What Are You Going To Sell?
One thing is certain: if you are going to make a living online, you need to have SOMETHING to sell.
This article is about products, but before we start, we must point out that a person can also sell services online.
Services would be any service you can offer to others to help them, such as dentistry, attorney services, doctors, contractors, realtors, mechanics, coaches, therapists, builders, etc.
A strong online presence can absolutely improve these types of “service” businesses. So, basically, everything we talk about on this blog can be used for and directed towards service businesses as well.
Service businesses also need a good landing page and sales funnel, traffic, follow-up systems, and more.
Let’s Talk About Products
But this article is about products.
So, let’s talk about that.
You can promote two types of products – physical products and digital products.
Then, to take it one step further, you can promote products you created yourself or those made by others.
Products created by other people are known as Affiliate Marketing; you can learn more about that here.
Network Marketing Versus Affiliate Marketing
Another type of product to promote is through a method known as “Network Marketing” or “Multi-Level Marketing (MLM).”
So, what is the difference between affiliate marketing and network marketing? Well, both are selling other people’s products.
But the difference is that with affiliate marketing, you rely solely on your own efforts, while with network marketing, you bring other people into the business and rely on their efforts as well.
The people you bring into the business are your “downline,” and those above you are your “upline.”
For the most part, everyone who agrees to participate in the business is required to spend a certain amount of money every month on products. Of course, this depends on the business model.
But that is what is most familiar with network marketing.
How Network Marketers Get Paid
There are generally two ways to get paid with a network marketing business – one is on the products you sell yourself, and another is to get paid on the products of people you have brought into the business.
This can be a great thing and a not-so-great thing. The good thing about network marketing (when done correctly) is that you can leverage other people’s work.
The idea behind it is that if you bring in 1000 people and get paid off their efforts, you can make 1000 times as much.
Now, this sounds good in theory, but here’s the thing—for this to work, the whole system needs to be duplicatable.
Otherwise, if you have to depend on all of the people beneath you in your downline, they need to have the same skills and abilities. Or at least have a system that can be easily duplicated.
These days, this is much easier to accomplish than in the infancy of Network Marketing.
In the early days, they were primarily designed to promote the “warm market,” also known as friends and family.
How Network Marketing Has Improved Because of Digital Marketing
But today, many network marketers have tremendous success using sales funnels and the internet.
So, if you have a system that sells itself, then this is definitely a viable option.
But if the people signed up below you need sales skills to succeed, then it doesn’t matter how good your own sales skills are.
If the people beneath you cannot do what you do, they will eventually drop out unless you have a duplicatable system.
I found this the hard way back in 2001 and 2002 when I first became interested in Internet marketing. No matter how hard I worked (because I was highly motivated) and how great the products were (and the company I was with had fantastic products), people could not duplicate what I was doing.
So what happened was I would get people into the business, but I eventually realized that people were dropping out as fast as I could bring them in.
No matter how much I tried to inspire and motivate them, they could not afford to keep purchasing products monthly and did not want to try to “sell” those products or “sell” people into the business.
Now, understand me. I am not against this business model. I love it.
And besides, things have changed (thankfully) for the better since then.
It is a great way to motivate people, inspire one another, and grow as individuals emotionally and in many other ways. In these types of businesses, you can meet some of the best people in the world.
I’m just saying that it did not work for me, and I eventually changed my focus to affiliate marketing instead.
Why I Prefer Affiliate Marketing
With affiliate marketing, I could automate everything online and not have to promote my business to people I know. However, when you have a great business, you will want to do that naturally.
But … It is not required to succeed. You do not need to try and sell products to your friends and family, which is something that network marketing is widely known for.
With affiliate marketing, you earn a commission to sell physical or digital products created by other people. As mentioned above, you can learn much more about that with this article.
But another way you can promote products online is to create your products.
Now, if you are an artist, a musician, or something similar, you can create relative products to sell online.
Creating Your Products
But if not, you can also create digital information products. This is most commonly referred to as “Digital Publishing,” and it has made many people extremely wealthy.
The downside to digital publishing is that you have to spend a considerable amount of time creating these products. You either need to write a book, record audio, or record videos to promote them.
But the good news is that you only need to create these products once. Then, you can sell them over and over again for years to come as long as they contain current, useful information.
Digital Publishing is a fantastic way to earn a living online. But – make sure you do your research. And don’t spend weeks or months creating a product for an audience that doesn’t spend money.
Extremely important.
So, read that previous paragraph again before deciding to walk that path.
An 8-Figure-A-Year Digital Marketer
I would recommend following Dan Henry if you want to create your digital products.
Anik Singal also has a great course for this, but it is not always available. You would have to check and see if it is available now.
I like Dan Henry’s course because he calls it “Sold Out Courses.”
The idea is to sell out the course BEFORE you create it. This way, you not only know it will sell, but you already have it sold.
He uses the method of working with students to get them results FIRST and then sell the product, which I think is a great idea. At the time of this writing, I have not purchased this course; I only watched the webinar.
However, I would like to create digital courses in the future, and when I do, I will definitely be interested in listening to Dan Henry’s advice.
The Benefits of Private Label Rights
But another avenue for finding products to promote is through something called “Private Label Rights.”
Now, I love this method. What this means is that you find products already created by others, but you buy the rights to sell them yourself as your own product, which you can either leave “as is ” or revise any way you like.
Either way, you’ll keep 100% of the profits. You can brand the products to fit your business.
This is a fantastic way to get quality information for cheap, brainstorm, and repackage those products with your logo and business name.
I would not want to sell it “as is” unless I give the original creator credit, but I do like to use private label rights products for information purposes that I can use to brainstorm and improve.
You can get some fantastic products this way for extremely cheap, so in my opinion, this is definitely not something to ignore.
Learn more about creating products for your business with this free “Beginner to Expert” internet marketing course!
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