Three Things You Need to Improve to Make Lots of Money Online

@Elec - These are definitely one of the many things you need to watch out when building an online business. However I would also say that they need to work on themselves first before anything else...

I've created a few products and free ones and most of them are the exact methods that I used however whenever I check on the progress of the people who downloaded the report. They will always have an excuse why they didn't implement the methods I have laid out.

I'm sure most product creators will agree with me on this..

If people can't get pass this and will continue to give some B.S excuses I highly doubt they will be successful!

I admire your enthusiasm, but you're totally wrong. Here's why . . .



Yes, pay careful attention to your costs, but using a freelancer achieves absolutely nothing unless you categorically know that they can achieve better results than if you'd done it yourself . . . and more importantly, that they have a "handle" on your niche. Freelancers, in whatever guise, are only as good as the results they get YOU - not what they've achieved previously.


Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Setting higher prices alienates the middle and lower end of the market either for reasons of affordability, or the "too good to be true" factor. If at all possible you should always set your price structure at the lowest possible entry level. Then - if your product/service is good of course - you have many more customers to spread "word of mouth" praise.

Setting "higher prices" in NO WAY guarantees more money.


You can sell your product/service to few people, but the quality of it, coupled with referrals and spin-off's you achieve from it, far outweigh selling to many who are "one-off" buyers" who've seen your sales pitch but will never return.


Really!

I don't know any people - newbies included - that would enter into a business without having researched their market.

Oh, btw, researching your market is NO guarantee of high sales volume, as you state.


Sadly, no.

Rather than setting a high price for a common item, you would do better by finding a rare product or service that no one else offers online. In this way, you can charge what you want and still earn money, so long as there is a demand and ready audience for what you are offering.

I don't know about that. I'm from the old school and some mail order guru once told me to start at the high side of what you think the market will bear and then adjust down if necessary.

I've had a number of products that sold well at what I thought was a very high price and didn't sell as well at lower prices. If I would have started out low I probably would never have risen the test price to the level where it actually made the most money.

I always start high but as always, test, test, test!

This is an interesting thread, that starts to get valuable, but started out a bit wrong.
Of course the things @Elec mentioned are important, but as @positivenegative started to explain, they are very important in a different way:

1. Costs
Yes, costs are very important, but you can not just go for low costs. Having very high costs can also be highly profitable. What you have to go for is ROI. If you have high costs, but still make good profit, and those high costs are necessary to achieve the good profits, then there's nothing wrong with your high costs.
A great example is what I see with a lot of clients of mine when we start working together: the first place where they cut costs is marketing, because they don't actually measure the results of their marketing efforts, so they only see what they spend. After cutting the marketing budget they struggle to get new clients, and I have to explain to them why they should see marketing in a strategic way, and not just spend money on it.

It's always about ROI, if you get more value than what you spend, you should spend it!

This is also true for freelancers: you have to think of ROI, not just the costs, and it includes value and quality. If you get crap for cheaper you are surely not better off with it.

2. Price
It's about value and perceived value.
If you are selling a very common, very basic product, with not much extra value (like a basic low-end Android phone), you should go for the lower price ranges, because otherwise people will buy other similar products. Of course you have to consider your costs and make sure that you make profit.
On the other hand if you have a special product with extra value (like a high-end phone), you should go for the higher price ranges for three reasons:
- that's where you will make profit
- your product offers the right value for the high price
- if the price is high it means that not many people will be able to afford it, so the rareness and perceived status of the product will add extra value

3. Volume
This is in close correlation with the Price and Costs. If you sell something for 2$, but your costs are just 1$, and you sell a 1000 items, you make 1000$ profit. But if you sell something for 2000$ with 1000$ costs you get the same 1000$ profit by selling just one item.

There's also the basic rule of economics, which is true in most cases: lower price means higher volume, higher price means smaller volume. Of course sometimes it's exactly the opposite, but that's usually the exception, not the rule.

Volume is not everything, and sometimes it's even counterproductive. If you were selling a high-priced coaching program, and openly advertised that there are like a thousand free spots, people would think that you can't provide much value, and it's not so special. If you only offer 10 spots for the same program, people would think that it's unique, and can give value, because you only divide your time between 10 people.

You should always go for ROI and for the right balance between costs, prices and volumes.