A lot of Internet Marketers today focus on selling information products such as: e-books, memberships, and downloadable scripts. What about physical products?
Should you or shouldn’t you spend your time and energy doing something such as affiliate marketing for physical products, or setting up your own online dropshipping site to sell products via an online store.
Negatives
• Commission rates can be low.
• Competition is often high.
• Concern over dealing with customer service issues.
Sites like Amazon.com only pay 4% for starters for their affiliates so people might only make a 25 cent sale by referring an Amazon book, CD, or gift item. A lot of effort can be needed to make a first sale on a new website, as most Internet Marketers know.
Positives
The positive thing is that more people than ever buy stuff online so that presents you with a lot of potential customers. There are a lot of different earning programs you can participate in with the physical products business.
For potential customers, knowing they’ll be receiving something tangible in the mail can put that consumer’s mind at ease over pondering the purchase of an e-book and this can help Internet Marketers overcome selling barriers because some people are still ‘old school’ in that they don’t want to pay for information or a download only.
Many sites that offer affiliate programs have several tiers of financial compensation depending on how many sales you make so while your efforts might only net you $17 this month, next month you could hit $18 for the same amount of sales. It might not sound like much but once people buy from you once and are satisfied, they usually come back and they often refer others to you as well.
If you can get a steady stream of traffic and employ good conversion tactics you might develop a steady income stream and most sites you can sell physical products through pay straight commission and don’t require any investment or touching of the physical product as it is all done via dropshipping direct to the end user.
Tips For Finding The Right Product To Sell
Your online success depends on a lot of factors when you’re trying to sell anything on the internet. Here are some considerations:
• How competitive is the niche? If it’s very competitive you may have difficulty getting your site found through traditional means. Instead of a PPC campaign, you may decide that niche article marketing will work better.
• How much demand is there? Look at keyword tools to help you determine how many people are searching for a particular type of product.
• How much will you get paid? You might not focus a whole lot of effort selling $5.00 items with a 4% commission rate. But if you’re selling a $99 item with a 20% commission rate, that could be a little bit more promising for you. Choose products wisely.
• Find a wholesaler instead of a middleman to ensure you’re maximising your profit earning potential.
• Learn all you can about SEO and converting organic traffic to customers.
• Make a squeeze page so you can capture contact information for your marketing list where you can promote to customers and site browsers in future.
While the information products business is hot for Internet Marketers, if you discount the potential of selling shippable products you could be missing out on some great earning opportunities.
