1. Join only reputed affiliate programs. Before joining any program, do some research about it. You can make a quick search on Google or any other search engine to find out the necessary information and reviews. Forums are also a good source of information. Use Alexa.com to find out the amount of traffic which the merchant website is already receiving.
2. Select products in which you are personally interested. The best thing is to buy and use the products yourself. Your personal experience of using the products will make it easier for you to convince your customers about the usefulness of the same. The products should be of high quality and capable of solving people’s problems. They should not be too costly. Always go for niches which are growing but do not have too much competition.
3. The affiliate program must provide the necessary marketing tools, which will help to promote the products.
4. The program must offer high commission rates. Unless you receive a high commission on sales, you may not be able to recover your marketing and advertising expenses. Always go for programs, which offer commissions of between 30%-70%.
5. Study the commission structure offered by the program. Some programs pay a fixed amount per sale, whereas others will pay you for having people complete some survey or provide some information. Some programs will pay for repeat sales from the same customer. Some programs follow a 2-tier system where the affiliate is paid for his own direct sales as well as for recruiting new affiliates. All these factors require important consideration.
6. Look at the payment system. Some programs pay weekly whereas others pay on a monthly basis. Most of the programs have a minimum payout level. You may receive your payment through check or through Paypal or any other payment processor. Make sure that the payments are received in time and on a regular basis.

Technorati Tags: affiliate programs

However, I would say there are some arguments for giving it some consideration.

Existing businesses can’t easily change the business sector they operate in. However, some business sectors are still very buoyant, by starting your business now, you have the opportunity to choose a sector that is still seeing a steady flow of business.

People still need their every day items and during recessions people still tend to purchase the same / similar products but try to buy them for less. Any retailer that targets the value for money conscious will do well in a depressed market.

Even the most frugal among us still feel the need to pamper ourselves on occasions, affordable luxuries tend to do well in recessions

Recessions create a ‘buyers markets’. This means suppliers are far more receptive to new business leads and potentially you may be able to source many of the items required to start your business for considerable less money. Recessions also create a lull the job market, which means if you require staff for your business, high quality applicants are readily available often for much lower salaries. The poor employment climate also creates employee commitment due to nervousness in the security of their job. Employees in hard times tend to be more committed and are more likely to tolerate the sparse facilities often found in a start-up environment.

Hard times force everybody to be more frugal, being frugal is a very important factor of running any new venture. Starting your business with these ethics will mean you are far more likely to carry them on even when the market begins to come out of recession

Probably the most important factor for success in hard times is the drive and enthusiasm on the part of the business owner. Devotion and willingness will keep customers returning over and over again, irrespective of the underlying economic climate.

Technorati Tags: business startup, recession beater

“I would like to identify the right products to be sold on the web. Can you please help me with this process?”

The question is actually almost impossible for me to answer and I hope the following clarifies why.

From a personal viewpoint it’s essential that you have a genuine interest and some degree of knowledge in whatever it is you intend to sell.  You’re going to be spending a lot of time working with your product, writing about your product and talking about your product.  It’s therefore very important that you have a passion for the line of business your in and for the product you sell.

From a commercial point-of-view your budget and resources will definitely have some bearing on your chosen product.  If you have a very small budget it maybe prudent to avoid mainstream markets.  If you have a larger budget and some ideas on how you can improve on what the competition in that market place are doing, you may wish to tackle an industry where you know a vibrant market exists.   However, I myself always look for niche markets, product ranges where I can expand the business into related areas in a sustainable and timely fashion.

Let me give you an example: Pakatak – Security Cameras started with a single wireless spy camera product.  Once I realised there was a market for the product we expanded the range to cater for security cameras and surveillance cameras.  Six years later, the business now sells a complete range of CCTV and surveillance equipment and has a turnover of over $750,000.

There are hundreds of similar markets that can be taken advantage of.  When researching potential markets I use this product analysis technique.

It’s very difficult for me to be specific and tell you precisely what product line you should sell.  It’s a very individual thing that involves personal preferences and beliefs and as mentioned the amount of funding you have available will play its part. 

I personally like to start small with just a handful of products.  I normally test a product on eBay to see if there is a market for it and once I’ve established a market exists, I may then build a website to retail them.

Just recently, I’ve been working on a venture that sells headphones nothing more nothing less.  This site has grown very quickly over the course of 2-3 months and already sells 20-25 units per day with a mean $6 profit per unit.  So it’s already a very nice little earner.  Specializing on one product allows me to ‘home in’ on potential sales, perfecting my search expressions specifically for people looking for headphones.  I can afford to be far more targeted than other electronics resellers because that’s all the website sells.

It also means that there is far less competition for the organic expressions.  This means your site is far more likely to receive a steady flow of highly targeted free traffic.

I’m also considering a site selling ‘remote controls’. Anybody who wants to beat me to the punch feel free, there’s plenty of other niche markets out there and more than enough business to go round.

