Selling Physical Products from your web
site
(An
Online Store)...
Let me state
up front that of all the different techniques I describe on
this site, this is the area where I have the least
experience.
Within the
next 6 months I shall open a store; at this time some of my
research is complete, so I can share this with you.
99% Of Sellers Get It Wrong From The
Start
The first
thing to realize is that 99% of all the people who open an
online store, do almost every aspect of it wrong, from the
get-go.
Visit almost
any selling website on the ‘Net that's run by "amateurs" you
know, and use the Google Toolbar (see “the Tools of the Trade" section for the
download link) to confirm that the site has no page Rank
(PR0) and the Alexa Toolbar (again, see Tools of the Trade) to check the ranking
of the site in terms of traffic … and don’t be surprised to
find the site barely ranks in the top 1,000,000,
2,000,000 or even 4,000,000. These people probably didn't
perform a minute's keyword research before choosing and
registering a domain name, and designing and building their
site.
No research
... no optimization. No optimization ... no traffic from the
free search engines.
Back To
Fundamentals
In fact, the
Internet Marketing fundamentals don’t change from the topics
we’ve covered on earlier pages where we discussed the
Affiliate Marketing opportunity, and Information Products
opportunity, for example.
For
instance: you still have to
drive traffic to your site before you can make a
sale.
Some Old Stuff ... but More
New
However,
there are some other elements involved in a site selling
physical products that we haven’t needed to cover so far.
For example, when I talked about
selling Information (how-to) Products, in a digital format
for immediate downloading, I recommended Clickbank as a
service that handles all the credit card processing, etc.
But Clickbank won’t handle sales of physical products. So we
have to get into some new areas, as well as some familiar
ones (if you've read some of the other pages on this
site).
-
You still need to register a domain
name and have your web site hosted somewhere, of
course.
-
You need to have a website that
shows off the products you’re selling.
-
You need to have a merchant account
to handle credit card processing on-line.
-
You need to have a “shopping cart”
system to enable people to browse your site, add
products to the shopping cart, then check-out and pay
for them.
-
You need to have some autoresponders
in place, to say “thank you” and to e-mail to people
who have already bought, to induce them to buy
more.
-
You need to have a source for the
products you sell.
-
In addition to keyword research, you
need to perform the research to learn which products
are genuinely going to sell.
Where to
Start?
I found
myself torn between two alternatives when I was doing my
research.
Earlier, in
the Affiliate Marketing section, I mentioned Ken Evoy’s
Site Build It service. It’s an incredible
service, with a value-for-money that is extraordinary. For
an annual fee of a just under US$300, you get
access to an integrated suite of tools that would cost you a
thousand or more to buy, without integration. Keyword
research. Domain registration. Web hosting. Web development
tools. Search Engine optimization and intelligent page
submission. Comprehensive tracking and statistics reporting.
Autoresponders. Pay-per-Click bid support. All aimed at
newbies with no experience whatsoever, and the service is
accompanied by high-quality user documentation and on-line
customer service.
Last year,
Site Build It added a “SiteSell” capability, and they did it
in a very smart way. Their basic service still provided for
the hosting of a site and the benefits of all the usual SBI
tools. But they also worked with one of the leading Shopping
Cart software companies to integrate their service into the
SBI system. They used the services of one of the top
store-design businesses, to help you make the site as
professional as you could want. And, they allied with some
transaction processing partners to handle credit card
processing, etc.
My wife used
SBI as her entry point into Internet Marketing, and we
remain impressed. If you want to know more about the “store”
opportunity within SBI, visit the SiteSell Web Site. You'll learn a lot just from the description
of what they do.
However, the
alternative is VERY atractive, too - a Yahoo store. I have
heard of some people who take advantage of the Yahoo store
option, and get it right, making a LOT of money
through their store; 7 figures (which I consider "a
lot," even if you don't). You can learn about the
opportunities if you visit the Yahoo Small Business web site.
Where
would I personally start?
Well … I’d
start by reading the material I’ve indicated for the SBI and
Yahoo opportunities. But then, if I was still interested,
I’d plunk down some cash to buy a course called Online Store Profits. Read the sales
letter; it’s soup-to-nuts coverage of EXACTLY what to do to
get to the point of a nicely profitable on-line store, using
text, animations, video, and screen-capture videos, and I
can’t recommend it too highly. It will be my bible when I
build my store in a few months time. The authors point out
that when they started, "blind," it took them 5 months to
finally crack a profit, during which time they were paying
$1500+ for hosting, etc ... and the value of the book in
their eyes is that you should be able to turn a profit in
the first month.
It covers how
to find what products are “hot,” and how to buy them at a
low price. How to source products, how to avoid carrying
inventory. How to create the yahoo store. How to get
traffic. And much, much more.
As I say,
I'll be putting a store in place in the near future; I'll
add a lot more about my experiences at that time.
Good
Hunting!
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