The Perfect Business

June 30, 2008 at 3:36 am · Filed under Affiliate Program, Affiliates, Business Strategy, Digital Products, E-Commerce, Internet Business, Internet Marketing, Selling, merchant

When you’re a one-person Entrepreneur (which you would want to be, if you can, especially when you’re starting off), you would want to minimize your expenses and maximize your profits as much as you can.

I’ve managed in mega corporations with hundreds of people on its payroll working in huge business premises. And I’ve been on my own as a one-person Entrepreneur (where you basically take care of everything on your own).

There are advantages and disadvantages to both - but if you’re not planning on working for an organization any time soon, you really have only one choice.

As a one-person Entrepreneur, you’ll want a business model that doesn’t require a huge capital outlay, or any employees. You can outsource some parts of your work which can be on an ad-hoc basis (like doing up your accounts, for example), but by and large, you’re in charge of everything, and you’ll be doing all of them.

Internet Businesses appeal to individuals without a huge appetite for risks since a lot of leverage can be achieved with a computer, software and the Internet. Many of your tasks that you have to do to run your business can also be “delegated” or assigned to specialized software, like following up with your Prospects, for example.

Not only that, if done properly, Internet Businesses can also bring in HUGE returns which make the costs of running them quite laughable by comparison with other types of businesses.

Well and good - but what Internet Business should you start?

My recommendation is to sell products on the Internet, as a Merchant, not as an Affiliate for other Merchants.

Yes, even when you’re starting off, with absolutely no experience.

For it is only when you’re a Merchant that you can spot good Merchants that you can be an Affiliate for.

In other words, if you don’t know what’s involved in selling - how do you know the Merchant you’re an Affiliate for knows what he’s doing? You’ll want to maximize your efforts in referring Prospects to the Merchants so that you have the highest possible chances of success in earning your commissions.

The other reason is that once you’re a successful Merchant, other Merchants will be flocking to you to offer you their Affiliate or Joint Venture opportunity so you don’t really have to seek every single Merchant out to partake in their Affiliate Program (unless you wish to, of course).

Thus by becoming a Merchant, you’re really making yourself both a Merchant AND an Affiliate at the same time, with the Affiliate role being an automatic option.

Compare this to becoming an Affiliate first, where you seek out Merchants to refer Prospects to. You simply focus on referring, instead of building up your own range of in-demand products that are your ASSETS.

So the vast majority of Affiliates remain Affiliates, with just a fraction of them becoming Merchants themselves, because being a Merchant isn’t an automatic option for Affiliates, as Affiliates don’t learn the skills or acquire the knowledge on building up their own ASSETS that can generate a fortune for them for many years to come.

You may say that an Affiliate’s asset is the LIST of Prospects he builds up, on his way to referring them to the Merchants - and you would be right. However, a Merchant has to build up his own list too - so why not get 2 streams of income as both a Merchant and an Affiliate, instead of just becoming an Affiliate only?

Best of all - a Merchant can have Affiliates marketing FOR HIM too - whereas most Affiliates work for themselves only since most Affiliate Programs only pay on 1 level directly to the Affiliate where he can’t recruit other Affiliates to help him market for the Merchant.

Know what I mean?

To fit within the low-cost, high-profit boundaries you’re setting for yourself as a one-person Entrepreneur, I very highly recommend that you sell DIGITAL products as a Merchant.

Specifically, digital products that can be DOWNLOADED directly from your web site.

Downloadable digital products are automatically duplicated and delivered to your customers once they click on the link that leads to your digital product on your server, which also hosts your web pages selling your digital products.

This is different from selling digital products on CDs or DVDs where you’ll still have to deliver the physical CDs/DVDs to your customers through the mail. This means handling, packing and physical delivery at the post office - all of which will take up your time, and certainly add to your costs.

You can of course outsource the handling, packing and physical delivery to another outfit, with the costs being borne by your customers. But this will increase your customer’s cost of getting your product, and you’ll still have the usual customer support headaches associated with selling physical products. They could say that they “didn’t receive product, please send another one”, or the “product is damaged, please send another one”, or “one CD is missing from the set of 3 - please send it over”, etc.

With downloadable digital products, especially information products (which is what I suggest that you start with) - what’s your headache?

1. Customer couldn’t download product
Give him a direct link to your product in your e-mail to him. Or attach your product to your e-mail. End of story. Will take a minute or two. This happens only a fraction of the time.

2. Customer thinks your product is crappy. He wants a refund
Log into your PayPal account (assuming you use PayPal to accept payments online), and effect a refund. End of story. Will take you a minute or two. This happens only a fraction of the time, unless your product REALLY is crappy - in which case it’s time to make it better until you get very few refund requests. Refund requests will happen, whether your product is digital or otherwise, and no matter how good it really is. You can deal with it and move on quickly.

Is there anything else as far as customer support for downloadable digital product (information based) is concerned?

Right. There is NOTHING else.

Best of all, downloadable digital products can be taken delivery of by your customers even as you’re lazing around in your Pajamas at home, or you’re at the cinema watching the latest blockbuster in the middle of the day (when you’re escaping from the maddening crowd, and when most of your friends are at work in a conventional job) since a CLICK by your customer on the download link is all that is required to complete the sale.

Your web pages do the selling, your host server serves your web pages to anybody with a browser and an Internet connection and your domain name, your PayPal account accepts payment directly from your web site (via credit card or other PayPal accounts), and your host server automatically duplicates and delivers your downloadable product to your customers.

It’s the PERFECT business to do.

Lest you think selling digital products via a web site is for techies - relax!

I’ve figured out ways to make it possible for complete dummies who have only ever used e-mail up to now, to quickly create downloadable products of his own (sometimes this happens instantly!), quickly write a sales spiel for it, quickly set up this sales spiel and download page on his web site, quickly integrate his web site with an online payment system and finally quickly marketing his web site so that the selling can take place - all within A FEW DAYS!

Yes, it is NOW within the reach of MOST people with an interest to become a Merchant of downloadable digital products, FASTER THAN EVER BEFORE - whereas previously the majority of people can’t do it, no matter how much coaching they’ve received.

This isn’t a pipe dream. I’ve spent the last 4 or 5 years of my life trying to crack this code - and I’m proud to say I’ve finally done it.

Which is extremely good news for you, if you’ve always thought of making money online, but never got started, or never succeeded.