A money-making self employed business website starts with obvious
prerequisites: It sounds obvious, but you can’t make money with a
website, until you have a money-making website! You need:
1. A product, service, or information to sell that is in demand.
2. A well designed, user friendly, ecommerce enabled website.
3. The ability to accept credit cards
You may already have these things in place. If you are missing one or
all of the above listed prerequisites, then plan on spending some time
and effort meeting these prerequisites.
Next, when choosing a product, service or information product (PSI) to sell, you need to consider several factors:
1. How do you get ideas on what to sell?
2. Is the PSI in demand? Do people want to buy it? Is the competition already selling it?
3. Can you obtain the PSI at wholesale? How do you find suppliers? Will they drop ship for you?
4. Is there a reasonable profit margin? Can you sell the PSI competitively and still maintain a reasonable margin?
How do you get ideas on what to sell? You may already have several ideas. If so that is great. But if you don’t have any idea whatsoever, then get a pencil and paper and do this short exercise:
1. Write down ten things you like to do.
2. Without regard to unanswered questions like finding wholesalers and the like, write down five things you would like to sell. You should ignore you tendency to discount things because of unanswered concerns. We are dreaming here.
3. Now, look at your list of 15 things. Let your mind wander on this list, and let items on the list spark new ideas. Add as many more items as you can to the list.
Now that you have your dream list, critically analyze each item on the list, and narrow it down to something to sell.
For a moment, I want you to forget everything you thought you knew about marketing. Why? Because everything you thought you knew does not apply on the Internet! We are going from Newtonian to Einsteinian concepts here.
Is the PSI you chose in demand? Take that question literally. If nobody is buying it, you don’t want to sell it. Most people believe that to start a business selling on the Internet, you need a unique product that has little or no competition. That is wrong!
You need a PSI that has lots of competition. You have already ignored my request to forget everything you thought you knew about marketing, and you are second-guessing the idea that you should sell a PSI with lots of existing competition. Relax. Let me explain by contrasting two cases.
Case 1: Your crazy Uncle Fred has invented a widget. It is really brilliant. It works. It is cool. He hasn’t managed to sell much of it over the past 23 years, but now with the Internet, look out!
Case 2: Your neighbor, Aunt Sarah, wants to set up an Internet website to sell golf balls. Just golf balls. The same balls you can buy at the pro-shop, Wal-mart, and through mail order from thousands of other companies.
The question is: On the Internet, which of the two has the best chance for success? Think about it for a second. Aunt Sarah and her golf ball website will probably run circles around Uncle Fred.
Being self employed paves the road to money when you educate yourself and know the dos and don't dos. Make sense?Road to self employed money