I'm about to reveal what is by far the best type of product to sell online.
That's some claim, but I promise you, even if you're already familiar with this type of product you'll find this very interesting.
Information Products Information products are as the name suggests, products which are purchased purely for the valuable information they contain.
Everyday examples include CDs, DVDs, eBooks and MP3s.
We've all seen these types of products and regardless of what media is used to store the information, it's the information we really want.
Information products have two main categories, physical and purely electronic.
The CD and DVD examples above are physical products, but the type we're really interested in here are the purely electronic products.
Lets find out why these are great to sell on-line...
Automated Delivery With physical information products like CDs you still need to package and sent them to the customer whenever you make a sale.
With our business mindset philosophy of making things as easy as possible don't want to be doing this if you can avoid it.
You could pay for someone else to send out your products but there's a much better solution.
If you make the audio, video or eBook, etc downloadable whole delivery process can be fully automated by your website.
Any website can already automate the sales and payment process but with information products you can also fully automate the delivery too.
Zero Inventory One of the great things about electronic information products is that there's no physical storage space required.
No warehouses, no back bedroom full of products, nothing.
The only storage required is a little space on your web server for one copy of the product, ready to be downloaded by your customers automatically whenever a purchase is made.
Simple, cheap and effortless.
By the way, this also means that you can run your business from anywhere.
With no inventory to take with you a laptop and an Internet connection is all that's require to run this business model from anywhere in the world.
Immediate Delivery Whether you think it's a good or bad thing, I'm sure you'll agree that we live in an "I want it now" society.
That's why credit cards are so popular, because people don't want to save up or wait any more, they want everything now.
With downloadable information products you can give your customers immediate free delivery.
That's a seriously good selling point.
If you want to buy an album for your iPod, you may like to drive to the shops for a CD, or order it on-line and wait for it's arrival.
However, most people nowadays choose the immediate download option from iTunes or similar store.
You can be listening to your new album in minutes without even leaving your sofa.
Immediate gratification, that's what people want and that's what information products can deliver.
Massive Profit Margins OK, it's time to talk money.
If we use the CD example again, imagine selling CDs on your website.
You buy them in, store them somewhere, ship them when you make a sale and then maybe make a few dollars profit on each one if you're lucky.
Now let's take an electronic information product you make yourself.
You store it on your web server at near zero cost, you sell at near zero cost to yourself and it's delivered immediately for free.
What's your profit? Almost the entire sale price! If you sell a $20 downloadable information product from your website and at least $19 of that isn't profit your costs are too high and you're doing something wrong.
I hope this has made you realise that creating a website which sells information products is an awesome business model.
One which anyone can set up with minimal cost.
Just like any business, it takes time, effort and persistence to make it happen but when it does the benefits over more conventional business models are quite amazing.
I don't yet know of a better business model, but if you know of one I'd be more than happy to hear about it.
That's some claim, but I promise you, even if you're already familiar with this type of product you'll find this very interesting.
Information Products Information products are as the name suggests, products which are purchased purely for the valuable information they contain.
Everyday examples include CDs, DVDs, eBooks and MP3s.
We've all seen these types of products and regardless of what media is used to store the information, it's the information we really want.
Information products have two main categories, physical and purely electronic.
The CD and DVD examples above are physical products, but the type we're really interested in here are the purely electronic products.
Lets find out why these are great to sell on-line...
Automated Delivery With physical information products like CDs you still need to package and sent them to the customer whenever you make a sale.
With our business mindset philosophy of making things as easy as possible don't want to be doing this if you can avoid it.
You could pay for someone else to send out your products but there's a much better solution.
If you make the audio, video or eBook, etc downloadable whole delivery process can be fully automated by your website.
Any website can already automate the sales and payment process but with information products you can also fully automate the delivery too.
Zero Inventory One of the great things about electronic information products is that there's no physical storage space required.
No warehouses, no back bedroom full of products, nothing.
The only storage required is a little space on your web server for one copy of the product, ready to be downloaded by your customers automatically whenever a purchase is made.
Simple, cheap and effortless.
By the way, this also means that you can run your business from anywhere.
With no inventory to take with you a laptop and an Internet connection is all that's require to run this business model from anywhere in the world.
Immediate Delivery Whether you think it's a good or bad thing, I'm sure you'll agree that we live in an "I want it now" society.
That's why credit cards are so popular, because people don't want to save up or wait any more, they want everything now.
With downloadable information products you can give your customers immediate free delivery.
That's a seriously good selling point.
If you want to buy an album for your iPod, you may like to drive to the shops for a CD, or order it on-line and wait for it's arrival.
However, most people nowadays choose the immediate download option from iTunes or similar store.
You can be listening to your new album in minutes without even leaving your sofa.
Immediate gratification, that's what people want and that's what information products can deliver.
Massive Profit Margins OK, it's time to talk money.
If we use the CD example again, imagine selling CDs on your website.
You buy them in, store them somewhere, ship them when you make a sale and then maybe make a few dollars profit on each one if you're lucky.
Now let's take an electronic information product you make yourself.
You store it on your web server at near zero cost, you sell at near zero cost to yourself and it's delivered immediately for free.
What's your profit? Almost the entire sale price! If you sell a $20 downloadable information product from your website and at least $19 of that isn't profit your costs are too high and you're doing something wrong.
I hope this has made you realise that creating a website which sells information products is an awesome business model.
One which anyone can set up with minimal cost.
Just like any business, it takes time, effort and persistence to make it happen but when it does the benefits over more conventional business models are quite amazing.
I don't yet know of a better business model, but if you know of one I'd be more than happy to hear about it.