Selling physical products online (part 1 of 2)
June 23, 2009
Most of the time Internet Marketers talk about how to sell products that deal with, well, Internet Marketing. I've been guilty of that, too, although for some time now my focus has been on promoting products that either help you create content or help get you ranked in the search engines.
I thought you might like to hear about how one guy (my brother Ted) runs a successful business online selling real-world physical products: porch swings. And man does he sell some porch swings! Last month alone he sold $42,848.31 in porch swings out of a small shop he has in his back yard.
Find that hard to believe? Here's a link to his May 2009 PayPal statement (he does all his business through PayPal):
Click here to see his PayPal statement for May
That kind of success begs the question: how does he do it!?! Let me start off my answer by telling you what he doesn't do.
No Gurus Involved
First of all (and I may be shooting myself in the foot here), Ted has never read any Internet Marketing courses. He's not invested time or money in any of the flood of material out there by self-proclaimed "gurus." He was seriously turned off by the hype and obviously overblown promises, so he decided to do things for himself.
Really, to sell anything online, you only need to know how to do three things:
- How to find a great product that's in demand to sell.
- How to price your product in order to get it to sell very well.
- How to get traffic to your web site so you can start making sales.
Ted took the time over the last three and a half years to figure out how to accomplish all three of those things very well. Let's talk about each one.
Finding A Great In-Demand Product
For the most part, Ted makes his own porch swings in his backyard shop. When he gets too many orders, he offloads some of those orders to another company in a neighboring town — but he mostly builds them himself.
He's not a trained, professional carpenter. He's just a guy who took up the hobby of woodworking and got really good at it.
So naturally, when it came time for him to find an in-demand product, he leaned toward something he could build himself. He used eBay to determine what products were selling like hot cakes, found one he could build and started selling it himself.
It's hardly a requirement that you manufacture your own product. Although the profit margins are generally higher, there are no doubt plenty of folks in your area who have quality physical products but a dismal web presence. Most "mom and pop shops" have a web site but few get any real traffic. Find these shops and resell their products!
Pricing Your Product
Regular folks who are looking to buy products online are very price conscious — especially in this economy. Ted discovered this early on. So he worked hard to find ways to cut his costs and stay competitive. One of his best tricks allows him to undercut his competition because he's a small business owner and not a "big dog" in the industry.
Being a small business owner has certain advantages in keeping overhead down: fewer employees, lower operating costs, etc. So find ways to keep your price lower than the other guy and you can expect much greater success online.
Getting Traffic to Your Site
Of course, no matter how in-demand your product is, or how low your price is, if you've got no traffic you'll get no sales! So you have to learn how to drive traffic to your site.
Although Ted is now getting most of his traffic from Google (thanks to yours truly–more on how I did that for him coming up in my next blog post), for the first year and a half Ted was doing great without getting hardly any search engine traffic at all! He used pay-per-click almost exclusively.
Ted did not, however, use AdWords to drive traffic to his site. Too expensive, he said. He found alternative sites that he could buy traffic from — again, keeping his costs lower so he could price his products better than the competition.
So if you're looking to sell physical products, try to think outside of the box and find second-tier pay-per-click sites to advertise in.
Coming Next Post: Ranking in Google to Sell Porch Swings
As I said, although Ted did great using pay-per-click traffic to sell his porch swings, most of his traffic comes from Google now. That really helps him cut costs because his traffic is virtually free. My next blog post will talk about the steps I took to get him the rankings in Google he needed to get the razor-targeted traffic that launched his business to the serious six-figure business it's become.
Coming this Monday, June 29th, you'll have the opportunity to get all of the details about how Ted found an in-demand product, how he cuts costs as a small business to price himself better than his competition, as well as what second-tier pay-per-click sites he used to sell his porch swings. Look for more information on that in the next blog post as well as in an upcoming email.
Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.
Comments
84 Responses to “Selling physical products online (part 1 of 2)”
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. He is the creator of a suite of popular software tools, including: Jonathan L Leger 
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I wish I had some skills myself to actually make something
Gobala Krishnan:
That's the thing: althought it does help your profit margins, you don't have to sell something you make yourself. You can do the same thing and sell other people's physical products.
Question: How much was he pricing his swing sets for? $42K is a remarkable feat…but I wanted to know how many he sold, though, and for what price.
