Home Business

Sell Your Own Product Online

Another strategy for making money on the Internet is to sell you own product directly. When compared to working as an affiliate, selling your own product online is more straightforward in concept, but does not result in a passive income stream because you become an active seller. You must arrange for inventory and storage, shipping, and customer service for your goods on a continuing basis.

But if you’ve thought up a great product to market, or perhaps already have a product to sell, you can potentially reach millions of buyers by taking your storefront online. And you can pocket the entire profit from each sale, not just a commission.

Essentially you can sell anything you want, from home-made jewelry, to fresh-baked dog snacks, to your own world-changing invention. You simply build or outsource an e-commerce site, open up your digital storefront, and market and sell items directly to your web customers.

Unlike when you’re just an affiliate though, you must take the time to establish a relationship with your customers, as repeat business is critical to your long-term success.

In addition to selling physical products, you can also sell local services on your site, such as dance lessons or math tutoring. It's not complicated selling a service online, but your maximum earning potential is severely limited by the small geographic range of potential customers and your actual physical labor time.

But if you have an established business already such as a dentistry, real estate office, or catering service, this is a great way to bring in extra business. Many people have been successful using the Internet to promote their new or existing local businesses, using services such as SiteSell.

Becoming an Affiliate Provider

The principal advantage of selling your own product online is that you can set up your own affiliate program and get hundreds, even thousands, of affiliates working for you.

Once you have established your online store, you can set up your own affiliate network to bring in even more sales. Now, from the other side of the fence of the affiliate marketing equation, you can recruit an army of affiliates who will do the brunt of your marketing for you with their own websites or other marketing methods.

There’s no risk or ongoing expenses for you as an affiliate provider, as it's a performance-based system. You don’t pay an affiliate unless he or she generates an actual sale. Although you do split the profit by paying out a commission, you would not have gotten that sale in the first place if not for your affiliate, so it's simply extra income for you.

And the bigger you set your commissions, the more enthusiastic and harder-working affiliates you will attract. Imagine how many extra sales you could bring in if you had thousands of affiliates working for you.

One caveat to note however, is that there is typically an 80-20 rule in effect when it comes to affiliates--meaning, only 20 percent of your affiliates will generally do 80 percent of the work. The fact is that most affiliates just won’t work very hard.

The flip side of this is that you should make it your primary goal to recruit as many “super affiliates” as you can. Since super affiliates are motivated, experienced, and savvy marketers, a single one can earn more for you than all your other affiliates combined.

The whole affiliate marketing concept is a rather ingenious little marketing system: a win/win/win for the customer, the seller (affiliate provider), and the affiliate.