In the age of the internet, you know longer have to own a brick and mortar shop to be the proud owner of a successful business. More and more people are learning how to sell products online from home and are becoming their own boss.
Most of us are familiar with sites like eBay and Craigslist along with others like Zazzle and Etsy. But with sites like those, your products can get lost in the competition. Also, what about those of us who don’t have products of our own to sell?
In this article I’m going to show you the most profitable way to sell products online from your own website with ZERO competition, even if you don’t have products or services of your own!
And don’t worry if you’ve never built a website before. I’ll connect you with the same training platform I used to create my first website that earned a $4k month in my first year and a $7200 month in my second. I’ll even show you how you can get started free today.
In this article, you’re going to learn all about:
- How to build a profitable niche website that gets massive organic traffic.
- Getting targeted traffic to your site from customers who are actively searching for what you’re selling/promoting.
- How to connect your target audience with the products and services they’re already searching for online through affiliate marketing.
- And finally, how to get started FREE with the best training and mentoring community for anyone looking to build a successful online business.
How to Sell Products Online From Home With Zero Competition
Let’s get into some Selling Online 101. If you’re looking to become an online entrepreneur, selling online isn’t nearly as difficult as you may think. It’s actually very straightforward. The main steps towards being successful and profitable in online business are the following:
- Choose a profitable niche
- Build a website
- Attract visitors
- Earn revenue
Choosing a profitable niche
If you’re going to be selling consistently, then you need to start with choosing an interest, or choosing a profitable niche. Choose something specific that you have a genuine interest in.
It’s not all about finding the most popular products to sell online. Instead, when you focus on a niche that you have a genuine interest in it makes it that much easier to understand what your audience is looking for. It instantly places you in your own target audience and makes it that much easier to write quality articles for your website.
Another key is to be specific with your niche. A niche like “basketball” is much too broad. But a niche like “Basketball shoes for teenagers” narrows your niche down to one that is very manageable.
Don’t try to be everything for everybody. It wouldn’t make sense to your audience if you started promoting camping equipment, photography equipment, and cell phone accessories all from the same website, right? Remember, you’re not Amazon!
When you create a website around a specific niche you’ll get a much higher percentage of conversions because people arriving at your site are finding exactly what they’re looking for.
And remember, you don’t need products of your own to sell. How can you make money online when you don’t have products or services of your own? This is where affiliate marketing comes into play.
Connecting people with the products or services they’re already looking for from trusted merchants like Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and others can be EXTREMELY lucrative. More on that in a second…
Building a Website
Now, while popular sites like eBay and Craigslist are available to sell stuff online, they are also filled with competition. Any items you place on those sites can be lost in a sea of similar items in a heartbeat.
This is where doing business on your own internet real estate comes into play.
When you build your business on your own website you are in full control. You can choose how items are displayed & you completely eliminate competition being shown in the same space. Further, you can choose any number of ways to monetize all your traffic that’s coming in.
Commissions and website earnings don’t just come from sales. In fact, the most profitable websites earn revenue not only from people who make purchases on their site, but even from people who show up and actually leave the site!
You can earn revenue through relevant ads placed on your site, building an email list, creating a sales funnel, and more.
Attracting Visitors
Traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. Many training platforms will focus on buying traffic. But the true key to building traffic that continues to grow for a sustained period is in learning how to build organic, free traffic.
Steps can be taken to get more traffic to your content, but at the core of building traffic is doing good keyword research.
Understanding the power of keywords is how you drive massive traffic to your website organically.
Keywords are the words or phrases that people type into search engines. What if there was a tool that allowed you to know the exact keywords your target audience was making? There is and it is fully integrated into the mentoring community I’m a part of! Utilizing this keyword research tool is the equivalent of knowing exactly what your target audience is looking for.
When you know exactly what your audience is looking for you can then create content that is the answer to their most popular searches! Further, a great keyword tool will not only show you popular keywords but the ones with the least amount of competing websites targeting them. This means you’re getting high traffic with minimal competition and this leads to massive conversions!
