[Hony]

When you are trying to sell a product (this is the thing I'm starting to learn - trying anyhow) - do you start by finding a topic/keyword, or start by finding a product?

I'm having trouble either way around.

If I start with a topic, then I research keywords, try to find ones with good traffic/competition results - but when I get a "good" one then can't find a product.

Or if I start with products, go to CJ.com for example and find something saleable. Then I can't find any keywords related that aren't too competitive.

Scratching my head here.

I have a home built researching tool scraping around looking for keywords (yes, it's built in Excel) but if I just let it go look for "good" keywords it comes up with things like "daybreak comp" and "opioid conversion", which may have decent traffic/money/competition results - but hell if I can work out what to write or sell about those.

Alternatively if I feed my system a product or a product type - like I tried some flatscreen TV topics but end up with best things I can get are "flat screen tv stands" and "4k tv samsung" which are still pretty competitive.



Am I heading in the wrong direction?

[Bill Benson]

Hony, I put product first and wouldn't go to CJ. I would look for products in the $1 to $2k range. Not consumer products but B2B. If you do some searching, you would be amazed how many obscure niche products there are out there. And the competition will generally have a lousy website or at least louse web marketing.

To get started you will probably have to buy through an authorized distributor of the manufacturer. With enough volume you may be able to approach the manufacturer directly and become a distributor.

Your margins may be low in the beginning. For example, I am a direct distributor for the manufacturer. My products range from $200 to $20k and I usually get about a 30% markup on the orders. When I get a call from someone who is a reseller I'll give them a discount between 12% and 20% with 15% being typical. I want them to make money, so I discount accordingly. If I can make a couple of K on the order, I'm happy. Expensive high margin products are the way to go.

So if I were you, I'd find a product or products that fit the above criteria. I'd make a top notch informational site on the product. When you get traffic, add a cart.

Stay away from Amazon, Ebay, CJ. The profit ceiling is just to low. And the risks are higher.

Oh, and some industries just plain have more expensive products and higher margins. Oil and gas exploration for example.

[Hony]

Bill, I would love to be able to do this. I understand the concept fine I think, but perhaps I'm just missing knowledge as I have no idea what sort of things costs multi thousand dollars but gets bought online. I also guess the typical approach of looking for high traffic words won't work in this context, as they will be specialized items right?

I guess I'm cheap but I don't remember the last time I bought something that cost >$1K ... Ok maybe years ago when I was in an office I bought servers and network devices, very expensive in themselves but low margin items I believe.

I'm really trying hard here but I have some kind of mental block going on it seems. I know you've already given me a hint, I'll try to work that but if I don't get anywhere I'm going to ask for another hint. :-)

I do appreciate what you guys here in the forum have given me as hints, and I'm trying to get it. Of course it goes without saying but I'll say it anyway that I will keep my hands off of any of your niches you mention as examples.

[Hony]

Bill, I would love to be able to do this. I understand the concept fine I think, but perhaps I'm just missing knowledge as I have no idea what sort of things costs multi thousand dollars but gets bought online. I also guess the typical approach of looking for high traffic words won't work in this context, as they will be specialized items right?

I guess I'm cheap but I don't remember the last time I bought something that cost >$1K ... Ok maybe years ago when I was in an office I bought servers and network devices, very expensive in themselves but low margin items I believe.

I'm really trying hard here but I have some kind of mental block going on it seems. I know you've already given me a hint, I'll try to work that but if I don't get anywhere I'm going to ask for another hint. :-)

I do appreciate what you guys here in the forum have given me as hints, and I'm trying to get it. Of course it goes without saying but I'll say it anyway that I will keep my hands off of any of your niches you mention as examples.

[Tigger]

Hony can you just clarify what your trying to do as you say find products, then Bill & you talk about CJ & bulking buying

Are you:- Looking to set up an affiliate site or looking at bulk buying your own goods ?

[cherilynn]

So Bill can Hony be a reseller of yours? I had to ask



When I was trying to be an affiliate for mainstream I found better terms at Linkshare, plus don't forget Amazon.


Hony there is money right now in many area of ebooks. Lots of writers are looking for competent translators. Ones that can proof and use the most common dialect.

Plus a need for proofreaders and editors. I have big trouble just finding proofreaders (not editors) and what I really want is an audio proof reader who listens to my stories for mistakes.

There is a lot of money around ebooks beside just the writing of them. But if you can translate I think there would be good money in it, especially erotica because people get prissy about naught stuff.

