by Andre Sanchez

Anybody who wants to make money from internet marketing must learn how to sell a product online.  Whether that product is their own, or an affiliate product that they are selling for somebody else, is immaterial.  The procedures are very similar, only the sales page becomes a pre-sales page.

It is essential to have a website to sell a product online.  Even if that is a minisite with only one page, it must still be there.  Without a website you have no platform from which to sell.  Even an offline marketer needs a shop, stall or barrow to display their wares and to sell from.  There is a range of website options available these days that makes internet marketing so much easier than it was at one time.

Web hosting options range from free websites that come with products ready to sell, through inexpensive options at less than $10 monthly to full blown hosting packages offering everything needed to run a modern internet business.  Which you choose is up to you, but keep in mind that you will require an email service that is related to your business, and an autoresponder to automated procedures such as replying to email enquiries, and sending regular emails to a large number of people.  You will also need a checkout system and a means of accepting credit card payments.

If you cannot accept credit cards, you will be fatally restricting your business.  A modern online business must be able to accept payment by credit or debit card, personal check, bank wire or transfer and PayPal or a similar popular payment method.

Once you have your website set up and running, you have to sell the product.  You should design a good sales page that catches the eye, with a compelling title that offers a benefit to the prospective buyer.  Typical benefits include how your product can make them money or save them money, save them time, make things easier for them or help their business.  Everybody looking at an offer wants to know what’s in it for them.

“Washes Whiter than White” is a feature, but “Cut Your Cleaning Time in Half” is a benefit.  If you were a busy householder, what would you want – ‘whiter than white’ or your cleaning time ‘cut in half’?  Do you want something to ‘Taste Lovely’ or ‘Work Fast’?

Provide a benefit, but make it realistic.  “Make $50,000 in your first month” is a claim nobody will believe, but “Make $100,000 in your first year” is more believable.  Write your headline, and then sleep on it.  Look at it next day and think whether or not it would attract you.  If not, then change it.

You can list the features of your product, but only while stressing the benefits that these feature provide.  “Low energy use” does not have the impact of “Save 20% on your power bill”.  You should also make an offer to the potential customer, or prospect.  Offer something free that relates to the product.  If you are selling bicycles offer free maintenance for a year.  If you are selling a book on Search Engine Optimization, offer a free keyword research tool.

Make sure you make a call to action.  Tell them what they must do to buy the product.  ‘Click here’ or ‘Click Here Now!’  Make sure that you ask them to buy the product.  It’s amazing how effective that is.  You could simply ask for their first name and email address so that you can send them further information, but ask them something.  You must tell prospects what you want them to do.

In order to sell a product you have to get prospects to your website before you can tell them anything.  You have to advertise, and there are many ways of doing this.  Advertising is generally the biggest part of the budget of an offline company, so online companies should be no different. You should choose a few keywords for your product that have some degree of demand, and as little supply as possible.

If you know how to optimize your website for good search engine listings, you can get free traffic through organic search results for your keywords.  Otherwise you can use Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.  Two of the most effecting PPC programs are Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.  You pay for each click a visitors makes on your advert, so if you word your adverts correctly, they can supply a lot of very targeted traffic, focused on the subject of your advert.

You can also advertise using article marketing and ezine adverts.  Both of these can drive targeted traffic to your website.  You should make sure that, no matter what route they used to get there, visitors should land on your sales page for your product. If visitors clicked on an advert for the product, they expect to see more information about it when they click.

If you know how to sell a product online, you should not find it difficult to persuade visitors to visit your sales page.  The rest is up to your persuasive abilities, and of course, the product.

How to Sell a Product Online was originally published  at http://www.affiliatemarketinglife.com