Basic, Better and Brilliant Ways to Sell a Product Online

Just about anything you have expert knowledge on can be
developed into a guide and sold online. Unfortunately, the
vast majority of people selling informational products
online do so in the wrong way.

Let's take a look at 3 ways of selling an informational
product. The basic way, the better way, and what we call
the brilliant way. This last way of selling your product
allows you to build a multi-million dollar business out of
your product.

The Basic Way

As an active user of online dating sites, Sheryl notices
that many men struggle to write a decent introduction and
profile to post on a dating site. As a consequence, they
get hardly any responses from prospective dates. Sensing a
market opportunity, Sheryl writes a 50 page ebook targeted
to men on how to market themselves better in the dating
market.

She prices the book at $6 and sells it on Amazon.com. She
makes $3 per sale as the distributing site, Amazon.com,
takes 50%. Selling 100 copies a month, she makes only $300
a month. Later Sheryl also decides to advertise the book
herself on Google and Yahoo!. To afford pay per click
advertising rates in the busy online dating market she has
to increase the price of her book to $15.

At the higher price, Sheryl now sells only 50 copies a
month but by selling them on her own and not on Amazon.com
she now makes $750 a month. After paying her advertising
bills on Google and Yahoo!, she earns an income of around
$500 a month. This is good....but far from great. Sheryl
could have been a lot more innovative.

The Better Way

Marge writes a book on dating, just like Sheryl, but she
knows that selling it online will not bring her much more
than $500 a month so she tries something different.

She gives away the contents of her book for free online.
She sets up a website dedicated to dating tips. The 50 page
book is broken into sections and she designs the site
according to search engine optimization rules so she gets a
steady stream of traffic from Google, Yahoo!, bloggers and
fellow site owners who link to her site.

How does she make money? By giving away her book for free
she now has traffic coming to her site. Better yet, this
traffic is highly targeted and consists of people looking
for dating tips and advice. Marge makes money by reviewing
and recommending various dating sites to her audience.

Since the online dating industry is ultra-competitive, many
websites will pay Marge affiliate fees between $10 and $50
for every customer she sends to them.

By offering free advice, her audience comes to trust her
and to appreciate her honest reviews. She in turn makes
money every time a visitor signs up for a site she reviews.

The Brilliant Way

Quincy's idea was to help people learn to play their
favorite songs on an acoustic guitar in a fun, simple, and
intuitive way.

Quincy told us that he had never seen any product online
that made learning to play guitar fun and easy. He said,
"Every guitar instruction book and DVD on the market is not
teaching people how to start playing their favorite songs,
they all focus on music theories and practice lessons!"

That's when he decided to launch iPlayMusic.

He decided to completely change his approach. He realized
that if his beginner book and DVD was so successful, why
not give some of it away for free? As a small business, it
is very hard to get people to trust us and buy from us.

However, it is far easier to give them something for free,
earn their trust and then convert them into paying
customers later. Plus, giving away some lessons would cost
us next to nothing since ebooks and videos could be
formatted into easy downloads.

He added free demos and created a free online course that
customers received over two week span. He also made our
instructional videos available through iTunes, which got
him a lot of publicity.

He then went back to creating more content and started
working on the next volume of lessons to help beginning
guitar players take it to the next level!

In addition to expanding his instructional "Learn to Play
Guitar" lessons he also created detailed how-to videos
teaching people how to play some popular guitar songs.

Lastly, he came up with the idea to create a "Beginner
Guitar Bundle" that combined his lessons with an acoustic
guitar.

Since he doesn't make guitars, he contacted a leading
guitar manufacturer and struck a deal where he was able to
source guitars at over 65% less than retail price.

He now had a $129 product with a profit margin of over $65
per order. This time, all the changes he made worked and
iPlayMusic soon reached sales of over $1,000 per day. He
hasn't looked back since.

So as you can see, there are 3 very different ways to
market an informational product online. The last thing you
want to do is follow the crowd and sell your product on
Amazon.com. Although Amazon.com is the easy way out, it's
not very effective and you won't make the money you're
hoping for.

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Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned
from having his own building company to a great online
business. Check out his site and see for yourself how he
can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com