Making the Sale
Starts With Product Selection

Product select must be done right. The first step in creating a compelling site that sells is to select a product. You need to know what you are selling and to whom before you even think of profits.

Here you want to select a product that people will want to buy. It needs to be easy to sell on the Net. And it needs to be easy to deliver--hopefully over the Internet.

One thing that immediately comes to mind is information products. These can include reports and other e-books. Everyone knows something that others would pay to learn.

Ken Evoy has a lot of experience selling his popular Make Your Site Sell book over the Internet. He sells around 100 of these e-book a day. His experience is worth its weight in gold.

But, other goods, hardgoods, can be ordered and often drop-shipped to your customer. All without you having to handle the product at all.

Product selection is a tricky but critical first step in selling on the Net.

Here's where the experience of Ken Evoy, a real Internet marketing professional, comes in handy.

Ken Evoy is a physician who had an interest in penny stocks. He developed an innovative methodology for buying and selling penny stocks that was an outstanding success. He created a simple computer program he called PennyGold.

Ken decided to market this proven, but high priced program on the Internet. His success was outstanding. Not only did he have a good product, but he experimented with what worked (and learned what didn't work). His marketing knowhow made his site extremely successful.

He then wrote and marketed his secrets as the revealing Make Your Site Sell book.

And he perfected his hard fought marketing experience by selling that book only on the Internet. Today, Make Your Site Sell is the leading book on growing your Internet business. And, there's a very good reason for that. It's jam packed with helpful ideas that will quickly bring targeted traffic to your site.

Make Your Site Sell not only reveals the results of his extensive research, but provides outstanding examples of how you can make your site pull in the targeted traffic so it can sell successfully.

Don't think that Make Your Site Sell will teach your HTML or JAVASCRIPT. It won't. But it will give you the practical knowledge you need to select the products that will sell effectively over the Internet.

And by practical, I mean what is tried and true--what really works.

There are literally thousands of products you can sell on the Web.

Should you simply jump at the first product you see? Or should you evaluate that product and many others against a list of criteria?

Obviously, to avoid disappointments and wasted effort, you should select a product in an intelligent manner. Ken, in Make Your Site Sell, suggests the following criteria.

Checklist for Product Selection Product Quality. Does the product solve someone's problem, or deliver a benefit, in a high quality way? Competition. Don't enter a crowded field if you don't have some kind of unique edge (for example a unique product or a unique approach). Market Size. Wide appeal is great, but the Internet is ideal for niche products. Promotability. Can your product be promoted at low or even no cost? Profit Margin/Pricing. Even though the cost of doing business on the Web is low, a product with a great profit margin is still a wonderful product to sell. Supply and Exclusivity. If you develop your own product, you're 100% sure of the supplier...you? Advantage for You to Sell Via the Web. Information products are ideal ones for the Web. Advantages for Customers to Buy Via the Web. Is there an advantage of price, convenience, or speed of delivery? Sizzle Factor Does the product lend itself to some marketing "sizzle?" Support Required. Is the product basically "plug and play?" Legal/Regulation. Make sure it's safe and legal in every jurisdiction where you'll be selling it. Cost of Transportation. The product must be cheap to ship. Cost of Inventory. It should be cheap to maintain an inventory. Potential for Repeat Purchase. Your product must have the potential to develop repeat business. Community. Does the product lend itself to building community? Fun for You. Does selling the product give you pleasure?

Ken's criteria for production selection will help you evaluate each product. You can then select the ones that will produce the maximum income for you.

But, realize first, that you will not be the only one selling that product.

Others, sometimes hundreds or thousands of others, are already selling that product on the Internet. You've got to have some advantages.

That's why Ken suggests that you...

Product selection is more than finding a product. You need to learn about the market. Is your potential competition going to make it difficult for you to succeed?

The only way to find out is to examine the skill and inventiveness of your competition.

First, you need to find your competition.

But, how would you go about investigating the competition? Make Your Site Sell does more than just tell you to investigate your competition. It shows you great techniques for investigating your competitors.