Earning Revenue & Getting Consistent Conversions
Once you have consistent traffic, consistent commissions and monthly revenue follow. If you’re selling your own products or services, this is pretty straightforward. However, how does one get commissions through affiliate marketing?
Through affiliate marketing you partner up with trusted merchants and then connect your target audience with those popular products they’re searching for. You’re basically selling products online for companies and this is VERY lucrative. Everytime they make a purchase, you get a commission. So how does this work exactly?
The process is actually one you’ve probably participated in many times without even realizing it. Let’s say you’re wanting to buy a camera. You make a Google search looking for a review of that camera. You find one you like, you read through it thoroughly, and at the end you click on the link that allows you to buy it from Amazon.
This link you clicked on is an affiliate link. When you buy through that link, the reviewer who wrote the article gets credit for bringing you to the merchant.
And when you know the most popular products and searches being made, this process repeats itself over and over and over again. The more traffic you have coming to your content, the more conversions your making.
This is why affiliate marketing is such a lucrative industry!
Putting It All Together – The Training Platform I Recommend Over All Others
Wealthy Affiliate is the platform I recommend over all others. If you’re looking to get started in online business, Wealthy Affiliate’s training will lead you step by step from absolute newbie to entrepreneur.
You’ll learn how to build a website that gets real, organic traffic in whatever niche you choose. And most importantly you’ll learn exactly how to monetize that traffic and create consistent monthly revenue.
Why do I consider WA the best? Because I tried it myself.
I’m someone who had no background in online business. I didn’t know how affiliate marketing worked, and I had never built a website before. I created my starter account with Wealthy Affiliate and I immediately saw the value in what I was learning. That was huge for me. I upgraded 2 days later and never looked back.
I’m proud to say that Wealthy Affiliate’s training helped me have a $4k month in my first year. Its straightforward, eye-opening training continued delivering with a $7200 month in my second year. If you’re someone who is entrepreneurial minded looking for a good starting point, I can’t recommend Wealthy Affiliate highly enough. Create your free starter account and get started today!
Summary
The key to maximizing your profit online is to create a business on your own website. It’s a little like the difference between renting and owning. Doing business on someone else’s space limits your control of how your content is displayed.
Additionally, whether you have products or services of your own or whether you’re connecting your audience with the merchants they trust, you can monetize your traffic in a number of ways when you build on your own website.
Getting the right training is key. Online business profitability doesn’t come overnight. Like traditional business it takes consistency. But when you have the right training and follow tried and true strategies, you can find yourself with your own online business where you’re the boss & consistent monthly commissions are coming your way.
Feedback, Follow, and Subscribe!
How do you feel about this article? Has it been helpful? Do you have a better understanding of how to sell products online from home with zero competition?
Have you ever built a website before? Are you familiar with affiliate marketing? Have you tried selling your stuff on sites like Zazzle and Etsy before? What was your experience like? Got any success stories and/or horror stories to share?
Share your story and leave any questions and comments you have in the comments section below! I love hearing your stories and experiences. I’m always available & I always respond, so don’t hesitate to leave a question or a comment.
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Eric – very engaging website about affiliate marking. Getting straight to the point about how much money is possible to make and then relaying the information about Wealthy Affiliate and their program. You kept me reading all the way through. I really like your Jaaxy information as well. Very upbeat and positive – thanks Penny.
Thanks for all the kinds words!
I think a lot of us initially go wrong when it comes to creating a niche. We often think too broad, or at least I did when I first started my niche blogs. By pertaining to a certain sector of the population, you’re going to carve out that market for yourself and yes, there is competition, but it’s now far less. When you say profitable niche, what are some of the greatest examples of profitable niches that one can earn a full-time income in a quick manner?
The greatest examples of profitable niches that you can earn income quickly in are the ones you are passionate about. Bottom line. The only way you’re going to earn income quickly is by creating quality content, and the only way to do that is to have a genuine interest in the niche. That’s the secret sauce. 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
With regards to choosing a profitable niche some good advice I came across is to evaluate the content you will be able to write. What problems are there in the niche that people want answers for? If you think you got a niche, make a list of how many articles you think you can practically write, then see if your niche is expandable.
