SFI: Choosing Your Products

Researched & Written by Karen Barnes

Note: This Tidbit focuses on the SFI Affiliate Program, however, the tips contained here can be used by other online home-business owners...

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Q: Is there anyone who has become Executive Affiliate (EA) through attracting non-affiliates to purchase items from the retail side of their SFI business. If so, could you give me some advice on how to do this?

A: Yes, I have done this. In this series of Marketing Tidbits, I'll be taking you through the step-by-step process of what I have done with my marketing in order to accomplish this. I will, in Part One of this series, explain why you need to choose your products and why I started with the products. This will then lead to the next part and so on through this series of Marketing Tidbits. If you already have a standing order for a subscription to The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs, then you are already at least an Executive Affiliate and you should by no means cancel your standing order. 

Use this series to help you focus on making retail sales to non-affiliates of Strong Future International. By using these steps, you will be able to add to your commission's check each month on top of the T-Network Compensation Plan.

Here are the four product categories that I chose from the Veriuni Store:

1. Food
   
2. Wellness/Nutrition
   
3. Magazine Rack
   
4. Telecommunications

Out of those four categories, I then chose the products that I thought would be of interest to the consumer rather than myself.

Now you are probably wondering how and why I chose these products to sell to non-SFI affiliates. After working in the retail business for over 20 years, these are the things that I see others purchasing when they are shopping. Some items are their regularly purchased items and other items are impulse purchases. You will want to have a mixture of these items on your Website, that is, if you wish to build and dedicate a Website to products only. If you would prefer, you can do this with one category of the products as well.

I asked myself these questions while looking at the products in each category:

• What would others be more apt to purchase online?
  
  
• What would be the items that are purchased more often?
  
  
• What items have I seen others buy while shopping in the offline stores? (Example of these stores: grocery, Wal-mart, Target, convenience store, etc.)
  
  
• Would people buy these items online as well as offline?
  
  
• Which of the products would be more apt to sell online than offline? (Example: Telecommunications - the long distance plans, Internet provider services, or cell phone and plans; which of the health and wellness products? Which of the magazines?)
  
  
• Which group of people would be the best to target?
  
  
• What are the latest trends for manufacturers? (This will take a little research as well. This will be covered in a future Marketing Tidbit).

After asking myself the above questions in each category, I then chose my products. The items I chose are as follows:

1. Food category: Java Coffee
   
   
2. Wellness/Nutrition:
   Veriuni Advanced Oxidant with Red Wine Extract
   Veriuni Advanced Liquid Nutrition
   Veriuni Advanced Weight Loss*
   
   
3. Magazine Rack: All of the categories*
   
   
4. Telecommunications: Long Distance Phone Services*
   

*NOTE: In the next few series of Marketing Tidbits, I will go into further detail about how to choose and sell these items more effectively.

Now that I have explained how I have chosen the products that I have, I am going to give you a "homework assignment."

Items needed for this assignment:

Pen or pencil
Notebook

DEFINTIONS

Regular or staple purchases: Items that customers purchase each and every time they go to the store. These items can be anything from: soaps, both laundry and bath, dietary aids, cold aids, weight loss aids, milk bread, coffee, tea, sodas, cleaning products, etc.

Impulse purchases: Any of the items that you see at the checkout stands, items down the store's seasonal isles, seasonal products such as charcoal, bug spray, desserts of any kind, any flavored items for their drinks—basically items that are not necessary to run a household.

Between now and the time the next portion of this series is posted on May 17th, while you are out doing your regular shopping at any of the stores that you frequent, take a quick look into the shopping carts of other shoppers, scan what is in their carts very quickly, go around to the next isle, and make a note of some of the products that they have. Do the same thing for other shoppers that you see at the checkout stand.

By having a few notes on what you have seen others purchasing, either regularly or impulsively, you will then gain some insight into their shopping habits. Once you have this compiled, you will then be able to choose your own products more accurately.

The next step is to open a word processing document and type up your list from your homework assignment. You will then need to go to your Veriuni Store Gateway page, go through the categories listed there, and start choosing the products that closely fit your comprised list. 

In that same document, you will then need to type out the name of the item, copy and paste the description of each corresponding product, and then place the link for that item below the item name and description. Once you are done, save and close the document. 

This will be all that you need to do for now. You are more than welcome to reopen the document if you choose to do more research on customer purchases and add to your Veriuni list until the next Marketing Tidbit is ready so that you can start on the next step.

As an example, here is what I see customers purchasing:

• Candies - single bars, bags of candy, gum.
  
  
• Coffee - caffeine and non caffeine.
  
  
• School Supplies - pens, paper, pencils, poster board, erasers.
  
  
• Magazines - Women's Day, Better Homes and Gardens, O, car magazines.
  
  
• Seasonal Items - the items that are for the holiday or current season. (Example: In spring and summer, seasonal items would include bug spray, sun screen, sun tan lotion, bar-b-que items)
  
  
• Some impulse buys are: the candy bars, some magazines, calling cards, gift cards, greeting cards, pre-made kabobs, plants, mulch, etc.

The next Marketing Tidbit will cover the use of keywords in pay-per-click search engines and their use in Website content and classified ads (both paid and free).