A lot of people have asked how I started out in the whole ‘make money online’ thing… I started out with no capital (whatever I wanted to spend, I had to make first) and so dabbled quite a little bit with all aspects that I heard and read about starting out – blackhat and whitehat, freelancing and various other things.
Although I did not flipping websites and domains seriously until a few months later, one of the main ways I generated capital was products.
The funny thing was that I was not making a lot of money at that time… maybe less than $500 per month. However, having read a lot of the ‘guru’ blogs, a lot of them recommended using products… and I listened to them.
When I started out, I thought that the ‘make money online’ niche was the ONLY way to make money… heh. Which is why I’m so against most of it these days… I did some stupid stuff starting out, and although I still do stupid stuff today, there is far less of it. 
Anyways, I released three products when I started out, I think… one on domain flipping (I had something like $200 in domain flips and considered myself a guru on the topic after that ), proxies (I had a proxy hit $20 a day and considered myself a guru on the topic after that ) and flipping PLR eBook sites (which, to be fair I did around $1,000 a week on).
Combined, I made around $6,000+ just on the total sales on those products. Remember that this is a person who had no experience selling products beforehand, no list, no reputation to be able to build joint ventures… nothing, basically. However, that was quite a lot of money back then and along with the money I earned from other ventures, allowed me to push on.
The reports I sold at the beginning were standard ‘make money online’ products… however, you can use this guide for anything webmaster related. Search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, internet marketing, blogging… you get the idea. However, I will say that MMO products sold best under the below steps.
I’m not going to recommend you use this unless you know what you are doing – there are enough shoddy products out there promising lots and delivering nothing and more are not needed. However, if you think about your customers and want to satisfy their needs enough, you will make money.
Report Structure
The reports were generally 7 – 15 pages long, and sold for between $7 – $20 dollars. I liked to charge around a dollar per page, so people thought that they were getting good value for their money.
Each report focused on one idea of making money (for example, domains, proxies, PLR eBook sites) and basically was a step by step guide, starting with buying the domain and hosting and then discussing the method. I also threw in a few related bonuses when I could get them.
Due to the reports being so simple (I used a free template and didn’t bother with images etc) they took around 30 minutes to an hour tops to write. Reports at this price range will not appeal to established marketers, but newbies tend to snap them up pretty quickly.
You can throw in flashy graphics, a table of contents if you want… I didn’t.
Where To Sell
I sold my stuff in two places. A third is added, for those of you that will be trying this.
Digital Point’s Buy Sell Trade section – I started a thread in the main section, with friends on board before hand that could post reviews in the thread. I also tried to answer questions when I could and made sure that the opening post was in depth as possible (to save time).
If you are selling an MMO product, nothing works better than showing proof. Showing proof of your earnings can boost sales by quite a bit. You should have proof, as I’m assuming you’ve used the method discussed in your report successfully (why would you create a report if you hadn’t? 
).
Warrior Forum Special Offers section – I didn’t do this on my first few gos, but my first product (priced at a cheap $7) made around $300 in sales, which was not bad again for someone that a) wasn’t established on the forum b) wasn’t a big name in IM and c) didn’t have a list of partners to help promote.
I mainly released the product to help build a reputation and this definitely worked, with people signing up for my list and people checking out this blog. If your first product goes well, make sure you follow up with a better, higher priced one. The Warrior Forum does charge $20 to list, but the exposure you can get is worth it.
Deal Dot Com – I have not used this yet, but will be for my next one (whenever that goes out… I really have no idea ). As I’ve not used it, I cannot give you guys my personal experience but I do know a few people that have done pretty well using it.
The above three ways are the easiest to get started… of course, if your product was high quality enough you’d start approaching others to joint venture, maybe launch on Clickbank or Pay Dot Com… it’s entirely up to you.
Delivering The Product
For me, the less work you do, the better it is. Which is why I liked to use E-Junkie to automate the purchase process… all the buyer does is pay and then they get automatically emailed a download link. E-Junkie also helps fight against pre-sale fraud.
E-Junkie costs $5-10 per month, but is well worth it.
Benefiting After The Sale
Around 50% or more of the visitors to this blog at the beginning were from products I launched… they liked the products, and so decided to check it out. If someone’s willing to pay for something you create, it’s likely they’ll check out a free source of information created by you.
You can also benefit by building a list with a service like Aweber, or placing affiliate links in your report to products and services that would help people.
You can also sell resell or master resell rights, however I’d advise against this because…
Flipping The Site
You can buy a domain, put up a short sales page using a free template and sell your product as a website with revenue on places like Sitepoint. By doing this, you can make anywhere between $100 – $1,000+.
By sticking up my PLR eBook product on a related domain (that took 20 minutes to put together) I was able to sell the site for $1,500.
