Most of the people who end up making the huge money on the net are the ones who build products people want, and market those products online. They’re the people on the top of the pile, regardless of how big their particular pile gets. They aren’t the people who are joining affiliate programs and trying to sell someone else’s stuff. “You won’t get rich working for someone else.” is for the most part a very truthful statement, unless you happen to work for someone like Bill Gates before they become a multi-billionaire. Since you’re going to put all the effort into promoting and selling a product (or service), why not sell your own product or service? Develop something you can gain 100% profit from, instead of settling for 40% or 50%.
Identifying a niche that fits with your expertise
The first step is to identify something valuable you can sell. Where is your expertise? Most people are very knowledgeable on at least one subject. It doesn’t have to be in programming or web design, and in fact it doesn’t even have to be in something tangible. Many people sell information. Remember, you can outsource the product design and production (or programming) at extremely good prices. However, you first need a product or service that you can sell and support, preferably one that is not already widely available.
Let’s take the example of someone who is an excellent poker player. You might have a hard time selling your skills directly, though some wealthy business moguls may invest in extraordinary poker players. It could be a profitable racket. I don’t know, I have little knowledge about the subject, but let’s move on with the poker theme anyways.
As an expert poker player, you could teach your poker skills to others for profit in several ways using the internet. Selling video tapes or DVDs of yourself playing poker and explaining as you go along could be a great method. You could write an eBook on the poker guru’s best kept secrets. If you’ve got some web skills, you could build and maintain a website, forum, and/or newsletter offering expert advice to aspiring poker players. If you don’t much about web design, remember you could still outsource this work. The online casino business is BOOMING right now, and this would be an excellent time to establish yourself as an expert. Maybe you’ve got some great math skills and you could work with a programmer to write some type of poker odds calculator, or work together with a flash designer and write a poker flash game together that uses intelligent computer AI and teaches players good strategy. Web games have had massive promotional success using viral marketing techniques in conjunction with desktop game sales and pay to play subscriptions to premium games.
As you can see from this scenario, you don’t need to be a web designer or a programmer to develop and profit from the internet, though having some basic development skills and an understanding of these areas is ever so helpful.
So you’ve found a niche, what now?
I’m far from a marketing expert, and I don’t even want to pretend I know the best precise methods for properly marketing a website. I figure out what works and what doesn’t by emulating the strategies of successful websites. Anything you read on the web you should check against what that author is actually doing (and against successful websites of that type). If they’re saying to use lots tons of nested tables to increase your search engine results, and their layout is entirely table-less, odds are the ‘expertise’ they’re peddling is complete junk. For marketing, look at what a website does to become successful, not just what it says you should do.
I do what I say on this website, and I tell you exactly what I do. Nothing I do with regards to website promotion or development is a big secret. It’s getting all these things working together that provides the success. Think of each aspect of web development a multiplier to those other aspects, and you can begin to see the big picture. The biggest multiplier of all is time. The longer you have an active, established presence on the web, the more your traffic will grow. There’s only one thing you can do about that fact: START TODAY!
Lead in to the sale
I know one proven method of making sales is what I call the ‘lead in’. I don’t know what the technical term for it is, but essentially you hype the product for a while with well written marketing talk, without giving away too many details. Then present the person with an option to purchase. Generally these are one column websites and consist of one long page (sometimes split up into a few pages). I’ve never tried this form of selling a product, however it’s been around in the mainstream for a couple years and continues to be used by some sites I do know make very good money. So, it must be at least somewhat effective, assuming you can write a good sales pitch and aren’t selling frozen poop-sicles.
Advertising methods have a lifespan
How many times has a telemarketer called you in the last year when you haven’t recognized it was a telemarketer in the initial 5 or 6 seconds of the conversation? It should be noted here MANY of the websites who use this ‘lead in’ approach pawn useless eBooks and junk “get rich quick schemes”. Inevitably any marketing technique widely used by con artists and snake oil salesman will eventually get branded into a user’s mind as a scam. I recognize telemarketers almost instantly, and I’ve never so much as given them the time of day once I realize who’s on the phone.
Folks will eventually come to recognize the style and method of sales, and even if you’re not selling junk you are in their mind. This is not a recommendation whether or not to use this method, you’ll have to try for yourself and see how it works. This is just fair warning that when you try a sales method that doesn’t work, it may be the way you’re selling and not the fault of a bad product or bad traffic.
Building a customer relationship through email
Often times newsletters are coupled with product sales, because it offers you the ability to create a working relationship with your customers, while establishing yourself as an expert. Most of the more successful newsletters I’ve seen never begin with a sales pitch of any kind. They always start with something informative and useful (and related to their product, service, or area of expertise). If the company sells computers, they might start out with some tips on avoiding scams and spyware, or a warning about the latest virus sweeping the internet. This may eventually lead into a closing paragraph offering a great deal on some spyware removal software, or a software package that promises to permanently erase your web browser’s history and credit card numbers from your computer’s memory.
The idea behind this approach is that when you start your newsletter with a sales pitch, most often the spam reflex kicks in and you’ve just lost a sale – or more importantly you might have annoyed this customer and just lost any number of future sales. A sales pitch at the end of the letter has a much more casual “oh by the way” feel to it, and isn’t likely to bother anyone much. At the worst, some will just quit reading when they get to the products for sale.
There are hundreds of other methods for marketing a product online, and I won’t pretend to know them all. In the end you’ve just got to do some trial and error to see which methods work best for your particular niche.