It would make it all seem a little bit clearer for me…
T.M.:
His swings range from about $60 to $260 per swing, depending on the size.
Jonathan,
THANK YOU! for sharing. I admire you for sharing truth with your readers.
Siddique
Looking forward to the rest of this story…
Jonathan.
Congratulations to you and your brother. It amazes me how many physical products sell WELL online.
My main source of online income is ebay affiliate sites, and it always amazes me how much money is being exchanged daily in one little itty bit super sub-niche of a niche.
I'm always looking for new niches, I think I found one
Looking forward to the rest of the story. I'm surprised Jonathan doesn't seem to know who the first commenter is. Gobala Krishnan is a master blogger and internet marketer in his own right.
Gobala's comment is a little deceiving as he may not be a skilled woodworker or craftsmen with his hands although he definately knows the internet and blog marketing arena with many products of his own.
regards, mitch
Wow, your brother looks like you, Jon. Not that suprising, really, I suppose!
I especially like the order of the 3 steps you've listed. Finding the in demand product first (which is essentially the same as identifying the customers) is definitely #1.
#2 and 3, I'm guessing, a lot of people would switch the other way round, although the order you have them in is the correct one.
All the traffic in the world isn't going to produce much of an ROI if the product is junk and the pricing is prohibitive.
Traffic's worth a great deal more when you have the *right* offer to put in front of it, hence step 1 being to identify the right product.
Looking forward to part 2.
Amin
Thanks for the info. I also think ppc is a waste of money. I would like to learn other ways outside of article marketing and video marketing to drive traffic to my site without breaking my budget.
Looking forward to the next message on June 29th.
Theresa
What a great story. I am going to start paying attention to those type of Niche markets and finding the people who make the products. Very inspirational in this economy to see someone doing well. I can't wait for part 2
I think that most folks do not realize just how valuable the information you share is. I have learned more from you over the years and it has come at a very attractive price, FREE!
The only problem I have with your posts is that they do not come often enough…
Jim
Jonathan,
I have been one of your customers and blog followers for a couple of years now. I find your posts interesting and generally practical.
This is a great post. It sums the situation up very nicely including putting the value of "guru" advice in perspective. In my opinion so much of that advice is too overly focused on a single tactic and does not address the broader internet business "problem".
Congrats to your brother.
Thanks for this post. I've been doing EPN sites and niche AdSense sites, and have been making decent money. I've been looking for a way to step things up to the next level and this post has given me some ideas. Time to do some research…
I can't wait to read the rest of the story as well.
Sounds really interesting.
Patrick
Jonathan,
Thanks for sharing so much quality information. I believe that honesty can be rewarded in many ways. I just signed up to your newsletter and look forward to a good relationship with you.
KevinU
He could probably drive alot of traffic with home improvement forums as well.I used to drop ship aquarium supplies and was doing 40K per month from just forums and the trust i built with the members in them. Very interesting read though.
Thanks for the suggestion, but he's already getting so much business now that he's had to scale back his advertising because he was getting too much business, with both he and his secondary builder at maximum capacity.
Nice problem to have, no?
Hey Jon,
Great post and well done to your brother.
There's definitely a swing towards selling offline products online. I see more and more marketers mentioning it and running courses etc.
I really like the idea of finding a little 'cottage industry' (or Mom and Pop as you call it), already up and running and creating an online presence. Just act as the middle man. Less work that way!
Hand made products immediately spring to mind. Products like bird tables, tree houses, childrens toys, furniture .. blimey there's loads!
Looking forward to the next installment..
~ Peter Tremayne
Jon,
I'm looking forward to the rest of this story as I'm interested in adding physical products to my mix.
The Ebay Partner Network keeps finding new ways to screw people with less than stellar numbers and I'd like to do more business with some of the other networks I belong to that act like they value your business.
Jeff
Jonathan,
Great post. I've often thought of selling physical product online, but somehow never got around to it. I work with local businesses and I'm sure some of them have product that would sell well. I'll be looking at this with a fresh perspective.
Bob
Jon, the first thing I thought (which was mentioned above) was you how much you and your brother look alike.
