Home > Profit > Selling Products or Services > Getting Started

by Pope H. Moore

One of the first things you will have to decide when setting up an Internet business, is whether you want to sell a product or a service, both of which have their advantages and disadvantages.

Products

Advantages: unlimited income potential because you are not constrained by time.

Disadvantage: requires stocking and shipping.

Disadvantage: generally requires you filling large amounts of orders, unless you have a product with a very high profit margin.

Services

Advantage: it is easier to make a profit quickly because the entire price of a service is paid to you (except for any overhead).

Advantage: services can generate a great residual income because the client may want to hire your services repeatedly.

Disadvantage: you are limited to a modest income because you can provide only so many services each day.

In my opinion, selling a product online has, by far, seen the biggest profit potential in the long run. Once you get a successful product, you can automate the system and move on to new products that will generate you multiple streams of income.

If you need immediate cash flow, providing a service is the fastest way to produce instant income...but it will never pay off as big in the long run compared to selling a product with a high profit margin.

If you sell a service, think about how you can transform it into a product. One of the best examples I can think of is regarding people who submit Web sites to search engines. Because the competition got so fierce and their business began to suffer, some wrote and sold reports revealing how search engines work and tricks for getting sites listed higher etc.

What Are The Hottest Products?

It is in your best interest to market information products like books, manuals, special reports, audio and video tapes, and software. They are the easiest things to sell and generate quick profits.

Information products are also easy to produce, compared to virtually anything else, and there are essentially no regulations that apply to them. If you were to produce a weight loss pill, you would need to go through the medical administrations, safety and labeling regulations. However, if you were to sell a weight loss manual, you wouldn't have to do anything but write and print it. If you need a product, there are two ways of creating a great information product:

First Product Generating Technique

Find out the best selling books around. You will notice there are a few on the same subject. This tells you which topics are currently hot. Now, go out and buy 4 or 5 of the most popular books on a popular subject. Read them, do some further research and write an informative article on the topic. You can then sell that product as a special report. If marketed properly, you are guaranteed to sell many copies, because you know it is a topic in demand.

Second Technique

The second way to create an information product is to hire a "ghostwriter". There are hundreds of ads in the back of magazines from writers who will write on just about any subject. It is as simple as hiring their services. They will sell their writings so you copyright and publish their work under your name.