Oh and audio book voices is big too. Go to ACX and get a mic setup if you have you or anyone with a good audio voice to make ebook audios. That is big now too. I know erotica authors looking and then for young voices too.

Just a mass of ideas lol

wants Hony to make bucks!

[housekeeper]

Originally Posted by cherilynn

Oh and audio book voices is big too. Go to ACX and get a mic setup if you have you or anyone with a good audio voice to make ebook audios. That is big now too. I know erotica authors looking and then for young voices too.

I was just thinking of e-books yesterday, how I started to get the ball rolling then stopped to take a nap along the way. But you've always been a good source of inspiration Miss Cherilynn, I certainly need to get my ass in gear.

If the voice telling is the way to go, then I'm the man. I've got a deep baritone speaking voice and am quite eloquent in my romantic chatter, many people have told me I should either be on radio or do voice overs. I've done radio before, but voice overs are very hard to get, the majority of cattle calls I've gone on over the years have all been ruses and some type of hustle to get you to invest in demos and studio time, bah.

[Hony]

Originally Posted by Tigger

Hony can you just clarify what your trying to do..

I don't know. I'm desparate. I'm trying to make some money to feed my family using skills I've got. Boils down to that. I'd even get a job, but I'm unemployable (apparently), so is my husband. We've spent the last 10 years thinking about little else than webcam and SEO. But seems that the "success" we had before was a fluke as we can't repeat it or continue it. And now our previous skills are 15 years and 10 years respective out of date, which makes it impossible to get job - at least one that would pay what we need. With kids in schools and dependant elderly parents our expenses have skyrocketed, while income has plummeted. Hence the desperation. Not going to get tossed out on the street or anything (thankful we own the house) but choices for our kids are being limited in ways that are breaking my heart. Jeeze. did I really say that? Guess I'm having a down day...

Originally Posted by cherilynn

So Bill can Hony be a reseller of yours? I had to ask

I didn't say it but... :-)

Originally Posted by cherilynn

Just a mass of ideas lol

Greatly appreciated, I am all run out of imagination...

Originally Posted by Bill Benson

Hony, I'll send you a PM in a minute with the product I sell.

Many thanks Bill, lots of ideas here. As you may know where I live, lots of demand for things like that. I need to talk to a neighbour who is a retiree in a related industry and ask him how it works here.

Originally Posted by LatinLuvin

I'd go for a group of related products, for instance I do pet furniture. First find products that would seem like people would want to buy online because it's easier than buying at the store, and target those products. Pet furniture can be big and clunky and most pet owners I doubt have a truck to buy a bigger item and take it back to their place. Think dog houses, cat trees, stuff like that. So for them shopping online makes sense because delivery is something they would need even if they bought the item at the store.

Listen to Bill too. That seems like another great way to go and im curious about what he's talking about too. I especially like the higher profit margins. Amazon doesnt pay that great. I'm assuming he would mean stuff companies buy, like heavy machinery, maybe giant print presses or other obscure things that companies need to run their operations. Just think of the places you work and think of the stuff they used to conduct business.

Seems Bill and yourself are at differing ends of the cost/quantity scale, but it is working for both of you so there must be something for me somewhere along that scale!

I think I have a lot of reading and research to do now...

While continuing my black-hat link-farming project for my adult sites - which is another big unknown for me, but I know better than to ask about black-hat techniques here as you guys are all purely white hat. :-)

Many thanks again.

[LatinLuvin]

Originally Posted by Hony

I
Seems Bill and yourself are at differing ends of the cost/quantity scale, but it is working for both of you so there must be something for me somewhere along that scale!

I think I have a lot of reading and research to do now...

Bill definitely does better financially with his business. My pet stuff profits are minute compared to his numbers, but that doesn't mean you can't take a stab at both to see what works best for you. Me, I just started this mainstream stuff about 2 years ago. And only up until recently did I start taking my pet stuff more seriously then the porn stuff. I'm concentrating on building pet brands so I'm not so dependent on SE's. So hopefully it will take off even more now. It's already doing better than my porn sites with only a fraction of the visitors and I enjoy writing about pet furniture so that helps. But Bills ideas sound like they can be extremely lucrative. I guess it just depends on what way you want to go.

As for porn, all I can say is....eh.

I've about had it with freeloaders who jerk off for free with any million of the tubes out there. I've just about given up trying to milk my visitors for money. Not when pet owners are SOOOO willing to throw their money at me for the silliest of pet stuff.

