How To Sell Your Own Product or Service Online

If you want to sell your own product online, you can determine exactly how much it is going to cost you, if anything at all.
 

Many people are selling their own products online and they are doing very well. But you need to plan your marketing strategy very carefully.
 

There are various ways to market your product, such as free classified advertising, ppc (pay per click), affiliate marketing etc.
 

Many people claim that free classified advertising doesn’t work. But I often find people who are enjoying good results from free classified advertising. The secret is that you have to spend time on it. You need to do proper research to see which classified advertising site will work for you. Then you need to place at least three to five adverts every day. You need to have a tracking system in place in order to track your advertisements and see which ones are getting the best results and on which sites.
 

If you are prepared to spend some money, you can use pay per click advertising. Using this method you need to do proper keyword research, where you will pay a certain rate for your adverts based on the keywords of your choice. Every time a potential customer clicks on your advert, you will pay a certain rate. You can budget for the amount you want to spend on your advertising and you can set a limit to the amount you to spend. If you do not want to spend more than $1 000.00 you can set your limit to $1 000.00. The moment you reach that limit, they will stop showing your advert.

The danger with this kind of advertising, is that if you don’t know what you are doing, you might end up spending the $1 000.00, getting the clicks, but not making one sale.

You can also recruit a team of affiliates to sell your product for you. This is a very popular way of marketing. How they market the product is up to them, as long as it is ethical and they are not spamming people. But the choice of using free advertising, paid advertising or even article marketing is left up to them.

You can submit your product to Clickbank and let affiliates find your product through Clickbank.
 

 Another method you can use is to join a company such as Triple Clicks.com and submit your product to them. By doing this you will become an E-Commerce Associate of the company. Their E-Commerce Associate program allows merchants worldwide to offer products and services at the Triple Clicks Store. Thousands of SFI affiliates all over the world are promoting Triple Clicks .com. By joining Strong Future International (SFI) as an affiliate, you automatically get free membership at Triple Clicks .com, and you can treat it as your own online store. This will give you the opportunity to promote thousands of products, but you will also be able to promote your own product with the benefit of a site which already has lots of traffic.   

Don't Try To Know It All Before You Start Your Business Online

I don’t know enough.

Many businesses fail even before they have started. People procrastinate because they think they don’t know enough. When is it the right time to start?

Now. Yes, I really do believe the right time will never come if you don’t start now. Irrespective of what you want to do. Whether you want to start with a family, start a business online or whatever you want to do, there will always be a reason to procrastinate. “We have to wait until there is enough money”, or “I don’t know enough yet”. If you are going to wait until you have enough money or until you know enough before you commit to something, you most likely will never start.

I am not saying you should just dive in blindly, go into debt, or recklessly just start your business online without proper planning or thinking it over. To the contrary, that is exactly where you should start. Commit yourself and start planning your business. Determine how much money you are going to need (by the way – this is an important part of what you need to know before you start your business). What skills do you need? If you want to start a business online, do you know your subject? Do you know your way around the internet?  

Knowing enough

Once you started this process, you have committed yourself. You have gained some momentum. So now you realize you don’t know enough about social media, you know even less about blogging…..oh yes, and then there are e-mail lists. How on earth can you start if you don’t know enough yet? When will you know enough to start your business? Never. Yes, never.

The good news is that every successful business man, everybody that is successful in whatever they do, started exactly where you are now. Not knowing anything.

So when do you know enough to start? As soon as you know just enough to take the first step. Then you start learning and gathering enough information to take the next step…. and the next…..and the next, until you start achieving your goals.

There is a saying that says: “the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know”. The bottom line is; you will never know enough. Any business is constantly changing; the internet is constantly changing, so you will never stop learning. Wait until you know enough, and you will never get started.  

Create a Map

As I already mentioned, I do not say that you must just blindly start doing business online without proper planning. No, planning is absolutely essential.

Carefully think about the following: What exactly do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? How will you achieve it (your action plan)? Once you achieved your goal, how will it affect you/your life? Do you have a strong desire to achieve your goal? Are you motivated? Can you persevere?

You need to know; the challenges will come. Achieving your goals are not going to happen in a straight line. Some of your strategies might not work the way you thought it would. There might be delays. If you don’t really have a strong desire, which will motivate you, you won’t necessarily persevere, and you might just give it all up.

