An Entrepreneur’s Journey of Transformation

High Ticket Niche Marketing Experiment Part 1

September 13th, 2007 Posted in 30DC, Niche, Experiment, Internet Marketing

So recently, I took the 30 day challenge, and I was successful at making my $10+ dollars while spending no money. I have a couple of niche websites that were one hit wonders.

Literally.

They only gave me one sale and then vanished as they couldn’t rank in Google well. However, I have couple of other niches that are selling quite well, but I have a problem.

Each sale is netting around 30 cents to 3 dollars, and the lower part of that range is much more popular.

The problem is that I’m selling items that cost an average of $15-20. I’ve made a whole bunch of sales, but at 6%-7% commission, it ain’t jack. I have accumulated $120 so far but half this revenue comes from 6-7 sales out of 60+ total sales!

Talk about the 80/20 rule.

So I’m thinking one day. I spend a lot of time building websites trying to nail commissions on such cheap items. Why don’t I aim for the big ticket items?

If I can refer a sale on eBay for a car, it’ll be like $60+ commission each time! I’m also thinking it takes the same amount of time to get $60 commission as a $1 commission because the real time is spending just putting the darn site together with content.

This is why I’m going to propose an experiment for myself. In the last 3 weeks, I’ve made over 60+ sales for small ticket items and made roughly $120.

Now I’m going to aim big.

I’m talking about selling items that are priced in the thousands. I’ll put my minimum criteria that the item has to be at least $1000 for me to sell it.

I will set up websites at a minimum of 3 niches. We could be talking high end TVs, cars, or whatever. I will then give you guys updates on each one as I go.

My prediction is that I will spend roughly the same amount of time to make more than triple the income. I expect less sales, but the sheer size of each commission is where the magic happens.

I’ll keep you guys posted on my experiment as I go. Should be exciting! To me, it’s only a win win situation. If I hit it big, it’ll really be big. If I make nothing, I will have learned a lot, and I can share what not to do.

Just don’t harass me too much :).

Carl Zetterlund

  1. 4 Responses to “High Ticket Niche Marketing Experiment Part 1”

  2. By CatherineL on Sep 13, 2007

    Hi Carl - Great point. I used to sell books on Amazon and Ebay. But the trouble was - no matter how many I sold, I didn’t make much.

    The only downside to selling really expensive items is that it isn’t so easy to do if you haven’t built a relationship with the customer.

    Why not try using an opt in list on your site? You could then sell lower priced items initially, and promote the higher priced items to your site once you’ve built a relationship, through sending weekly newsletters.

  3. By Carl on Sep 13, 2007

    Hmmm. I forgot about.

    Not sure if I want to deal with that just yet, so I think I’ll try to make sure the person that comes is already in the buying mood.

    I think I’ll go ahead with my experiment anyway and see how it works. If I see some success, I will try to move into getting more into that business, which means selling my own big ticket items. Then, I’ll probably need to use those strategies especially I’m trying to aim for a bigger market. Not just the people are ready to buy big.

    Thanks for bringing up that point up. I’ve heard it quite a few times, and I know it is effective. I’ll keep it in mind when I write my sales copy.

  4. By knupNET on Sep 14, 2007

    Carl,

    This is a great idea. I’m curious to see how the experiment works out. If you have some time check out my blog at knupNET.com and possibly add it to your blogroll! I’ve added you as a “Roll Partner” on my site so let me know if you are not interested. Us up and coming bloggers need to stick together.

    Good work!
    Ryan

  5. By CatherineL on Sep 15, 2007

    Hi Carl - I just read a book that says you can sell high ticket items to strangers so long as they’re a quality well known brand.

    The book in question said Bentley’s and even a share of an island had been sold in newspaper ads!

    So it may be worth your while after all.

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