That is awesome for your brother! Selling a physical product is something I have been thinking about for awhile, or at least selling something I have control over. Adsense and affiliate programs are great, but it has happened more then once where they go away or something changes outside my control that would not be an issue if I owned the end product (digital or physical).
Although I know selling something you own brings additional headaches (sales taxes to mention one) there must be a really good feeling having total control.
Looking forward to more.
thanks.
Thanks, Jon… and Kudo's to your brother.
Great thoughts you're sharing here.
As usual, your ideas are very well received!
Hey Jonathan,
Great post. Wish I had his skill…or some skill. Can't wait for part 2!
Thanks,
Sandra
Really, great inspiring story, when I think how much I've spent in the past on hype and no results and your brother did it without any of this.
I take my hat off to him!…..Congratulations.
I can't wait for Part 2, especially the second-tier PPC stuff. I've been so focused on Google it never occurred to me that there are other companies offering PPC…duh!
I'd like to hear more about how he found 'second level ppc programs'.
I have no idea how to even start with that, and I think it would be very helpful to ANYONE looking for methods of cutting their advertising expenses.
GREAT post, though, and reminds us that "thinking outside the box", is not only good marketing rule, but demonstrates that there is still money to be made by anyone that utilizes razor-targeted niche marketing.
Congratulations to your brother Jon
And thanks for sharing his story with us. I can't wait to hear the rest of it.
Your brothers cute by the way
Amazing!
There are really countless unexplored niches out there and your brother is the real proof.
Makes me think about switching to making porch swings instead of this business
Can't wait for part 2!
Cool story. Thanks Jonathan. Amazing that shipping costs doesn't kill him.
Thanks Jon for giving us some real life examples of real products being sold on the internet. Much better than all the stories we get about selling information products and internet marketing courses.
It shows that normal businesses can thrive on the internet and, as someone trying to use the internet to market physical products, your brother is an insiration.
Thanks again and keep up the good work.
Information and Physical producst are both what really makes the internet.
I'm planting little seeds by setting up targeted Ebay and Amazon product sites for free on Squidoo and slowly but with certainty am seeing bountiful harvest take root.
I loved the article but I can't hardly wait for the next post revealing the second tier pay per click sites.
Hi Jon,
Congratulation to you and your brother. Thanks for sharing this great tips. I love the order of the steps and that is something that I have working on lately. I hope I will be able to make the same amount your brother made very soon. What a great blog you have here Jon, full of useful and helpful tips. Keep it up.
John - you're doing it again… you're using the tactic to draw me in… knowing that I will make sure to come back on the 29th to get the punch line of the story… well done padre!
Thanks for another interesting and informative posting Jonathan.
I look forward to reading part 2, which is hopefully the meat and potatoes. Hopefully, we can learn to do as well online as your brother is doing offline.
Kind regards,
Barry
This are the story that make me believe that selling real product in internet work! I have been selling in eBay for quite sometime and always feel that staying too long in eBay will do nothing good to me.
So me and my gf goes for online store - by opening our own online store. Even though the traffic is good but sales is not there, i feel that we can push it even further by getting more traffic since we have done correctly for #1 and #2. So left #3 which I will be reading in your next post.
Thanks for your tips and really never make me give up on selling on other online platform instead of ebay. Thanks!
This is fantastic, Jon! Congrats to your brother Ted. And I want to add, just like you did in one of your comments, that this is indeed possible with affiliate products, too. I have built a website about beach decor and this site is purely selling physical products around the home decor and beach niche. I sell products through an amazon store and ebay widgets. Combined with my income from this site from Adsense I make about $150 a month at the moment from this site. I know that doesn't sound much, but you have to consider that I do NOT work on this site much at all any more. I set it up, optimized it for the search engines, wrote a few articles and squidoo lenses and let it go. It took a few months for the money to come in, but now it does - without me doing anything much at all. I might put a blog post up one or twice a month, and occasionally add another inbound link, and that's it. So I am planning on expanding on that, build more websites like it and see my income grow!
Thanks for a great post!
Really nice idea thanks for sharing this post. Congratulation to you and your brother. I would like to know more about he product based online marketing and waiting for your next post.
All the best!
In all honestly I have to say I find it hard to believe. I've been following you and your products for some great amount of time know. One things has never changed. You are a great sales man. Your product are middle of the road. Some work and some don't But please stop trying to tell us that their is some easy way to make lots of money online. It dosn't exist any more. You have some good points but some things are way off base. Bust I will still continue to follow you unstill you come of with something from out of the world. Look Luck.
