

What caught my eye, though, is the phrase “barely any knowledge on the materials.”

An online store is unlike a traditional store where you can put the materials on shelves and let customers inspect and look at it and decide if the material is what they want. On a physical store, the product speaks for itself, without you speaking for the product.

Selling on the Web, however, is different. An online store relies on great pictures and SALES COPY. The sales copy often gives the description of the product, what is the size, what is it made of, and other selling points of the material. If you don’t know what the material is, you will miss the opportunity to suggest ways scrapbookers can use the material (e.g. material is great for decorative painting or for use with journaling).

Sales copy is a critical tool to persuade the customers to buy the product, and how well you write the sales copy will depend on your knowledge of the product itself. It is hard to sell a product that you do not know, afterall.

There’s only one instance where having “barely any knowledge of the materials” will work — that is, when you will hire a copy writer to write your product!