Can you really make your own website to sell stuff from? Well, there are many free website building platforms which allow you to do this completely free. Weebly.com, Wix.com and WordPress.com (to name just three platforms) all offer this service completely free.
But once your website is up and running are you actually going to sell anything? That’s the big question. It’s easy building a website, but much harder to get people to come and visit it, and more difficult still selling something from your site. Why would anyone come and buy from you anyway and what do you have to sell?
Selling stuff from a website is tough, even if you have something great to sell. You still need to advertise your site, otherwise no one will know it is there!
Make Your Own Website To Sell Stuff – No Products To Sell? No Problem
If you already have a business to sell (or a product), or a service, you’re already way ahead of many. Your issue is then getting people to your website, you might want to skip to the next section if that’s you). A website is definitely a good idea if you have something to sell already, but what if you don’t?
No business or product to sell? That’s no problem because you can sell other people’s products. A clever business model known as affiliate marketing lets you list items from websites which you don’t even own. When you make a sale through your unique affiliate I.D. you earn a commission based on the sale.
Alternatively you could build a product specific website and sell something unique; sourcing your products as you sell them. But many people will simply go to eBay, or similar auction site to find such items. Why would they visit you?
Make Your Own Website To Sell Stuff – Marketing Your Site
As a newbie to affiliate marketing I thought I could throw up a website and suddenly people would flock to buy whatever I was selling. The truth was rather disappointing. Think of opening a garage in the middle of the desert, trying to sell petrol/gas and you’re somewhere near understanding how little people will care about your new shiny website.
And, even if they did find you, you then have the task of trying to sell them your product/service without actually having met them. With the competition online this is an unenviable task. Anyway, most people won’t buy from a website on their first visit, particularly from one which they are unfamiliar with. It takes several touch points before someone will buy from a website.
To get people to your site in the first place takes either paid marketing or effort in terms of content creation. Paid marketing is almost instant, but costly. You will likely lose money while testing it and trying to get the right people to your site. Blogging is a cheaper route. By creating content which attracts the right audience you can build massive traffic to your site over time. But this takes time and there’s a lot of competition online in almost every topic. See also paid marketing vs organic marketing.
Some Good News
But it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s some good news in this too. Having a website which sells is awesome and it’s worth keeping this in mind while you’re building your online empire! Imagine having a website which attracts thousands of visitors each day and many of them buying from you. Not only that, but imagine the products fulfilling themselves – not having to deal with any customers or deliveries, or even handle any products!
The business model of affiliate marketing is exactly that. Affiliates “partner” with companies who already sell products and services online. Amazon, for example is a popular website which also has an affiliate/partner program. Many people sell for Amazon and receive a “cut” when they make a sale. Amazon has a lot of products to choose from, but it doesn’t pay very well.
However, you can also promote other affiliate products which pay much better and which even pay recurring commissions. Recurring commission affiliate products are some of the best you can promote as an affiliate. They pay you recurring commissions for your referrals. So once you have sold a few, you get a nice, recurring payment every month – for the lifetime of the customer. So even with only a few sales you can build a good income up with these kinds of products.
Selling High Ticket Items
High ticket affiliate products are those which carry much larger price tags than the average product you might find on Amazon, for example. A high ticket sale can earn you at least $500 in commissions, just for a single sale. A few of those goes a long way, especially when you consider Amazon’s commission structure for affiliates. Selling an Amazon product worth $100 can earn affiliates as little as $1 if the commission is 1%.
High ticket affiliate products are a good idea therefore for a couple of reasons:
- You earn more for what can easily be the same amount of work
- It is easier to use paid marketing to get traffic to your website with high ticket items and still turn a profit.
If you’re selling low valued products from a website, it’s much more difficult to become profitable using paid marketing. The growing competition online means people are pushing up the cost of online marketing. So if you’re running adverts which cost $1 per click, and only 1% of people buy from you, you’ll need to cover $100 in ad spend just to break even; assuming you make $100 on a sale.
With high ticket items and recurring income products this pushes up your profit potential and you’re more easily able to spend on an advertising budget while still earning a profit.
Start From Scratch And Use An All In One Business System
Building your own website for profit has many problems attached with it as you can see. Even with products to sell, you need a marketing strategy to get people to your site. This can be costly or time consuming. With physical products you need to keep sourcing products if you’re selling something you own. But with affiliate products you can keep selling the same products over and over from your site. You don’t have to personally handle products with affiliate marketing, or deal with customers.
A similar business model is drop shipping where you outsource product delivery/manufacture to another company and your website is the go-between to find customers. See also drop shipping vs affiliate marketing.
To learn more about the different types of online business models, and to access an all in one business system and step by step training, access these free videos. You’ll also be able to build your own website which is pre-populated with affiliate products which you can sell.