What you will basically doing is selling FULL rights to a buyer… of a product that has proven success (if it’s made sales). If you want, you can even do this before you start selling it – there are brand new products going for upwards of $600 on Sitepoint, although they are pretty well developed.
Problems With This
The problem with this method is that you can get yourself into a kind of comfortable rut… and solely depend on it. Once I started with products, and found out how easy they were… I stopped looking at other things, and just started developing one product after another to sell (I had something like ten on the go at one point). Although they made money (around $100 a day on average, I think) I limited myself… and since I’ve started looking at website flips, coaching classes and other things, my income has multiplied far more.
So my recommendation would be to try products – I always think you should try everything once, as different things work for different people, however make sure you concentrate on other income streams too.
I do not regret starting out with products at all, as this is one of the ways I got this blog to the stage it is at today… however, MAKE SURE YOU BUILD A LIST! I have sold products of my own to thousands of people, and had I built a list from the word go I wouldn’t have to work and would probably be one of those annoying big name marketers that hits you with product launches every week promising the next big thing. Ah well, I didn’t so I’m here – so be it.
I will (hopefully) be discussing how to promote other types of products (non-IM-related) over the next few weeks. We’ll see.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:31 am
Great depth Jason
Lately I have noticed that most e-book sites are selling between $500-$700, which is pretty nice seeing as they only take an hour or 2 to put together
Otooo’s last blog post..BloggerLee Review
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September 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 am
I would be happy with $100 dollars a day, I am glad you pushed yourself to do more though.
What format is best for e-books? PDF? And how do you make one if so? I have acrobat reader, but can you write in that as well?
- Jack Rugile
Simple Sapien
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Jason (702 comments) Reply:
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:56 am
Oops lol… I write a post about creating an eBook and then forget to put in how you create it!
Personally, I use Open Office – it’s amazing, and I stopped MS Word completely when I got it. It’s free, and allows you to directly convert to PDF with all hyperlinks remaining intact.
Here you go: http://www.openoffice.org/
And yes, PDF is king.
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Ganesh (106 comments) Reply:
September 24th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I know your advice will work. I’ll do this maybe next week.
Let me earn a few dollars first with proxies.
Ganesh’s last blog post..My First Proxy – Unisurfer.info
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Ganesh (106 comments) Reply:
September 30th, 2008 at 1:26 am
I’ve got to agree with you. Since I switched to OpenOffice.org, exporting the files as PDF seems to be a breeze.
Ganesh’s last blog post..Google Pagerank Update
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September 22nd, 2008 at 8:47 am
Very comprehensive Jason! I really should right another ebook
List building is my big downfall…I have never really built one.
Tom – StandOutBlogger.com’s last blog post..Sunday Question: What Would You Be Doing If The Internet Did Not Exist?
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September 22nd, 2008 at 9:44 am
Very nice. What is the average amount of sales (unit wise) you usually get on DP?
Koi Games’s last blog post..The Fancy Pants Adventure World 2
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Jason (702 comments) Reply:
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:30 am
For a lower priced product (around $10) usually around 40 sales on average, with the highest ever amount being around 250 sales.
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Melvin (105 comments) Reply:
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:43 am
So how do you bother w/some members there always asking for review copies?
Melvin’s last blog post..Oh My, Pay Per Click!
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Jason (702 comments) Reply:
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:34 am
Get your reviewers on board before hand, and state that you’ve given out all review copies.
I personally like to leave 1/2 open as people asking to review bumps the thread to the top.
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September 22nd, 2008 at 9:50 am
Great summary of the process; I’ll look forward to seeing the follow-up article about non-MMO products, since I just can’t get my head around the MMO niche.
Minnesota Weekend Getaways’s last blog post..Three Wonderful Art Museums in Minneapolis
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September 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 am
Wow, this is gold value here!
Well I never really have focused on selling info products. All I have sold are plr junks and so…
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September 22nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
This is an awesome post as I am in the process of creating and releasing my first ebook (probably over 20-40 pages) for just $7. So for value for money that is pretty good. Thanks for the tips
Ryan McLean’s last blog post..This is NOT a Blog About Blogging
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September 22nd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I wonder whether,what all the other stuffs other than e-book,people like to buy.Any way good post jason
Harish’s last blog post..Sunday Link Love-September 21
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September 22nd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Ur lamez!!!!444
Just kidding.
Just my 2 cents: The sales of a product (ebook/software) depend on the hype around it. If you can build up the hype, you’ll sell a lot more than 50 copies of a $10 ebook. Fortunately not many product sellers know how to market their products effectively on forums.
Young Entrepreneur’s last blog post..Eric the newbie online entrepreneur 3.
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September 22nd, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Each and every post by Jason is getting more and more informative.
