Ken McCarthy’s latest article titled “Top Picks for 2007 – Part Two” is reprinted here. [Article]


Ken McCarthy’s latest article is reprinted here.

Top Picks for 2007 – Part Two

Several years ago, Mike Quarles, a System grad, took me to task.

“You should spend more time on how to sell physical products online. It’s a great opportunity for people.”

Mike knew what he was talking about.

He took his family’s business forms business from $700 a month to over $1 million a year in online sales in less than 18 months.

And he did it with just his basic System Seminar training and no special help from us.

He was right, of course.

Many System grads chose to apply what they learned at the System not to selling information, but to selling hard goods.

And lots of them did very, very well.

When something happens naturally, it’s always a good idea to pay attention – and pay attention I did.

I went on an intensive search to find folks who were:

a) successful at selling physical products online and

b) willing and able to talk about it.

Surprisingly, this was not an easy thing to do.

Most people who are good at selling physical products online don’t see any reason to slow down long enough to teach what they know to others.

Also, many of them go into selling *physical* products specifically because they’re NOT speakers, or writers or teachers.

They’re just guys who sell stuff and make money. Simple.

A big breakthrough came for me when I met Andy Jenkins. Andy not only ran several successful online stores, he captured everything he learned about the process in a book.

“Andy, you realize there’s $10,000 worth of information in that book, don’t you?” (I think at the time he was selling it for $49.)

It was a super book and the reason I know is that is that it helped launch so many online physical products success stories.

One day Andy suggested I meet his friend Robin Cowie. Robin is an expert on one of the most important aspects of selling physical products online: product sourcing.

Unlike info marketing, where most entrepreneurs create their own material or license it from colleagues, folks who sell physical products live or die on the quality of their product sourcing.

If you’re good at sourcing, it means you can find high quality, high demand goods from reliable vendors at excellent prices.

This is one skill physical products marketers must have.

All the traffic and fancy marketing in the world won’t help you one bit if you can’t find a steady supply of product.

But sourcing product ain’t easy.

First of all it’s very labor intensive…

Long hours searching directories, contacting suppliers, deciphering terms, and then testing.

And I don’t mean testing ads. I mean testing whether your supplier is reliable!

This is a huge challenge in the physical products business. Probably less than 1 out of 10 suppliers is worth doing business with.

A few years back, one of Robin’s colleagues had a brainstorm…why not find and catalog all the reliable, net entrepreneur-friendly product suppliers there are in each product category and make all the information available in a single guide.

It was a simple idea, but very powerful.

In a short time, thousands of online merchants were using the resource and even eBay was looking to Robin’s company for advice and training for its down merchants.

Fast foward to the present…

No matter what you’re selling, whether it’s information, advice, services or physical products, it pays to think about selling physical products.

Let me give you one example of why:

An attendee at last year’s System Seminar, a veteran online marketer who provides Internet services to dentists, stood up at the end of the conference and said:

“Robin Cowie just added a million dollars in annual sales to my company – minimum.

We have a relationship with thousands of dentists and it never occured to me how it easy it could be to source physical products to sell them.

I didn’t know that there are company’s that make selling physical products as easy as selling eBooks. We can just send them payment and they handle all the warehousing and shipping for us. Virtual and hands-off.

This is going to be a gold mine for us.”

No matter what you sell, there may be a line of physical products you can add to your business to increase your overall sales.

If you’re already in the business of selling physical products, Robin’s sourcing resources are invaluable.

But as good as Robin’s service has been, it just got ridiculously better.

He’s just come out with a service called One Source that when I saw it literally made the hair stand up on the back of my head!

It’s an insanely advanced product research service at an insanely low price.

Frankly, I don’t get it. How can anyone make so much quality, hard-to-find vendor information available for so little?

But I know that Robin knows what he’s doing.

Maybe he’s decided he doesn’t need to make all the money in the world.

Mayeb he’s decided to become a humanitarian.

I don’t know, but if you’re in Internet marketing, you really should check this out without delay before he wakes up and jacks up the price substantially. www.worldwidebrands.com/kenmccarthy

Enjoy!

Ken

P.S. Robin spoke at System 2006 and I’m pleased to announce he’s coming back as a faculty member again for System 2007 which is in Chicago this year, April 27 – 29.

Ken McCarthy

Ken McCarthy organized and sponsored the first conference ever held on the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web. His company Amacord Inc., formerly E-Media, was one of the first Internet-based businesses in the world.

In addition to working with small and mid-sized business clients since 1993, McCarthy was a consultant to NEC’s Biglobe, the largest online service in Japan, from 1996 to 2001. His book The Internet Business Manual was the first book on web entrepreneurship published in that country. He is also credited by Hotwired magazine with being one of the people responsible for the development and popularization of the banner ad, one of the key underpinnings of commercial Internet publishing.

A graduate of Princeton University, McCarthy came to the Internet industry with a varied background which included technical consulting for two of New York’s top investment banks, lecturing on educational psychology at MIT, Columbia, and NYU, and founding and operating a number of small businesses, including one that helped produce an Academy Award winning documentary. Ken McCarthy is associated with the following blogs: Ken McCarthy’s Blog, System Video Blog and Internet Video Marketing Letter

*IMNewswatch would like to thank Ken McCarthy for granting permission to reprint the latest article.

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