Creating, marketing, and selling your own products and services on your own website can be a very profitable venture for your business. After all, you get to keep all the money after paying your costs.
Selling your own products and services can prove to be the most challenging because you have so much work to do before you can begin selling. However, there is no substitute for creating your own product if you want creative control and long-term growth potential.
You don’t even need your own product; you can offer a service. Consider Marriage Counselors Hub. It’s a directory that builds and features profiles that give professionals web exposure.
Here are some guidelines to follow when offering your own products and services for sale online:
Information products are still king. An information product — which can be as simple as a how-to book or an e-book — is still the easiest and least expensive product to produce and deliver. Virtually anyone with a computer can write a how-to book and then convert it to a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. You can use a free, online PDF converter at PDF Online.
Audio is queen. If typing isn’t your forte or style, buy recording equipment and talk into a microphone to create 30- to 40-minute MP3 audio files to sell. For as little as $75, you can buy a digital recording device with a lapel microphone for hands-free recording. Or, make a complete CD set showcasing your knowledge.
After you get started with audio, you will quickly realize the unlimited opportunity potential available by producing recorded products and promotional content.
Another great use of audio would be to interview an expert the next time you attend a conference. Host a short ten-minute Q&A, add the sound file to your blog, and send a notice to your opt-in list that you added the recording for their review.
Video is HOT, HOT, HOT. Every website can enhance the buyer’s experience by offering video, especially when you have a product for sale. Software can be demonstrated, shoes can be modeled, e-books can be featured, and services can be displayed. Video sells online, and video products sell, too.
Professional video can now be produced in your own home for a one-time purchase of just a few hundred dollars in software and equipment.
Webinars continue to be the ultimate education tool. A webinar is an online session in which you walk through a presentation or training session on your computer while an audience views your presentation online and hears your voice from their computer. The best part about webinars is that they can be recorded and offered as a product for sale.
Microsoft’s webinar service — owned and operated by Citrix — has video and audio recording built in to its webinar tools.
Create a whole product line. For every information product you produce, you can create an entire product line by offering the nearly identical product in e-book form, MP3 audio recording, video, webinars, and in-person seminar training.