Set your goals. Aim high. Dare to dream. Then start creating your plan of action. Break it all up into smaller goals (action steps) which are easy to achieve. This is like creating a map to reach you final destination.

Once you have this in place, take action. Only focus on your next step. If your next step doesn’t give you the desired result, don’t quit, be flexible and change your strategy, as long as it keeps you on track to your ultimate goal.

You Don’t Have To Do It Alone

If it is your goal to make money online, there are different channels you can follow. You can create and market your own product, or you can render a service. Information marketing is often very successful.  You can also join one of the many affiliate programs online, in which case you will market someone else’s product. There are some excellent affiliate programs available. You can join such a program at no cost to you and earn commission when you refer customers to the vendor’s website and a sale is made.

You can also take part in joint ventures, profit sharing programs (such as Google Adsense) etc.

What is important though, especially if you are new to online marketing, is not to be the “Lone Ranger”. It is important for you to interact with people. If possible, have a mentor to guide you along the way.

If I can make a recommendation, it would be to look at a company called Strong Future International (SFI). They give you the opportunity to get involved in a great affiliate program; they also have an online store from where you can generate sales and consider it as your own online store. It gives you the opportunity to create a passive income. Membership to Strong Future International (SFI) is free.

They have an excellent support structure, and you can visit their forum where you can meet fellow online marketers and experts. Discuss your own obstacles and get advice from other experienced marketers. You can also see what problems other people are struggling with and maybe you can offer the solution to their problem.

So how much do you need to know before you start your business? Just enough to take the first step.

You Want To Start An Online Business, So Treat It Like A Business - Part 3

It is time for the 3rd part of our 4 part series today. If you missed the first two parts or want to refer back you can do it here:

Part 1

Part 2

Today I want to discuss various marketing channels you can use in your online business.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are very popular on the internet, and are one of the easier ways to get involved in internet marketing.

By taking part in an affiliate program, you can get started with no capital outlay. You don’t need to keep any stock and you don’t have to be involved in shipping any products.

All you do is to make recommendations of products of other vendors, and you refer people to their websites. If any purchases are made, you earn a commission.

There are some great services available online to assist you. They will make life easier for you and keep you safe. These are services such as CLICKBANK and LINKSHARE to name but a few. These services provide centralized locations where you look at various affiliate programs from different vendors, and you can join the ones you prefer.

They provide you with affiliate links and “banner code” to place links and/or banners on your website for the program of your choice. When someone click on one of these links or banners, they will be redirected to the vendor’s website, and if a sale is made, the sale is tracked and you will be paid a commission.

Most of these services provide online reporting, to enable you to monitor your results.

Your Own Product / Online Store

It is also popular to create your own product to market on the internet. By doing this you can then build a team of affiliates to market your product, thus making use of leverage by duplicating your efforts through many people. In this case you can also list your product at the services mentioned under affiliate programs, such as CLICKBANK. This will enable affiliate marketers to register for your specific affiliate program.

Creating and /or running your own online store is another way of creating a great passive income, where people return for repeat business month after month. By doing this, you will not only be able to make money, but you will save lots of money, by just doing things you normally do.   The reason I say this, is that if you need to buy a product for everyday use, or a book you want to read, and you have an affiliate link of either Amazon.com or TripleClicks.com on your website, you would much rather now buy it from your “own store” than from someone else.

Network Marketing

In affiliate marketing you do not have any capital outlay, stock problems etc., but you are only relying on your own marketing efforts.  Creating your own product, you can use the power to leverage the efforts of many people to produce much better results, by recruiting affiliate marketers to market the product for you. Yet you will have to put in the effort to create a quality product in order to create any sales.

When joining a network marketing company online, you shouldn’t have any capital outlay. Yet you won’t be relying on only your own marketing efforts, seeing that you will be building a down line of other marketers as well. By teaching these people, and duplicating your efforts through them, you can also utilize the power to leverage their efforts to your advantage.

Yet, you would not have to create a new product, seeing that you will be marketing the product or the service of the networking company that you joined.  You would also not have to keep inventory, neither deal with shipping of any products, as this will be the responsibility of the company. 

You also should have the back-up and support of your sponsor, seeing that your success will also mean better success to him/her. And ultimately you should be enjoying a good support system from the company, providing training, marketing tools and customer service.

Go to Part 4 here.