Selling Online Products
With the popularity of the Internet growing leaps and bounds every day, there is a huge market for instant access to information. Many people would rather sit at home and shop than go out to the store to get what they want. You can take advantage of this
Ebooks
One of these sites includes Bookswealth.com, and for example they have an ebook titled "101 Tips to Stop Your Child's Bedwetting Forever". They sell you this ebook for $2 and you can then turn around and sell it on your web site for whatever price you want (you'll want to keep it within reason so people will buy it). Once you purchase the ebook from them, you have FULL resale rights, meaning you pay $2 for the ebook ONCE, and can re-sell it forever with no additional fees to pay! How is that for a small investment price?
The key to selling things such as ebooks is to find where they will sell the best, and focus on advertising a particular subject at once, instead of a random, "Come check out my ebooks", you can focus on one topic such as "Come visit the ultimate resource for parenting advice!". And then to advertise more specifically you could post this on a parenting forum (if they allow advertisements) or underneath parenting sections on craigslist. There are so many options, and immediate downloads are such an inexpensive and easy way to sell. Your investment is small and the customer gets their product immediately, so they are instantly gratified and you don't have to ship anything!
Audio/Podcasting
Instead of writing an ebook or document and selling it, why not dictate it to a recorder and sell it as an audio file? There are many people out there who do not like to read and would much prefer listening to audio. And what better way thank to offer an immediate download? This can include audio versions of ebooks you have written, how-to documents and even mentoring and coaching series. You obviously want to make the recordings decent quality so that they will come back for more. There are several ways to provide audio with the first being that you create an audio file and offer it for download. You can do this using a digital recorder, microphone, recording and editing software, which can all be found free or fairly cheap.
One of the top choices for audio is Podcasting. A Podcast is an audio recording that a user can download from the Internet and listen to either on a computer or portable player, such as an iPod. Podcasts have become increasingly popular and the ease of creating them makes them possible for just about anyone with very little equipment (besides your computer). Podcasting was originally utilized for individuals to create and distribute their own "radio shows," however they are now being used for everything from school lessons to conferences and seminars. You can either use podcasting as a way to sell your audio or to create buzz for your web site. For example you could sell an audio version of your how-to on real estate investing, or you could provide a free podcast to announce your site and what you offer and give some tips related to your site and what you sell to show people you are informed about what you do or sell. Master New Media has some great information on podcasting as well as reviews of the podcasting software out there and resource suggestions. And Podcasting-tools.com lists some great tools for use in podcasting including recording the audio as well as announcing your podcast.
Video
Do you want to show people how to do something, whether it be making jewelry or maybe building a bookshelf, and you think it would be much easier for them to understand it if they saw it? Many people learn better and prefer seeing how something is done rather than reading or listening to it. Here's where video is a great way to offer that! Your video can be a quick 5 minute clip or an hour long, it's up to you! You don't need a big budget and expensive equipment to do so, just some time, patience and quiet uncluttered environment. You can create a video on really anything from dog training, makeup application, home decorating and jewelry making to how to juggle a soccer ball. Here are some great sites and articles on creating, editing and publishing your video to your site:
Bandwidth
One thing that you need to keep in mind when deciding whether to include audio and video is whether you want to do it via the streaming media way or via a download. Whenever someone visits your site, they use bandwidth and most hosting companies have a limit of how much "traffic" you get to your site. Video and audio use much more bandwidth than just normal visits to your site, so check with your hosting company to find out what the limits are for streaming media. You may also have limitations on whether you can offer downloadable files based on your hosting company and the package you choose. You may even want to consider a separate streaming host if you wish to have alot of video and audio, such as Stream Hoster. The last thing you want to do is have people attempting to watch your video and get an error that they can't see the video because you've exceeded your bandwidth limitations.
