In the first post (Adding a Revenue Stream to your website). I included sell a product as an option. Then i followed this up with an updated post (Adding a Revenue Stream, Updated). I brought the idea to the top of the list and focus on the idea of an electronic product, and expanded to the idea of adding further products and making the site easy to use and easy to buy from. I want to expand on these ideas even more now, and hope that you will find this a useful place to start in adding a product to your own site.

The first place that you want to look to giving some time in adding one or more products to your website is creating a plan to do so. While in theory it is possible to just take a product and put it up for sale, this is hardly the way to build a valuable place to bring customers. So while the plan does not need to be really structured or overally detailed there are a couple of good ideas that you should include;

• Does the product fit – If you have a website or blog that is about starting a business, then selling a weight loss e-book is probably not the best idea.
• What sort of product is it – Are you looking to sell a physical or digital product? Will it be a product of it’s own or have accessories?
• How will you sell the product – Will people buy online via your website? Will it redirect to another site? or, Will people purchase it offline in stores?
• What future potential is there – Is there potential to offer follow up products, or add-on’s later on. Or will this be just a single one off product without much scope to offer more later on.

Even if you do not answer these questions within a plan as such. It is worth being able to actually answer them though. This will give you at least a good idea at where you are starting from and what you may be able to do in the future.

What about if the product does not meet some of the above points. Well all is not lost really, however it could potentially be setting up roadblocks that you may not want to or may not need to deal with. Selling a product that is completely different to the topic of your website is immediately a hurdle. People very rarely will go looking for something they want on  site that is about something completely different. Additionally it will lead people to question the validity of what the product is being sold as, if it can actually provide what is promised.

Depending upon the type of product that you are offering and the way you have your website set up can make a big difference in how sales will flow through. A dedicated landing page which is aiming to sell the product, will sell both physical and electronic products. However Often electronic products will sell better, as there is the ability to offer the benefit of instant gratification. Which can be a big selling point. If you can create the need to have something, within people, and then provide it instantly once they pay, you are likely to generate more sales, then if you are able to create the need but, it takes time to get it to them.

Finally being able to create a product that inevitably leads to another product, you can create later on, can generate plenty of return sales. As such you do not want to put everything into a product the first round. In other words, if you want to write an e-book, you may be better off writing a short report to start with maybe 20-30 pages, and selling this first, to test the market. Then you can either follow it up with a full e-book or maybe a second 20-30 page report. Continually building upon your base.

Adding a product to your website can be the most profitable way to build an income from the internet. While there are some benefits from creating websites with advertising and such. These ways of making money often require much more time and money then they will generate as a return initially. The best thing about products is the ability to tweak the offer, know what you are promoting. Where often with advertising on your site, the advertising it can be far from know what will be shown.

1. Trade shows and Expos – While this is discounted by some as a waste of money there are others that would not miss one of these events for anything. While they are not always a source of a lot of sales they do give you a lot of opportunity to get your name into the market and to get your information to a lot of people. So while they do not necessarily generate fantastic return’s at the time of the event, they can over the long term generate fantastic returns.

One of the things to remember with trade shows and expo’s is to ensure you have a way to get the details of people that you speak to or visit your booth. This enables you to market to these people more in the future, and because they showed interest at the show there is potential that they are going to be prospective customers.

2. Shopping Mall Sales booth – While you may not have a store or an office, there is nothing to stop you from having a temporary one. Many shopping center’s offer very short term leases to set up a small stall in the center which you can sell your products from. Of course this option is better suited to products that are of a retail nature that general consumers are likely to want to buy. However if you are a service business it can be a good way to increase the awareness of the service you provide and also of your business.

3. Markets – Again it depends on your product if this would be a suitable option or not, however with the right product this could be just the place to catch the attention of the customers that you may not normally be able to directly promote you business to. You do need to be aware of limits that are placed on the type of products offered at different markets, but it is always worth taking a look and seeing what potential may be there. It never hurts to try something new, the worst case you could get nothing out of it and have lost a little money. Best case it may be one of the better investments you made.

Three options you could use to better pormote your business in a temporary environment. Consider each option and you may just find something interesting to try.

The first point is when you initially are talking with the client about the product. There will often be point within the process where asking for the order will generate the sale. Watching for these points and trying to close the sale can solve the problem all together. The earlier in the process you can close the sale the easier it will make the over all process. However you do not want to put to much pressure on the potential client either.

The second point is if you cannot make the sale in the first contact, you need to follow up with the prospect, within a reasonable time frame. It is quite important to follow up or you are pretty much writing off the sale as not that important. This is because it is much easier for someone to buy something, not just when they are interested in buying but you are interested in selling it to them.

What this basically comes down to is that if you are not interested in following up the sale process. Then what do you believe will create enough of an interest with the client to actually follow up and purchase. But of course yes there is a certain number of people that will follow up and purchase no matter, however by being proactive and following up yourself you can greatly increase your chances of a successful transaction.

Following up the sale though should not mean being a pest to the client.

• If you need to provide a quote, then you should do so in a timely manner, i would suggest within 1 business day, or what is feasible considering the client and size of quote.
• Once you have submitted the quote a follow up call could be made within 1 more business day just to ensure that the client has received the quote and to see if they have any questions.
• Finally give the client 4 to 5 days to review the quote and give them another call. This call could be made with the intention to answer questions and close the sale.
• Remember though, that you need to pay close attention to everything the client tells you. For example if the client request a quote to present to their board in 2 weeks time, then you may not find it very useful to call them 4 days after you have confirmed they received the quote. However calling maybe 2 and half weeks later could be more positive, and in this situation may even require another call later, as more questions may arise once they have present the quote to the board.

