Selling Inventions on the Internet

{Don Debelak’s new book, Turning Your Invention into Cash is now available on Amazon for $3.49. Go to Amazon.com and enter inventions Don Debelak to purchase. From the author of Entrepreneur Magazine’s Bringing Your Product to Market.}

Selling through the Internet has become the least expensive and most direct way to reach potential customers. Inventors can easily set up store fronts on eBay and ship the products from their home. Many inventors also create their own web page to sell directly or they sell through Amazon or other websites. But selling through the Internet is not easy and is very labor intensive. If you build it, they will not come. You need to know how to market your product, increase awareness of your product, trade links, start an affiliate program, sell affiliate products, write articles, buy ads, get listed on search engines and anything else you can think of to make people notice you. All of these tactics are very labor intensive although usually inexpensive if you do them yourself.

You want to create as many ways for people to find you as possible, but you also want the right kind of product that will succeed on the Internet. The best kinds of products are ones that make people take notice. You will want to write press releases and articles for the media and bloggers to see. It is essential that they pick up your story, or write a story about your product, so you can create some interest. The Internet is a huge place, with millions of websites, and you need trusted blogs and media sources to bring attention to your product.

In addition to this, potential customers should already recognize they have a problem that your product solves, and they need to be ready to search for it. For instance they could type in a search engine, “honeysuckle removal”, and find your product. The Internet works by people searching for things and if your potential customers aren’t looking for a solution to the problem that your product solves, no one will be looking for your website or product. If you need to explain to customers that they have a problem, and that your product will solve that problem, you will spend a fortune on advertising and you still probably will not sell many products.

Contrary to what many people think, the Internet is a better place to sell limited appeal products, or products geared toward a small niche market. For instance, if you have a great new frying pan, people may be unhappy with their current frying pan, but most people won’t search the Internet for a pan, they’ll just go to their local department or kitchen store and pick one up because they know they are there. Even if they do search the Internet for a new pan, there will be lots of sites that sell pans and it will be hard to get listed high enough on search engines for people to find you. On the other hand, people who have an obscure hobby or interest know that they can’t go to their local department store and find what they need, so they will search on the Internet for it and there won’t be many sites dedicated to that hobby or interest, so you will probably be able to show up on the first page of search engine results. Don’t think that a small hobby has too few potential customers to build a business on. Even if only one out of 10,000 people has that hobby, you will still have tens of thousands of potential customers in the U.S. alone.

One great benefit of selling online is that you can sell a hard-to-understand product. For instance, you can put video demonstrations on your website to show and explain your product. If your product requires that kind of demonstration, you will never be able to sell in a retail atmosphere.

Some distribution channels require certain types of prices, but the Internet is wide open for any kind of price, from $1.00 to several thousand. Also, some of the other channels require either a product to be way ahead of competition or just a new twist on an existing product — the Internet allows either.

Selling Online

There are many ways to sell your product on the Internet. You can sell through other sites like Amazon, eBay, or established online retailers. But most inventors prefer to start their own site to sell their product. I think it is best to start your own site, but also sell through other sites. The Internet is a big place and you want to create as many opportunities for potential customers to find you. Selling on eBay is easy to set up and Amazon has two different programs to sell on Amazon (just visit amazon.com and go to the bottom of the page and click on “Sell on Amazon”). Selling through other established online retailers requires you to contact them about selling your product on their site. Online stores are usually easier to get into than brick-and-mortar stores because online stores are not limited by shelf space.

Setting Up Your Own Website

If you want to set up your own site to sell your product, there are many hosting companies that make it very easy to do so. For instance, StartLogic has everything you need to set up an online store, even if you have no experience in web design. You can also use PayPal to very easily set up online sales.

Increase Awareness of Your Product

How do you let people know about your product? One of the best ways is to get websites that your potential customers visit regularly review your product. For instance you can contact well-known bloggers in your market niche and ask them if they will review your product if you send them a free sample.

Another way to raise awareness of your product is to write articles about the problem that your product solves and then submit them to websites that republish articles, like http://ezinearticles.com/, and to websites in your niche market. You don’t want your article to heavily promote your product, but instead offer good advice (which can include your product) and then in the author bio section, mention your website. If your article is well-written and helpful, it will be picked up by other websites and all of this will increase people’s chances of finding you and your product. The more articles you can write, without being repetitive, the better. This will also increase the number of links pointing to your website, which can give you better rankings in search engines.

Press releases are another way you can increase awareness of your product. You can submit press releases to many free PR websites that will reprint your news. These press releases show up in search engines, pointing people to your site, and sometimes the press or bloggers pick up on the news and may reprint it.

Trading Links

Trading links used to be a very popular way to increase web traffic. It used to be that search engines like Google would rank your site in part by how many other web pages had links to your site. That led to link exchanges, hidden links and many other ways to increase search engine ranking. But now search engines are smarter and only links from relevant sites count. For instance if you sell cooking products and you have a link from a car part store, search engines won’t count it. But if you have links from other cooking stores or online cookbooks, those links will help your ranking in search engines. So you can trade links, but make sure they are only with relevant sites.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is an always changing process because search engines are always improving how they calculate search engine rankings. Every time they change their system, people find ways to beat the system, and search engines then again change their system. SEO is a huge topic, but I will briefly mention some very important aspects here:

• Create relevant page titles
• Use description and keyword meta tags
• Use heading tags for important content: <h1>,< h2>, etc.
• Regularly update content
• Submit your site to major search engines and update sitemaps

There is much more to SEO and if you are interested, you can find many good resources online.

Start an Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is getting other websites to carry your product, either in their store or just by posting a little advertisement for your product anywhere on their site. Then for every time your product sells through their site, you pay them, either a percentage of each sale, or a predetermined amount. Affiliate programs are a great way to get other sites selling your product since you make it is easy as possible for them to carry your product and make money with no investment and little effort.. If your product is sold on Amazon, you can use their affiliate program to have other sites sell your product.

If you are starting your own affiliate program, there are many websites that can help you with tracking, creating code for other sites to post and everything else you need to run your affiliate program. Just search for starting an affiliate program online.

Selling Affiliate Products

Besides having other people sell your products, you can sell other people’s products. You may make money from this, but really you want to create more ways for people to find your site. Once you have more than one product, people can find your site looking for your product or for the other affiliate products you sell. When the find your site looking for affiliate products, they will also be exposed to your product and could possibly buy.

Advertising

Some online companies spend huge amounts of money on advertising, while others don’t spend any. One of the great things about the Internet, unlike TV, is that it is not too difficult to get exposure for free. That said, many still do find online ads effective. Search engines allow you to advertise on them and on other sites. GoogleAds for instance is the best-known system for advertising. Also you can buys ads directly from individual sites, either on a monthly basis, or paying every time someone clicks on your ad. If you have the money for this, you can experiment and see how effective it is.

Do you need web content?  Don Debelak, who has written 15 books published by major publishers such as McGraw Hill and Entrepreneur Press is currently writing web content.  Check out more information at:

http://onestopinventionshop.net/web-content-writing-services

Don Debelak offers affordable patent work. Check out http://patentsbydondebelak.com/