Just How Hard Can it be to Sell Digital Products Online?

Well some of the top marketers make it look easy don’t they, but one of the main attributes to this success is just plain old hard work. It all depends on your work ethic and attitude and what methods you use. So with this in mind let’s look at some options for niche products.
Affiliate and SEO Tactics

1. First and foremost we begin by searching for the product to sell;
There are a few choices that you can use like ClickBank, Paydot.com or RegSoft, these are all loaded with thousands of digital products. Make your choice with careful consideration, for this example we want to find a more *niche* orientated product.  Once you have made your choice join the affiliate program and check to see what promotional materials are available.

2. SEO (search engine optimisation)

So you have your product, next comes the SEO which is probably the most important element in the whole process. A good idea is to set the domain name to match your product with the magic word FREE; example: (yourproductforfree.com). You can see what an impact this process makes in the search page itself (Google free.com for an example). People who land on this search page are more likely to click your ad than say a sponsored one. If you look for products that *aren’t as popular* you have a better chance of ranking higher for that product with little competition. Do a bit of research on your keywords with Google keywords tool, put in your exact phrase to see what the competition is like. You will want to see low search results for your exact keywords to make your campaign more feasible.

Point to remember, make sure your product offers a free version; obviously you will make your commissions when a customer upgrades.


3. Promotion
Do email campaigns, if you don’t have a list then use a safelist. If you’re not sure what a safe list is then just Google it. Turn out some articles and posts to review the product then submit them to article directory’s'. Do a press release pointing out all of the benefits about the product. Join two or three forums and find a relevant thread that matches your product; spend a little time on generating a good signature box for your bio. Give some thought to the right identity when joining forums; try to be consistent with your brand and U.S.P (unique selling point).

It’s a good idea to use all the power and flexibility of the social networks especially the likes of StumbleUpon and Digg, but also MyBlogLog or FaceBook, look for the high traffic networks, do some research on this. At this point I would mix it up a bit and set up my own minisite to maximise exposure. If this is beyond your experience don’t worry there are plenty of free ways that you can utilise mini sites by picking the right affiliate program which can help you to set it all up. And of course a hosting account is essential.

Another great resource for your promotions is Squidoo and Hub Pages theses are especially useful, make sure you surf around your category and leave comments on other lenses and Hubs to generate links back to your product. Look for some popular Blogs like Problogger and CopyBlogger to drop some more comments; these popular blogs have huge traffic.  Make good meaningful comments, don’t just leave a one liner, put some thought into it, you’d be surprised on how many bloggers click through your link if they find it interesting.

If you have some cash to spare then i would highly recommend running an ad campaign through the likes of Google Adsense or Yahoo. To give you an idea of a search page, type in *free.com* you will see some examples and variations of the word FREE in the URL and ad body content.

So to sum up the three main areas

Find your niche product
Research your keywords and phrases
Promote through multiple platforms

It may seem a lot of hard work but the rewards can more than compensate, stick to your task and never waver, be prepared to change tactics if needed. Keep track of your responses and analyse your traffic and sales.    Good luck and prosper.