S M A L L F A R M S R E S E A R C H C E N T E R
F A C T S H E E T
C O L L E G E O F A G R I C U L T U R A L , L I F E A N D N A T U R A L S C I E N C E S
United States Department of Agriculture
Office of Advocacy and Outreach
(OAO)
Small Farms Research Center
Alabama A&M University
4900 Meridian Street
James I. Dawson Building
RM #219
P.O. Box 700
Normal, AL 35762
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Creating your own product and selling on the Internet is the ideal work at home opportunity to make money online...
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Low start-up investment.
Low promotion costs.
Simple to automate.
 Worldwide customers.
How to Find Things to Sell on the Internet
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The main factor to narrow down your options is whether to sell hard goods - tangible products, or digital goods - intangible products like e-books, computer programs and website content. The first option may be good for you if you already have an offline store and existing inventory, but, in most cases, selling digital products on the Internet is the best work at home opportunity to make money online, since these products...
are relatively easy to create and very cheap to produce.
can be instantly delivered by digital download - no dealing with stocking, packaging, shipping, and the like.
are more suitable to purchase via the Internet than via traditional offline stores.
enable you to fully automate your business.
There is only one problem. In order to sell your own digital products, you must be able to create them. But, the good news is you don't have to be a talented software developer or writer. There are many resources to help you create information to sell on the Internet in the form of ebooks and paid membership sites, even if you don't have any particular writing skills.
One of the best free online resources on creating your very own infoproduct and selling on the Internet is Ken Evoy's Make Your Knowledge Sell!. This ebook shows that everybody has knowledge and insights gained from life experiences that other people want and are willing to pay for, and offers the solution of how to create, publish, market and sell an infoproduct successfully on the Internet.
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How to Create an Online Store
You can easily create a professional-looking online store with Yahoo! Merchant Solutions.
This service contains in one package everything needed to begin selling products on the
Internet today...
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Domain name, Web hosting, e-mail.
Store design.
Product catalog.
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Shopping cart and checkout.
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However, most e-merchants dive into the process of selling on the Internet backwards. They create an online store first, and then worry about visitors. Their stores do look professional. But 9 times out of 10, there's nobody home.
Nobody's browsing. Nobody's searching. And most importantly, nobody's buying. And 98 percent die and give up within a year. Why?
#1 Merchant Mistake - Create an online store, THEN worry about traffic.
Open a storefront on a busy "real world" street - visitors will spill in and buy. Selling on the Internet, however, doesn't work like that. People aren't looking for you... they are looking for information. The only way that your online store, or any other monetization model, can succeed, is to follow the CTPM Process. CONTENT->
TRAFFIC-> PRESELL-> MONETIZE.
In short, it means…
CONTENT .
Online, people search for information and solutions. So give them what they want by turning what YOU know into high-quality, indemand CONTENT.
TRAFFIC. Your theme-based topical content ranks high at the Search Engines, attracting free, targeted TRAFFIC... interested, motivated, targeted,
"open-to-you" visitors.
PRE-SELL . Develop trust, credibility and confidence by OVER-delivering relevant, original, high-value information to these motivated, "open-to-you" pre-customers. (By the way, here's one of the best e-books on effective preselling - Ken Evoy's MakeYour Content PREsell. It's "#1 must reading" for anyone who communicates on the Net, even if it's only via e-mail, and it's now free.)
Then... and only then... MONETIZE. Convert your warm, willing-to-buy visitors into revenue, in various ways.
Sell hard goods, e-goods, your personal or professional services. Or earn income without selling at all, through Google Ads, affiliate fees, finder's fees, etc.
There are plenty of tools on the Net that can help you create an online store - a quick visit to Amazon Zshops, eBay Marketplace, or Yahoo!
Stores will confirm this. But, there is only one product in the world that takes you step-by-step through the powerful, natural CTPM process - Site Build It (SBI).
SBI is the most comprehensive and well established product among other small business website builders. You won't find any other tool that can show results like this. However, until recently, SBI didn't include an integrated shopping cart or online store functionality (it's fully compatible with many plug-and-play third party solutions).
