6 Ways to Sell More Online Products

Your product is amazing. It's a fantastic book that deserves to be a best-seller, or it's the most beautiful indie line ever brought out from the imagination. It's perfect. But if people don't know about your product or service, they can't realize the genius you represent and send you all their money in hopes of touching greatness. In other words, it's all up to you. You create excitement and interest in your work, and you use that excitement to get the word out.

Each of the ideas in this article can help you create "buzz" about your product or service - and do it without breaking your piggy bank. The more ideas you can use, adapt to your particular needs, and work with, the better. Customers aren't usually impulse buyers when it comes to online products. They take their time, do some research, and look for the best deal (which doesn't always mean the cheapest). The more that a potential customer hears about your products, the more likely they are to actually purchase them.

Use these ideas as brain food. Let them feed your imagination and see what else you can grow from them. And don't discard an idea outright - just because you've never done something before (like make a speech or do an interview), doesn't mean that you can't do it ... and do it well.

Try starting with two ideas that you can put into action beginning this week. Make them complimentary ideas that can feed off one another. Once you get those off and started, choose a more detailed idea and get to work. It will pay off, in long-lasting ways.

1. Have a Personal Web Presence

If you are trying to sell products online, you absolutely need to have your own website. Seriously. Even if you are focusing on becoming the best-selling eBay Power Seller ever heard of, you still need your own website. Take some time with your site and make sure that you are representing yourself and your products in a manner that you can live with. It's even better if you do it well enough that you want to show off your site to every person who makes the mistake of saying hello.

On your website you should include information about yourself or your business and your products. If they can't order your products directly from your website, give them links that take them directly to the spot where they can order.

2. Exchange Links

There are numerous benefits to link exchanges, but the biggest one is this: Once you start placing links on your website to another website that you honestly respect and think would interest your audience, you can contact the webmasters of the sites you're linking to and ask them to consider linking back to you. If you've done your work on making a pleasing, useful website, this shouldn't be a problem. What the exchanging means to you is free advertising - lots and lots of it if you can manage to get incoming links from a very popular site.

3. Be Active Online

Never underestimate the power of forums and discussion groups. When people have a chance to get to know and trust you as a person, they're much more likely to get interested in your products and services. This is a huge deal to online sellers. We don't have the chance to stand in our shop and chat with visitors. Instead, we have to find other ways of communicating.

Find at least two discussion groups or web forums that are dedicated to your area of expertise. Sign up for them and start posting. You probably won't be allowed to post "advertisements" - but you don't need to. Include a link in your signature to your website, and start answering people's questions and offering general information.

4. Hold a Contest

This is a trick that the big boys love to play with. When people have the opportunity to win something, they're going to become very interested in your business - fast.

Make the contest something specific to your area of expertise. You don't just want people coming to your website to enter a contest, you want people who would be interested in your products to come to your website and enter a contest. If you sell crochet patterns, give a prize for the most creative un-published pattern ... and offer to publish it. Sell closet organizers? Why not host an essay contest, with the winner being the entrant who made you laugh the hardest with how disorganized they are.

5. Get Listed

Some of us absolutely love those glossy little pieces of commercialism that arrive in our mail boxes from time-to-time. Others call it junk mail, but we call it a catalog and reverently go through all the pages looking for something new to dream about buying.

With all the catalogs out there, where do you think they get most of their products? Some people have this vision of enormous warehouses overloaded with in-house products ... but it simply isn't the case (or not usually, at least). If you know of a couple catalogs your products would be perfect for, contact the company that produces them and find out how you go about being considered. Often, all that it will take is a sample of one of your products and then a contract stating how many you can provide.

6. It's for a Good Cause

Around the holidays, this becomes a much more often-used device. There's no reason to limit it to the holiday season, though. Announce that a portion of all proceeds from your products (or a specific product that really ties in) will be donated to a charity or advocacy group. Do your research on the group before you start announcing, though, so that you can let your customers know which charity and feel confident that you're not going to be gaped at for supporting a charity with horrible methods. Once you've decided on the charity and the products, choose two dates. One date is when the "event" will begin, and the other is when it will end - usually one month. Then, let the charity you're supporting know. If you can offer them a small link button or graphics to help you publicize your work, all the better.

Never be afraid to try something new, to put a twist on the traditional ideas and make it really unique. You want to do things that will attract the people you want to reach, and you want to spend the least amount of money and time as you have to doing them.