Choosing Your Product
The product/service you sell is absolutely key to the success of your internet venture… you need to consider your product very carefully. It’s obviously not possible for me to be specific about the product you should sell. However, I can hopefully give you some valuable advice, information that will potentially save you hundreds of dollars and many hours of wasted time and effort.
Consider the following criteria when deciding what product or service you are going to sell.
- Market – who are your customers and do they use the internet? If you plan to sell your product on the internet you need to establish if your product is well searched and ultimately purchased through the medium. (This factor is becoming less crucial as most products are now being searched and sourced through the medium so regardless of your product you should ultimately be considering some form of internet promotion)
- Demand – how much do people spend on average on the product/service?
- Competition – who are your competitors and how can you create a competitive edge?
- Supply – is there a regular supply of the product and where and who are you going to purchase it from?
- Shipping – in relation to it’s size and weight, how easy is your product to deliver?
- Support – how technical is the product and will your customers require after sales support? If so, will they be prepared to pay for it?
- Profit – what is your profit margin? Is the difference between cost and sales price large enough to make it a viable project?
- Perceived Value – is the customers perception of what the product is worth similar to the sales price of your item?
- Costs – consider all the costs that you will incur bringing your product to market and ultimately fulfilling customer orders.
Apart from the profitability, the single most important factor when choosing your product is: how and where you are going to market it, if people are not looking for it where you are advertising it, you won’t sell anything! In the marketing posts we will discuss the techniques required to ascertain if your product is well searched. We will also look at search marketing (SEM) and try to discover how to pick up targeted traffic for as little money as possible.
