There are several types of products promoted on a daily basis in the Internet Marketing space. If you’re like most Internet Marketers, you have an inbox full of promos. The value of all of these products varies drastically and IMRC addresses that issue by helping you choose only the best products, based off of real user reviews. But what about the other side of it … the product owner. That is something I am going to address right now, just in case you see the extreme value in selling quality IM products.

First, you need to figure out what value you have to offer. Most people have more value to offer than they realize, but that’s the topic of a future post. Once you have that figured out the big question is “How can I make the MOST possible money?” And usually the answer to that question is by helping as many people as possible in the biggest way you possible can. BUT, it’s crucial that you know how you’re going to present and sell whatever it is you’re going to offer, because one business model (or product type) could provide the same amount of value as another, but make 1,000 times more money!

To do that, you need to decide whether you are going to offer a one-time fee product or a recurring fee product. There are pros and cons to both, but in my experience, although recurring fee products/services typically have lower conversion rates, long-term they are far more profitable! Once you figure out how to make your subscription based product/service scalable (able to grow with little to no growth restrictions,) while providing value, which isn’t nearly as hard as many people think, you will continue to get payment after payment after payment from your customers, rather than one payment and then nothing.

But what TYPE of product is best?

There are a few different product “types” that are common in the IM space:

- Info Products: An info product can be a great list generator, a one-time fee product or even a service (providing new info products every month, for example.)
- Software Products: Usually a one-time fee for unlimited use, but a fee for future versions.
- Manual Services: Can be one-time fee or recurring fee, but typically not very scalable. There are exceptions like outsourcing, but even then, it can and usually does turn into a nightmare to manage.
- Software as a Service (SaaS): Almost always recurring fee and extremely scalable! A few good examples of SaaS are aweber and Backlink Booster.

While there are certain situations when any of the above are the best option, if we’re talking about the most profitable, SaaS is in my opinion the “hands down” winner because:

1. HUGE potential to provide value. You can do just about anything with software these days!
2. Extremely scalable. All of the work that is done, is done to improve the current service as opposed to regular services where the more clients you get, the more work you have to do.
3. SaaS is typically web based and should be if at all possible, so aside from basic browser compatibility, you don’t have to worry about ensuring every update is compatible with every user’s system. Do an update, upload it, ensure it’s compatible with the major browsers and your’e done! All of your current clients instantly see the changes without any action on their part.
4. Recurring payments. This is obviously one of the bigger points.  Instead of getting paid once per client, you get paid over and over and over again.

While I’m sure a few people may have valid arguments to this, I can certainly say that in my experience in developing multiple products of all types, web-based software products have generated the most money by far! A close second would be any type of product that is given away for opt-in, to build an email list.

So what is your experience and/or thoughts? I would love to hear them.

Posted December 30th 2011 to Internet Marketing • Comments (5)

If you’ve been working online for very long at all, chances are you’ve heard the phrase “The money is in the list” many times. But why? Why do so many successful Internet Marketers constantly tell you to build a list? The answer is simple: Getting 10, 20 or even 100+ visits from the same person, is better than getting one, especially if that person is already a buyer. And when you’re actively retaining website visitors, whether via email marketing, RSS, SMS Marketing or otherwise, those contacts start to add up and multiply.

This means that even your sites with only 10 new visitors a day could easily turn into big traffic sites if you simply retain those 10 new visitors every day. If you got only 25% of those 10 new daily visitors to opt-in to your email list, or subscribe to your RSS feed, after six months that’s about 450 people who you can notify every time you publish new content, promote a product etc. and that number would of course grow daily. And that is with only a 25% opt-in rate on a site that gets only 10 new daily visitors! If your site gets more than that, then those numbers are just that much better.

This is the same reason why membership sites are so lucrative and popular, not only in the Internet Marketing space, but business in general. Getting a $50 payment one time is great, but getting $50 month after month after month from the same person is that much better! Sure, you need to provide more value, but if you’re not concentrating on visitor retention you’re going to be constantly working to drive more and more new visitors day after day after day. So it really depends on which you would rather do:

1. Constantly work to get more and more new visitors.

-or-

2. Retain your visitors and work to provide just a little more value, so that you can get your current visitors back time and time again and your current clients to pay you over and over again.

Although this is not a new, fresh and groundbreaking topic, it is one that is ignored by many Internet Marketers. If you’re one of those people I urge you to ask yourself this: Do I want to constantly fight an uphill battle, or do I want to build up my troops and declare an all-out assault at any time I want, with literally the click of a button? I know my answer, what’s yours?

Posted December 21st 2011 to Internet Marketing • Comments (6)