No I am not telling you to start an online shopping arm of your retail store! That would require a well established physical set up.
Online product selling is much simpler. You can create your own online products… yes, products that can be sold and bought via the internet, without any physical exchange taking place. The best part about such a business is that it requires practically no investment. No retail space means no rent, no maintenance bills and no man power! All you need is a sharp brain and a pool of product ideas…
What is the prime use of the internet? INFOTAINMENT!
What you need to do is create info-products that do not have a physical form such as eBooks, eMagazines, eReports and the like. Such products have a great demand over the net, mainly because the first search that a person takes up these days is online. Now, if he finds all the reference/information on the internet itself, why will he take the pain of going to a book store?
Bongo! You’ll have your own online bookstore, and that too without any capital investment!
But people generally expect free information online, right?
Wrong! They expect easy information, and that’s exactly what you are providing them with! Genuine readers and researchers are willing to pay a reasonable price for the book of their interest. And if they are able to find such books online… why will he hesitate in shelling out the money?
The Success Secret
Good content: Your readers won’t just buy any eBook you offer. You need to do your part in brainstorming, researching, compiling and creating good, useful content.
Good market: Besides, creating good content, you also need to make sure that you have a reasonably big market for your products.
This is easy: visit a few public libraries and find out about the kind of books that have a high demand these days. Such research will not only help you tap the right market in the beginning but will also help you keep up with the changing tastes of the people in the long run.
Something Extra: If you want more and more people to prefer you over other book stores – both offline and online- you need to give them something more that regular information your info-products.
For example, if you are offering research reports, you may include interactive research tools for the convenience of the researcher; or in case you have novels to offer, accompany them with their free translations etc.
Time to sell
Once your product is ready, build your site and put your products on it. Remember to envelope your product with a lot of good quality content that’s available free to the user. This will attract the visitor to your site and also give him an idea about the quality of your product.
Another thing to be careful about is to keep the online payment method simple and quick, so that your customer is not put off due to any inconvenience caused.
Finally, spread the word!
You may just need a little low cost publicity to get the traffic to your ‘online store’. Pick up your phone and call up a few friends or text them though your mobile phones. The news will spread though word-of-mouth.
“Hey! Check out the new online bookstore @ www.myestore.com! A library of self help and reference books at your fingertips!”
Email, message, send a scrap or post it on your facebook wall… and the job is done!
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work Look forward to reading more from you in the future.