If you are providing a product or service where you have the opportunity to extend an enquiry from the first encouter then it can really be worth taking the time to work out your plan or attack, in how and when you will follow up with every client.

The best way is to be add additional value to your product, or service. While not every value added option that you offer needs to actually be purely part of the original product cost, the additional perceived value should give the customer an expectation they are receiving more then they are paying for. The part that you are really focusing on is the perception that you are creating rather then what the actual offer is. You could offer almost any added extra and with the right pricing and wording make it appear to be better.

Some of the things that you can offer as add-ons, which will help to create this extra perceived value could be

• Trade-in – It may end up just being a token gesture, eg trade-in your old widget when buying a new and get $50 off the new one. It does have the potential to cut into your profit a little, however it may be the one thing that gets the sale. Then depending on the product you may be able to recondition it and sell it as second hand or sell it for parts to the right business. There are options.
• Offer more options – Maybe your product has a range of colours available or some options that are not offered by the major retailers. Offering the full range of colours or options makes you seem more flexible and people may buy from you just because of the additional options whether they actually buy the standard model or not.
• Watch for supplier promotions – While retailers often get the best promotion offerings, they do not always take advantage of them, and often suppliers will have offers where bonus products are included or such with the main product. If you pay attention to what is offered by the supplier you can take advantage of these offers and make the offering you have look more attractive.
• Free Delivery – While it is an additional cost, would you prefer to purchase something by having to make the effort to visit a store, have a sales person put the pressure on, and then hope they have the one with the colour you want and the options. Or place an order and have it deliver a day or two later. I know which i would prefer.

That is just four options, but there are always other options, often it just requires a little thinking outside the box, and being daring to offer something that not everyone is willing to offer.

This is where the fact that marketing is something that you need to be doing actually hits home for you. This is not just your ordinary marketing though, while in some respects you are going to have to do everything that you would have done if you had an office. You have to take it to the next level and push your marketing more in front of more people, use that marketing to actually make the sale, or at a bare minimum to contact you so that you can close the sale. Whatever you decide though the only thing that really matters with the marketing is that it drives the customers to contact you.

FREQUENCY – How often your marketing gets in front of prospective clients is quite important, while for a retail store the frequency can be further apart, because them being there when the person goes shopping is what triggers a memory of the marketing. Your marketing needs to get the customer to contact you, which wont happen every time, so you need to get your message to the customer more often, so that they are more likely to find an offer you have that they want to purchase.

TYPE OF MARKETING – How you get in front of the client is also important, just a flyer saying who you are and what you do may serve it’s purpose but it wont really create a feeling of wanting to contact you now. So it is almost a requirement to put some sort of offer that will build that feeling in a customer that they want to buy. Then once there is something on that that creates that feeling of wanting to buy make it easy for them to buy. Have Ordering over the Phone, Ordering by your website, Order by Email, and even Order by Fax.

It really is a simple concept that people need to know that your business is in existance, and what you do. Because while a well positioned retail store may survive with little advertising, when you operate your business from No Fixed Office, if you are not marketing you have little chance if any of making any money.

• Client Visits – While this is an option is has some downsides, such as being time consuming, impractical for out of area clients and means you physically need the product available to show. While all of these negatives can be countered with it is better for the client, it is also counter intuitive to the whole concept of having No Fixed Office.
• Showroom – Again this is possibly the ideal option for clients to get the best benefit, however again it has some downsides, it adds additional costs to your business, requires you or an additional employee to always be there or at least at appointment times, and it actually defeats the whole idea of having No Fixed Office.

So if you cannot provide a physical demonstration of the product to the client, what is the next best way. Well there are actually a few options, all of which can provide usually sufficient information for the client to make the decision, help you keep your costs to a minimum and actually can often make it easier for your client to get the information. Below i will offer some of the potential options, but it can also come down to being creative, with your own twist on an idea.

BROCHURES – You may think, wow this is such a smart idea, i wonder why nobody thought of this</sarcasm>. However while i do mean brochure in the traditional sense, you also need to add something more to it. It isn’t as easy as just taking a supplier brochure and sticking it in the mail. You either need to add to the supplier brochure with an insert of your own, and ensure the brochure has you contact details on clearly. Or create your own variation on the supplier brochure, the primary benefit in creating your own variation is that you can include your own testimonials from your customers, as well as focus on the primary points you believe your customers care about, which are not always the same points that the manufacture focuses on.

WEBSITE INFORMATION – While again a website is almost a given, it is another area that you need to go that step further. Your website should not just be a online store with a brief description of the product and a link to buy. Especially if you are offering high end products or something that requires certain levels of information for the customer to commit to purchasing, than make sure that the information is there. Rather then just listing the name and one or two points, transpose all the information from your brochure, if there is a lot of questions get asked about a product create a FAQ for that product, add a page for testimonials, and make it easy for potential customers to contact you with questions.

PICTURES AND VIDEO – While really this should be part of your website, it can be used in other ways as well. The more pictures and video that you can make available to your customer the less important a physical product for them to see before hand will be. Pictures on your website is almost a no brainer, however video is something many people are still not quite onto, especially if you can demonstrate the product working in a short video. Limiting the use of pictures and video to your website is not the only way either, you can create other marketing tools like interactive cd’s and dvd’s and even putting more picture’s into your brochures.

While there is no one way that is absolutly perfect, and you are almost always going to need to fight that little bit harder for the customers, there are many ways that you can combat having No Fixed Office, in displaying your products. There are three idea’s here, but there is potentiall hundreds of ways that you can twist these idea’s and add other idea’s to make your business work for you.