Many internet marketers claim that you can command a higher price for a product if you ship it out in physical form, rather than deliver it as an instant digital download. This may well be true, but I haven’t yet experimented with it. Today I had a quick look at one of the most popular CD / DVD producers, Kunaki. Their whole system is automated, from submitting your case and CD artwork to producing, packaging and sending out your orders.

The pricing also looks attractive: a flat rate of $1.75 per CD / DVD, no matter how small the order (yes, one costs as much as a thousand!) and a shipping cost of $5 per unit to the USA and $7.50 to the rest of the world.

There are snags, however. Personal service seems to be non-existent. The Kunaki website states:

“Kunaki operates more like a machine than a business and does not offer a personalized service”

and..

“Kunaki does not wish to be viewed as a company. Kunaki prefers to be viewed as a machine.”

I’ve also read some horror stories on a forum about the variable quality of the printing, but they seem to be few. Most people seem happy with Kunaki, and I’ve got DVDs delivered via the Kunaki service. They seemed fine. Check out Kunaki here:

http://www.IanSays.com/LookAtKunaki

It’s not an affiliate link, because “the machine” doesn’t have an affiliate program. Nor does it negotiate. Flat rates apply! Also a flat, heartless website. But what do you expect from a machine. It’s efficient, that’s what!

I was prompted to do have a look at Kunaki whilst looking at a new script which automates the integration of PayPal with the Kunaki service:

http://www.IanSays.com/PhysicalDelivery/Automate

The idea behind this and other similar scripts is that when the customer pays for your CD / DVD, you get instant payment into your PayPal account, and the order details are transmitted directly to Kunaki, who then deliver the product to the customer.

So the whole system runs on autopilot. Sounds neat. Sounds easy! But you still have to produce the artwork for the cover and CD / DVD, which you could, of course, outsource to a graphic designer. If you’re interested, in selling a physical, rather than a digital product, my research might give you a starting point.

Selling web hosting accounts is a good business to be in, and it’s a great example of recurring revenue. People generally don’t change their web hosts very often so, once you’ve made a sale, you get revenue from that sale each month or each year, depending on the pricing plans. Generally, there are three ways to go about this:

Purchase specialised reseller web space. You then sell accounts using this space. This gives you a lot of flexibility but you are having to pay out a monthly or annual fee for your reseller space and you have to set up new accounts and collect the fees yourself.

Act as an affiliate for a web hosting company. Companies such as 1&1 Internet, HostGator and so on simply pay you a normal affiliate referral fee. There’s little work to do apart from sending people to the sales site via your affiliate link, but the rewards are consequently lower.

Act as a reseller for a web hosting company. There are not too many of these types of hosting company. Normally you get a personalised sales page, the ability to set hosting fees (within limits) and a lot more flexibility in operating the service. Similar to acting as an affiliate, you don’t have to set up new accounts or collect hosting fees. There’s no start-up cost, but you might have to spend a day or so configuring everything to your liking.

The third option was the one I chose when, a few years ago I decided to add this particular revenue stream to my portfolio. I spent a lot of time checking out different companies. My choice eventually came down to two. I then took out a hosting account with each of them to see what the facilities and service were like. It’s very important to have confidence in whatever you are selling.

One of the two companies was good. The other was excellent! And that company formed the basis for my Hosting4Marketing web hosting service:

http://www.Hosting4Marketing.com

I have been as pleased with the reseller services of the company as I have been with the services they give to their hosting customers.

You can either use one of their templates, which you can personalise, or you can go the extra mile, as I have done, and design a “private label” template.

You can decide which of their standard packages you feature on your sales page, and you can set a selling price for each package.

Invoices go out from the company with your chosen reseller trading name, although naturally, their own name is also on the invoice.

The reseller’s control panel is superb, and you really do feel that you can get all the information to run your web hosting business.

So, if you fancy running a web hosting business, I’m happy to share with you the name of the company behind my very successful Hosting4Marketing business. Once you’ve set up your account, all you need to do is to send people to your sales page.

