What should I sell on the Internet?

how to answer to that question, your only choice is research, and lots of it. Based on years of experience, here's the basic process that  successful Online Retailers would go through every time we try to decide on a new product to sell on the Internet.

Find out what the Demand for the product is:

On the Internet is just another place to sell products. The basic concept of Demand is the same on the 'Net as it is anywhere else, and has been for all time. If there aren't enough people who want it, there's no profit in selling it!

Find out what the level of Competition is:

Again, the internet is the same way. The 'Net is just another place to sell things, and if there are too many people selling the same things, nobody makes any money on them.

We start with a dedicated Internet Store shopping site with a high degree of popularity, like Yahoo Shopping, for example. We spend hours in there, acting like a customer, using different search terms to search on the products

Find out what the General Interest level is

 General interest in a product helps to gauge where our Demand and Competition numbers fall into the big picture. For example, if there isn't much Demand for a product, and there isn't much Competition, it would seem that it might not be a good seller. You can't sell something to people if they're not out there looking to buy it. If there aren't many people out there trying to sell it, either, then it's probably not a good idea.

Find out how others are Advertising this product:

 Same thing on the Internet. If you're going to sell a product Online, you're going to have to advertise it in some way or another. Today, Pay Per Click Search Engines are the dominant force in Internet product Advertising.

Once again, we act like a customer. We use as many search terms as we can think of to search for the product we think we want to sell. What we're looking for here is two fold:

 How many other people are paying to Advertise the product Online?

What do their ads look like and say?

SWOT Analysis

Once you have a shared understanding of who you are as a firm and what you do, you can begin to dig a
little bit deeper with a classic SWOT analysis, stand ing for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats.
The SWOT analysis is a time-honored business tool used to assess a company’s current situation
both internally and externally, with a view toward developing a plan for the future. That said, the
SWOT analysis is somewhat misnamed, in that it isn’t really particularly analytical. It’s a tool for cap-
turing your beliefs and perceptions about your firm and the context in which you’re functioning to paint
a picture of your current situation. It helps you see where you are, where you could go, what you need
to fix, and what you should watch out for.
Divide a piece of paper into four quadrants, and label these Strengths (upper left-hand), Weaknesses
(lower left-hand), Opportunities (upper right-hand), and Threats (lower right-hand). The left side of your
paper (Strengths and Weaknesses) is internal, issues within your company that you believe are either
strengths or weaknesses. The right side (Opportunities and Threats) are both focused outside: What are
the opportunities out there that you can take advantage of, and what are the threats that you need to
watch out for?

What Are Our Strengths? What’s Special about Our Firm?

Start with your strengths. What is truly special about you? Here are a few general possibilities to get you
thinking, in the rough categories of design, service,and knowledge that you offer to your clients:
> Design
- Distinctive style
- Recognition
- Innovation

> Service
- Responsiveness
- Communication
- Speed

> Knowledge
- Expertise in a given market
- Specific body of knowledge (foreign building codes, etc.)
- Relationships with key consultants, contractors, suppliers
These are only a few ideas. Brainstorm with your planning group until you come up with a list of
strengths that feels complete to you.
Bear in mind that most of your competitors can probably also claim the majority of strengths that are
on your list, so focus on those that are truly unique to your firm or those that are easily quantified or
proved. Saying “We’re responsive to clients” isn’t really a useful strength, unless you can back it up
with a few killer examples.

Using Drop Shippers

If you want to sell products online, but you don't want to spend your own money up front for those products, you want a Drop Shipper.


You're going to spend a few bucks to get your Home-based Internet Business started. Not a lot of money if you do it right, but there will be some costs.

When you start your Product Sourcing, you need to decide whether you're going to spend more money buying bulk quantities of products from Wholesalers, storing them at your house, and shipping them to your customers yourself; or whether you're going to start out using Drop Shippers.

Using Drop Shippers allows you to sell brand new, brand name products to your customers without paying for those products

before you sell them. In other words, your customer pays you for the products before you pay your Wholesale Supplier for them. Pretty cool, huh?

Here's how drop shipping works:
1.  You open an Internet Store, or start an account on an Auction site, like eBay.
2.  You find a Wholesale Supplier who is willing to Drop Ship the products you want to sell.
3.  You establish an account with the Drop Ship Supplier(s) you choose.
4.  You receive images and descriptions of the products you want to sell from the Supplier, and place them on your Internet Store or Auction.
5.  A customer finds your Store or Auction, and falls in love with a product that you have priced at, say, $80. They purchase the item with their credit card. Your Store or Auction charges their credit card $80 plus shipping.
6.  You email the order to your Drop Ship Supplier, along with the customer's name and address.
7.  The Drop Ship Supplier sends the product directly to your customer from the warehouse, with YOUR business name on the package.
8.  The Supplier charges you the wholesale price of, say, $52.00, plus shipping (you've already passed the shipping charge on to your customer, so the shipping costs you nothing).
9.  Your customer gets a great name brand product from your store or auction shipped to their door, and they tell all their friends about you, and you make even more money.

