My Philosophy On What the Web Really Is, A Product Delivery System

I recently made some comments to a question on Facebook in a group that I am in, on how to find products to sell online. How do you expand your website into a business?

My comments centered around some people who have built web-based distribution channels that they use for selling products and services. Success online is about using your web properties to create distribution channels that you can sell your content through. We were discussing podcasts, but these are just the latest version of web distribution channels because they are so popular. But really any website or blog or video channel or podcast that starts to get you traffic becomes a channel for you to sell your own content on.

One of the hardest things to figure out with the web is why people come to your site or listen to what you say. But once you do you can capitalize on it and sell stuff.

I have a friend who I helped publish her book. It goes along with her blog and podcast on women empowerment issues. The main question she gets asked is how to make a podcast. People listen to the podcast but want to know how they can create their own podcast. This happens a lot. If you create a lot of videos, you will get asked what camera and microphone you use. The questions won't be on your content but will be on the tools. I have been encouraging her to create a quickie How to Make a Podcast PDF and post it on her blog. Then mention it in her podcasts to see if people will download it. Test the questions. She is stuck because she wants to talk about empowerment issues when in reality her audience wants to create podcasts.

My point here from the original question is to look at your content and your website stats and see what people might want to know. What are they asking about? One of the ways to figure out what people are interested in is to look at your website's Google Analytics or stats. Google has a free website called Google Analytics that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about your site. If you have a Google account you and a free Analytics account. Every web site records all kinds of stats about their visitors. What page people visit on your site is what you want to know about. For me, the most important Google Analytics stat is the landing page stats. What page did Google send people to? Now that you know that, create a product that sits on that page or posts that goes deeper. These are the pages you can sell related products from.

I have found that how you see yourself or your website is completely different from how the world sees you or your website. What you think you are doing is often wrong to what the world thinks you are doing. If you can match how the world sees you with your message and content you have a powerful channel. A channel that can sell stuff.

Don't have a site like that, then create one. A blog is perfect for this. It does not have to be fancy, Google Blogger is perfect and free. You have a Google account, you have a free Blogger blog account. If you have written a book, take it and post every section of it as individual posts or pages with the goal of Google Analytics telling you what people want to learn from you. Then feed it back to them. Once your site starts getting web visitors or traffic you now have a distribution channel. Wrap ads for your products around your posts or pages. Take all your content and put it online and see what happens. Once you know what people like, you then repackage it and sell it to them. You can not believe what you think you are doing, you have to believe what Google tells you your doing. You have to listen to the stats and act accordingly.

Posting, publishing, and releasing your content online matched up with your Google Analytics or iTunes or YouTube or whatever stats gives you answers. I have done this with many different products on many different websites. I sell, books, posters, courses, clothing, software, all kinds of different products.

Remember magazines, newspapers and TV shows have been doing this for years. They are not about the content that you watch or read, they are about the ads and products they sell. Different content brings different readers and viewers but it is still about the ads.

This is my point. Build web-based distribution channels, learn why people visit and sell them stuff.

Resources:
Google Analytics
Google Blogger

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