It appears that you're new here, if you like what you read, please subscribe to the news feed or sign up for the Leap eTips news and updates email list. Thank you for visiting :)
One popular online business model is the reselling of intellectual property. Heck, even iTunes is built on this idea. You gain reseller rights to some intellectual property–for example: eBooks, software or media–and then distribute it from your site, hopefully making a decent profit along the way.
While software and media can be a little too expensive for the startup or home business to get into, information (eBooks) is a very lucrative and affordable way to begin. As always, let me caution you away from scams or crap products that provide no real value to your customers. I’ve seen many startups try to break in with these and have yet to hear of a single one that grew or even lasted for any noticeable period of time. The fact is, word spreads quickly online and if you scam customers, or sell them garbage they’ll trash your reputation, and business in no time at all.
However, there are tons of legitimate resources out there with resale rights available right now, and a million and six (I’ve counted them) freelance writers just waiting to create new ones for you if you have good ideas.
I was thinking of running a new startup experiment with a reselling site that I could write about as sort of a case study to show the ins-and-outs of the entire process, as well as what does and doesn’t work in marketing, and even the nuts-and-bolts of tweaking my web site copy text to maximize conversions of visitors into buyers.
I had this idea in the back of my mind when my friend Dana approached me in February about helping her start an online business. She’s a widow, and has a special needs child; so has been disparately searching for something legitimate she could do from home that would give her more time with her son and earn at least as much as she has been waitressing for the past year and a half since losing her husband.
Of course I told her I’d help her start out, and I asked if she would allow me to document each step of the process along the way. She agreed, and I’m happy to report that in less than 4 months she’s now earning more from her web site each week than she is at her waitressing job, and she plans to quit that job in July if the web site is able to sustain or increase the current income levels for her until then. Obviously, she wants to be sure her web site earnings are consistent and stable before leaving the security of her job–I’m confident that she’ll probably double her current income from the web site by the end of the summer based on what I’ve seen, but I applaud her cautious approach to making the leap.
I plan to write a series of posts here about Dana’s success and the entire process, plus Dana and I are putting a package together, not really an eBook (we’re not great writers) but more of a “Project Report” that really shows our entire plan of attack for her web site, from the drawing board to now we’re dissecting every detail and decision that was made to explain why it was made that way, and whether it worked or not.
I hope to have the Project Report finished in the next week or two, and when it is we’ll make it available right here at O`Bannon’s Leap for everyone who’s interested. The first draft is already completed, and I’m excited about how much valuable information (with real examples) we’ve collected and been able to squeeze into it. From deciding what the goals for a site will be to picking products to sell, choosing a web host, how we designed the site for maximum conversions, the creation of landing pages, the creation and use of a mailing list (the best tool there is), how we made the search engines love us, an in-depth look at our keyword research techniques and even a full review of our online marketing campaign–including the entire $34 we actually spent on marketing.
You can see that there is a treasure of information being packed into this, and we’re doing it in a way that I wish someone had done before when I was starting out, by providing the information side-by-side with real examples of it in use to give a full and clear picture of exactly what we’re talking about. I really believe that for anyone just starting out or even someone looking to review their current web site from a fresh perspective to spark some innovative ideas this Project Report will be a solid resource.
Watch for it here soon, or subscribe to The Leap eTips for an advance announcement of the release date, as well as all the other tips and information I offer there.
Email this post