Hi Jon,
it is really a nice posting and sharing for this article, waiting your next post on part 2
best wishes
Hi Jon,
What an inspiring post. It shows that we can also sell real world physical products in order to make huge sums of money apart from selling only informational "how to make money online" products.
Well written!
Keep more coming.
Welly
That is really a successful story. I need to hear more tips on how to sell physical product online. I really hope to be like Ted
Nice post. I am looking forward to the next one.
I run some sites that I have partnerships in where my partner is the manufacturer & distributor and I look after sales online. 2 specific markets are Coffee and Dog Clothes. So I am very interested in your next post.
Regards
Justin
this is a remarkable achievement, $42,848.31 in sales last month…WOW!
that is awesome!
I recently started a site selling a physical product in a particular niche market as an affiliate. The site is up and running but I'm still struggling to get traffic to the site, I don't want to use pay per click advertising because I'm on a fairly low income.
I would be really interested in finding out how to get ranked highly in the search engines for my long tail keyword phrases.
I look forward to part 2
John O'Hara
United Kingdom
Hey Jon,
Refreshing post as usual!
I like seeing real-life success stories like this.
Just a thought; we all know how high paypal fees are.
Given his volume, maybe it's time to open a merchant account himself or to accept cheques, etc?
The savings could of course be passed on to his customers as well- win-win-situation?
Looking forward to part 2
yes, i aggree with you, ppc has become way bit expensive these days.. It's good that we find alternative ppc sources. well Congrats to you n your brother. Man, am waiting for your next post which will throw light on google traffic.
Great idea with physical products while everybody else focuses on infoproducts (which is good too of course). However, nothing is as easy as it may sound and I think for a newbie selling physical stuff is even more difficult and risky than selling digital goods.
Gunter
Finally someone got mention the real make money online secrets.
Definitely not buying make money online ebooks here and there, and realizes that the only way to make money online is selling the same books to other newbies again.
I am looking forward to your next post, Getting more traffic always helps sales!
Always look forward to your posts. This was a very inspiring one. I feel like I have been on information overload. I have narrowed down the emails I actually read to yours and a couple of others.
Now, I feel like I can take action instead of sitting in front of the computer reading everything and trying to decide what to to first.
Thanks Jon.
Interesting. I am very sure what's critical to your brother's success was that he SHUT off listening to too many things from the "gurus". Tell you the truth, they can get very distracting when one puts too much focus on them. And yes, your brother does look like you… I guess that's why he's your brother, LOL,
I can't wait for the next part of this post.
"My next blog post will talk about the steps I took to get him the rankings in Google he needed to get the razor-targeted traffic …"
Step #1, my new product for only $199.00. LOL! I am in!
Thanks for a quality blog and quality products.
Thanks for sharing.
Does Ted market his porch swings through PPC or natural search?
Jon I have no reason to doubt what you're saying but it does seem like an incredible amount of work for one guy. At the prices you quote, he's making between 160 and 700 swings a month, mostly himself.
Sorry if I wasn't clear on this: my brother employs 4 other people now to help him build the swings.
Anxious to hear about the Adwords alternatives. I use ppc to generate leads to sell to local businesses, and it is getting much more expensive.
Thanks for the post. Your case studies are great!
Can you update the one on the 3 way link site you did over a year ago?
Great information Jonathan, and thank you for continuing to share so unselfishly.
Jonathan,
I'm new at reading your blog. Great information. Aftrer reading this post I gravitated to the one titled "How to Get a #5 Ranking in Google in 14 Days Starting From Scratch".
In that article I read "I then posted 10 unique articles to the blog that I hired a ghostwriter to create for me."
Could you please, kindly explain why you did not use Instant Article Wizard?
I'm asking because I'm thinking about buying IAW, but then when read your article I doubted it.
Thanks for your honest feedback,
Thanks
Héctor
Hi Jonathan,
I am a newbee.
I would like to know how your brother gets Google ads for free as you state, And what do you mean by second-tier PPC? Does it cost anything?
And where do you get it?
