What are your online business requirements:

PHYSICAL PRODUCTS - INVENTORY MANAGEMENT - Supply and Demand
The first things to sell online that many people think of are physical products. Do you want to manage an inventory of products? If so, do you have the space? What if the demand exceeds the availability? How will you deal with that. Do you have an order process to maintain your inventory. If you are not the manufacturer, how quickly can your manufacturer(s) deliver. If you are the manufacturer, are there potential bottlenecks that would prevent you from meeting demands. (We will address the predictability of your business in another section, these questions are hypothetical right now just to get you to think about it). Very often the desire to sell physical products online originates as an extension of an already existing business that is already selling the same products offline.

SOFT PRODUCTS - SELLING INFORMATION
Anybody can be a publisher! You can write an e-book. You can also get one written for you. Most people that just happen upon a subject like this will scoff at it. Yet people literally make millions of dollars selling ebooks. There's no reason you can't jump on this bandwagon. From a realistic standpoint, selling an ebook or a software program and making money online requires a process and an understanding of how the internet can drive business. We'll provide that guidance. Our goal is to help you set up a predictable business and that requires a process. The process, the market research, the articles you'll write and the marketing effort you'll go through is very similar to those for selling physical products. The difference is that your order fulfillment process is vastly easier. After the purchase, your customer downloads his purchased product!

PHYSICAL PRODUCTS - NO INVENTORY - DROPSHIPPING So, what if you could sell physical products that you didn't have to inventory? Here's how this process works. Distributors give you access to their product lines. These products range from everything including electronics, home decor, books, candles, lighting and on and on. Build-a-web-shop has integrated dropshipping capabilities which allow you to access this type of process. Products appear on your website as if they were in your inventory. Order fulfillment is simply placing the order on the distributor, setting up the shipping to the buyer and pocketing the profit!

Find out more about dropshipping HERE

AFFILIATE PRODUCTS - SELL SOMEONE ELSES STUFF
Affiliate sales are very popular with online sellers for the simple reason that they are easy to implement. Affiliate sales are really the online equivalent of passing a referral. This doesn't really fall into the category of shopping cart type websites but it doesn't hurt to have some affiliates established. Affiliate sales are usually processed by tracking links. An affiliate links back to the original site with a special link that carries the affiliate code in the link. The company actually selling the product can track who sent him the client and will pay a commission based on that information.

SUMMARY - CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU HAVE A PASSION FOR
Hopefully this eliminates the notion that you have nothing to sell. Whatever you choose to sell, choose something that you have a passion for! You should be able to shed some knowledge on the product, the subject matter. It's not that you can't sell something you know nothing about, you can if you build your website correctly. However, you will be far less inclined to put in any effort to increase your exposure and sales if you can't speak intelligently and passionately about your product!

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 Find your niche! This client sells dog diapers!