Been there, done that, and I don't want to see you lose your shirt! Internet newbies need a little guidance, a plan, and sometimes, a little handholding.
Therefore, part one of this article covered the process of product selection, the form the product could take, creating a website, and selecting of a domain name. We will now move on to step five.
Step Five: Select a hosting service. A hosting service is the server that "holds" your webpage, and makes is continually available to all your potential customers. There are many large companies, like Hostgator and Godaddy, that are reliable and inexpensive. Hosting costs less than $100 a year, and you pay once a year or once every two. Therefore, be ready with your webpage all set to upload to your hosting service before signing on. The company you choose will have instructions and help on their website. If you need help, it may take 24 hours to get back to you, so be patient. Once your website is uploaded and has gone live, you need to tell the world about it so you will begin to have customers! That, of course, is the whole point of your efforts, so you need to direct traffic to your site.
Step Six: A wise web designer told me, "It's not if you build it, they will come," like in the movie Field of Dreams. That's fantasy. You must work to attract customers to your site, and fortunately, there are several good ways to direct traffic to your new site and bring in those customers. One way is to submit articles on your topic to ezines. These are internet magazines where internet surfers go to find information to solve a problem or concern they have. Using our previous example, you might submit an article relating two effective ways to keep your dog from jumping on visitors to your home. Many people have this problem with their pets, and you can provide a good solution. At the bottom of the article, you would of course have your name, website address, and the title of the ebook or video you've produced to solve more pet problems. If readers are impressed with the effectiveness of your advice, they may well visit your website and become a customer. You can also supply helpful information on blogs written by pet owners, with a shorter format. You might say, " I noticed many people have asked how to keep their dogs from jumping on visitors, so I wrote a free article you can find at [a page on your website] for some helpful solutions. Readers can go from the blog to your article, and while there, learn more about the ebook or video you have published. Voila! You've got traffic! Then, when you really have some momentum going, you can hire affiliates to help spread the word for you.
Step Seven: Affiliates are salespeople who promote your product and get paid a percentage when someone buys. If you have an original product, or you've rebranded and tweaked a product that has PLR and has permitted you to do that, you can submit your work to ClickBank, for example, and hire affiliates. (The process of registering to sign up affiliates is outlined on the ClickBank website.) In order to entice a number of affiliates, you should agree to pay them well, say 40-75% of the price paid for your product. "What! You want me to give away that much of my earnings?" you may say. Just remember that 25-60% of something is better than 100% of nothing! Remember also, that the affiliate process is a building one, so keep promoting your product by means of helpful information through blogs and articles, and your sales force will continue to grow. If your sales force grows, your customer base will grow as well. Be sure to build an email list of those customers so you can let them know of new products you've found or you've developed. This will be a good source of income, too!
Step Eight: Give yourself a special payday with your email list. Once in a while, not too often or you may annoy people, prepare a new product, write a new sales page for it on your website, and alert your customer base by using your email list. Make each email personal, and thank them for purchasing from you in the past. Then, introduce your old customers to your new product. You may find that, if you have earned your customer's trust and your first product performed as promoted, you will have a burst of buying when you promote your next product. Following that, use the methods in Step Six to widen your exposure of the new product to interested consumers.