How to decide what to sell online?

Before we start, if you are reading this article, it means that you have already decided to take things into your own hands and make a change in your life. Therefore, I would like to congratulate you for making the right decision. You are still a long way before the finish line, but you must enjoy the journey in order to be able to be proud of the destination once you have reached it ?

So… what to sell online? A question every to-be online marketer asks.

First things first: you need to get yourself a website and build it. For that, you need two things: a domain name and a hosting account. For cheap domains, I normally use www.namecheap.com they have cheap domains for less than $10. For hosting, I use www. hostgator.com you can get a hosting account for as little as $8 per month.

Now once you have purchased your domain name and signed up for your hosting account, you need to build up your website. You do not need to be a guru to build a website. Believe me because I am not a computer techie either and I am not so good at HTML. If you know HTML, all the better. But if you don’t, it’s still ok! All you need is a website editor and it will do all the HTML bits for you. What I use is www.nvu.com it’s free to download.

Now we come to the main question of this article: what to sell online? What is hot and what is not? This is what we call a niche. For more information about niches, please visit my blog in: nicheselection.wordpress.com you will find there all you need to know about niches and how to choose one.

Now when you want to decide what to sell, you need to follow these steps:

1. It’s all about keywords: you need to choose your keywords and see how popular they are on the internet. What I personally use is Google keyword tool. All you need to do is go to Google.com, then type: google keywords and follow the link. Once you enter the keywords you are looking for, it gives you the results of how many searches have been made using those specific keywords. You want those results to be 1,000 and more, but less than 100,000. Why so? Because if they are less than 1,000 then there isn’t much demand for that specific product/ keyword. On the other hand, if they are around 100,000 or more, it means that they keyword is too generic. We don’t want generic keywords, we want specific ones, right?
2. Once you have checked your demand, you want to check your competition. Now how do you do that? You may ask! Simple procedure, but very effective. You have to go back to Google.com and type in the same keywords you looked for in Google Keywords. However, this time you have to put the keywords between quotes. For example, if you are looking for Rolex watches, you have to type in “Rolex watches”. The results should be 30,000 or less. If it is more than that, then there is too much competition. The second exercise you have to do is write: “intitle:keyword”. In this example it would be: “intitle:Rolex watches”. This time the results should be 10,000 or less. When you type “intitle” with the keyword, it shows you how many pages have that product with the keyword in the title of the pages.
3. Once you have decided what your product will be. You need to market your website. There are hundreds of ways to promote your online business. Some of them include PPC (pay per click), article marketing, etc. My favourite is Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is today’s marketer’s friend. It allows you to promote and market your website/ product without spending lots of money. If you wish to know more about web 2.0, please visit my blog at: web20trafficflood.wordpress.com you will find all the necessary information about it.

What I advise you to consider digital products as your niche. Nowadays, the best selling products online are e-books, tutorials, how-to’s etc. However, if you would like to sell something else, it is still ok as long as there is demand and the competition is not so high.

I hope that you found the above information helpful. Please don’t hesitate to leave your feedback/ comments.

Good luck to all!