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Featured photo by Kaustav Bhattacharya
Or so it may seem. In reality, it’s actually quite the contrary. There is just a huge transition going on as we speak. Let me explain.
There is almost nothing, you can’t digitize today. What is the number one “rising” digital product on the Internet at the moment? My guess would be eBooks. According to the Association of American Publishers, eBooks overtook audiobooks in 2009 with sales reaching $313 million. That’s a 176.6% increase compared to the previous year. And what about this year? Think about what devices and delivery channels are coming into the market this year. Amazon Kindle has been there already a while (from November 2007 to be exact). Just lately Apple launched the iPad and the iBookStore (sales and delivery system for eBooks). Many other manufacturers have also released their own tablet computers.
Large number of nomadic entrepreneurs get their revenues from eBooks. There are also a few who sell games and applications for iPhone and other mobile devices. But I don’t want to talk just about eBooks. There are dozens and dozens of other products you can sell in a digital form too. Today, it’s also a very popular alternative to create, design and upload your product in a digital form and then let a middle man create and distribute the end result (a physical product) to the buying customers. One example in this category would be a service called CD Baby. You’ve made music with your band and want to get it out there in a physical form. CDBaby puts your music on a physical CD and distributes it into a numerous brick-and-mortar CD-stores. Same kind of thing works with almost any product imaginable: Books, movies, games, photographs, paintings, physical objects like tables. The list is endless. Cool, huh?
Let’s take a quick look at what kind of products you can digitize and sell online as a nomadic entrepreneur (note: I haven’t used most of these. I compiled this list just for the sake of this post):
Books
- Types of books:
- eBooks, audiobooks, physical books.
- Popular publishing & distribution channels:
- eBooks: E-Junkie, ClickBank, Lulu
- Audiobooks: Audio book-A-rama
- Print-on-demand (POD) – self-publish and sell your book as a hardcover: Lulu, CreateSpace by Amazon
Movies
Movie Self-Publishing (selling your home-made movies) is still in it’s infancy. Although there are many places you can publish your movies (YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, etc.), there’s only a few places you can publish and sell your productions (please correct me if I’m wrong!). One (and the only one) channel I found was once again, Amazon’s CreateSpace publishing service.
Music
Popular publishing & distribution channels: TuneCore, CDBaby, CreateSpace.
Games & Software
- For mobile devices: Apple App Store, Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store
- Computer Games & Software (PC, Linux, Mac): Plimus, BMT Micro, FastSpring
- How about selling Flash games: FlashGameLicense
- Or program and put your application on catalog at Google Apps Marketplace
- Maybe you’d like to design a board game online and sell it in a physical form? Check out The Game Crafter.
Photographs
Popular channels for selling your photography include (there’s many others as well): Fotolia, PhotoShelter, ShutterStock, CreckStock, BigStock
Paintings
Popular channels for selling your artwork: Red Bubble, ArtyBuzz
Physical Objects like tables, lamps, jewellery, etc.
You can design a physical object online and these guys from Ponoko make and sell it for you.
But what if I want to sell something concrete with my design on it?
You should check out sites like CafePress, Zazzle, Etsy, SpoonFlower. You can sell anything: Mugs, T-Shirts, Your own Fabric, Bags, Jackets, Shoes..
Talking about options!
As you see, there are a tons of alternatives to create and sell products without ever having to build your own publishing factory, buy machinery for printing your custom designs or anything like that. Gatekeepers are also becoming a thing of the past. No longer do you need to work your ass off and try to get your book or music published. The world is your playground my friend! Make use of the opportunity wisely.
That’s all for now. Please share your own experiences on the comments. What kind of digital (or on-demand published) products have you sold online? Have you had success with your sales? If you’re already a nomadic entrepreneur, what kind of product sales have you found to be most lucrative?
In the next post, I’m going to take a look at the most common digital product distribution channels in more detail. Let’s see how they compare to each other!:
- E-Junkie
- ClickBank
- Lulu
I’m going to find out how they compare to each other when selling digital products like eBooks, Course Material Packages (eBook, audio, video, other digital material) and monthly subscription fee based products/courses. In addition to that, we’re also going to see how you can get your eBook published, so that it’s also available on a mobile devices like IPhone and Android.
Until next time!
I am sure you can come up with a better middle man example than CDbaby, a service nobody has ever heard of. Their product/service could be fantastic, but it would be so much more effective if you proved your point with an example that we can all relate to rather than something obscure.
I think the movie industry would be one, independent studios make a movie, pitch it to universal, who then decide its the next Blair Witch project and distribute it globally for you..
Thanks for your comment H!
Maybe the CDBaby example isn't the most known out there but then again, It was just one example of middle man distribution. I'm sure there are better examples to be found. However, they do have around 200,000 artists distributing music through their service, so I wouldn't exactly call it a “never heard” service. But your point taken. I'll try to come up with a better example next time!
Thanks for visiting the site!
Some good resources. I have bought items from many of those (several from Lulu). I have a few ideas for products of my own I'm working on distributing through these channels. I am working on turning most of my belongings into digital-only, but I know not everyone is doing that just yet. There will always be a market for physical products.
Most of my experiences are also from Lulu (in addition to click bank, e-junkie and the like). I'm a newbie on many of these channels, but I really love to see that there are so many options nowadays people can take advantage of. Are you working on a eBook? Have you experimented with ClickBank or E-Junkie yet?