Selling Products or Information Online
You’ve decided to enter the online world of making money by selling products and ebooks, but without the right strategy, mission or plan of action you could end up wasting months or years of time on your dream of success. How can I make such a glaring and rude declaration? Because I’ve been there, done that and in some markets I’m still wearing the t-shirt. The point of this post is all about assumptions and how thinking you’ve got it all right could cost you thousands of dollars and hours.
Some marketers will say there’s a market for every product, and they’re probably right in a sense. After all, just this week I heard of the most bizarre product that was selling online – to a very tiny and unbelievable market – and their sales were…low, but at least they were making sales right?
You probably assume that once you’ve decided what you’ll sell you’ll then need to know the best ways of reaching and enticing your market. But actually that’s just a little backward and I hope I caught you in time…
The product was a reproduction of an ancient musical instrument. Pretty tight and tiny niche wouldn’t you say?
Here’s what I want you to think about before you’ve got 1,000s of a product all lined up or hours invested into an info-product.
- The first step in the process is to actually find the market you want to sell to online.
- The second step is to then find or create the product those people would like to buy.
Too many good marketers go wrong by having this backwards. Here’s why you want to define a market before you settle on a topic.
If you know your market first, you’ll also know how much they’re willing to pay for your product. You’ll know how many products you can expect to sell in a given month. You’ll know, after all that, whether or not it is worth your time and effort creating, obtaining or marketing your product. (And you might just drop it and find a more profitable market as a result.)
So, how does a new online entrepreneur find a hungry market? Through research. I know, dreadfully boring task. BUT, once you’ve done the research a few times I promise you’ll get very excited when you charge forward into profit – and not work yourself to the bone trying to sell ancient musical instruments.
Do your research, get to know your market, determine the price you can set and only then, invest your time into creating or finding the product.
Researching products online generally begins with keywords – the frequency at which particular keywords are typed into search engine search boxes.
After awhile researching ideas and markets will become part of your business ’sixth’ sense, but if you’re brand new to online research I strongly suggest choosing a market that you have knowledge or an interest in – say gardening or auto restoration – and researching keywords around that market.
In short order you’ll see markets that are under-served for the volume of interest and can then consider a product or service to market.
To learn about researching the marketplace for info product sales online, you might like to check out "What’s My Ebook Idea Worth?" at Idea Secrets. The report is less than $20 and will walk you through keyword research online.