You start with something very specific, and once you’ve exhausted the possibilities there, you expand. If you have a good amount of content in place before expanding, your site will already be much better established for your second subject compared to any possible competition.
In essence, it all depends on how much you are willing to work for it. The opportunities are endless. You can make any niche work if you’re dedicated.
Very well put. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks for the comment!
Great article! How long after creating your website can you start a partnership with companies like Amazon. Can you start right away or do you have to wait a certain period of time before you add affiliate links to your site? I heard that with Amazon you have to make three sales within a certain amount of time. How do you make sure to get sales in this time period?
The great thing about Amazon is they will let you into their affiliate program without needing to meet any minimums with regards to your site’s traffic. Once you’re placing their affiliate links in your site, the best way to get sales is to get traffic. Period. That means consistent quality content creation paired with solid keyword research. 🙂 The training platform I link to in this article has a huge focus on building organic traffic this way with a huge emphasis on conversions. The strategies and insight they give is priceless. 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
I have a question or two about keyword research. I’ve been using a free keyword research tool on my own to target keywords but I’m very interested in this one you mention in the article and how you mention that it will find the keywords with the lowest competition. How exactly does it do that? And also what constitutes “low competition”. Thanks!
Bruno
Good questions. Click here for the full review article on the keyword research tool I swear by. With regards to how you can find low competition keywords, it’s all about knowing how many other ranking sites are targeting that same keyword. You may find a keyword with spectacular traffic, but if 300 other websites are targeting it, you probably won’t rank for it which means your article will be lost in the abyss of page 7 through 10 of the search results. However, when you find a keyword with solid traffic and only say 50 competing websites targeting it, now you have a much better chance at ranking. Add to that the fact that this keyword tool also allows you to check the competition that is actually ranking for that keyword so you can know what it will take to beat them, from word count to site authority, etc. 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
Eric, thanks so much for all this information. As someone who’s been frustrated in the past selling on other people’s “real estate” I’ve been considering doing it on my own. I needed that push in the right direction and this post did exactly that for me. How hard is it to find affiliate programs for services that aren’t so mainstream?
Great question. There are actually thousands of affiliate programs out there in just about every niche you can think of. A simple google of [your niche] + “affiliate program” can show you several good options. The training community I’m a part of really goes in depth with this particular aspect of the affiliate marketing training and I think that’s an important step that can give your business real direction and scalability. Thanks for the comment!
Great post! I’m a affiliate marketer myself. How long did it take you to start getting real traffic? The one downfall when starting your own site is it doesn’t have any of that traffic the established sales sites like eBay and the other ones you mentioned get. Do you use a keyword tool to target popular keywords?
Keyword research is HUGE. Click here to read the article I wrote on the keyword research tool I swear by. It changed everything for me. And I agree 100% with what you’re saying. A brand new website will have little to no traffic starting out, but that’s why understanding how to build that traffic the right way is SO key. Keyword research has a lot to do with that along with building your site right. The training I reference to and link to in the article above took me leaps and bounds higher than I’d ever thought. And trust me, once you have that traffic the returns are sooooo much sweeter than when you’re just a number on another site. Thanks for the comment!
Hi Eric
I completely agree with you that the best way to earn money online in to have your own website. In the past I struggled with getting my photos to sell online because as a user I could never even perform a search where my prints came back in the results! Great points you’ve made here. I’m someone who didn’t know a thing about building websites and thanks to this same training you reference at Wealthy Affiliate, I’m proud to say I have my own site up and running live! Many thanks for your encouraging and informative post.
Chrissie 🙂
It’s always great to hear about success stories. Congrats and keep up the good work! The training at Wealthy Affiliate absolutely delivers. Theirs is the best you’ll find online, bar none 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
Eric,
I read your article on “How To Sell Products Online From Home With ZERO Competition!”. You cover the subject well. My concern with your article is that it makes it sound so easy. I don’t understand the ZERO Competition claim. There is tremendous competition on the internet. Nothing to be concerned with as competition is healthy. Please give me your thoughts.
