But What Do I Sell?
So, you want to start your own online business. You know you
have to create your own website, start your own ezine and
generate traffic to your site before you can make sales.
So far so good. But ... sales of what, exactly? What do you sell?
Fortunately, the options are many and varied. Basically, though,
everything falls into one of two categories ... products or
services. We're going to take a closer look at a few relatively
easy options for when you want to get started and get started
NOW.
=> PRODUCTS
What kinds of products can you sell from your website assuming
you don't already have something available? Your best bet is
anything that can be delivered digitally such as software and
information products.
When it comes to selling software or information products, you
have three basic choices:
1. you can create your own product from scratch, e.g., by
writing a software program, a cgi script or an e-book;
2. you can join affiliate programs and sell products already
created by other people and earn a commission for every sale;
3. you can join a multi-level marketing (or network marketing)
plan; or
4. you can acquire resell rights for products already created by
other people and keep 100% of the profit.
Option 1. is a must-do. Eventually. But when you're itching to
get started, you don't want to have to wait the 3 or 4 months it
takes you to write your ebook before you can launch your online
business.
Option 2. is great for a quick start but you're working on
commission. Someone else is getting the lion's share of the
profit for your hard work.
Option 3. is a good choice if you're a natural networker. For
more information about MLM and whether it might be right for
you, check out my article "Not MLM! ... Why Ever Not?" at
http://www.ahbbo.com/notmlm.html .
Option 4. (along with option 3.) is where the real money is, at
least compared to option 2. Acquire the resale rights as well as
the product and you're not working on commission any more --
you're working for serious profit.
Where do you go to acquire products that can be delivered
digitally with full resale rights? There are several good
sources but here are a few tried and true sources, each
excellent places to start:
eBookPublications http://www.ahbbo.com/ebookpublications.html
eBookWholesaler http://www.ahbbo.com/ebookwholesaler.html
FreeToSell http://www.ahbbo.com/freetosell.html
=> SERVICES
What kinds of services can you sell from your website? How about
advertising space in your ezine or on your website? How about a
members-only area of your site, access to which requires payment
of a membership fee?
=> Advertising Space
Since you really need to be publishing an ezine on a regular
basis to stay in contact with, and generate, web site visitors,
it makes sense to make money from something you already have to
do anyway. Selling advertising space is a good revenue-generator.
Don't try selling your ad space until you have a minimum of
1,000 subscribers or so. Until you get to that point by all
means offer free ads in your ezine though. That's a good way to
generate subscribers and get your readers used to seeing ads in
your publication. Ad swapping with other publishers during this
period (and beyond) is also a good way to generate new
subscribers.
Once you reach the 1,000 mark, you can start offering your ad
space for sale. The days when you could publish an ezine with a
classified ad section of 20 or 30 ads are long gone. Ezine
readers are much more savvy and discerning and, as a result,
ezine advertisers are much more selective and will look for
ezines that run few ads and which place them strategically
amongst the content, or "meat" of the ezine itself rather than
being stuck in a great glob that nobody reads at the end.
Think also about sending solo mailings to your list as another
source of revenue. Be particularly circumspect when it comes to
these mailings, however. Solo mailings are very effective when
targeted to the right audience and so advertisers love them.
Ezine subscribers have varying attitudes towards them though.
Some will immediately unsubscribe from an ezine that sends solo
mailings. Others will accept them so long as the ezine itself is
worth receiving.
Personally, I don't worry about losing subscribers just because
I send solo mailings. The acceptance of solo mailings (which
are, in my case, limited to one per week) is the price I ask my
subscribers to pay to receive my ezine for free. The advertising
revenue I receive is how I pay my costs and make a profit. If
people aren't prepared to receive a solo a week in exchange for
the ezine then they'll unsubscribe and that's fine with me
because they're not prepared to make a fair exchange and were
never going to buy from my advertiser anyway.
