When I first started out in internet marketing nearly two years ago, I only ever thought about selling digital products. I joined many different marketer’s mailing lists and all I ever saw was promotions for eBooks and software products. Of course I purchased my fair share (more than my fair share to be honest) of digital products online myself, and I loved the fact you could get access to them immediately.

The whole concept of being able to sell a digital product over and over again to many different people, and having it delivered to their inbox as soon as they made a payment, even if you were sleeping, fascinated me. Plus of course you don’t need to carry any physical inventory for your products, you can simply store them on your hard drive. You don’t even have to do that if you are promoting somebody else’s product as an affiliate, you just get your affiliate link and put it in a place that people are going to see it.

Up until the beginning of this year, I had mainly been working in the IM / make money online niche. I had done a fair amount of article marketing that promoted products in many different niches, but my main focus was in the IM niche.

But this year things have changed. I now look for any niche that has a market and related products to sell. I then build websites focused on these niches and promote products through them.

But I no longer just look for digital products to promote, I now spend a lot of my time researching markets and niches that I can sell physical products in.

Why?

Well let me give you an example of one of the main benefits of selling physical products.

When you do your keyword research for any product, you should always look at the commercial intent for any keyword phrase. This is to basically determine whether people that type in your keyword phrase are looking to buy something, or just looking to get some information. You obviously want to target the people who are looking to buy something, so it is imperative you choose your keywords accordingly.

If you use a keyword research tool such as Micro Niche Finder, then this already has a commercial intent function installed, so you can determine the best keywords with that. But if you don’t have Micro Niche Finder or something similar then you can use a free tool here:

http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx

Now say if you wanted to promote an eBook that tells you how to cure tennis elbow. You would think that if somebody typed in the phrase “cure for tennis elbow” they would be looking to find a cure, and spend money to get that information. Well I am sure that some are, but if you type that phrase into the tool here, you will see that it comes up with a 0.71 NON commercial intent.

That basically tells you that 71% of the people that typed in that keyword phrase weren’t looking to buy something, they were merely looking for information.

Let’s try entering another phrase – “how to get rid of tennis elbow”.

This delivers a result of 0.93 NON commercial intent. That is even less than the first one.
So what I am trying to demonstrate here is that for information products such as eBooks, you really need to dig deep to find the correct keywords to target people that are looking to buy something.

So let’s try this again with a physical product. I entered “Samsung LCD televisions” and look at the result I got.

It is showing a maximum 1, which means 100% for COMMERCIAL intent! That means that 100% of the people that typed in “Samsung LCD televisions” into the search engines are looking to buy a Samsung LCD television. They’re not trying to find out where Samsung TV’s originated from, or what components they use inside, they are flat out looking to find the best Samsung television they can, and get their credit card out and buy it there and then.

Let’s try another phrase for a physical product. I typed in “Flymo lawn mowers”.

This returned a result of 0.9, which means 90% of people that type in “flymo lawn mowers”, are looking to buy a flymo lawn mower.

You will get similar results for thousands of physical products so your choice is endless.

There are many different places that you can sell these kind of products as an affiliate. The big one obviously being Amazon. Another great thing about selling physical products is the conversion rates are much higher than with digital products, and refund rates are much lower. This is because companies like Amazon have such a strong and positive reputation, it eliminates most of the skepticism that potential buyers have when looking to by a product. Skepticism is very high when people are thinking to buy a digital information product, as they really don’t know what they are getting and whether it will really do what it tells you it is going to do.

Another great place to find companies to sign up as an affiliate and sell physical products is Commission Junction (CJ). They have many different companies throughout a huge range of markets and niches that you can sign up for.

The downside to selling physical products is the commission rates. They are no way near as high as those for digital products.

If you sell an eBook from Clickbank as an affiliate, you will receive anything from 50% to 75% commissions. But most physical product affiliate programs will only pay you 5% to 15%. You can find some that will pay higher, but this is the average range.

But this can be evened up by the fact that you can sell a lot higher priced physical products than you can digital products. Do you think it would be easier to sell a $500 digital product, which is surrounded with hype, and leaves most people wondering what is really on the ‘inside’. Or a $500 Samsung LCD television? I think the Samsung LCD television would be easier to sell every time. Then if you received 10% commissions, you will still receive $50 for the sale.

Here is a quick summary of the Pros and Cons for selling digital and physical products:

Digital Product Pros:

- High commission rates
- Instant delivery of purchased products
- Always a huge range of products to sell across many different niches
- No physical inventory to carry

Digital Product Cons:

- Harder to find real ‘buyers’ keywords to target
- Higher refund rates
- People more skeptical about buying a digital product

Physical Product Pros:

- Easy to find strong ‘buyers’ keywords
- Much higher conversion rates
- Less skepticism involved with physical product buyers
- Easier to sell higher priced physical products.
- Lower refund rates

Physical Product Cons:

- Lower commission rates
- Delivery of purchased products takes a few days

So if you have never looked into selling physical products as an affiliate, then I would really urge you to have a look at this as it can be a very profitable component of your online business and you are really missing out on some unbelievable opportunities if you just limit yourself to selling digital products.

