One of the most common questions I am asked is "What do I sell on the internet?"
Well, the answer depends a lot on your personality and HOW you want to sell. In other words, the first question should not be "what sells well on the internet", but "what method of selling am I most comfortable with?"
There are essentially three ways to sell products on the internet. Let’s look at each method and the see the advantages and disadvantages of each.
First Method: Buy Wholesale and Sell Retail
This method is as old as human history. Find a product your niche wants, locate a wholesale source for that product, set up your online home business, advertise the product on your web site and ship the product to your customer.
Advantages:
1. You maintain complete control over the sales and delivery process.
You decide how much to mark up the wholesale price, not someone else. You also have control over when the item is shipped to your customer, not someone else halfway across the country!
2. You can shop around for the best wholesale price.
3. You can recommend your other products when someone purchases your product.
Disadvantages:
1. You will end up shipping packages everyday.
2. You will have to pay upfront for inventory and have a place to store it in your home.
3. Since others will be selling the same thing you are, you must be able to out-market your competition.
Second Method: Recommend Products for a Commission
This is also called affiliate marketing. You recommend someone else’s product using a special hyper-link called an affiliate link. When your visitor clicks on that link, the visitor is taken to the other person’s product page, but a cookie tracks the link to you. If a sale results, you get a commission. There is a lot of affiliate marketing information online.
Commissions can range from 5% of an order for camping gear to 50% of an information product priced at $1500! Affiliate marketing works for physical products, services, ebooks and anything else under the sun.
The key is finding product owners that see the value in sharing a percentage of the sale with those willing to be volunteer sales people for their product. Product owners that see the value of residual income with an online business.
Advantages:
1. You do not have to ship the product - the owner of the product takes care of that. In fact, the owner of the product creates the sales page, collects the money, ships the product and handles the questions and refunds.
2. You do not have to keep the product in inventory
3. Some commissions can be VERY generous.
Disadvantages:
1. If the product owner has an affiliate program, other people will be selling the exact same product. You must out-market other people and even the owner to make significant sales. You can not merely put up a link and forget about it if you want to make sales!
2. You have no control over the price of the product, the effectiveness of the sales page or the delivery of the product.
3. Although most product owners are honest and want to keep their affiliates happy, you have no leverage when it comes to getting paid. You do not control the money.
Third Method: Create your own product.
This is my favorite way to make money every day online! Once you learn to start an online business, creating your own products is a great way to follow your passion AND sell products that no one else is selling!
Advantages:
1. You have complete control over the sales and delivery process. You determine the price for your own product and you can even cut out the delivery costs be creating a downloadable product.
2. You will gain a huge sense of satisfaction, not to mention instant expert status!
3. You can find a need and then meet it. Creating your own product allows you to be very flexible and meet a targeted need in a very specialized niche.
4. There is no competition for your particular product. You are the ONLY ONE selling your products, unless you allow others to sell it for you, but you have complete control.
Disadvantages:
1. You can waste a lot of time and money if you have not researched your niche properly.
2. You must find a daily source of new customers.
3. You must find others to help promote your product.
So there you have it - the three basic methods of selling products on the internet. Hopefully, you can look at the advantages and disadvantages of each and determine which method is right for you. But don’t stop with just one. Incorporate all three methods into your online business and you will have a strong, diverse business that whether any economic storm!
Internet Millionaire Secret
