I’ve been full-time online since way back 1996, so I’ve seen a few things come down the road. And I keep seeing people get the basic things wrong.
By now most of our readers know that the two most important elements for people doing business online are conversions and traffic.
In the past I’ve mentioned the “one thing that always wins” for both traffic and conversion – and that “thing” is CONTENT.
Great content will get your site noticed in the Search Engines and will also help you convert leads into Customers if presented in a logical and convincing way.
OK, now you ask… it might be great if content always wins for traffic and conversion… but how do you turn that into money?
Well, I’ve used just about every revenue system
under the sun since I started out. I’ve sold all
kinds of things – from continuity programs to ebooks to
home-study courses to online courses to membership
sites to physical products. I’ve also sold
advertising on my sites, in my ezines, and
probably a few other places I can’t remember. And
I’ve made hundreds of thousands of dollars with
affiliate programs and Adsense.
And what I’ve learned about actually
extracting money from a web site is this:
There are
basically TWO ways to make money online:
1. You can sell your stuff.
2. You can sell other people’s stuff.
Hey, that might sound overly simple, but it’s CRITICAL that you understand it and how these two relate (and WHY they relate.)
First off, I’m a huge fan of selling my own stuff. This gives you big time control, positioning… and most importantly it gives you higher profit margins.
And higher margins aren’t just about you making more money, it’s about your business survival.
For example, if you’re selling a $97 widget that someone else is producing, you might only make $10 or $20 per widget that you sell. That might sound good, but if you’re competing against someone else who is manufacturing that widget (or a competing widget), and they are making $50 in profit per widget… then you aren’t going to be able to compete.
Higher margins mean you have more money to spend
to pull in more traffic and increase your conversions.
For this reason, I think it’s important for you to
have your own high-margin products. Maybe not when
you first start out in your business, but it’s
something you should quickly work toward.
Personally, I love information products for this purpose – they are relatively easy to create and they carry typically high margins.
All that said, you should also use the
second revenue system – selling other people’s
stuff.
Why?
1. Because it will balance out your cash flow
2. And you will never be able to create all
the products that your prospects want.
Trust me on this – no matter what market you’re in, your prospects and Customers will have a bigger demand than you can meet.
Some people think they can put a wall up around
their Customers, and keep them from straying to a
competitor.
Well that’s pure fantasy… it’s not going to happen,
not when they can find ten competitive solutions
in the time it takes to do a search online. So you might as well be the trusted source
introducing them to other people’s stuff.
So let’s break this down – what exactly do I mean
by “selling other people’s stuff”…
In fact, if you’re doing any form of affiliate marketing,
marketing CPA offers, advertising, or even
Adsense… then you’re already selling other
people’s stuff. Nothing wrong with ANY of that. In fact it’s
GOOD… for the reasons I outlined above. You just
need to be really clear about these two revenue
systems, and understand that you can easily
implement each of them to boost your bottom line.
And one more time – I think you should do both.
I know that when I first started out, I didn’t have the knowledge or the confidence to create my own products, so I sold other people’s stuff…
Basically, I had two CPA offers (CPA stands for Cost Per Action) on my site… they were what we call “soft offers”, one for a newsletter and one for a software product. That means I generated leads – people would sign up for a free trial on my site, and I would get paid for each person that took the trial. The people didn’t have to buy, didn’t have to give a credit card… didn’t have to do anything other than request a free trial.
That CPA offer was the way I made my very first dollars online, and it went on to pay my expenses every month for about nine years.
As an aside, marketing CPA offers is a GREAT revenue generator, and I have a soft spot for it since it was the way I started making money online.
Unfortunately, over the years it’s gotten harder to get approved for those CPA offers. The big CPA brokers are really hard-core about who they will approve… frankly, if it were this way back in 1996 I never would have been approved in the first place – and it might have cut my Internet Marketing career short way back then.
Today, one of my colleagues just opened the doors to his own CPA network and he is allowing just about anyone curious enough to join as long as they are determined to succeed.
If you are interested in giving CPA a whirl, let me know and I’ll have him send you a personal invitation.
Entries (RSS)
Oh, a wonderful article! No idea how you were able to write this post..it’d take me days. Well worth it though, I’d assume. Have you considered selling banners on your website?