Have a look at what these guys are doing here and what they teach in their product, the Consumer Wealth System. They show you how to make simple five page websites that take a couple of hours to set up, and each make about $150 to $250 a month selling physical products. Not a huge amount, but when you consider the little time it takes to make one of these sites, just think how easy it would be to make ten or twenty of them.

Click here to watch the Consumer Wealth System Video

I have made a video to show you how you can really optimize your article marketing by building a ton of backlinks to either your websites or other articles using an article submission software product called ArticleBot

Article Marketing is still a very effective strategy and is widely used by most of the top Internet Marketers to drive traffic and build backlinks to their websites.

By submitting your article to many different article directories, and linking back to your website, or even another article in your resource box you are going to build a lot of quality backlinks. This in turn will help improve your search engine rankings for either your website or your main article.

To manually submit articles to hundreds of different article directories would take forever, it just isn’t practical. You could outsource the job, but that will cost you a lot of money. The best way to do this is to use a software tool.

I regularly use one called ArticleBot. It is not as fancy as some of top ones, but I personally think it is one of the best available because of it’s ease of use and reliability and also the results it can produce. It is a VERY effective piece of software, and another great part is the price, coming in at just under $25.

I always use Ezine Articles as my main article directory. They are the best out there by a long way, and I also find that once your article gets published it more often than not gets indexed and ranked very quickly. They also respond well to backlinking, and I still have many articles that are sitting in position 1 in Google for their chosen keyword, after using this strategy of building backlinks to them by using ArticleBot.

Ezine Articles don’t allow you to use affiliate links withing your article or resource box. So if you wanted to link directly to an affiliate product you can do this by buying a domain name and redirecting it. You only need to buy a .info domain name for this, they cost $0.99 a year at GoDaddy.com. I made a video a while back that shows you how to do this redirect, you can watch the video here.

When you use a piece of article submission software then it is always a good idea to spin your article so you are not posting the same content to hundreds of different directories. Google will see this when they are published and you will lose rankings for you article because of this. There are many different article spinners available, but make sure you don’t just go for the cheapest option as they can produce some really poorly spun articles that don’t make much sense when you read them after they have been spun. One I use now is called the Best Spinner, and it does a great job.

To make your backlinks in your resource box, you want to use a simple piece of HTML code that will allow you to use your main keyword phrase as your anchor text. This basically wraps your URL up so that it can’t be seen and will show your main keyword as the anchor text, so that when somebody clicks on it they will go to your website or article.

I will give you a sample of the HTML code to use so you can put it in your resource boxes:

<a href=”http://www.YourWebsiteOrArticleHere.com”>The best website</a>

So what you would need to do is replace the http://www.YourWebsiteOrArticleHere.com with your own full URL to either your website or article. Make sure you place it between the ” “.

Where you see the words in the example above, The best website, this will be your anchor text (the words that will be shown and people can click on). You want to try and make these your main keyword phrase.

 This is a very powerful and effective technique for building quality backlinks to your websites and articles. You do need to use an article submission software tool, and I would highly recommend using ArticleBot as it is a great piece of software, easy to use and it costs just under $25.

To have a look at ArticleBot click here

Back in June, 2009 I decided I needed a mentor if I was going to make a success of my Internet Marketing business. Although prior to that, I had been doing IM part time for about 9 months, I really hadn’t made much progress and I certainly had no idea what direction I was taking my business.

I had made a few sales, mainly from my small list and also through article marketing. Back then when I joined Alex’s program my list was around 500 subscribers. It was after starting the coaching that Alex taught us how to plan and focus and also to set goals. So I started right away, and at the beginning of August 2009 I decided to put a lot more effort into building my list. I also recorded my efforts throughout August and turned this into my first product called the List Building Diary. This product alone has now earned me thousands of dollars and also added a few extra thousand to my list. My list today stands at just over 12,000 active subscribers.

This is a screen shot of my list when I started my List Building Diary project back at the beginning of August, 2009:

And below is an image of my list now, currently standing at just over 12,000 active subscribers:

This has all been possible because I was shown the right way by my mentor, Alex Jeffreys. He taught me how to run a business, and now I am working full time online and earning a very nice income online.

Alex Jeffreys is just about to launch his new coaching program 3.0, and this will not only be his biggest coaching program to date, but also the last live coaching program he will be doing for a few years.

