Wondering how to sell information online? So much information online is completely free. So how can you get paid selling information? There’s a few ways you can get paid selling information. Here’s a quick overview:
- Write and sell an ebook from your website
- Create content on Substack and charge for views with a subsciption
- Build a blog and monetise with advertising (e.g. Google Adsense), or affiliate marketing
- Build an email list and promote affiliate products through it
- Create a digital product and have other people promote it for you through Clickbank for example.
- Use Teachable – share what you know and build an online course to sell
How To Sell Information Online – An Ebook
An ebook is one of the simplest ways in which anyone can sell information. Create your book and upload it to your website. Then create a sales button using Paypal and a sales page on your website. You can then have your ebook page automatically show up when someone completes checkout on Paypal.
To set up the actual sales process when selling an ebook is relatively simple and straight forward. You can check out the process in more detail in this article: selling ebooks from your own website.
You can also upload it to Amazon using Kindle Self Publishing, which can give you more reach. Once you’re all set up, the main problem when selling an ebook is attracting traffic to your website. This is one of the main issues whatever strategy you are using; be it affiliate marketing, selling your own course, building your own email list or attracting customers to your Substack subscription blog.
How To Sell Information Online – Traffic
Traffic is the key, whatever method of selling information online you are going to choose. There’s multiple platforms which will help you set up a “payment gateway” for your content. That’s the easy part. But still, you’re going to need traffic when your “digital shop” is up and running.
If no-one can find your digital store, nobody is going to buy your information. With over 600 million blogs on the internet, there’s a vast competition in the online space. To get a slice of traffic, you’re going to need to get your own content in front of people/run ads.
If you’re selling an ebook, for only a small amount (e.g. $7) it’s going to be difficult making a profit when you’re only getting $7 per customer, especially if you’re using paid advertising. You have to make a sale for every $7 you spend, just to break even!
To get people to find your ebook for free, you’ll need to create content to attract them (for example though blogging). But if you’re creating similar written content for free, who in their right mind is going to pay $7 for your ebook!? So what’s the answer?
– Affiliate Marketing
The answer lies in selling other people’s products with a model known as affiliate marketing. With an ebook, you can maybe charge a few dollars but not much more. So it’s going to be tough selling it, especially if you’re attempting to use paid advertising.
Spend more than the cost of the ebook without making a sale, and you’re running at a loss. In addition, many affiliates are giving away ebooks like they’re going out of fashion. You can grab mine here! Why pay when you can get an ebook for free somewhere else?
However, ebooks are great lead magnets. A lead magnet is a term for something valuable which can be given away to generate an email list and build your email list.
Building An Email List
An email list is one of the best tools you can get to help you sell information online. By building an email list of subscribers, and delivering value driven messages to your list, you can build trust and develop relationships. Many affiliates will even build their email lists into the hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
You can then promote products to your list, which are worth far more than your ebook would fetch.
Ideally find products which are aligned with your ebook. That way, your subscribers are more likely to be interested in it. Information products typically pay far more than physical products to affiliate marketers. For example, a physical product can pay between 1% and 10% commission (an item from Amazon’s affiliate program, for example). But an information product (or digital product) can pay a lot more – typically 30%-40% commission.
If you choose high value and subscription based information products to sell, you can earn ongoing commissions from each customer. They can also purchase products from a range and allow you to earn from multiple sources. See also benefits of an affiliate business system.
Best Info Products To Sell Online
The best info products to sell online are arguably those which pay the most. They are typically those which offer the greatest value to their customers. What problem would you pay the most to have solved for you by a product/service?
Another income? To be able to quit your job? To be financially/geographically free? Income and lifestyle are the problems which people will pay the most to change. So if you can offer a solution to these kinds of problems, people will likely pay more for them.
For example, people will pay a lot more for a business mentorship program than they would to learn how to play the guitar. The value they get from building a successful online business is far greater (in monetary terms) that the skill of learning the guitar.
So although a learning guitar online course would still sell to the right audience, you’re limited as to what you can charge for it. Learn more here.