For example: there were three German brothers called Samwer, one of which spent some time in 1999 analyzing Silicon Valley start-ups. After consideration he decided that he and his brothers, together with three other friends would form a German equivalent to eBay, which they called Alando.de. Within two months of its launch the auction site had closed more than 250,000 auctions and was well on it’s way to monopolizing the German auction market. Ebay quickly recognized the threat and only a few months after its launch eBay had agreed to buy the German copycat site for $43 Million in eBay stock.

This example maybe a little extreme but it indicates the potential opportunities that can be discovered by analyzing overseas and or regional markets for good ideas that can be copied and/or improved. 

Once you have chosen your product line the copying ideas theory should extend to periodically checking competitor sites. You need to identify who your main competitors are; these sites should be checked on a regular basis for the following:

Prices – make sure they are not considerably cheaper than you. If you are coming up on the same internet searches and their pricing is better than yours you can guarantee they will be getting a high percentage of the new custom.

Content – never copy content but look at your competitor’s site, pay attention to the quantity and quality of the product descriptions. If this content is better than your own or they have any extra information, try to incorporate the ideas into your own site

Products – look for new product ideas on your competitor’s sites. Make sure your competitors aren’t selling any new exciting product lines that you are not. If you want to extend your product range then competitors sites should be your first call when you are looking for new product ideas.

Site features – are there features on your competitors site. For example: one click ordering, customer accounts, product searches, knowledge bases etc. If so, try to incorporate these features into your site.

Services – do your competitors have any value added services that will draw potential customers to their product? Once again look for ways to incorporate these into your own site. 

Speed and navigation – surf your competitor’s site – complete the order process, is the site faster or easier to navigate than your own? If so, optimize your site and/or move it to a faster hosting company.

Appearance – are there areas of your competitor’s that are more aesthetically pleasing than yours? Try to make your site good to look at, a jumbled, over filled site can confuse your visitors and could stop them from making a purchase. 

Contact – what methods of contact do your competitors offer and are they easier to communicate with than you.

Basically you are looking for anything good they do that you don’t and anything they do better than you. If you analyze several competitor sites and incorporate the best ideas from each of these sites into your own, it should make your site stand out from the rest. You don’t actually have to limit yourself to local competitors you could look at likeminded overseas sites for new ideas, concepts and products that, again, could be incorporated into your own site.

Technorati Tags: copying ideas, research competitors

Key:
1. Market (MA) – is there an internet market for the product…not all products will sell on the internet so you need to establish who buys the product and do these people use the internet to make purchases?�
2. Size of Market (SM) - how much do people spend on average on this product/service?
To try and establish this information you need to do a little market research, there are plenty of sites that specialize in providing this information and can be found by searching ‘Market Research’ on the search engines. You should also search for news and statistical articles pertaining to the sector in question, try searches like “your product line + “market data”.

When looking for products to sell on the internet you need to establish if they are well searched through the medium.
3. Search Potential (SP) – number/depth of potential search expressions
4. Search Competition (SC) – the competition for those search expressions and the CPC / PPC costs that the search expressions attract
Most of the above can be established using the overture expression tool and then checking the CPC/PPC cost of the expressions you identify on either Overture or Miva. Unfortunately, Google do not indicate the placement cost of the expression, so average Google placement costs can only be established once you have added the expressions to an active CPC/PPC campaign.

5. Competition (CO) – check for any really big players in the market in your region and research the competition to establish if it is possible to create a competitive edge.
This can be established by searching using the expressions that were previously identified. The presence of a really big player should not necessarily put you off but you need to identify ways to be less expensive or better than they are.

6. Market Breakdown and Niche Opportunities (MB) – attempt to breakdown the market and identify possible niches.�
7. Supply (SU) – is there a regular supply of the product and where and who are you going to purchase it from?
8. Shipping and Handling (SH) – in relation to its size and weight, how easy is your product to deliver?
9. Customer Support (CS) – how technical is the product and will your customers require pre and after sales support? In the case of after sales support, will they be prepared to pay for it and are you prepared and capable of providing it? Will the product require in house specialist knowledge?
10. Average Sector Profit Margin (PM) – what’s your profit margin? Is the difference between cost and sales price large enough to make it a viable project?
11. Returns (RE) – some products naturally generate a lot of returns, for example: when shopping for clothing people tend to buy products in the knowledge that they will be returning some of them. It is important to build this into the cost structure.

Each of the above is given a respective score of between 1-9 and with our model a product with a score of between 75-108 is worth further analysis.

(All figures indicated above are our own internal workings and are based on our own research and opinions of that market. Please feel free to use our workings as a guide, however, we strongly recommend you do your own research before committing to any particular product or service.)

If a particular product line scores well, we then undergo a sector breakdown where we analyze the sector looking for under-exploited niches, as follows:

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of potential products and services, if you have a product that is not mentioned maybe this process will help you to identify whether it is suitable for retailing on the internet.

