In Starting Your Own Business For Fun And Profit we talked in general terms about marketing products and services online. In this piece we’ll be going into some specifics. Let’s look at our outline again. To be a successful merchant you’ll need to expand on these three necessary elements for your online business:

• A product or service with strong demand
• An attractive and functional Website to showcase the product
• A sufficient number of visitors to your site who are actually interested in your offer

The first piece to the online business puzzle is to have a product to sell. And for you to have any chance for success you should choose one that is in demand. Having a product that’s in demand is both a blessing and a curse. Obviously high demand means people want it. But high demand also translates to high competition. What that means is most of your efforts online will be devoted to marketing. But before we visit that topic let’s look again at how you might find something to sell.

Digital Products
Digital products are most often informational downloads that people can receive in one of several ways. The first is by clicking on a link that directs them to a download page. Here they will click another link and receive an ebook, a software program, an audio recording, instructions on gaining access to an exclusive membership site or a video. Another way to get this process started is that after paying for a product the seller sends the buyer a download link via email.

This method is becoming less popular as people want immediate access to the information they’ve purchased. Finally, the product may be shipped to the buyer on CD or DVD. This somewhat defeats the purpose of selling digital products as it requires a seller to stock inventory and ship it.

Immediate Downloads
The beauty of offering digital downloads is that once a product is created and uploaded to the seller’s server, there is an infinite supply or that product and virtually no cost to keep it outside of the hosting fee for his Website. Most often text-based digital products are offered in PDF format which allows both PC And Mac users access. There are a variety of formats for audio such as MP3, WAV and others. Video downloads are becoming more popular as well.

The beauty of selling digital products is that they are relatively easy to produce and distribute. If you have information that you feel people would want it’s not a hard proposition to prepare it for download. There are literally millions of how-to titles available online from how to find dates to how to make money on the Internet and many more.

There are also affiliate programs that allow you to promote the products of others and earn high commissions. I’ve promoted a course in the past and earned a nice commission of $497 per sale. That’s nice business and all I had to do was direct customers to the product creator’s Website.

Physical Products
It’s also possible to market physical products online and ship them. In fact, that’s the basic model behind eBay. Many online marketers don’t want to be bothered handling physical products. However, if you can locate something in demand that is light and inexpensive to ship you might have a decided advantage simply because others shy away from dealing in physical products. I have a friend whose wife imports silk scarves from China and sells them online for a tremendous markup.

For a time I was very active as a seller on eBay and did very well with it. I became a Power Seller in a relatively short time. There are some privileges that come with the title.  A Power Seller is required to sell a certain number of products and/or reach a certain dollar amount in sales per month.

There are a couple of advantages to marketing your products through eBay. First, they have a built-in supply of visitors. That means that at any given time there are millions of people shopping there. The second thing that I liked about them is that there are a couple of legitimate strategies you can use to rise above your competition. And after all these years only a very small number of people use them.

By the way, this piece is not designed to promote eBay. I do, however, give it attention because it’s an excellent opportunity to earn money online. In evaluating your online advertising options we’ll examine a few of the many ways you can promote your products and services online.