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to pricing your
ads. Basically, you want to achieve some measure of equilibrium
between supply and demand. If you have more demand for your ad
space than supply, increase your prices until demand is in line
with supply, do not increase the number of ads. The more ads you
run, the more you dilute their effectiveness for your
advertisers and the less likely your advertisers are to place
repeat business with you. In other words, by taking a short-term
increase in profits, you sacrifice the longer-term profitability
of your business. You're cutting off your nose to spite your
face.
Conversely, if you can't sell all your ad space, reduce your
prices. Try and get to a price point where the demand for your
ad space is roughly equal to your supply. If you have an
occasional ad spot vacant don't worry - just run an ad of your
own instead. But if you regularly find yourself with half your
ad inventory unsold and you're not running an excessive number
of ads, this is a signal your ads are overpriced and it's time
to reduce your prices or make the strategic decision to run your
own ads instead of others'. In fact, in many instances you'll
make more money from your ad space by advertising your own
products and services than you will from selling the ad space
itself.
How to set your price? As I said above, there's no hard and fast
rule. Whatever brings about equilibrium between supply and
demand. My own pricing formula is $5 per 1,000 subscribers for a
single classified, $10 per 1,000 subscribers for a sponsor ad
and $20 per 1,000 subscribers for a solo. That pricing structure
is right for me but may not be right for you.
Your pricing will also be influenced by how specific or general
your target market is. If you publish an ezine on a relatively
esoteric subject with a small but highly targeted market, you'll
be able to sell your ad space for a higher price than you will
if you publish an ezine on a really general subject (such as
"internet marketing") with an extremely large but also
undifferentiated market. For this reason, it's not the size of
your list that dictates your advertising pricing, but rather how
targeted your list is to the subject matter of your ezine and
your advertisers' products and services.
Similar principles apply when it comes to selling advertising
space on your web site.
Bottom line: advertisers want and will pay for results, not how
many subscribers you have on your list.
=> Paid Subscriptions
Paid subscriptions are another good way of generating income,
whether they be for your ezine or web site.
A great resource if you want to go this route with your ezine is
Monique Harris' Paperless Newsletter (see
http://www.ahbbo.com/paperlessnewsletter.html ).
As far as your website is concerned, by utilizing password
protection you can effectively cordon off areas of your website
for paying members only. This requires some technical set-up but
your webhost will generally offer some sort of basic password
protection capability. For more advanced systems, you'll need to
get hold of a specially designed cgi script for this function.
When it comes to pricing your subscription services, although no
doubt there are exceptions to the rule, the better approach is
to charge a monthly access fee rather than an annual fee. A
monthly structure allows you to set a relatively low initial
price, thereby making the decision to sign up more of a
no-brainer for your subscriber, and it also gives you a
recurring monthly income. It's also possible to charge more
overall than you could under an annual structure. For example,
most people would not hesitate to pay, say, $9.95 for monthly
access to a site they perceive as valuable, especially knowing
they can cancel at any time. But those same people may hesitate
if that initial investment was $120 ($9.95 multiplied by 12
months).
With the appropriate payment processor and software,
subscription fees can be set up to be automatically charged to
your subscriber's credit card each month unless and until they
cancel.
=> THE ROLE OF CONTENT
These are just a few of the options available to you to generate
income from your own online business. The bottom line with
respect to all of them though is the quality of your content. It
doesn't matter how good your product line is if people have no
reason to visit your site in the first place.
So, put first things first. Pick a subject matter for your site
that you are passionate about. Do the hard work of creating a
truly valuable resource for people interested in the same thing.
Publicize it to death. Publish an ezine on the topic, again with
high quality content, to draw them to and, more importantly,
BACK to, your site again and again and again. Then, and only
then, will you have a chance to get your product or service in
front of them. Then, and only then, will you have a chance to
make the sale.
There's no disputing that the main reason we go into business is
to make money. If you don't have this as your objective, then
you're engaging in a hobby, not running a business. But when it
comes to doing business online, the reality is that you have to
give before you can get. So give your site visitors what they're
looking for. Do that and they'll visit you again and again and
refer their friends. Do that and you'll actually have customers
to sell your products to. Don't do that and, although you may
have the greatest product or service in the world, no-one but
you will ever know about it.