You, of course, know how to use search engines to find Web sites related to your product. You would search for your product's name. Then you would search for the features and the benefits of the product. And you would search for the problems your product helps solve.

You'll come up with a list of dozens or even hundreds of potential competitors.

Some few of them will use the techniques in Make Your Site Sell to make their sites really competitive. For example, they will have related the benefits of the product to a visitor's needs and problems. They will have used keyword phrases to help drive targeted visitors to their site.

You'll need to identify these sites. They are your main competitors.

Take this (hopefully) handful of really competitive sites and investigate them more thoroughly.

You'll look at each highly competitive site individually. Examine the HTML source for each page. Have they used META tags effectively? What keyword phrases do you find each page using and what is the density of those phrases?

You probably haven't found every page at these competitive sites. Use the search engines to find out all of the pages at each site. You'll also use the search engines to determine all the pages that link to that site. This will give you a good idea of the techniques the owner of the site is using to market the product.

Next, you'll want to determine what other sites the owner has. Some sites may be related to the product in ways you haven't thought about. Examine those sites that are relevant to your product.

How you do all this is explained in Make Your Site Sell. I can only give you the briefest details here.

This "intelligence" about your competition will either scare you off with the indication that the product is being marketed very competitively. Or, you will be inspired by knowing that you could do a better job of marketing.

But, you'll never know unless you investigate the competition.

You'll want to search sources such as Deja News to determine what others are saying about your product. Your product's reputation may be good or bad. You'll never know until you look.

But, there's more to investigate that the product's reputation.

You'll also want to see the level of actively of the owners of the competitive Web sites. Do the owners participate frequently in newsgroups, often promoting the product?

If the Web sites are owned by a business, you can see what members of that business are saying. They may be drawing people to their sites through the newsgroups.

If you have the opportunity to develop your own product you'll have more control over:

• Packaging. What format will the product take?
• Test Marketing. How will you determine if there really is a market for your product?
• Pricing. How much will you charge for the product?
• Promotion. What methods will you use to attract targeted customers?

Nobody likes to fail. But, sometimes we come up with a concept that does, indeed, fail.

The trick is to determine how well you're going to succeed before you put a lot of effort into the project. Test your concept before you spend months developing your product. This is critical.

Test marketing your product determines if it's worth while developing the product.

Ken suggests that you construct a web site of 3 to 5 pages. Put some good effort into marketing your concept. But, at the end, when people see the value of your product and want to buy...

So what do you do?

You tell them that the product is under development. Let them know that you want to contact them as soon as the product becomes available. Ask them for their name and email address.

Your most wanted response is to get them to give you their email address. This shows a level of interest in your project.

You will then determine if the number of people who give their email address represents a large enough market. Is it worthwhile to commit time to developing the product for 10 people per day? What about 5 per day? How about 1?

You can imagine that I've only touched on a small part of the 1,500 pages in Make Your Site Sell. There is much more that you can learn.

You'll learn about important topics like tracking your success and the importance of using CGI scripts, the real impact of banner exchanges, creating an effective sig file, creating effective META tags and so much more. You'll also see examples of great sites and well as not so great sites.

In fact there are really four volumes that make up Make Your Site Sell. I've only scratched the surface of the volume about Traffic Building. Included in the over 1,500 pages is also a volume about Product Selection, Make your Store Sell, and one about Site Selling. It's a terrific series.

Does Make Your Site Sell deliver? Not exactly. It's more than 1,500 pages over-delivers both knowledge and results.

In fact, you can get good look at all three extensive tables of contents in this powerful series by clicking here or click on the logo below:

Here is a free course that will pump up your brain muscles as fast as it will pump up your profits.

This course has over 200 pages of not-to-be-missed material. You'll read it once and refer to it again and again. It's that good.

You'll lean how to develop high profitability topics for your site. You'll see the importance of PRE-selling and why it is so effective.

You'll understand the importance of good content. How it builds relationships with your visitors. How it leads to sales.

This free course is extremely valuable. It's like money in your pocket. And the best part is, it's free.

If you sell items on your site or participate in an affiliate program, here is help.

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Copyright © 2001 Robert Sherman
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