Marketing Digital Products to Make Money Online
If you are considering marketing digital products to make money online, there are several important points to be aware of before you decide to get started on this path to digital success.
For many businesses operating primarily over the Internet, their marketing strategy is usually defined by the product or services they are selling.
There are two major defining strategies for selling products via the Internet. These are:
- Physical products, generally using an e-commerce platform
- Digital products that can be downloaded direct from a website
Let's first take a look at the differences between the two methods to gain an appreciation of what can be involved in setting up either method and why so many newcomers to online business tend to choose the second option.
Physical Product Sales Online
If you're an online company selling a large physical product then the location of your target market is of crucial significance. It's very likely that your market will need to be based in a single country unless the product is so unique that it can justify the large costs of international shipping.
Smaller items can be sold online to more locations, usually anywhere with a reliable delivery mechanism that can be used at minimal costs.
Ebay is a good place to research to where goods can be sold and delivered. For example you'll regularly see Chinese and Hong Kong based businesses sell goods direct to the UK, the shipping costs are obviously larger but often still allow for a decent profit margin on cheaply made Chinese manufactured goods.
There's no doubt though in general that people will always prefer to buy from locations that are nearer them, usually in the same country.
Digital Product Sales Online
For many online-based businesses though, their product is often a digital product or service. This could be something like computer software, digital training products such as online personal development courses, video-based courses or electronic books, for example.
This has a huge advantage in that location is fairly irrelevant at least as far as delivery is involved, making this business model perfect for digital nomads (people who like to travel a lot and can still work from wherever they find themselves in the world).
For the digital business person, the Internet can form their entire market place and customers can potentially come from anywhere on the planet.
Obviously the product still has to be delivered but there are a huge number of alternative platforms that allow secure electronic downloads as well as full shopping cart and payment facilities, ranging from Clickbank, Warrior Plus and JV Zoo to name but a few.
Affiliate Marketers
For affiliate marketers, the whole process is even easier than being a product creator and vendor. The product owner will normally supply a download mechanism after payment, which means the affiliate just has to supply the customer!
There's a huge range of products that can be effectively sold online by anyone with the right marketing experience. Take for example any particular digital product which is in high demand and sells really well, from how to make money online to learning about the law of attraction and wealth manifestation.
Online Security
For example, you can find a number of security products that allow people to encrypt and hide their internet connection when online that prove popular among regular Internet users who need a way of securing their transactions.
While such a product sounds like it is very specialised, it's actually used by many thousands of people who need secure online activity or even to simply to watch online TV.
Global Market
Although products like these can be marketed to most places in the world, it doesn't mean the same blanket marketing strategy will work. Consumers in different countries react very differently to different approaches, the hard sell will not work in all countries for example and obviously there are still language barriers.
A promotional website would be specifically targeted towards individual locations, could have different pages for different countries if possible and include translations for non-English speaking markets.
[BACK TO TOP]