Comments on: A Micropreneur’s Perspective: Selling Physical Products vs. Digital Products

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:16:01 +0000

Part of the problem with the beach towel site was the choice of product:

1. Low margins
2. It was an item someone can buy at a store
3. Little opportunity for upsells (buy a bigger towel?!?)
4. Little value in the list of customers
5. No or little repeat/continuity business

If you can find a high margin, not-available-in-stores, continuity product with the possibility for upsells, then you have a winner.

By: C.S. Hsia

C.S. Hsia — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:38:41 +0000

My startup, which has expanded into language based service, online community debugging, and an open ID provider, are all software based products. We’re firm believers in digital products and online based services (not ad based). However, it all still depends on the audience. Selling our VOIP service without a “physical CD” proves very hard in education. Whereas we got some big names interested in Pay4bugs very early, just with SEO.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:22:39 +0000

@Jannik – Check out the comments on http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2008/10/03/should-you-build-or-buy-your-micro-isv/ for some info about this. And yes, it was for sale – I purchased it at auction.

BTW, the Micropreneur Academy I mentioned (www.sixfiguresoftware.com) goes in-depth on the issue of buying a product, including how to re-vamp it and increase traffic/sales since that’s the key to a sustainable increase in value.

There are a lot of pitfalls to avoid so I wouldn’t recommend going to the site and making an offer on the first site you see. It took me a couple years and many bad purchases before I figured out how to screen sites, handle purchase transactions, and how to re-vamp and ultimately profit through increased recurring income or selling the site at a higher value.

By: Jannik

Jannik — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:33:22 +0000

Hey Rob,

I was just wondering – where/how do you look for decent acquisitions? Was justbeachtowels.com officially up for sale?

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iWeb Blog » iWeb Tech News Highlights: web marketing, F.lux, micropreneurs — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:58:02 +0000

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Tue, 05 May 2009 12:00:56 +0000

[...] les leçons apprises par un micro-entrepreneur: Vendre des produits physiques vs vendre des produits digitaux [...]

By: Daily Digest for May 5th « Flow

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By: recession marketing monkey

recession marketing monkey — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:01:42 +0000

Great post! I just sell via an affilliate link on one of my sites.. Although I have no administration overheads, it does suck only getting 2.5% commission.. look forward to reading more!

By: CVOS man

CVOS man — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:50:08 +0000

Selling online is a lot like comedy: success comes with lots of testing and perfect timing.