Cordially,
Robin Williams
Yea, the toughest part about the online biz community is not finding the products. It's getting the traffic. I've been working on a web site, trying to get a bunch of traffic for over three months and I don't think I've gotten 20 hits. There's just an awful lot of competition in just about any niche. If you can find something unique and get some traffic to your site, you're going to make some bucks. If you've got the traffic and a half decent web site, the $$ will come tumbling in.
How long did it take your bro' to build up his biz to where it was making a decent monthly profit, Jon? Surely, it didn't happen overnight?
Hector:
I didn't use IAW because it was a test site, and instead of taking the few hours to write the articles myself, I just hired out. It's more cost effective for me to hire out that kind of work nowadays than write the content myself, even using my tools that makes it a lot faster like IAW.
Gary:
Ted's been at it for about 3.5 years, as stated in the blog post.
Congrats to your brother! I think you made it seem a little too easy. Can I be adopted?
i can find something unique and get some traffic to your site, you're going to make some bucks. If you've got the traffic and a half decent web site, the $$ will come tumbling in.
It's interesting successfull story, i am looking for your next email. Great.
thanks jon this is what i need beause now i start to focus to selling physical products and mostly from amazon.com
Thank you for providing this information on your brother's business. His remmarkable success and how he achieved it provides valuable lessons.
Hi Jon,
Kudos for your "little" brother Ted! Is he gonna sell an ebook on how he sells on ebay and gets search traffic?
This is great information as you can see I am also trying to sell a physical product online and it is not easy. So I'm always trying to learn new tricks.
I would like to know what second-tier pay-per-click sites to advertise on or what do you mean by that.
Dave the How To guy
I'll bet number three is greatly helped by having an SEO wiz for a brother. Wish I had one
Very interesting, I guess the same applies for digital products as well. Since a lot of today's stuff can be sold digitally like tutorials, ebooks (ofcourse.
Most of my skills are related to computers so that's where I'll stick I think
Could always have my girlfriend start making and selling her own natural beauty products, although shipping from northern europe could be hard since most of the SE traffic tends to be from USA and Canada.
Thank you for providing this information on your brother's business. His remmarkable success and how he achieved it provides valuable lessons.
Hi Jon
Talking about physical products - have you seen a new app created by a guy called Edwin Boiten (don't think he's well known), it's called the AffiliateBlogBuilder and I saw it on the Warrior forum. It looks pretty amazing, does everything for you if you want to sell physical products. I've seen similar before but this seems to fill all the gaps. I have used a few of this guy's Wordpress templates and like them a lot. Am seriously thinking of buying the app!
John
I almost agree with everything you said. But I have some doubts about importance of finding a product that is great in-demand. I would agree that to sell something people would like to buy it. But as I can see people would buy almost everything (especially things that they don't need) if you give your product right brand and let people know about it. Lets check Ebay for strange and unusual selling. There is a lot of products that sells great but you (and I) would never want to have one. Marketing can do miracles. Of course it is easier to sell a product that larger amount of people would like to buy. But it is not easy to find such product. The market is filled with almost everything in all shapes and colours. In this point it is the most difficult thing to find that kind of product.
I'll bet number three is greatly helped by having an SEO wiz for a brother. Wish I had one
Congratulations!
Interesting post. I would like to know how your brother gets Google ads for free as you state, And what do you mean by second-tier PPC? Does it cost anything?
Your case studies are great!
Anyone can sell anything online if they know how to do it. Congratulations to your brother on his success.
julia here.. i am student of BBA…. i got lot of information from here.. i am happy to found this………..i want to start my business i got lot of tips from here.. which will be applicable on my business
Hi this is hwsite
There is a lot of products that sells great but you (and I) would never want to have one. Marketing can do miracles.
Hi this is webdesign
His remmarkable success and how he achieved it provides valuable lessons
Great Post Jonathan!!!
As I always found helpful information from your posts. And thanks for sharing the great success of Ted. Really encouraging.
Mathew
i am happy to found this………..i want to start my business i got lot of tips from here.. which will be applicable on my business
"Last month alone he sold $42,848.31 in porch swings out of a small shop he has in his back yard."
That's an amazing achievement. I've tried selling physical products online, but I found it wasn't easy - what with the packing and distribution and stock management involved. Also, I stuck with small items (antique books actually) so it was relatively easier than porch swings. Awesome.