If you want to follow me - or maybe even overtake me! - go and get your free reseller account here:

http://www.IanSays.com/SetUpWebHostingBusiness

If, once you have signed up, you need any advice from me, you know you only need to ask

I’ve mentioned JayKay Bak’s “Vault” a few times recently. I continue to be impressed with this regular dose of new products. He gives huge value:

http://www.IanSays.com/ILike/UnselfishMarketer.htm

Some of them have PLR / MRR / RR, some are for private use only. Let me give you a recent example of one of the latter categories that JayKay added a few days ago..

There have been a lot of ways to produce stunning eCovers using “action scripts” for PhotoShop. Great. But you must own the top-end version of PhotoShop. Very expensive!

A new product was released in the middle of June. It’s a way of producing eCovers, software boxes, membership cards etc., which does not use PhotoShop. It’s called “Web 2.0 Covers”, and you can see the sales page here (not an affiliate link):

http://web2covers.com/

I know that MRR / PLR for this product costs about 60 bucks. Yes, you can get a “private use” copy for $30 - $35. But it’s free to members of JayKay’s Vault. That was just one of four products he uploaded to the Vault on 12 June. And he updates the Vault with new goodies every two days.

Want to see more of what’s in the Vault? No problem. Have a look at JayKay’s sales page:

http://www.IanSays.com/ILike/UnselfishMarketer.htm

Near the top is a scrolling display of products, and just under the moving display it says: “Cli.ck here to see what’s currently inside the Vault”. Another massive page opens up. And it only shows the last two month’s products in the Vault. There’s another 19 pages you can explore if you want to.

If I’m not careful, this article will look like one of JayKay’s huge pages And I haven’t even mentioned other goodies available to Vault members, such as free membership sites, free web hosting (up to 1 Gb of space), a free autoresponder service, use of JV Manager to manage your sales and affiliate program - and a lot more.

In the past few months I’ve subscribed to and cancelled membership of a number of inferior download sites. “The Vault” is one I’m definitely keeping! Go and follow my lead, like many of my subscribers:

http://www.IanSays.com/ILike/UnselfishMarketer.htm

One last thing. The Vault’s has now over 600. Somewhere between 500 and 1,000 members, the monthly subscription is going up. Lock yourself in to the current monthly price. It’s really worth it

A short while back, I introduced you to “Animoto”, a f’ree way to create a video from still images - complete with music. I gave you a demo of it here:

http://www.marketing-drive.com/cheatkit-video/

I also put some of my recent photos from my birdwatching holiday in Scotland into an Animoto video here:

http://www.marketing-drive.com/scotland-may08/

Now I’ve found a way (also f’ree) of putting a slide show on your site - complete with music, if you like. I fed the same holiday pics into this system, and produced this slide show:

http://www.IanSays.com/ILike/ImageLoop

There’s a link to the service on the above page. And no, there’s no affiliate scheme! Enjoy! And I hope that you find it useful. It’s really only suitable for personal, rather than commercial use because of the company’s strong branding on the slide show. But I think it’s neat!

It only seems a short while ago that Internet Explorer version 7 appeared. But it actually was made public in November 2006. My own experience is that this version of the browser has crashed more frequently than any of the previous versions. Go on, FireFox fans - tell me “I told you so!”

Rejoice - IE8 is now on the horizon! Beta 2 is due out in August this year. Given their history of missed deadlines, Microsoft have declined to say when IE8 will finally ship.

Beta testers of IE8 have already warned website owners that they need to start preparing now for any problems that the more standards-compliant browser could cause. There’s even a new Meta Tag which can be inserted into the headers of a website which will force the IE8 browser to emulate IE7, and thus head off any incompatibility issues.

Don’t panic yet, {FIRSTNAME}. We’ve all seen these Microsoft special Meta Tags come and go! You’ll find a brief summary of the latest IE8 news here:

Posted: June 24th, 2008 under Techniques: Website Building.
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