Why you Should have a blog

Blogs have enjoyed an explosion in popularity in the internet community. Short for web log, a blog is an online journal set in an archived format that allows for frequent updates. People use blogs for a variety of reasons, both business and personal. The popularity of blogs is so widespread that a new term has been coined to describe the massive collection of blogs existing online: the blogosphere.
There are a variety of good reasons to host a blog for your company. One is fresh content. By adding a new blog entry daily, or even weekly, you are constantly bringing new content to your site, which helps increase your search engine rankings. Another is to showcase your experience. You can create blog entries about projects you’ve done for clients, or share stories sent in by customers who have purchased your products. Furthermore, a blog provides another way to keep visitors interested by offering them information or entertainment—and keep them coming back for more.
Still another advantage to creating and maintaining a blog is customer interaction. A standard blog feature allows viewers to post comments and feedback on individual entries. You can set your blog to allow comments from anyone, even anonymous visitors (however, if your blog provides a word verification feature, you should turn it on to avoid spam comments…oh yes, spam is everywhere).
The blog format you choose will vary according to the type of business you run. If you run a consultation practice, make note of your clients’ successes as they occur (be sure to get the client’s permission before you write about them!). If you are selling a product, you can use a blog to keep consumers updated about company and industry developments. You can also transform a blog into an online resource center for information relating to your product or services. Find a few interesting links every day to related web sites and give visitors something new to look forward to every time they visit your site.
How do you get a blog? You can either maintain a separate blog from your web site, or use a web host that integrates blogging software with their packages. If you set up a separate blog, be sure to link to it from every page of your web site, and link back to your web site from your blog. Most blog hosting companies provide blog accounts free of charge. The most popular blog provider is Blogger.com (powered by search engine giant Google), followed closely by LiveJournal.com. Blog hosts generally provide customizable templates in a wide variety of styles, so you can find one that matches your web site.

Micro-Management: Legal Handling of Your Scattered Employees

You may not have any employees at all. However, from time to time you may find it necessary to bring in some extra help. When you do, you have two choices: hire an employee, or enlist a contractor. Both of these methods have different tax concerns—and because they are far less complicated for contractual help, most virtual corporations choose to outsource the services they can’t provide themselves.
Employee Tax Issues: Any business owner knows an employee is an investment. If you’re running a virtual corporation, in the beginning stages it’s almost always better to outsource extra work. However, as you grow you may want to consider
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hiring someone who will work with you on a long-term basis and know your company almost as well as you.
In regards to taxes, as an employer you must pay Social Security, Medicare and unemployment tax for any permanent employee. One concern related to the virtual office is the physical location of your employee. You may choose to hire a telecommuter—someone else who works from home. If your employee(s) live in another state, you must file a W-2 (standard income tax form for employees) with that state. This costs an additional fee, but usually no more than $10 annually.
Regardless of where your employees live, you must provide all regular employees with a W-2 at the end of each tax year.
Contractor Tax Issues: The independent contractor is responsible for all of his or her own taxes. Therefore, most virtual corporations prefer to work with contractors, or as they are often called, freelancers. As a virtual business owner, your only tax responsibility for freelancers is to provide them with a Form 1099 at the end of the tax year, provided you paid them more than $600 in the year. You must keep track of any outsourced work you purchased so you can report it on your own tax forms.
NOTE: If you’re not sure whether a person who has done work for you is an employee or a contractor, the IRS provides a set of 20 questions to help you
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make that determination. Basically, if you directly control the way the work is done (you are in direct supervision of the person working for you), you should treat them as an employee. If you simply assign a task and do not control how it is done, but rather receive a finished piece of work after a specified time period (such as web copy writing, site design, or outside bookkeeping services); the person handling the work is considered a contractor.

Paying with Virtual Money

Like traditional employees, virtual assistants and contractors must be paid. You can opt to mail a paper check to your virtual employees, but this is often just one more hassle in an already complicated home office setup. It also costs extra money in printing and mailing costs.
A better way to pay virtual employees is through the internet. Monetary transactions online are much safer than they used to be, and there are several large companies who deal specifically with electronic funds transfers. The most popular of these is PayPal, which allows any two individuals with (free) PayPal accounts to exchange money online. You can register checking accounts, savings accounts, and even credit cards with PayPal, and most virtual telecommuters and freelancers already have PayPal accounts. Paying them is a simple matter of signing in to your account and allocating funds from your checking account—and PayPal takes care of the rest.
You can also set up online transfers between checking accounts, or direct deposit for permanent employees. Most banks will allow you to do this right from their web site, without ever setting foot in a branch office.
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Hiring a virtual employee or contractor is a great way to expand your virtual corporation, and the process will help you learn more about online business. A good virtual assistant can be invaluable in making your company look bigger, and you won’t have to spend a fortune to get one. The reference section in the back of this book provides several popular online job boards to help you get started in your search.