Step 1 – Decide What Product You Are Selling

I think the most important step for anybody starting out on the internet is deciding what product to sell. If you are going to make money on the internet, then a customer is going to have exchange money with you (or a business you are affiliated with) for either a product or service. Therefore the starting point must be a decision on exactly what you are going to sell. The way I see it, there are 4 core types of products.

1. Physical products –

Many people use the internet or have websites that sell physical products. These are tangible goods such bicycles or t-shirts. Physical products are packaged and shipped to a customer, either by the website owner or a fulfilment company. The margins and potential for profit are dependent on a variety of different factors (far too large to examine in this post). The factors may include the price at which you can secure the product for, the admin costs of fulfilling the product, the exchange rate and seasonal demand. It is perfectly possible to make a lot of money online selling physical products and Amazon.com is an excellent example of this. You should be mindful that if you are planning to sell a physical product on the internet the start up costs can be quite high.

2. Digital/Information Products –

The opposite of physical products, digital products can be transferred to the customer electronically via the internet. As the files are transferred electronically there is no need for any packaging or fulfilment. The customer pays you the money and then downloads the product instantly. ITUNES is a good example of a digital product seller. Ebooks are also very popular digital/information products to sell. The attraction of digital/information products is that once the product is made the margins are extremely high. It also costs you nothing to deliver them. Selling information on the internet is potentially a very lucrative business to get into. One of my personal hero’s is a guy called Eben Pagan. He is one of the world’s top internet marketers and has built a business empire out of selling information on the internet. I believe that his first information product was an ebook that taught men how to meet and attract women. It was phenomenally successful and apparently now his business does more than $20 million per year in sales. So please don’t listen to anybody if they tell you that there is no money in selling information on the internet to people.

If you are starting out online I strongly recommend that you start selling information!

I am releasing a product which will show you how to sell information effectively on the internet. The main attraction about selling information on the internet is that the start-up-costs are extremely low. It is quite easy to get set up for under $100 dollars and the potential for profit is massive. Human beings are always going to be searching for solutions for problems. If you can present a solution to a particular problem in the form of an ebook and deliver it to a customer then you can make a lot of money.

3. Other people’s products –

This is more commonly known as affiliate marketing. If you are an affiliate, you don’t have your own product (either physical or digital) but rather you sell other peoples products. You earn money by taking a percentage of the revenue generated from the sale. Affiliate marketing is extremely popular on the internet. One of the main advantages of affiliate marketing is that as an affiliate you don’t have to concern yourself with any of the backend (i.e. customer services, fulfilment, insurance, staff etc). All you do is promote other peoples products and get rewarded financially. In many cases you don’t even have to make a sale to get paid. Some companies will pay affiliates money, if the affiliate gets a prospect to sign up to a newsletter. Affiliate marketing is attractive because like information/digital products the starts up costs are extremely low. All you need is some means of driving traffic to another person’s offer or product. Many people are full time affiliate marketers and make an excellent living out of it.

4. Professional/Consulting Services –

The final type of product is what I would call professional or consulting services. For example if you an expert in SEO (search engine optimisation) you can charge people money to listen to you. It can be a good way to make money online but I think you really need to have the credibility behind you in order to do this. I don’t believe that you necessarily need accreditations or specific degrees to do this but it certainly helps if you are want to charge other people money. The good news is that virtually anybody can become an expert in any field in a reasonably short period of time nowadays. There are many courses available if you are truly committed to becoming an expert in a certain niche or industry. If you can establish yourself as an authority on a subject then you can charge a lot of people for your expertise.

Summary

That concludes part 1 of my blueprint for online success. I believe that before you do anything online, you must decide exactly what product you are selling. It is very tempting when you are starting out on the internet to jump from one idea or method to the next. You must avoid this. If you are just starting out, start by deciding what you are going to sell. If you are going to sell physical products then fine do that. If you are going to sell information products, do that. As mentioned I personally favour selling information products as the start up costs are so low and the potential for profit is so high. So once again, please before you do so much as register a domain name, decide what you are going to sell online.

In part 2 we will look at what you need to do in order to start selling your product online.

To your massive success,

Guy

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