Writing a book is an effort that not everyone takes pleasure in. Creating software takes special skills and patience. If you can’t write and can’t program, does it mean you can’t start an online business? Absolutely not.
Luckily, there is a wonderful thing called Reprint Rights. You don’t have to write a word – just purchase the resell rights to someone else’s work and start an instant business.
What are Reprint Rights?
I first learned about reprint rights from Ken Evoy’s “Make
Your Knowledge Sell” and thought, “what an amazing concept!” You don’t have to know how to write, or spend months creating a quality product. You can just buy the rights to it and keep 100% of the profits, without paying any royalties or reporting your sales figures to anyone.
Compared to any other business, launching an information selling company has a very low start up cost. The key is to choose a product that fits your interests, is of high quality and in demand. The rest will be up to your desire to succeed and persistence.
If you already have a product to sell, find a product with reprint rights that would make a good bonus, addition, or a back-end for your business. For example, if you are selling a $10 report about successful golf playing, a good back-end product could be titled “Advanced Techniques of the World’s Best Golf Players” priced at $50 or higher (forgive me if I am way off – I know nothing about golf ;-).
You could also work backwards – first find a good product you want to purchase the rights to, then write a report that would serve as an introduction/sales letter to it. Then give it away or sell it at a low price. That’s what I did with my “First Business Web Site in 10 days!”. After I finished writing it, I created a short version of this book (and turned a 120 pages manual into a small 15-page book) and started giving it away on my web site under a different title (“The Absolute Beginner’s Guide To Starting a Web Site”).
How to make money with a product you purchased the rights to
Many people buy rights to a product but never do anything to make it a success. You MUST treat it as your own product to make it profitable.
– First, choose a quality product (purchase a copy for yourself first to review) that fits into your interests, or your existing web site theme
– Make sure you are absolutely impressed with it so you could write a great ad copy (though many products already come with a sample sales copy)
– Create a simple web site using an easy-to-use web editor
– Find a way to take payments online (many people use inexpensive services of ClickBank, iBill, and OrderButton)
– Promote it (subscribe to free marketing e-zines and experiment to find the most effective ways to advertise it)
While you don’t have to create a product (what a great shortcut!) you still have to promote it to sell. There is plenty of free publications and forums on the Internet that can teach you how to do it, if you can devote 1-2 hours each day until the desired level of income is reached.
Buying cheap rights vrs. Expensive
The first time I purchased resell rights, I could only afford a $49.95 package. The deal looked great! I was getting over 25 books to own and resell as my own. Only a few weeks later did I realize that everyone and their dog are selling the same books. The products were still great and if you purchase them for the sake of learning business and online marketing, it’s a bargain. After purchasing this package I sold it to at least 10 happy customers, thus making $450.00 on a $49.95 investment.
To build a successful business reselling these books, though, would be very difficult since hundreds of other people are selling it on their web sites.
Yes, $49.95 is very affordable to anyone who wants to start an online business. But the cheaper the reprint rights are, the more people are able to afford them, thus you will have more competitors selling the same product. So if you find the price is a bit steep, think of the advantages: not every average “joe” who might not even be serious about business will purchase these rights. And if you do, you will have only a few competitors and your marketing efforts will pay off much better.
Where to find products with reprint rights
Many authors, especially new ones, have never thought of offering resell rights to their products. If you find a product that you like and want to resell, contact the author and make him or her an offer. Make sure it is a high quality product that you would want to purchase for yourself. For example, I was contacted several times by my past customers who so much liked my products that they wanted to own the rights to it. This is a great indicator that you will succeed selling this product: you read it, you liked it, you know it, you can write a great sales copy to sell it from your heart.
One other good way to find reprint rights to quality products is by going to a Search Engine and typing a word or a phrase on a subject you want to focus on. When browsing through results, pick out web sites that sell a product you are interested in AND have low traffic. Use Alexa (free from alexa.com) to find out each site’s traffic rating, which is a good indicator of how the site is doing. Webmasters of low traffic sites might sell reprint rights to their products cheaper than any popular site.
Important questions to ask before purchasing reprint rights
I am not going to call myself an expert on reprint rights. But after selling almost a dozen rights to three of my products, I learned a lot about the subject. Here are the questions you should ask before you decide on a product to purchase:
1. How many other people will be allowed to sell this product? In other words, will there be a limit to how many resell rights are available? A standard number for information products is 20 resellers. More than that might create market saturation and too much competition between the resellers. Also, every marketing strategy that you implement might be “borrowed” by your competitors and hurt your sales.
2. How many copies of this product have been sold? The answer will simply tell you if this product has been popular and selling well. While it is difficult to say what number of sold copies will qualify a product as “popular”, remember that even if it is a brand new product (e.g. my oldest book is only 7 months old) it can still be a winner. The author may be just entering the arena and is not known on the Internet yet, or hasn’t been putting enough effort to create steady sales. For example, as soon as I was done with my 1st product, I immediately started creating my 2nd one which turned in fact to be two more new products – I know, tell me I need to focus 🙂 – so I didn’t have time to get out and actively promote my 1st book.
3. Are you allowed to modify the product and/or reproduce it in a different format? Most e-books are made into an executable (EXE) or an Acrobat Reader (PDF) file format. But if you want to put this product on a CD, or publish it as a hard copy, you might need a special permission from the author first. Ask if you are limited to a certain format or are you free to make it into anything you wish.
4. Can you sell the reprint rights to this book? Many products out there include the right to resell the rights. In other words, you pay $49.95 for a book, then turn around and sell this book to someone else. That someone else can do the same thing, and so on. As you understand, this technique will reach market saturation very fast (the rights are affordable and you can resell them, too).
But many products of high quality do not include the right to resell the rights. You need to purchase such rights, called Master Reprint Rights, separately at a higher price. While it is not affordable to everyone, it certainly limits the number of resellers to only the serious ones.
5. Will the author/seller offer you technical and marketing support? Make sure the person you purchase the rights from will keep in touch with you and help you get started with the product. It doesn’t mean creating a web site for you and writing your ad copy. Simply being there in case a question or a problem arises is all you need. Especially so if you purchased the rights from the author: after all, he or she knows this product the best and is the only one who can answer all the questions that you (or your customers) might have.
Once you purchase the rights to a product, get right to it. Don’t waste any time setting up your web site and starting to sell it. And if you are fast enough, you might make your first sale within hours after purchasing the rights.
Milana Nastetskaya is a full time web developer and the author of the “65 Instant Web Design Answers”. http://www.instantwebanswers.com
