How to Sell Video Games Online

Opening an online video game store means entering a market that is particularly vast and full of competitors, but at the same time very profitable, given its recent expansion, and its continuous growth which shows no signs of slowing down. On the web, there is an increasing amount of talk and focus on everything related to the world of gaming.

Therefore, as an entrepreneur in the field, your goal will be to open a gaming e-commerce.

In the following, we will look at the main aspects to focus our attention and resources on, as well as the steps for creating and setting up your own custom e-commerce site, all thanks to the platform Framework360, as we will see later on.

Develop a brand and a business plan

To build a successful business, it won't be enough to simply create an online video game store; you will need to develop a real brand around the activity, in order to promote a perfect communication and tangible development. 

As a company, you will therefore need to think through a business plan, which will guide you through what will be the expenses, the revenues, any potential investments, and the strategies to adopt in sales.

Included in it will be expenses for possible sponsorship campaigns or collaborations, but we will talk more about this later.

The product

First of all, you will need to define what will be the shop's catalogue, thus specializing your search for which products you intend to sell (video games for Nintendo, PlayStation, portable consoles, and so on) 

Of course, operating in such an industry, as in many others, you will have to buy your products wholesale to maximize earnings while remaining competitive. 

We advise you to stay updated on the market and new releases, making sure not to miss out on the most requested products in your catalog. At the same time, consider dedicating a section of your shop to used or vintage video games, if possible. As antique pieces or even imports in their original language can be found without too much difficulty, they would satisfy that broad segment of collectors.

Furthermore, we recommend enhancing your business with trade-in opportunities for used items, which will provide an additional incentive for customers.

The audience

In this regard, we suggest conducting research on the competition, and especially on what will be the target audience for your market niche.

This will be a task that should be done almost simultaneously with product catalog development because defining the target audience brings the product into focus, and vice versa.

Leverage social media and collaborations

Especially for a sector like gaming, social networks are of vital importance for an online sales business.

Therefore, create a profile on the platforms most used by the younger audience, such as Instagram and TikTok, showcasing your activity and products available, while particularly interacting with the audience to foster the development of a community.

Moreover, as gaming is an industry that has been growing constantly and recently, we suggest you not to underestimate the potential of collaborating with content creators.

For instance, you could offer a collaboration under compensation, as determined and agreed upon by you, with a content creator who will feature your business along with a discount code or coupon associated with them, to be used at your online store.

This will only encourage the creator's community to become your customers, and perhaps in the future part of your buyer community.

Where to sell

To sell video games online you will have many options, depending on your sales goal:

• Used sales: to sell used video games you can rely on large second-hand platforms such as eBay, Subito, Wallapop and possibly also Vinted, a platform that is increasingly embracing more product categories, or niche platforms like Momox.

• Sale of new products: if you intend to sell new items, besides relying on major Marketplaces such as Amazon, our advice is to set up a personal e-commerce site, independent and tailored, completely managed by you.

Do not worry, Framework360 will assist you in this regard, let's see how now.

Selling with Framework360

Framework360 is the first complete platform for digital marketing, which will help you create and manage your own e-commerce site through numerous but intuitive screens and windows, with total autonomy of choice.

This will indeed give you the opportunity to access a customization section with all the tools needed to configure your personal website.

After comfortably registering at the following link and having thus created your environment, you will be ready to start.

Let's see now how to do it.

After creating an account and registering your environment, you will have the possibility to install a specific plugin for e-commerce among the many offered by the platform, and begin customizing and managing your site preferences in a simple and intuitive way thanks to the navigation menu on the left.

To know more details about all the steps for creating an e-commerce site, we invite you to consult our brief guide already present on our blog:

 — How to open an e-commerce site with Framework360

For now, let's explore some features that might immediately be useful for setting up our online sales business.

Adding items for sale

After having installed the plugin, adding items will be very simple thanks to the dedicated section. 

On the left side of the screen, it will indeed be possible to find the aforementioned section as shown in the picture, where products can be added using the appropriate button.

Once that is done, we will find ourselves on the actual page, ready to receive all the information we want to correlate with our article: from the image to the name itself, from the price to the availability in stock and to the description (available in more or less detail). 

The settings, as you can see, are numerous and offer us the possibility to set up a varied and detailed shop, both in terms of basic information and more specific details, including any promotions and discounted products.

To reconnect with the topic of collaborations with creators, we suggest you also take a look at the following feature, available on the platform, through which you can offer a tailor-made service for the customer.

Coupons and discount codes

As for the marketing part, you might find the "Coupon" tool useful to encourage product sales with discounts.

Its use is very simple, by clicking on "Settings" and then on "Sale", you can access the screen we are interested in and add a coupon with the appropriate button.

From there, just follow the fillable sections, set the terms of use, as in the example image, and thus create the coupon with its respective code.

Now that we have also seen some of the most useful and immediate features of the platform, you will be ready to thoroughly study your business plan and to launch your new e-commerce site for gaming and video game products,

Good start!