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Introduction
The following few paragraphs provide an overview of the entire process. Based
on where you are in the process, click on the links that best suit what you're
looking for, and you will be taken deeper and deeper into the rabbit's hole...
Remember - whenever you feel you've exhausted your current location and you're
ready to move forward, you should return to this overview and figure our the
next steps.
PS - this is a work in progress, so come back often to see what's new.
So, you want to make money online, ha?
Everybody else makes money online, so what not you? Well, it's possible but it's
not that easy. If you've tried some of the "sign up now for free and start
making $10K/month within the next 24 hours with no work at all" offers out
there, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't - you're better off
spending some time here and learning from my mistakes.
This guide is a work in progress, and I get back to it every once in a while as
I have so many other things I'm working on. If you have comments or suggestion
for this page, please contact me.
Something to Sell
The first thing you need is something to sell,. meaning something that people
would be willing to pay money for. The way to do that is do identify a need and
fulfill it. By the way, you may think I'm silly, but I believe in Karma, so I
never ever cheat people out of their money. I believe it works better for
everybody if I am able to present things in such a way that people know all the
facts and are happy to be separated from their money knowing they just made a
good deal. I sleep better at night this way.
You can choose to sell your own product, or
to sell somebody else's product.
Somebody to Sell it to
Now that you have something to sell, you need to let people know about it. In
99.99% of the online cases it means generating traffic - the more traffic, the
more people are exposed to what you're offering, the more sales you'll have -
it's as simple as that.
A good place to start learning about generating traffic is
here. Since the vast majority of online traffic
is generated by search engines, you should also look at how
Internet search works and how to leverage it
for your benefit. Another significant traffic generation tool is the concept of
traffic exchange, which is very appropriate for
low-budget beginners.
Sell your own product
This section is still in development.
Sell somebody else's product
If you have little or no experience in generating online business, this is
probably the best place for you to start. The principle is very simple - you
promote somebody else's product and when somebody you referred makes a purchase,
you get a commission or a referral fee. The advantage is simple and clear - you
don't have to risk lots of money and time to develop a product and a marketing
campaign for it, and you can choose to promote products that have a proven track
records of success.
Selling somebody else's product is usually referred to as becoming their
"affiliate" or "associate". The process of become an affiliate is usually simple
and straight-forward, and requires only a few minutes to sign up.
Learn more about the possibilities here.
Again, promoting somebody else's product is the best place to start, since it
will save you the trouble of developing a product, developing the backend for
accepting and processing online order, fulfilling the orders, handling customer
service issues and so on. You will be able to focus on the online marketing
aspect, which is not only a demanding aspect by itself, but is also the most
important one in generating revenue online. It will give you the opportunity to
fine-tune your skills (both marketing and technical skills) and will also
generate some revenue for you to grow your business gradually.
Naturally, since you're selling somebody else's product, and they assumed all
the effort and risk in developing the product and its marketing campaign, your
share of the profit will be smaller - usually between 5% and 20%. So it would be
in your best interest to learn quickly how the system works and then implement
it around your own product.
Still, if you join a carefully selected affiliate program, and if you master the
marketing skills necessary, you can make enough money (for example, selling
high-volume of a low-cost product, or a low-volume of a high-cost product). Real
estate brokers, for example, may make a $6K commission on each transaction, so
they can live happily ever after closing just 3-4 deals per month.
When you sign up for an affiliate program, and as you're promote their product,
pay attention to THEIR marketing strategies. People and companies have been
doing online marketing for years and you will be well-rewarded if you learn from
them what works and what doesn't work, rather then try to re-invent the wheel
yourself.
You can view this library's collection of affiliate
programs or you can do an online search and find many more. Over time you'll
learn to evaluate the good affiliate programs from the bad ones. In any case,
once you find an affiliate program that you would like to start with, it's time
to get people to know about it.
Private Label & Resale Rights
A more advanced option of selling somebody else's product is purchasing the
right to resell the product yourself, or purchase the product with
private label rights and re-brand it as your own.
In both cases, it saves your the time and resources required to develop your own
product, and allows you to focus on setting up and managing your business. It
usually means you would have to set up a complete
e-commerce solution.
Private Label
Here is the definition of Private Label: "Private label products or services are
typically those manufactured or provided by one company for offer under another
company's brand".
Click here to see this library's collection of
private label products.
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