Thanks to him.:)
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September 22nd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Nice information about making money with ebooks , its important to have a hugh list to make a decent amount from it . The other option is to sell it on high traffic forums.
ZK@WebTrafficROI’s last blog post..7 Effective PPC Ad Copy Tips to Boost Conversions
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September 22nd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
It would be nice to see some of your previous products. How did it look like, profit you have made …. just stuff
Aleks’s last blog post..Joke of the day – RICH
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September 22nd, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Awesome post Jason. Your posts are always helpful and this one especially. I started flipping sites recently and your tips helped me do it.
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September 23rd, 2008 at 12:51 am
Hopefully this won’t encourage noobs to create more garbage and dilute the marketplace even more. And yes I am bitter about that.
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September 23rd, 2008 at 4:14 am
You have knack for writing and thought flows. Impressive.
moneymoe’s last blog post..Moe’s Top 4
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September 23rd, 2008 at 8:10 am
That’s a very inspiring story there!
Thanks for sharing it!
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September 23rd, 2008 at 8:25 pm
[...] Step By Step Guide To Promote Your Own Webmaster Products [...]
September 24th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Great post! Creating my own products is always something I’ve thought about and I definitely think I’ll give it a go now.
Chris’s last blog post..WordPress Duplicate Content
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September 24th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Great post, selling products to other webmasters wanting to make money is a good money maker. Digital Point forum is a goldmine!
frogstr’s last blog post..Google killed it!
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September 24th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Not much to sell on Digital Point, neither on Warrior. Some good information on this post, on selling products but you haven`t mentioned anything about PPC budgets and all that. The forums aren`t places where you can really sell products on daily basis.
“By sticking up my PLR eBook product on a related domain (that took 20 minutes to put together) I was able to sell the site for $1,500.”
Now I am not going to say..prove it, but damn that buyer was an idiot.
)
Alex m.’s last blog post..My Adsense Earnings
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Daniel (56 comments) Reply:
September 25th, 2008 at 8:32 am
I think you may of misunderstood what Jason was intending to say there. It wasn’t an actual PLR site in that he just found a PLR ebook floating around and stuck a website up with it. I am pretty sure that book was something he wrote and made $1,000 in sales, he then gave away PLR rights and the website to the buyer. To be honest, that price is more then good. For something that has only been promoted at one place and making $1,000 a week, one could promote elsewhere and continue the sales.
If however he did just stick a random PLR ebook up with the website, I do agree that $1,500 was a fluke
Daniel’s last blog post..Proxy Flipping – Website Flipping Explained
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September 25th, 2008 at 2:47 am
I think it is very admirable that you are self taught and how you have made the best of limited resources (read non existent capital).
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September 25th, 2008 at 7:12 am
I actually found TUK last year (when it was brand new) after buying a couple of ebooks from you on DP. I’ve been visiting here ever since!
@ alex m.: Jason did show proof of the $1500 ebook sell on this site back when it was done, he even posted a link to the auction on sitepoint. I don’t think the buyer was an idiot. The site was making $1000 per week (Jason showed proof of that as well) and Jason was actually disappointed after the sell that he had sold it. All the proof is here on TUK!
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September 25th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
These are all very good tips. Social marketing is the best way to get your product out there. I like digital point, but i was banned recently because I advertised as a new user in a reply to a thread. Heck, I didn’t know any better because I was new. Good post though
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September 26th, 2008 at 10:59 am
So many responses, there are lot of people thinking like me.
Aleks’s last blog post..Joke of the day – RICH
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September 26th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Great post Jason.
Very informative for me. I might try this out in the next 2 days and then tell you.
Thank you,
ArLinD
Arlind’s last blog post..Google Chrome Review
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September 27th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Its amazing what all is available on warrior forum. Thanks for pointing me to it!
Eva White’s last blog post..Toxic Chinese Milk
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September 27th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
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October 2nd, 2008 at 3:22 am
Great ideas and info thank alot. Maybe I can put some of these into work on my flagships.
Thanks,
Ryan
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October 2nd, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Yes the ideas are great but the implecations should be correct n upto mark then only it will help.
GaMinG’s last blog post..SiN Episode 1: Emergence
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October 6th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Wow, i never knew you could make so much money selling ebooks! Great post, and I think I’ll research this a bit further.
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October 7th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Did anybody implement some of this tips? I have some of them, and they work.
Aleks’s last blog post..Funny video – Shit happens
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October 10th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Thanks for these great tips of promoting, Im sure they will work
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October 11th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Great tips for self promotion! Thanks for posting this.
Christopher Ross’s last blog post..Google Changes the Way SERP’s are Displayed
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November 5th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Yeah, I remember you were talking about how much money you made domain flipping. I also like your idea about selling backlinks. But ebooks are a good way to make some money on the side. The biggest thing is finding a free way to promote them.
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December 6th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
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