The New Rich generally make money through things which are intangible unlike the Old Rich brigade.. the Old Rich are people who have made their money through property, retail, inherited wealth etc. The New Rich are people like the Google guys who are billionaires through their Google search engine.. they sell advertising through their search engine and make a packet. I love the idea of the New Rich harnessing modern day technology to make their millions (or billions).. the computer game company Blizzard who created World of Warcraft, the huge online game generates about £150 million a month from subscribers (that's over a billion dollars a year!!)... and they are selling just a game.. no property, no tangible goods!
Clickbank are an online retailer allowing people to sell their ebooks online. Besides sellling your own ebooks, you can act as a middle man and sell other people's products and take a commission.. or you can do both. Clickbank has allowed a huge amount of people to make it rich and if you're looking for a relatively cheap way to start a business, Clickbank is an excellent way to do this. People are hungry for knowledge so if you have some specialist knowledge and can type.. Clickbank maybe for you.
Remember, the Internet has over 1.5 billion users... even if your area of knowledge is something obscure to the mainstream, less than a percent of 1.5 billion is still 15 million!! If you have a niche area even, say 10,000 interested people.. if you can sell to 1,000 of these for $50, you've made $50,000!! Check out the picture below of a Clickbank cheque that Internet Entrepreneur, Brad Callen had received... $214898.06 in 2 weeks!! Crikey!
So what skills do you need? Well, you will need a webpage, your sales page or squeeze page.. this is like your shopfront where you 'sell' your product. To be successful, you need to have a compelling sales pitch... the art of doing this right is called Copywriting.
You will also need to be able have a little knowledge of how to piece everything together so that people can be directed to your invoice page if they want to buy and then to download your product. Clickbank make this easy for you but you still need a little knowledge..
To those who don't have this knowledge, all is not lost.. you can simply hire someone to do this for you... you can utilise the power of the Internet and hire a contractor from India or something to do this for you for a fraction of what you would pay in the UK or US. My favourite place for looking for people to help is Odesk
The other thing to be aware of is that you need to make sure that when people buy your product they are directed to the download page for your product (Clickbank call this your 'Thank You' page). You do not want there to be any loophole in your product so that even if the credit card payment doesn't go through, they can still download your product... even worse, you don't want people finding the Thank You page with the download to your product on a search engine... you need to protect your product and do not want people getting it for free. The software I use to protect my Clickbank products is DL Guard which you can find out about here (and purchase)
Note. Clickbank also charge you a one off activation charge of $49.95 to list your product.
The great thing about Clickbank also is that there a heap of people waiting to sell your product for you... you can offer a referral rate of whatever you like to entice people to sell your product. So if you offer a referral rate of 50% for your product which sells for $50, you're offering them $25 profit for every product they sell for you. So you're probably thinking.. hmm, they are eating into my profits if I do this...
Remember however that your product is electronic... you do not have stockage fees like the traditional business.. who cares if you even make $10 on each product and offer 80% referral? You're still making a profit! By forfeiting a greater chunk of your profits, you can entice more people to sell your product and by sheer volume.. you should make more money. Of course, this is a balance for you to gauge between how much you charge and how much referral you give to potential sellers.
So.. if all goes well, the cost of you bringing your business to action is (approximately):
Cost of registering a domain and webpage - $20
Clickbank activation cost - $49.95
DL Guard software to protect your product - $127
Hiring someone to design your webpage from India - $50
Total : Under $300
This is considerable cheaper than opening a shop where you will need to buy/rent it, fit it out, by stock, advertising etc. It will cost you a couple hundred thousand at least! What if it doesn't work? Then you've lost it....
If your online venture fails then you've lost a mere $300.
However, if you're Clickbank venture works out.. you'll recoup your investment many times over.. and the great thing is, it is completely automated and so long as you continue to pay the domain renewal fees, you have a stream of income for life!
I'll post some Clickbank ideas on this blog soon but I hope you found this useful! :)