If you are serious about running your own online business and getting rid of your day job, then I fully recommend you getting a mentor, and I would really urge you to join Alex’s program as I have seen myself what he can do to push you along and drive you onto success. I can honestly say I would not be where I am today if it was not for Alex’s coaching program.

I have decided to put together a bonus package for anyone that joins Alex’s new coaching program through my link. I wanted to give you a head start, so I decided I would base my bonus around some of what Alex teaches you, and that is building your list. I have made a very quick video for you where I go over my bonus package and I have detailed it more below the video.

If you haven’t got your copy of Alex’s new report, the Guru’s Nightmare yet, you can download it for free here:
Download Guru’s Nightmare

If you haven’t listened to the $10,000 interview Alex did with my friend Marcus Passey, you can listen for free here:
Listen to the $10,000 interview

This Bonus is only available for the first 10 people that sign up through my link

1. A copy of my List Building Diary Premium Package that I am currently selling for $47 here – value $47

2. I will set up your squeeze page for you, with a free offer included. – value $297

3. I will promote your squeeze page to my list and build you a list of at least 200 subscribers – value $197

4. I will write a string of follow-up messages for you to put in your autoresponder – value $67

5. I will give you a 1 hour Skype call where we can discuss anything to do with your online business – value $197

6. I will give you my personal email address where you can contact me at any time to ask any questions about your online business – value $197

Alex’s coaching program will be going live this Thursday 8th April. He is also holding a free webinar on Wednesday 7th. I will post all relevant links here as soon as they become available.

If you are interested in joining Alex’s new coaching program then I would urge you to be quick. He limits the amount of people he takes on each time so he can devote as much of his time and energy with them. Such is the high demand for his coaching he always sells the places really quickly.

If you are interested in my bonus, then please understand that I will only be offering 10 of these main bonus packages as it will be a time consuming project for me.

Anyone that buys after the 10 main bonus packages have gone will still get a free copy of my List Building Diary product, and I will throw in a few other surprises too, but the other items listed will not be available.

I will post an email address here where you can contact me about the bonus once Alex has launched his program. Please keep an eye on my Blog for all the latest updates.

**UPDATE**

Alex has just released details of his free webinar that he will be holding on Wednesday 7th April at 6pm EST (11pm UK time).

There are only 1000 places available, and this is being promoted very hard by a lot of marketers, so be sure to book your place early.
You can sign up here:
Sign up for free webinar

**SIGN UP FOR MARKETING WITH ALEX 3.0 NOW**
Click here to join Alex’s new coaching program >>

**HOW TO CLAIM YOUR BONUS**

First, to qualify for your bonus you will need to join Alex’s coaching program through my link so I earn a commission from it.

To be sure this happens you should clear your cookies first.

To clear your cookies in Internet Explorer:

Go to the top right of your screen and you’ll see an icon saying “Tools” (if you’re using IE 7 or earlier, or “Safety” if you’re using IE 8.

Open up the drop down menu and click on “Delete Browsing History“. Then just make sure you have “Cookies” check-marked, then click “Delete“.

To clear your Cookies using FireFox:

Open up a new Firefox browser and click on “Tools“. Then choose “Options“, then click on the “Privacy” icon.

You can then remove individual cookies or all your cookies. To just remove the individual cookie, look for:
“marketingwithyou.infusionsoft.com“,
click on it to highlight it, then click on the “remove cookie” button.

Once you have cleared your Cookies, then go through my link to make your purchase.

When you get your receipt, please forward it to me so I can verify your purchase. Please use the following email address:
bonusreceipts@googlemail.com

I will then contact you so we can start working on your bonus.

**SIGN UP FOR MARKETING WITH ALEX 3.0 NOW**
Click here to join Alex’s new coaching program >>

I have made a video that shows you how to go about looking for a profitable niche, a product to sell within that niche and also your keyword research (sorry, the volume of the video is quite low)





Resources mentioned on the video:


1a. Sign up for a Clickbank account here
1b. Go to the Clickbank marketplace here


2a. Sign up as an Amazon Affiliate here (UK residents)
2b. Sign up as an Amazon Affiliate here (US residents)
2c. Go to Amazon Bestsellers here (UK)
2d. Go to Amazon Bestsellers here (US)


3. Use the Google Keyword tool here


4. Get the reviewAZON plugin for putting Amazon reviews on your Blog here


5. Have a look at Micro Niche Finder here

I’ve recently purchased some new themes from Woo Themes. All of their themes allow you to change the layouts around so much, with many options and functionalities. Please bear with me as I find the right look for mine…i get quite fussy when it comes to the look of my Blog, so you might see it change around quite a bit in the near future until i am happy with it.

If you’ve never seen Woo Themes before, take a look (click on the big banner to go to their site). Currently, if you buy one theme, you get two for free. They also have a few free themes on their site that you can download too.