04.04.11
How To Start Selling Online Without Your Own Products?
In the last post, we have “witnessed” on how simple it was to bring your offline business online. If you have missed the earlier post, you may read it here – Bringing Your Offline Business Online . Frankly, it doesn’t take rocket science to transform your brick and mortar business into an e-business. The benefits ? You will enjoy greater exposure which translates to higher profits and building bigger customer-based.
What if you do not have existing product to sell ? Well you know, there is always more than one way to skin a cat. While there are many alternative that you can undertake, in this article we are going to focus on 2 simple ways that you may consider.
(1) Become a middle-man to the local shop owner
(2) Become an Affiliate for the Digital Marketplace
By taking a role as a middle-man, you will basically approach shop owner(business owner) to discuss the possibility to work together. You will do all the online shopping cart setup while the business owner will supply you the products. The commission should be agreed upon for each sale and this is a truly win-win for both parties.
Alternatively, If you don’t think approaching business owner is the answer or not something that you feel comfortable doing, then consider the online digital marketplace eg Clickbank. You will become an affiliate and choose the product that you are interested to sell.
An affiliate is basically a person who get a cut of profit for every sales that he/she generated. Because affiliate doesn’t own the product, the product fulfillment including shipping and handling are handled by the product owner.
You do not have to keep stock or fork out additional capital for the products that you intend to sell. A “middleman” is just a person connect the dot between the seller and the buyer.
Let us dive in the details :
(1) Become a middleman and negotiate with the shop owner
This involve identifying the in-demand products and approach the shop owner for potential business partnership.
With this approach, you will help the shop owner to sell his existing product and negotiate for a commission. Depending on the original product profit margin, you have to negotiate with the shop owner and decide on the agreeable percentage.
This is one of the good approach as most business owners do not have sufficient knowledge on how to market on the internet. You, as an online expert approach the business owner by offering ways to increase their sales. You get the product to sell while the business owner increase their profits even after deducted your commission!
(2) Become Affiliate for the Digital Marketplace
The other alternative is to become an affiliate for the online digital marketplace. A good example of digital marketplace would be Clickbank. Founded in 1998, Clickbank is a secure online retail outlet which has over 70,000 digital products from over 20+ categories in various niches. All product sold at Clickbank is digital meaning there is no physical product involved. The digital product can be in the form of e-book, e-report, software, audio recording, etc.
Unlike most other digital marketplace, Clickbank offers up to 70% commission for every sales you generated. Meaning if you sell a product priced at $100, you will earn almost $70!
To start selling, you will need to firstly sign up as an affiliate of Clickbank.
Fill the application form and agree to the terms at the bottom of the page.
Once your application is approved, you can start selling as an Clickbank affiliate and earn a handsome commission!
For example, if you would like to promote a baby related products, you may go to the Marketplace (#1) and then key-in the keyword of the product that you are interested to sell (#2).
Let say you are interested in promoting “Best Baby Shower Games”, just click on the “Promote” button, enter your affiliate ID (created when signing up), and you are done.
Here’s the screenshot of the product that you may interested in. (tips : to see the product sales page, you can always click on the product’s title)
Regardless of whether you are selling your own product or other people’s product, the possibilities are endless on the internet. Having gone through the options that are available to you above, now you no longer have excuse of having no product to sell, do you?