Finally, please share some of your success to reach the monthly income stream you are enjoying. Congratulations!
Continued Success!
Rick
Hey Rick! Every single endeavor worth taking takes work, initiative, drive, patience, consistency, etc. Online business is no different. Don’t misunderstand my calling it straightforward for me saying that it takes no work. Business takes hard work, no matter if it’s traditional or online, but when you equip yourself with the tools, training, and resources necessary for success, that’s a HUGE leg up on the competition.
For me, Wealthy Affiliate was that huge leg up. I didn’t know where to start, and WA gave me the guidance I needed. That’s the reason I recommend it above all others, bar none 🙂
The “zero competition” is referencing that when you sell your products or services online on your own website there are no other competitor’s products on the screen as there are when you sell on eBay, Zazzle, Craigslist, etc. 🙂
Thanks for the question and comment!
Hi Eric,
Great high level overview on how to create an affiliate marketing business from scratch. Having my own affiliate marketing business I can testify that it can be a very effective way to make a living online. It’s especially true if you create your business around an interest as it seems less like work! I see you recommend Wealthy Affiliate for training, I’ve used it a few times myself over the years and agree their training and tools are better than any other system I’ve seen by a fair stretch.
Thanks for chiming in, brother. I appreciate your perspective. I think so many people see online business as something they’d want to try but don’t know where to start. I know that’s where I was 2 years ago. I found this training and never looked back 🙂 Just doing my part to get it out there even more. Thanks for the comment!
You have this spot on regarding selling on places like Ebay and Amazon I have done both. I used to be a powerseller on Ebay which took up so much time and of course the outlay for stock. Amazon I sold $45000 dollars worth of products and made zilch out of it as you had to pay for ads to keep your products on page one … only one winner there! Taking you up on the training you mentioned. You’re very transparent and I appreciate that. Thanks for a great post. I have connected with you on Twitter look forward to chatting sometime.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Martin. I absolutely appreciate that. You can always reach me on WA. I look forward to seeing you on the inside!
I enjoyed this article. I have one question. How easy or hard is it to partner with companies like Amazon, Apple, etc to be able to get commissions from them? Do they expect you to have ads by them on your site? Do you need to apply for it? Is it free or do they take out from your commissions? Thank you!
Great questions. It’s absolutely free to partner up with these trusted merchants. Amazon for example basically accepts everyone who applies. It’s as easy as going to their site and scrolling down to the bottom of the site where you see “Affiliates”. With other merchants they may ask that you have some traffic to your site already, or ask for other requirements, but it is always free. The training I link to in the article walks you step by step through the entire process and really guides you through it. Thanks for the comment!
Thank you for sharing your wisdom and advice with all of us Eric. In fact, after joining WA and picking your brain about how you made your first 4 figure month, I started doing everything that you did and achieved my first three figure month. I know it is not impressive as yours but it goes to show that all you need to do is follow the instructions and training as it is laid out!
Thanks for stopping in, Jessie! I really appreciate that! And you’re absolutely right. The training at WA absolutely sets us up for success. I’m only passing on what I’ve learned and I wish I could take more credit. Keep up the great work!
I really liked this article! This was extremely insightful for me personally as I’ve been looking for a direction into online selling. What would you say is harder? Selling your own products or partnering with these merchants to do affiliate marketing? Are there lots of rules to follow with merchants, or do you not have to worry about that at all?
Thanks for the comment! Personally, I’m not someone who had products or services of my own when I began. So connecting people with the products they’re already searching for online made perfect sense. And no, there aren’t giant hoops to jump through. It’s all about being honest and realizing that your target audience is finding you because they have an interest in what you’re talking about. There’s no need to “sell” to them. The training I link to in the article is the best I’ve found online, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to get into affiliate marketing. Thanks for the comment!