Now that you have an idea of what it is you would like to offer via the Internet, apply this to what is actually selling online. Certain products move better than others; for example, most online shoppers would not buy an expensive suit, because the expense and need for personal assistance are not available.

Yet these same people would buy apparel from a catalog like L.L. Bean or Habitat, Inc, the kind of apparel that is not priced too high, that you can look at a picture and decide whether or not you want to buy it. At the end of this chapter is a long list of Web Sites you can visit to discover exactly what it is that people are buying,

Apply this to what you want to sell via affiliate programs and use the following criteria to measure whether or not you select an affiliate program to work with.

You should be able to:

1. Open an online store, ie, Web Site, as your primary business or additional revenue stream and immediately begin selling products.

2. Take advantage of online customer service, automated order processing and delivery, and the ease of having a business that virtually runs itself with no overhead.

3. Drive people to the door and help them decide what to buy, wherever they are.

4. Use your highly trafficked Web Site to attract traffic and generate residual income.

5. Increase your profits by putting an automated system in place that works for you.

Most of all, you do not need to be an expert. The affiliate store and staff are set up to answer questions and fulfill the orders. Your job is to simply get people into your store..

All you have to do is market and cash your percentage of net profits your store generates, hopefully doing something you enjoy. Sound good? Let's look at what is selling online:

1. Computers: If you want to prosper during this Internet economic revolution, then you need to offer the products that people want to buy, quickly and easily.

   Today, they want computers. Lots of them.

   They want faster computers and modems, better monitors, and more software. Most people who visit your Web Site are using computers. Our whole Information Age is powered by computers. Here is a conservative estimate of what the future holds for Online Computer Hardware and Software Sales:

   1996: 140 million
   1997: 323 million
   1998: 701 million
   1999: 1,228,000,000
   2000: 2,105,000,000
   Source: Forrester Research
   

   While computers are an excellent item to sell, the affiliate programs are even better. The challenge is in selling such a wide variety of products. If you choose to sell computers, make it one of your core focuses and make sure that you know what you are doing.

   Once again, don't worry about being an expert. I had a computer salesperson in my staff in San Francisco who had never sold computers. He simply read trade journals, one hour a day for a period of 3 months. By the end of that period he was the best salesperson in our office.

   Computers have and will be a major part of this market.

2. Books are the next biggest item sold online by most estimates. You have a broad selection of affiliate programs to choose from, including Amazon.com's famous affiliate program.

   Barnes and Noble, Books.com, and many other book stores await you. Measure these stores on the profit margins you can gain from them. Remember in our success stories about the engineer who started with Amazon.com, but found out that most of the books he sold went at just a 5% profit margin.

   He opted to go with Books.com, which gave him 12%. Another Web Site, targeted towards a niche market of Pets online, generated over half a million visitors a month and ran into a similar decision. This Pet Web Site owner was selling many books for Amazon.com and negotiated with them to get 15% of everything he sold.

   Then he called the distributor of books (this affiliate was selling many, many books) and asked if he could sell directly from the distributor and by pass Amazon.com. Because of the high volume of books he was selling, the distributor allowed him to become a direct reseller.

   Books are an excellent product to sell as an introduction to your customer base. Keep in mind that even at 15% per sale, you are most likely selling a product in the $20-$30 range. That's only $3.50 to $4.50 in profit per book sold, not even close to our $20 a product item outlined at the beginning of this book.

   Yet books can help you get your customers used to buying from you, and they obviously like to buy them online. It is estimated that 23% of the people online buy books (Iconocast, October 1998). Look around at any of the bigger Web Sites and you see the are all offering books.

3. Travel is a huge market online and one of the most lucrative. From Web Sites like Travelocity to Microsoft's Expedia, the ability to book cheap travel online is powerful. Travel will continue to be a major portion of Internet sales. There are some affiliate programs with these travel opportunities, but don't just think about selling plane tickets.

   You may find people want to travel to a certain destination, which may result in a significant market. For example, Hawaii is a highly searched for vacation spot online. You may be able to sell apparel, travel, vacation rentals, and other Hawaiian related products. Just look in a search engine and you will find a battle for the top spots for this heavily searched for term. Keep an open mind if you are thinking about travel, because there is much more than the flight involved. People also like to remember where they have been with clothing, souvenirs, and videos.

4. Music is one of the biggest markets online as well. From music CD's, to personalized CD recording where you pick your own songs to make your own records, the market is vast. People like to buy music, but like books it comes with a lower profit margin than most other items.

   Even if an estimated 10% of people online buy music, you have to be sure that your target customer base is interested in buying this from you. Two great affiliate programs are Music Boulevard and CDNow; both offer decent profit margins, but this is again a commodity product.

