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INTRODUCTION TO SESSION 2: - PRODUCTS AND SERVICES TO SELL
Welcome to our second session about deciding which products to sell on your home based business website. I must say that this is a difficult topic to talk about. The reason is: if every company could find the perfect product to sell, they would do so and not let anybody else know about it.! Companies spend a fortune to find products that people will like and buy over a long period of time. The first set of questions about products and services:
I'm trying to get you to think a little farther down the road. In the past, I have had the experience and I know others who have had the experience of building a successful business and then losing it because they lost interest in the product. A few years ago, I added a product line to our existing product offering. I thought I would try it out as it was new, different and fresh. Something new to talk about. I thought maybe the clients would like something new. After a few months, I thought to myself, "I really don't like this product. I don't like talking about it, and I don't like the thought of working excruciatingly hard to promote it." Lesson learned. I wasn't passionate about the product, even though I knew I could sell it. It's like being in a job you hate. After a while you wish you weren't selling that product. How do you know when you've got a product you're passionate about? This is the most important part. You'll know when you are passionate about a project when you wake up in the morning and can't stop thinking about how to promote it, build it better, work it better etc. The reason that this is important because the truth is, for the first long while, that's what you're going to be doing. You'll need to eat, drink, sleep your product until the product starts coming out of your pores and you smell like the product! :) You had better like the product because you're going to have to live with it for a long time to come. Personally, I wake up every morning and get excited about what I do. I am eager to compete with my competition, make my products better and market the product. I am passionate about what I do. QUESTION 2: Which products are you knowledgable about? If you have an existing business which already sells products, you already know what you sell.. The next step for you is to figure out how to market those products.. SEE THE NEXT SESSIONS. If you're new to this whole "selling products on the internet thing" and not certain which type of product or service the next part is for you. Some people that are reading this come from a job from which they sold products or services. Some people are working at assembly line type jobs or government jobs where there function is not to necessarily involved in products or services. So you may be saying to yourself, I don't really know about any products or services. If you're not certain about which type of product or service to sell, it's brainstorming time. Take a pad of paper out and start writing out the following ideas:
Take some time to figure out which products you are most interested in selling. Just as it's important to not impulse buy, it's equally important not to impulse sell. If you study products over 2-4 weeks, you'll look back on some products that you were excited about a few weeks ago and realize that you don't really like them. It's really important to be patient about this: If you rush into selling products just make money, you're going to cause yourself more problems than it is worth. Think of it this way.. the big department stores would look foolish if they started adding products randomly to their shelves. They spend considerable amount of time planning and thinking about what will best sell in their stores. Try thinking about how a children's toy store would look like if they started selling adult sex products in their baby section!! The toy store executives might logically say, "We get so many young adults in here, that is our main target demographic". It's true, but completely inappropriate. Young adults go into a children's toy store to purchase fun toys to make their children happy. Another example would be: A pet store selling plumbing and electrical supplies. NOT!! This may seem ridiculous, but websites are like stores. How often have you been on a website where the person is selling several types of different products that don't match.?! If you're interested in selling several types of products that you are passionate about, you may have to create different themed websites, or at the very least, different sections on the same site. QUESTION #3: Which products can you afford to market? This is a tricky question. Some products cost more than others to sell. You would have to determine your finances as to what you can afford to spend on products and what you can afford to spend on marketing etc. There also the reality factor of the topic of affordability: Can you afford to stock and market jet airplanes? Even if you're passionate about jet airplanes, this may never become a reality for you. Same goes with cars, houses, and big ticket items. The other factor is the competitiveness of the field. There are some products that are ridiculously expensive to market because there are so many people bidding for the competitive terms on the paid search engines. This competitiveness may make it too expensive for some people to get in and compete. Of course you would have to research costs etc for all of the products you're interested in selling. TO STOCK OR NOT TO STOCK PRODUCTS Another way around spending a lot of money on products is to have suppliers ship out the orders that you get from your website. This is called drop shipping and leads into affiliate marketing. You would have an arrangement with the supplier where they fulfill all of the orders and you get paid a commission for each sale. As we continue along, we'll give you links to such places as eBay and other affiliate programs from where you can find products to sell. |
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