Dear ETR: "Who can effectively put my product on the market?"

by Marc Charles

"I just read Marc Charles' article about getting 100,000 people hawking your products. I have a special situation, and would like your guidance.

"I have almost finished producing the first of four hour-long instructional DVDs. I have found that there's an average of 3,000 hits daily from folks wanting this informational product, but there is nothing out there to fill the demand.

"This product is perfect to sell online. Organisations such as ClickBank, however, handle only digital, downloadable products, not physical products like mine. (I've looked into it and, because the video is so long, have not yet found a way to allow buyers to download it immediately upon purchase.)

"Who do you know that can effectively put my product on the market? My time will be taken up with production, shipping, and other such details that will limit my opportunities to handle marketing."

Edith Benjamin

Dear Edith,

When you say there are "3,000 hits daily" from folks wanting this informational product, that doesn't tell me what I need to know. "Wanting" and "buying" are two different things. A lot of people want information but are not willing to pay for it. And where are these "hits" occurring? In Google? Another search engine? Across the entire Internet?

You say that "there is nothing out there to fill the demand." This is a big red flag! As marketing master Michael Masterson has said time and again, "Base your plan on the success of someone else. Don't reinvent the wheel."

Whenever someone comes to me with a product idea they want me to develop, I require three specific examples of a similar product already selling in the marketplace. I'm not interested in trying to develop or sell a product when there is no competition. If there's nothing out there to fill a "perceived" demand, it usually means there is no demand for that product in its current form and at its current price point.

The first thing you have to do is prove that your product will sell. You're looking for someone else to do the marketing because you say your time will be taken up with production, shipping, and other details. This is a huge mistake. Right now, 90% of your time, money, energy, and passion should be focused on marketing and making the first sale. Production, shipping, and other details are irrelevant unless you can do that.

You're right. ClickBank does not handle physical products. But hundreds of sites do. Nightingale-Conant, for instance, is one of the top marketers of instructional DVDs. However, they tend to focus on products produced in house. The lion's share of instructional DVDs are being sold on Amazon.com, Yahoo! Marketplace, and BN.com.

You can set up your own affiliate network to sell your DVDs with Linkshare.com, Commission Junction (cj.com) and PayDotCom.com, and Pepperjam.com. And don't forget about selling on Google directly with organic search and pay-per-click keyword ads.

Search Google today to discover who's selling instructional DVDs successfully and how they're doing it.

I hope that helps!