Technorati Tags: product analysis, sales market

The obvious advantages are that there is no shipping or delivery costs to consider, no stock to hold and with most electronically delivered products once you have finished development, the sale is mainly profit. This type of product is often best sold using an affiliate scheme like clickbank. The high levels of profit give you a lot of flexibility to offer commissions to your affiliates. The better the commission you offer the more affiliates you will attract and the more affiliates you attract the more sales you will make.

Later in this publication we will discuss how and where information can be collated for the creation of informational products. We also discuss how and where software or technical products can be designed to your exact specification by highly professional technicians for surprisingly little money. This means you don’t have to be a programmer or technician, all you need is a reasonable idea.

If you do decide to sell an informational product the best way to sell the product is by affiliation, probably through clickbank. Remember, once you have your clickbank ‘seller program’ up and running you can maximize your exposure by going to Affiliate-Announce. A lot of excellent affiliates use this website to find new programs to advertise, so, try to offer a better commission than your competitors. Affiliate-announce will also allow you to offer cash incentives to your high producing affiliates over and above your standard commission rate. For example: you could offer affiliates that make more than ten sales in a calendar month an extra $2.00 per sale.

Technorati Tags: Digital Products, Informational Products

The perceived value of a product / service can be increased by:

• Including a value added service like support or set-up and installation
• Branding, customers perceive products with strong branding to be better quality – I own several watches one of which is a Rolex, I have had more problems with the Rolex than all my other watches put together.  So what made me spend $3000.00 on a watch, where I could have spent £29.99 on an alternative and possibly more reliable product? (this question will be answered later on in the publication)
• Customer Testimonials – try to include plenty of preferable customer accounts of your product / service.  this will increase perceived value by giving visitors to your site actual customer experiences of your product
• The presence of a strong guarantee.  This increases the perceived value because it shows that you are fully committed to your products
• Get your product endorsed by well known websites or brands – being associated with well-known household brands will inspire consumer confidence.  This can also be extended to getting your site registered with quality assurance sites that allow you, once registered, to display their seal of approval. 

It is important that before you commit to a particular product or service that your target market will accept the sales price you need to achieve to maintain a healthy business profit. If you cannot find a cost-efficient supply of the product (withstanding all the costs of bringing the product to market) that meets with your customers expectation of cost, look for alternative product lines.

Product Information – when you decide on a product consider what aspects of the product the customers will ask questions about. Take advantage of your friends and family, see what questions they ask about your product and make that information readily available in the product description on your website. Remember, the more information you provide the less phone calls or support emails your website will generate. Customers love information, the better your product descriptions are the more sales your site will generate. Good descriptions will also reduce product returns, if your site information is comprehensive and honest; unless the product is faulty or damaged your customers are left with very few reasons to return the product.

We once purchased 10,000 units of a product called SimSafe.  SimSafe was at the time very innovative. It was designed to download and store the information from up to eight mobile phone SIM cards, which it did admirably.  This was going back a few years and, at the time, there was no other product like it on the market.  However, we made three fundamental errors: we got drawn in by a new and innovative product,  we got over excited and paid too much and we naively purchased way too many units.  Because of it’s innovative nature we had to try and create a market for the product, the high price made it impossible for us to wholesale the product and the high volumes meant we were lumbered with a large quantity of a slow moving stock item – dead money sitting on the shelves.  It took us almost two years to recoup the initial investment and at the time the $100,000+ we invested was a make or break amount of money that nearly put us out of business.

Testing your market on eBay
eBay is a great and inexpensive way to test your product on the internet. There is a longer discussion on eBay later on in this publication but, for the time being, if you are unsure how well received your product will be on the internet, eBay could be the answer. Before committing large sums of money you can purchase a limited quantity and test your market on eBay. To give your product a fair chance pay special attention to your title-text, product descriptions and product images, all of which, if well presented, will dramatically increase your final auction totals. eBay is much the same as the internet retail market in general, in that, if people aren’t looking for it, you will struggle to sell it. If your product is a little obscure use your ‘title-text’ to tie your product into more mainstream markets so your auction will be presented when more popular eBay searches are carried out.

Technorati Tags: innovations, new concepts

Competition generally means there is a market for that product or service and you will get your share of sales based on the professional effort and hard work you put in.

An indication of the size of the on-line market for a particular product or service can be established by carrying out internet searches using Google or Yahoo.  A fair indication of the amount of competition will be evident by the quantity of PPC / CPC (Pay-Per-Click / Cost-Per-Click) adverts there are for popular keyword expressions within that market.

Analyzing the competition sites prior to choosing your product will give you some idea of the work you will need to put in to create a comparable (but better) internet presence. Going on to create a competitive edge is discussed in detail later on in the publication.

Technorati Tags: Competition, Competitive Edge, Competitors