I wrote this yesterday for one of my husband's co-workers who's trying to sell vitamins with no luck, and nagging her relatives to buy from her. (Vitamins?! Relatives?! Oh No!!) So the below information was written for someone who's not just an online newbie, but right now is an online nobie, not marketing online at all yet.
Self-Promotion First:
The most important thing about selling online is promoting Yourself, people need to get to know and trust you, and know where to reach you for questions, get to know your personality and trustworthiness and dependability and if they can take your word on the quality of what you're selling. If you're a quality person, and only decide to sell quality products or services, people will eventually get to know that and you'll gain a following of loyal customers who will make repeat purchases from you. Put your name in all your advertising, and a good photo of yourself is always helpful.
You'll do better within a hub of traffic, such as in networking communities and selling communities, instead of trying to sell by yourself in the middle of the internet. Think of it as having a lemonade stand, you wouldn't put it in the middle of an empty field, you'd put it in a place where lots of people walk past. Same with online, you need to be in a crowded place where people are already expecting to be sold to, and offer high quality and competitive prices, and be personable enough to make sales and maintain future sales.
You need to let people get to know you as a person, they need to know you'll be easy to find in the same places online every day, consistency in being around, a quality person with quality items, and gain good name recognition.
===>>> Free Promotional Tools That Pay You:
You need leads, you need a good double opt-in email list:
Autoresponders bring in 4 times more sales, because the average person only makes contact with their prospects twice, and it usually takes at least 5 communications for the prospect to make a serious decision to buy. Autoresponders do the job all day and all night, automatically.
* Aweber Autoresponders ($1 for the first month) This is very excellent, it auto-saves our drafts every 2 minutes and has great opt-in templates and email templates, and gives us a spam rating on our messages. It also tracks clicks on the links within the emails. You can also become an affiliate and earn 30% commissions from this if people sign up for the first month for a dollar and then stay with it for $19 per month (or more depending on size of the list), you can earn $5.70 per month or more per customer. It's easy to use, has directions for each step of setting up your messages and forms. It's a good idea to offer people some free information as in incentive to get them to join your list, such as you could offer them "free advertising, tracking, hosting, and free commission information" if they subscribe to your autoresponder, then send them your links to the businesses below (Viral Hosts, Viral URL, List Joe, ThumbVu, and Aweber) along with the other info you want to send them.
http://www.topbiztoday.com/aweber.html
Here are the free businesses I mentioned before, they also have paid upgrade options:
* Viral Hosts is Free hosting & advertising & leads & commissions. This hosting is easy to set up, it has a step-by-step set up wizard. You can also earn free commissions, so promote your link after you join, free members can earn up to $59.10 per sale if your free signups upgrade to Gold yearly membership.
http://ViralHosts.com/kvb99
* Viral URL is Free advertising, leads, tracking & commissions: use Viral URL cloaked links to track every ad you post. Earn free commissions from promoting this also, it's owned by the same people as Viral Hosts above, free members can earn $59.10 if your free signups upgrade to Gold yearly membership. The owners of these 2 businesses are also on Facebook and Twitter.
http://www.topbiztoday.com/v/vu
* List Joe is a safe-email list, you can join free and they send you about 37 emails daily, click them open, look for the credit link in each email and click it, and you can gather about 3,500 credits within a week and send email ads to 3,500 people per week. List Joe also has downline builders containing 1,000's of mostly free businesses that you can earn money from promoting, just by advertising your link to List Joe. Look thru the members area after you join, the downline builders area, and join a lot of those.
http://www.ListJoe.com/j/kvb2010
* ThumbVu is a great traffic exchange that helps people promote themselves and get Facebook friends & Twitter followers. You can join free and also promote your link to ThumbVu and earn commissions from people who join and upgrade to paid membership. You'll see people here who will become familiar to you, and eventually you'll become familiar to them, you'll also see the same people at Facebook and many other online networks and advertising sources. The owner is also on Facebook and Twitter.
http://www.thumbvu.com/ref/kcvan
The sources above are very popular and high quality, and you can join all of them for free and earn money by advertising the links to them.
===>>>If You Are Selling Tangible Products...
* It's sometimes difficult to sell "real products" online because the pricing is very competitive, some sellers on Ebay just sell within pennies above their wholesale cost so they can become Power Sellers faster.
* Most people online just want to earn money, and that's easiest to do by selling online informational products, especially info on how to earn money, and where to get high traffic advertising.
* If you're selling real stuff, your prices need to be very competitive, and the products need to be in high demand, such as consumables, that doesn't always mean food, consumable items that people use a lot of on a regular basis at low prices, such as cosmetics or personal products or restaurant supplies...other top sellers are famous brand name products at low prices... or items with a high "perceived value" such as vintage collectibles or mint-condition memorabilia, or autographed items. Remember that dollar amount is more important than markup amount, such as selling a $500 item for $550 would bring you $50 at only a 10% markup, that's better for your wallet than selling a $5 item for $10 that would only bring you $5 at a 100% markup.
* If you really want to sell real products, you can try Doba dropshipping free for 2 weeks, it's easy to use, and if you decide it's not going well for you, just cancel your membership before your free 14 days is up. They offer 1,500,000 products, you set your own price to sell, and you don't pay for the item until after you make the sale, then send Doba their wholesale price by online payment processor, and keep your net profits. The best dollar amounts on small markups are on leather coats and electronics, the best large markups for lower dollar amounts are on magazines. Doba is highly recommended by Ebay and is ranked #23 on the INC 500.
http://www.topbiztoday.com/v/do
Thanks for reading this and visiting & bookmarking the sites, and joining!
Sincerely, Kathleen VanBeekom