How To Sell Things Online And Make Money

With your idea in mind, you decided to make money online. You have your domain name and a web hosting company to host your site. You have mapped out on paper what your site will look like. Now you want an angle to make money.

Some people jump into doing business on the web with a business they run offline hoping an international connection will make things better. These people can do quite well if they were already successful in the real world.

Others figure they would just wing their way into the Internet gold mine. Again, without a business plan you probably won't get too far.

If you don't have something to sell, you can't make money on the web. By simply being on the web does not guarantee the money will fall in your lap. You need a product and to give the buyers a reason to get it from you.

One easy way to come up with a product is to create your own. Information is the most inexpensive form of a product you can sell. In print form, you can sell a booklet, but have to figure in the cost of printing and mailing. In electronic form, it costs you nothing! However, some people would rather have something in writing to justify the fact that they spent something.

If you are not creative enough to come up with an informational book, you could make other products, but you will have to confirm what your local, state and federal laws would be concerning the product you have in mind.

If you want an easier route, consider a dropship dealer. In many cases they can print up catalogs in your name for you to distribute. You collect the orders, take out your share of the money and direct the rest of the money with the order to the dropship company. They process the orders you send them and ship to the customer. It is easy enough, but you also want to be sure about any policy they have about returned merchandise. You may have to hold on to the money you made until a clearing period passes.

Look through this list of companies and take your pick of what you wish to sell. Write these companies and ask them about their dropshipping program. It helps speed things up if you send a large SASE when you write them. Some of these businesses may no longer be around, so pick a few just in case. Dropship Companies.

After you figure out what you want to sell, you need to find a way to take payment. What are your options?

Of course the best option is to accept any and all forms of payments, but that is not practical in every situation, is the traditional merchant account. If you have only one item that is less than $10 and sell a few a month, it would be VERY risky to get a merchant account to accept credit cards.

Merchant accounts will let you take major credit cards and checks. Depending on what type of account you deal with, some will only allow Visa and Master Card, some just checks only, and others will take everything. They charge you according to your credit worthiness to make sure you will not rip off the customer or the company to pay your debts or that someone will put a lien on your assests. Unless you have perfect credit, expect to pay more. You can get these accounts starting at $50 a month and up to over $250 per month. Then there is the transaction charge ranging from 10¢ - 75¢. And they also take a percentage of your sale ranging from 1-10%.

So as you can see, they do take a fair amount out of what you would have considered your profit just for a transaction. If you make no sales, you still have to pay the monthly fee. So unless you can prove you will have a steady flow of ready buyers, having a merchant account is not always the best thing.

Don't be fooled by the ads that claim your business will increase by having the ability to accept cards with a merchant account. Unless you have a good sales pitch and a product people want and people coming to see your offer, a merchant account won't do you a bit of good. They are also not the only way to take card payments, but they do charge less for the service.

A merchant account will only suit you if you can supply the buying traffic. Before you shell out the big bucks for a traditional merchant's account, check to see if you have the buying traffic to support it.

Get a good statistics counter to see how many people are actually viewing your ad, where they came from, and how long they stayed. Most good web hosting companies will have an excellent traffic statistic counter to tell you the details of where your traffic originated and even search terms used to get to your site. If your web hosting company does not have a good statistic program, try Web Stat which is one of the best traffic counters around and only $9 a month, but you can try it free for 30 days to check your traffic levels.

If you offer payment by check, cash, or money order and you have at least 1% of your traffic buying what you sell, then it might work out when you accept credit cards. If people want something, they will stick money in the mail. Granted there are many impulsive people, there are also many who would rather mail a check or money order than to give credit card informtion online.

Of course, if you do not qualify for the traditional accounts, you have other options. Sign up for the PayPal merchant account program, ClickBank, or eBay. They allow you to sell whatever it is you are selling without having to go through the same hoops as a traditional merchant account.

Once you have a product and a means to collect payment, create a sales page. Use the basic rules of advertising. Keep your copy simple to read and easy to understand. Keep it short and to the point. Use words that are powerful. Create "white space" (don't crowd the screen with words or bog it down with pictures and keep a good margin space.) Use headlines, subheadlines, and bullet points to highlight the great points of your offer for those who are just skimming readers. Be sure to ask for the order. Be specific on how they are to get your product. Create a sense of urgency to buy your product now. Give them what they wanted and pile on goodies to make it impossible to refuse. Make sure your page will load fast. Unless you are selling music, DO NOT PUT MUSIC ON!

Try to advertise your site as much as possible through forums, newsgroups, and other places where you find people in the form of a signature tag which is a 1-2 line signature that can link to a site you own and is used at the end of your comments. Another way to advertise online is through classified ads such as Adland Classified Ads. Also consider offline forms of advertising such as newspapers, flyers, business cards and word of mouth.

When you create and launch your site, just be prepared to fill orders and handle your business. It is not easy, but it is not difficult either. You will not get rich overnight and this will take a lot of time to set up. Don't let the Don Lapre's of the world fool you. If you haven't noticed, this site has a lot more information on making money on the web than buying one of the infomercial products. And this advice is FREE.