Product Or Service?

The Internet is used to communicate, entertain, educate, research or make money. It is thus no wonder that products including computers, software, books, travel, consumer electronics, electronic subscriptions are some of the most popular online products. Content rich sites, membership sites, or advertiser supported sites focusing on a wide range of topics, have been sprouting all over the internet.

However, all services cannot be run entirely on the Internet. The Internet is less effective when face-to-face selling and “personal touch” is needed to close a customer. The Internet can give lots of preliminary information that's useful in setting the scene for the purchase but the actual closing takes place offline and not on a website.

Products can also be marketed and sold successfully on the Internet. The kinds of products and services that sell best on the Internet are those that take advantage of the convenience of the web. Remember that convenience is the primary reason why consumers flock to the Internet in the first place. Online users can shop any hour of the day. They can avoid crowded stores, irritating sales people, and even avoid traffic jams.

Unusual products and services often attract online attention and sell strongly. You would generally not try to sell items people can get at the corner store. Thus, few toothbrushes are sold on the Net; the same thing with daily food and beverage purchases. But special wine, rare cigars, even diamonds, can and do sell on the net.

Most products sold by catalog and mail order also sell well on the net. However, people tend to buy only those products that could be shipped at a reasonable price. Higher shipping costs diminish the price competitiveness of online products. In fact, high shipping cost is one of the primary factors that discourages people from buying online.

As an online merchant, you have to work out the advantages as well as disadvantages of selling either products or services. However, in the recent past, online services have flourished. Nevertheless, if you chose to sell products you need to rethink your product offering if the total costs of the product and the shipping are higher than what is offered elsewhere.

If you are offering a product or a service, either way consider back-end selling. Back-end selling is when you sell other products or services to your existing customers after they have purchased an initial product. It is always easier to sell products or services to your existing customers because you have developed a relationship with them. You also will find it less expensive to sell to old customers as compared to selling to new customers.

In addition, your conversion rate which is the number of people who buy your offer divided by the number of visitors who see your offer, will be dramatically higher with existing customers. Every time you continue selling back-end products or services to existing customers, you will be building a longer relationship. So, the idea is to bring out new high quality back-end products or services.

Many work at home businesses sell their front-end products at little profit in order to generate back-end profits. These online businesses do not care even if they lose money on the front-end products or services because they know about the back-end profits.

About the Author

Tom Moor is a full time work-at-home supporter. Tom accepts wealth accumulation through the internet as to be true and converted to an online business enthusiast after learning about traffic generation strategies. He loves his Work At Home Business.