5. Apparel and clothing are just starting to catch on the Internet, as people see the traditional catalogs make an online play. In 1997, American Online found that apparel was its biggest seller during the Christmas season.

   Apparel and clothing can be a seasonal play, as most buying happens during the December holidays, Valentines Day, and Mother's Day online. These patterns may change as more people shop online, but for now the apparel game is wide open.

6. Toys are also big online, with affiliate programs running with good profit margins. This is most often a seasonal play as well. Etoys is the biggest player in this market, but look for a wide variety of companies as this market develops.

   Also consider that toys shouldn't be limited to Christmas-type gear; if you count computer and Nintendo/Sega type games, this market is very big.

7. Flowers and Greeting Cards are an obvious fit for the Internet. If you can pick up a phone and make a transaction easily, the Internet can facilitate this commerce.

   From companies like 1800Flowers to ProFlowers.com, these sites have networked florists nationwide and offer decent profit margins. Products like this would again move in according to certain holidays; Mother's Day in the United States is one of the biggest days for sending flowers, as is Valentine's Day.

8. Outdoor gear and sporting goods are also a good target. In particular, fishing is a very popular sport online. Most of the major sports like football, baseball, and basketball are dominated by the bigger sites, many of which do not use affiliate programs. Still you can look around for what is available. Outdoor gear for hiking, fishing, for extreme sports like rock climbing or mountain climbing may move well, along with vacations that relate to this gear.

   Here is where you could combine the travel with the actual sales of outdoor gear. Imagine a site selling fly fishing rods and travel to select areas to fly fish around the world. If you worked through our 30 second brainstorm and found fishing as your passion, you have an active market with many possibilities.

9. Vitamins and health food are really just beginning to make their niche on the Internet. From affiliate program providers like GreenTree.com and MotherNature.com to many, small suppliers of vitamins and health supplies, this is another growing market.

   In a recent study, the one thing people didn't mind hearing about often were health related items. If people are continually concerned about staying fit and healthy, this kind of product line makes sense. It encourages repeat business and is likely a good, long term play.

10. Personals online are very popular. One and Only is the most famous singles program, which run the gamut from dating services to just about anything you can imagine. Some of these personals tend to run into adult services, so be sure it is something you are interested in before you get started. Research what the product line is and look for subscription based services, which can be very lucrative.

    Many Personals services have monthly subscriptions; you get paid each month the person stays as a subscriber. Look into these programs for long term revenue.

11. (Bonus) Credit cards and merchant card services are an excellent market online as well. The business to business market for services is very big, and there are some great profit margins to be made on moving people to merchant card services. Some credit card companies are offering bounties, or payment per customer, for referrals, but they don't tend to add up to much. Still this market obviously has a major market online.

This is a simple overview of the best selling products on the Internet; subjects like pets, investing, and career development are major categories that we have not touched on. Look for more growth in these industries as affiliates programs spread.

In the next chapter we will cover the places to go and find your affiliate programs; for now use the following list to keep up with the latest trends in the market.

Remember these sites, because they keep up to date continually with the growth of the Internet. This is an important tool in determining what affiliate programs to offer.

One last word of caution; don't expect to stay with all your affiliate programs for a long time. Test them and move to the ones that give you the most sales. Be flexible and set your goals so that you can gauge whether or not it is worth your pursuing for a long time.

Charts and Graphs re: Sales Projections on the Internet and types of product purchases:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/reports/1998-04-Netshop2.html

Spending by location (USA, Europe, etc.), gender, experience, and age group:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q49.htm

Web vendor to traditional vendor comparison, suggesting that the web has certain positive attributes and credit safety is not an issue:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q6.htm

Opinions on Providing Credit Card Information:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q4.htm

Which of the following features are MOST IMPORTANT to you personally, when shopping, or considering shopping, on the Web:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q66.htm

How often do you use the web for shopping for personal reasons? (including gathering product/service/vendor information, placing orders, making purchases, and/or customer support)
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q80.htm

How often do you use the web for shopping for professional reasons?
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q81.htm

Listed below are some of the alternative manners in which you might purchase from Web vendors. For each scenario, please indicate how likely you are to buy a competitively priced product/service that you really wanted. (In each case assume that you are providing the needed information, and receiving the product/service directly from the vendor.)
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q5.htm

How often do you make a decision to purchase (or not to purchase) a product/service based primarily on information that you have gathered on the web whether or not you use the web to make the purchase?
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/personal/q99.htm

Growth Projections of the Internet:
http://www.c-i-a.com/199809iu.htm

Forrester Estimates Worldwide Internet Commerce Will Reach As High As $3.2 Trillion In 2003:
http://www.forrester.com/press/pressrel/981105.htm

A statistical snapshot of the net today, and a glimpse of where its going tomorrow:
http://www.emarketer.com/estats/welcome.html

How many are online throughout the world?
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/index.html