It is certainly the ultimate goal of every online marketer to create and sell their own products online. But before venturing onto this profit model, do remember that you can make money online by simply promoting other people’s product – i.e. through affiliate marketing.
But if you have good product ideas or already run an offline business that you want to take online, then feel free to explore product creation.
Before you continue, the important point to note is that before you create a product to sell online, be sure you can identify a target market whom you know for sure will buy your product.
The beauty of the internet business is that you can find out, through market research (which will be covered in the next module), whether a profitable market exists before you venture into product creation.
The last thing you want to do is create a product that on one wants to buy!
So, be sure to validate your market demand and their willingness to buy before creating a product!
I’m sure one of the questions on your mind right now is this: "How can I tell for sure that a target market is willing to buy my product?"
While it is difficult to provide a one-line answer to this question, one good indicator a "willing-to-buy" market exists is the presense of competitive products i.e. products similar to yours!
If you researched a market and are not able to identify competitive products, that is more often than not a warning sign that you may have targeted a market that may not want to purchase your product.
In summary, view competition online as a necessary evil, because "competition exists because there is a market!"
Here’s a summary of how product creation works:
How it works
- Identify a strong market need
- Research the competition
- Develop product specification, features and benefits
- Develop actual product
- Develop sales copy for the product
- Decide method to sell your product (e.g. Clickbank, CJ, direct sales) and payment processor (e.g. PayPal, 2CheckOut, WorldPay)
- Set-up affiliate program & joint ventures
- Launch and promote product
Strengths
- All you need is one good product to generate healthy profits
- Highest profit margin
- Can create affiliate program and have an ‘army of affiliates’ promoting your product
- Can recruit joint venture partners ‘sky rocket’ your promotion efforts and profits
Weaknesses
- Higher start-up/investment cost
- Must be able to correctly identify your target market
- Must be familiar with product creation life cycle
- There is a risk that your product may simply ‘bomb’, wasting your time and effort!
Product Creation Example – AdWords Empire