But now, with the launch of Store Build It (StBI), every owner of SBI site can use this new opportunity and create a highly trafficked, profitable online store. SBI and StBI are a powerful one-two combo that work together...
 Site Build It. This is the engine that drives targeted, credentialized, PREsold traffic to Store Build It. Traffic is the lifeblood of any online store.
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Store Build It. Completely integrated into SBI (it runs on a subdomain of main SBI site) StBI is a powerful and flexible world-class online store.
Obviously, Store Build It isn't available as a standalone product for the very reason that there simply cannot be "M" without "CTP" first. Build a highly trafficked website. PREsell. Then, and only then, use Store Build It to create an online store and monetize.
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Key Points
 Creating an online store without traffic is no better than not having a store at all. Obviously, it's not practical to concern yourself with selling on the Internet until you have traffic. However, that's exactly what most small biz people do
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Content created in SBI attracts targeted traffic from the Search Engines, establishes your credibility, and builds trust with a visitor. The conversion rates are much higher than those obtained from Pay-Per-Click advertising or other means of driving traffic to an online store. And the cost to generate visitors is cheap.
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Content created in SBI can be leveraged to generate income from other monetization models in addition to direct selling on the Internet - affiliate programs, Google's AdSense program, finder-referrer fees, and so on. This eliminates the reliance on any single revenue stream, offers a greater service to your visitors (by addressing a wider variety of needs), and generates additional revenue for the business.
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Store Build : It is completely integrated into SBI. Store runs on a subdomain of main site, maintaining a consistent brand and building upon the SBI-built trust.
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Store Build: It's accompanying guides enable even the complete novice to create a fully functional and profitable online store. They are intuitive and simple, with plenty of screenshots to ensure anyone can successfully have their own store up and running. The authors consulted with top store professionals and ran their own extensive testing to determine the best and most logical process for store-building. And they show you not only how to create an online store, but also how to assemble and source a unique product line, how to write product descriptions that sell, how to best display your products for maximum impact and much more.
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Store Build It is fully scalable. Want to sell a couple of products or a couple of hundred? Need advanced features and flexibility? No problem. There's a version of StBI that will work for you no matter what your needs may be.
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Store Build It is affordable. It is significantly cheaper than you can access another store-building software anywhere else. For example, the "Starter" version costs only $99 per year. For more information, see Site
Build It and Store Build It.
Author: Duncan M. Chembezi, Ph.D. Professor and Director, Small Farms Research Center , Alabama A&M
University
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Small Farms Research Center
The Small Farms Research center at Alabama A & M University (AAMU) was first conceived in 2000 with funding from USDA’s Office of Outreach authorized under section 2501 of the 1990 Farm Bill. The mission of the center and the Small Farmers Outreach and Technical Assistance Program is to assist all small and limited resources farmers effectively deal with agricultural risk, food safety, and overall farm management issues and provide them with information.
Learn more about us by visiting our website and Facebook page through the link below
Website http://www.aamu.edu/sfrc
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/smallfarmsresearchcenter
Contact Information
Dr. Duncan M. Chembezi
Director & Professor
(256) 372-4970
Email: duncan.chembezi@aamu.edu
Ms. E’licia L..Chaverest
Program Manager & Marketing Specialist
(256) 372–4958
Email: elicia.chaverest@aamu.edu
Mr. JaMarkus C. Crowell
Program Assistant
(256) 372-4424
Email: jamarkus.crowell@aamu.edu
Ms. Bhargavi K. Pucchakayala
Program Assistant
(256)372-4424
Email: bpucchak@bulldogs.aamu.edu
Cooperating Units: USDA Office of Advocacy and Outreach (OAO), USDA/NIFA/ Beginning
Farmers and Ranchers Development Program (BFRDP), USDA/OAO/Outreach Assistance for
Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers (OASDFR) Program, Alabama Cooperative
Extension Systems, and Alabama A&M University.
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