In 1983 when I was just a kid listening to a new band called Musical Youth, little did I know that something was already happening that would change lives forever. Something so powerful it would enable normal people, just like you and I to work anywhere in the world they wanted 
to as long as they had a computer and an internet connection.
The World’s First Secure Retail Transaction
On January 1, 1983, researchers began to put together a “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. In 1990 Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and the rest is history. Just a few short years later, in 1994, the first secure retail transaction over the web was made. Both eBay and Amazon launched the following year as early adopters.
1994 is a year I remember well as I was on a programming course at the time. A few of us in the class had dreams of being computer “whizz kids”. As a side-note, one guy on our course who programmed a greenhouse simulator, practically with his eyes closed, became a dot-com millionaire during what we now look back on as the tech bubble in the late 1990’s where tech stocks soared and crashed as fortunes were both made and lost. Although we were all familiar with using computers at a time when it was seen as being something quite nerdy, generally speaking, very few of us had used the world wide web.
The 5 Perils Of Physical Product Fulfilment As A Vendor – Tangibles
If you told the average person on the street that you were starting an online business, they would quite often assume you were selling on an eCommerce platform such as eBay or Amazon.
Indeed, to many, that sounds like a good idea as it’s a quick and relatively painless way to get started selling physical products initially. There are ways of leveraging and scaling this but it is important to bear in mind the following points before you go down this route:
1) You don’t have any control or influence over a 3rd party platform and how its internal algorithms work or how it lists your items in its marketplace in terms of overall visibility.
2) You DON’T have a business unless you have your own assets you are building. You just have cash flow as you have no assets of your own that you can leverage or sell at a later date other than stock inventory.
3) If you’re undertaking product sourcing and order fulfillment yourself it’s going to take up a considerable amount of time and effort and you only have so many hours in a day at your disposal.
4) Be aware of competition also selling the same item and commoditizing it by selling it cheaper, thereby reducing profit margins and in some instances effectively turning a profitable product into one that loses money after costs.
5) Today’s hot seller can be in tomorrow’s bargain basement bin. In an ever-changing marketplace, a physical product that is currently in demand can also quickly go the other way. Unless the product you are selling is evergreen, all that stock you bulk ordered from a wholesaler could be sitting in a spare room with nowhere to go at any kind of meaningful profit. Now that IS a headache and I personally know people this has happened to.
There are also other things to consider like the cost of sourcing stock, listing fees, final value fees, subscription costs, postage, the cost of buying more than you actually need in case there’s a spike in orders and there’s also the possibility of being left with stock you can’t sell or you will end up selling at a loss just to clear your outstanding inventory.
Of course, I’m not implying this cannot be lucrative as there’s a ton of money to potentially be made out of selling physical products but it can be a major headache if you don’t get it right and often you are shackled to the business both in terms of time and geographically. Doesn’t that sound more like a job than something you could do that is both enjoyable and rewarding?
The Finery Of Going Binary – Selling & Marketing Digital Products Online
Are you familiar with binary numbers? They are just 1’s and 0’s. When data is digitized it is turned into 1s and 0s for storage. The beautiful thing about information is that it’s all digital. If you run a business selling digital products as an affiliate or a vendor (the good news is you can do both) you no longer have to worry about sourcing stock or buying more than you actually need in case there’s a spike in demand. There is no limit to how many copies of it you can sell and if it’s already packaged up you can deliver it INSTANTLY to the customer.
Build Assets and Employ Leverage In Your Online Business
If you value time freedom and you want to employ leverage, selling digital products is an extremely attractive proposition. Not only can you build your own assets including products, email lists, websites and properties you own such as a blog, but you can do it literally ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD as long as you have a device such as a laptop or a computer and access to an internet connection.
Once you’ve got momentum on your side, you can literally make sales while you are doing other things. Yes, that even includes making money while you are fast asleep and spending leisure time with friends and family. You can even employ massive leverage if you sell your own products by recruiting affiliates and giving them a commission when they make one or more sales. Over time this can translate to an army of affiliates sending traffic to your products and offers on any product you launch.
Of course, you can’t press a button and expect money to fall out of the sky without doing any work. As much as that would be nice, it only exists in the world of fantasy so you have to be realistic and realise that it’s technically impossible. Be very wary of anyone promising “push button” riches because there is literally no such thing and they are just selling you the dream. Deep down you already know that don’t you?
You Could Technically Run This Business From Mars [1]
Providing you are prepared to put some work in, HUGE rewards are available to anyone with a willingness to learn and apply what they have learned, providing it’s from someone that is actually successfully doing what they already teach. My personal recommendation is to embrace the technological age we live in by running a business marketing digital products. This will afford you the opportunity to work when you want, wherever you want and on your own terms, unrestricted by geographical requirements and free of the burdens commonly associated with sourcing and selling physical inventory.
[1] You could run this business from Mars, providing you had oxygen, a computer, and an internet connection. If this article has piqued your interest in selling and marketing digital products, check out John Thornhill’s exclusive training which reveals how 9 out of 10 of his students are making a FULL-TIME living from the internet working part-time and how we create our own automated online income streams that generate sale after sale using the worlds number #1 digital marketplace. Visit http://www.6FigureAutomatedIncome.com to get started.
This is a guest post from Dean James, if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.
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