From One-Off to Repeated Sales
Repeated sales are the Holy Grail of Internet Marketing. If you have a good product or a service and it is possible to create a good digital version, you can sell it on-line. Many of the get-rich-quick schemes promoted by Internet marketers involve repeated sales.
I would never dissuade someone from trying this if they have a suitable product or service. However, there are a lot of second-rate offers online. Most people are better at providing one-off services or products.
A Case Study – for Repeated Sales
I am aware of one organisation that has provided an excellent service for over forty years. Over that time they have generated a lot of really useful information, they have a pool of people, mostly casual, who design and deliver the service and a list of members and contacts, satisfied customers who have in the past made donations and interest-free loans to the organisation.
Potentially they have a global market and could extend their list and probably find customers who would buy most of what they produced because they support the organisation.
In every respect this organisation could easily market its service online. The organisation is making an annual loss and will in a few years cease to trade. The reason they won’t market online is because they value the personal nature of the service they provide.
Whilst I understand their concern, I think they have made the wrong decision for two reasons. First, whilst delivering the service online may not be as personal as delivering it in person, it is not the same as an impersonal service. There are many ways an online service can be made more personal.
Second, delivering online products and services does not rule out delivering an in-person service. The organisation knows this but has not understood that an online service could subsidise their in-person work. It could in practice lead to increased in-person work.
Of course, these are judgements that have to be made all the time and it is not always easy to get them right. My approach would be to generally encourage organisations that have something genuinely first-rate to roll it out to the biggest possible audience. If it is that good, then the world needs to have access to it.
Developing Ideas
But what if you are developing an idea? The chances are you are not ready to build a repeat sales product until you are confident you have designed a service that warrants it. It is not too difficult to produce a high-quality one-off service. You need skills, experience and knowledge but if you have them you are most likely able to find packages that sell and are worth the money.
The hard thing is turning these packages into products that can be repeatedly sold. Not only does the package itself need to be high quality but also you need to be able to market it.
So, here are some intermediate steps you can take to test your market. Products you give away at first can be withdrawn and revised and incorporated into a premium package at a later date.
- An ebook is a good way to test the market and grow your email list.
- There are a variety of on-line documents, eg reports, guides, resource lists, diagrams, infograms …
- A blog can be used to grow readers and encourage comments.
- Videos can be made available through YouTube and used to build your email list.
- Audio is good for things like meditations. People use them when jogging or driving.
None of these are likely to generate much income alone but they can be used to test your market and build email lists. They help you practice turning your activities into products and can be used to test a future premium product and perhaps incorporated into a premium product at a later date.
For most products be cautious about the value of what you can put together. Many services deliver for their clients and never put anything online. One reason for this will be that they lack the material someone will value and be able to use without expert guidance.
This is part of a post sequence about the second element of the circuit questionnaire, products services and causes.