[Bill Benson]

You can go on with the concept of building a bunch of sites that make you $1k or whatever through CJ or the likes. I see that as being harder and harder to do as time goes on. I prefer my approach of a few sites (at the moment only one, but I don't like that) that have fewer orders but target high dollar items.

Since what you know is the build a lot of sites version, perhaps the best option is to build a few sites that make you a few $k per month and grow into the other???

[VoyGeorge]

Originally Posted by Hony

But seems that the "success" we had before was a fluke as we can't repeat it or continue it. And now our previous skills are 15 years and 10 years respective out of date,

I could have written that as the statement applies to me, too. What I did right 5-8 years ago no longer works. Well, it works, given the twists and turns in the market, but the font has dried up in how exactly I do it.

In my case -- yours may be different -- I know what I need to do to reboot, but the laundry list is so extensive it's hard to know where to start. And, some of it requires additional capital, which I don't have. I used my last capital to kickstart another business idea I had that unfortunately hasn't gone anywhere yet. I underappreciated the amount of face-to-face selling it required, and that kind of selling I'm not particularly good at.

From what I'm reading, Bill's business is lead generation for direct sales. People need to call to drop $200+ at an unknown Web site, and I recall you're not in the US. I think your physical location can greatly influence the scope of what you can provide in that market. And if you have kids and others to care for, that makes for a stressful day.

You have excellent writing skills, and like Cherilynn suggests, I wonder if you couldn't write/edit/publish eBooks. I'm putting together several (non-fictional, semi-technical) at the moment that I wrote several years ago for something else, and am repurposing the material. Given the track record of similar eBooks on Amazon, I think these will each add to the pot, and each book points to (mainstream) Web sites where I sell related products. Not many, but in a year's time it's $10-12K extra in the bank that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

I'm pretty certain that a key to all this is to incrementalize your income. Four years ago I spent six months writing a new kind of software for streaming video. To this day it's wholly unique, and to this day I have not sold a single copy. I put all my focus and energy into ONE thing, and lost track of other market pressures that have driven the Internet away from the kind of software I created, to something much different. I could have built quite a few Web sites about quite a few products in that six months. I'm still trying to recover from the loss of traction.

[VoyGeorge]

LL, On the subject of stuff for pets...Through my core mainstream business, I have the equipment and facilities to do customized pet items, like bowls, tags, mats, shirts, coasters, and so on. Cafepress has taken much of the personalization market, though they are not always up-to-speed with specific items for pets.

Do you think there's a market for offering some unique on-demand personalized items for pet owners? Is that something you're involved with as an affiliate for another site, and if so, are there reasonable sales? Mind you, I'm not talking about my finding other sites who have an affiliate program, but provide the finished products.

I don't mean to hijack Hony's thread, but as we're on the subject of developing more mainstream business I thought it would tie in. It's always useful to read about specific mainstream niches that are working for people, not so much to copy them, but to see where there are markets.

[LatinLuvin]

Originally Posted by VoyGeorge

LL, On the subject of stuff for pets...Through my core mainstream business, I have the equipment and facilities to do customized pet items, like bowls, tags, mats, shirts, coasters, and so on. Cafepress has taken much of the personalization market, though they are not always up-to-speed with specific items for pets.

Do you think there's a market for offering some unique on-demand personalized items for pet owners? Is that something you're involved with as an affiliate for another site, and if so, are there reasonable sales? Mind you, I'm not talking about my finding other sites who have an affiliate program, but provide the finished products.

I don't mean to hijack Hony's thread, but as we're on the subject of developing more mainstream business I thought it would tie in. It's always useful to read about specific mainstream niches that are working for people, not so much to copy them, but to see where there are markets.

I concentrate more on the pet furniture side of the business because the products are priced higher, thus higher profits for me and people are more likely to buy these things online. I think going with selling smaller items would be tough because you'd be facing tougher competition from pet stores, which usually sell that stuff already. But every now and then I do ge people buying little odds and ends for their pets while they're on Amazon. People do love spending money on their animals.

[Bill Benson]

One thing though VG. Yes my site is mostly lead generation. However, I've done 5K in strictly online orders this week, two of which were over $1k. I do get up to $5k orders online. Some of them may have talked to me, but some not. Purchasing agents are lazy. Overworked like everyone else. Find it, buy it, go home and pet the dog.

I just don't like selling to the consumer market as they do price shop more.