There’s a few major advantages to selling downloadable products online. By selling downloadable products you can automate the entire process. This lets you work from a laptop from anywhere. You can also scale your business too and sell multiple times through the same website. But how do you get started selling downloadable products and can anyone do it?
Selling Downloadable Products – Getting Started
For starters anyone can learn how to do this. Selling downloadable products on the internet is a simple thing to learn. However there are certain pitfalls to an online business which you should know about in order to avoid wasting time and money. Many people set out to create their own products to sell online before even knowing what they are doing. It’s a mistake and one I made which cost me a lot of time and energy.
Getting The Best Education First
Creating your own products takes time. Then you need to create a website to sell them from. Then you need to learn how to generate traffic to your website. All these things take time to learn and then time to implement. Having the right knowledge from the get-go will save you a whole heap of trouble.
If you want to start a realistic internet business, which can eventually replace your existing income, stay tuned. I’m going to share some of the main reasons why people fail online and how to avoid making the same mistake.
Selling Downloadable Products – A Magical Idea
The idea of selling downloadable products first struck me around 10 years ago. I bought a product from ebay which I could download instantly. It was before they changed the rules over here in the UK to disallow people from doing it. After the rule change you had to sell a physical product of some kind.
So if you were selling downloadable products you would have to sell the equivalent product on CD, for example, and send it through the post. Anyway, I digress! The thought of it hit me and stayed. What if I could earn a living selling downloadable products from the internet? I could work anywhere globally and sell from my laptop. I wouldn’t need any stock and people could buy from a website without me even having to be there!
Selling Downloadable Products – My Mistakes
I set out to create my own downloadable products and I started with an ‘ebook’ which I tried to sell over the internet. My first mistake was not underestimating the amount I needed to sell. My first ebook didn’t sell at all. I built a website but had no idea how to get people to it.
Traffic
Website traffic, or more specifically targeted website traffic was something I knew nothing about! I learned the hard way and had already spent a considerable amount of time building ebooks and guides to sell on websites which had no traffic. I sold nothing.
Affiliate Products
I tried a few courses which would teach me how to build traffic, sell other people’s products and make money online. I had a few small successes selling courses and software but I still hadn’t got a sustainable busienss model which worked. At best I made the odd sale from affiliate products and a bit of small change from Google Adsense. I was ill equipped and didn’t know how little I really knew. Luckily I was tenacious and patient enough to persevere.
The Sustainability Model I was Looking For
Traffic to my websites was the main problem I thought I faced for quite a few years. I had several websites and most of them were failing. I was struggling and needed a new direction, or to throw in the towel! I started again and realised I had to eat some ‘humble pie’. Although I had learned a number of skills online, noone was paying me for them! I hadn’t cracked the affiliate marketing model – selling other people’s digital products online.
I started again using this model and discovered a business model which had long term sustainability built into it. Here was a way of selling downloadable products for a commission and building a sustainable income from it too.
Selling The Right Products – Selling Memberships
The right products for me had to offer some value. It had to have integrity and I had to believe in them. I also needed to earn an income, which I wasn’t doing very well at this point. By selling downloadable products which offered memberships, I discovered a more sustainable way to earn from the internet. Rather than selling single point of sale products for a single commission, memberships gave me the ability to earn over and over again from a single sale. The model I eventually found and use today also has a number of other benefits including:
- High ticket sales – Earn 50% commission on sales of items priced from £1000-£20,000
- Earn Monthly commissions on sales previously generated
- Make sales closed by a built in sales team
- Earn from up-sales to customers who you have referred
- Earn for the lifetime of your referred members
Access a range of products which offer all of the above, plus get the education you need to start selling downloadable products in the right way. Access a video series here and get started.