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Are You Trying to Sell Steak to a Vegetarian?

A common statement that I receive from my newsletter subscribers is, "I am looking for something else to promote because my current program is not generating much income. Can you refer me to programs that have made you money on the Internet?"

My first response is always, "Sure, I'd be glad to show you how I've made money on the web, but keep in mind that what sells on my web site may not sell as well on your web site...if at all."

If you already have a site getting visitors, there is probably a commonality among these visitors (internet rookies, home based job seekers, etc.)  Who visits your web site largely depends on where you advertise.

For example, if you promote your web site by posting to the "employment" section of the free classifieds, you are likely to receive visitors that are generally less experienced on the web, looking for a low-cost way to make money, and are very skeptical about paying any type of start-up cost to begin making money.  These are generally the types of people that visit the free classified sites.

So if the majority of your visitors are getting to your site via the employment section of the free classified sites and other freebies, you should keep that in mind when deciding on what to sell.  Knowing this....you probably would have a difficult time selling a business opportunity that costs $200 to join.

Your web site should cater to your audience-type.  They may not want to pay $200 to join a business opportunity, but maybe they'll be interested in buying a reasonably priced book on how to start a business on the web like Ken Evoy's award winning e-books, Make Your Site Sell or Make Your Knowledge Sell.

Or maybe they'd like to invest in some "How to start a business" books from Amazon.com  You could join their free affiliate program and offer their low-cost books from your site.  Once again, these books should cater to their needs!  

So you should not always go looking to promote products, services, and opportunities that earn you the most commission/revenue.  You should look for high-quality products that offer extreme benefits to your daily visitors.

Sure, you may earn $150 for every person that you get to sign up for a merchant account, but if you're web site's audience doesn't even know what a merchant account is, this type of offer would be of no interest to the people who visit your site.  

On the other hand, you may feature of $50 book from Amazon.com on how to avoid Internet scams. Under their terms, you'll only earn about $7.50 for every person you get to buy, BUT if this book caters to your audience, you could make a killing if you get enough visitors to your site.

Use this site as an example. As I mentioned earlier, I know that the people that come to this site are mostly beginning Internet marketers looking for low cost methods of advertising. So I wouldn't recommend thousand-dollar courses and software for advanced marketers because I know that wouldn't be of any interest to my audience. 

So remember that when deciding what to sell online.  Don't try to find an audience for your offer, find an offer for your existing audience.  And if it's not a product that you developed yourself (you may be selling someone else's product/service via an affiliate program), purchase it, review it, recommend it, and sell, sell, sell!

People that make any decent amount of money on the web sell high-quality products/services at reasonable prices that appeal to the people that visit their site.

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