Create a Product or Service For Your Website

Creating a product or service for your website or blog is one of the best ways to make money online—and it can be surprisingly easy if you know what you are doing.  Many people are satisfied with just doing the methods discussed in my earlier article "How To Make Money With a Website;" however, if you use some of the methods described in this article you can greatly increase your income from your website. I think it’s fair to say that the methods described below are the best ways to maximize your website’s profit.

There are many types of products or services you can create and sell on the internet. If you want to create a product or service for your website make sure you create or offer what your visitors are looking for. Do research and see where there is a need in your niche, find the solution, and create the product or service.

To accept payments you have several options:

1. Use PayPal
2. Create an online shopping cart (*note-shopping carts can be easily created with Content Management Systems)
3. Pay an online shopping cart company to let you use their service
4.  Use Clickbank (if your product is digital) or CJ.com (if it's a physical product) and use their payment feature

With that being said, here are some products or services you can create and sell on your website or blog:

1) Information Products and ebooks

Ebooks are instructional books written in PDF format that can be downloaded on a computer. These are very easy to create and the only thing your customer is paying for is the information you produce. You can write your ebook about anything but make sure it contains top quality content that delivers what you say it will deliver.

Ebooks are fantastic products because they are free to create and every sale is 100% profit because it doesn't cost you anything to reproduce these. Ebooks can sell for a ton of money on the internet. I have actually seen ebooks selling for hundreds of dollars. *note-- you can also use affiliates to sell your ebook or digital product at Clickbank.com.

2) Membership Sites

Membership sites work well if you want to create exclusive content sections for your website that only paying members can get to. You can also give paying members certain privileges on your site (like letting paying members use your site without having to see ads, etc). There are many other great ways to use a membership site; just try to think of what your visitors want and what they would pay for.

3) Online Academy

Online academies are used to teach paying members about a certain topic. Often times you create an online academy to teach your visitors more in depth about your website's free content. Online academies should be places where you deliver regular "quality" content like articles, videos, and podcasts that are related to your website’s niche. Also, make sure you deliver content when you say you will deliver it or you will lose your paying members.

I also recommend using an online community/forum in the academy section. This way, members of the academy can help each other, talk about issues related to your niche, and have an open communication line with you--this feeling of interaction will greatly boost the overall value of your academy.

Moreover, online academies are great for creating reoccurring revenue each month because members sign up and are charged automatically every month until they cancel.

Online Academies can be created with HTML/CSS/programming skills, with a content management system (not very hard), or you can use a website that specializes in building membership sites. Also, you can hire a web designer/programmer or outsource this work to a virtual assistant.*note—we will discuss how to cheaply outsource a lot of your website's work in future articles.

4) Sell your services, consult, or freelance

You can be an online personal coach or do online consulting about a certain topic you are experienced in or know a lot about. Make your website visitors aware of your services and have a place on your site where they can contact you.

5) Create an online store at your website

You can also create a website that is first and foremost a niche store instead of a content based website—so your website just specializes in selling certain kinds of products.

*Consider becoming an affiliate for Amazon, Ebay, Clickbank, and CJ.com products in your niche and using these products in your store.

6) Premium Content

You can sell individual pieces of content as opposed to grouping it all together in a members section. For example, you can show visitors a preview of an instructional article or video and make them pay to receive the whole piece of content.

In conclusion:

Before you create a product or service for your website and put a lot of time into anything discussed in this lesson go to your visitors FIRST and ask if they would be interested in the product or service you are thinking about offering. I cannot stress this enough because it's a huge waste of your time (and possibly money) to create a product or service if no one wants to buy it. There are many free online survey services where you can create your own free survey that your visitors can take (like at SurveyMoney.com). Just create a quick survey and place a link on your website so willing visitors can take the survey.

...So have you tried any of these methods before? What are your thoughts (you can comment below)?

Also, be sure to check out this important report.