Selling
Products versus Services Online
by: Corey Rudl 
Selling a product on the web is slightly
different than selling a service. Each has its advantages and
disadvantages.
Products
- Advantage: It provides an unlimited
income potential, because you are not constrained by time
as with a service.
- Disadvantage: It requires stocking
and shipping (or drop-shipping from a supplier).
- Disadvantage: It generally
requires filling large amounts of orders to make a reasonable
living, unless you have a product with a very high profit
margin.
Services
- Advantage: It is easier to
make a profit quickly, because the entire price of a service
is paid to you (except for any overhead).
- Advantage: Services can generate
a great residual income, because the client may want to hire
your services again and again.
- Disadvantage: You are limited
to a modest income because you can provide only so many services
each day -- unless you hire employees to perform services
for clients.
In my opinion, selling a product online
has, by far, proven to be the biggest profit potential in the
long run. Once you get a successful product, you can automate
the system and move on to new products that will generate multiple
streams of income.
If you need immediate cash flow,
providing a service is the fastest way to produce instant income
-- but the payoff will not be as great, in the long run, as
selling a product with a high profit margin.
If you sell a service, think about how
you can transform it into a product. One of the best examples
I can think of is regarding the people who submit web sites
to search engines. Because the competition became so fierce
and their businesses began to suffer, some wrote and sold reports
revealing how search engines work, tricks for getting sites
listed higher on the lists, etc. The reports were priced from
$20 to $100, and the entrepreneurs in our example found new
markets to tap.
Rudl gets over four million visitors
to his web sites yearly, does $5.2 million in sales online each
year (yes, $5,200,000), and personally makes hundreds of thousands
of dollars from his online businesses -- all from his one small
office. Visit his site at http://www.marketingtips.com, where
he reveals all of his unconventional tips, tricks and techniques
with examples so you can learn the most efficient and fastest
ways to make money on the Internet.
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