Some affiliates love creating content, building mega-sites of thousands of information rich pages, and making money off collateral commissions and ads.

But what if you’d really rather be a good old-fashioned shopkeeper, with a storefront that combines plenty of great product choices and a pleasant visitor experience?

It’s a dilemma faced by a huge percentage of online business persons who discover that they are, in fact, in the wrong TYPE of business. Not everyone is cut out to be a content provider, mini-site marketer, portal manager, membership manager, or PPC affiliate.

So how do you switch business models in mid-stream without losing money, time, reputation, and sanity?

#1- Look for ways to re-purpose or re-package components of your existing business.
For example, if you’ve been struggling to provide content but would really rather be doing eBay, can you recycle your content into a viral report that’ll drive traffic to your eBay store? Can you turn it into a hard copy information product, and sell it on eBay?

#2- Sell your existing business or site, and reinvest the money in a more congenial business model.
If you’re really not happy maintaining your storefront, mini -sites, membership site, or content portal, why not sell it to someone who’d love a turnkey business? How much you’ll get will depend on your traffic, search engine rankings, market presence, the size and quality of your customer or opt -in list, and your domain name.

#3- Joint venture with someone who will develop your old business model for a percentage of commissions or sales.
One of the easiest JVs to set up… yet almost no one is doing it. Example: You’ve got a big opt-in list that isn’t making any money because you can’t find time to write a weekly newsletter.

Find a good freelance writer, preferably one who knows your niche inside-out. Then ask if they’ll take over writing and managing your newsletter in exchange for a generous percentage of raw commissions on affiliate products. Since you’re not making a penny off your list right now, it’s a win-win for both of you.

Similar JVs could be set up for all types of business models and sites. Just make sure you have clear-cut agreements, in writing, with your partners, that you maintain ownership and control of passwords and domain names, and that you have some checks and balances set up so your partner can’t hijack commissions or promote without your knowledge.

In the last post, we looked at different approaches to promoting backend products. In this post, we will look at developing an effective sales system for your backend products.

Just as there are many types of backend products, there are many different ways to get your customer base to buy those products. The important thing to remember is that once a customer has spent money with you, they are likely to spend money again and again with you, as long as you keep directing them to quality products.

You will most likely have more difficulty coming up with a high-ticket backend product than you will have in selling that product. Some ideas for high-ticket backend products include:

• Selling Master Resell Rights to your front-end or mid-level product
• Specialized Membership Websites
• Printed Manuals and Workbooks
• Consulting Services
• Teleseminar Series
• Video and DVD Courses

These days, just about anybody can make a little money on the Internet – but if you want to grow a substantial business, you’ll need to create a sales system. This includes entry-level products, mid-level products, and backend products.

You may be wondering, once you’ve taken a customer all the way through your sales system, what do you do next?  You start the process all over again with another related entry-level product.  Or you show them yet another high-ticket backend product.

The critical factor is that you must constantly meet your customers’ needs and exceed their expectations. If you do, they will purchase from you over and over again, including (and especially) high-ticket products.

Obviously, to make this work, you need much more than quality products. you must  establish a relationship with your customer with constant communication, and keeping abreast of what your customers want and need.

Think for just a moment about your pharmacist. Your pharmacist probably knows as much about what is going on with your health as your doctor does – because he is the one filling the prescriptions. Pharmacists also know what medicines you need for certain conditions.

Let’s say that you burn yourself. You obviously don’t want to go to the doctor over a simple burn, but you do need to treat it. So you go to your friendly pharmacist – the one who recommended and sold you a wonderful cream for your arthritis when he saw that the doctor was prescribing medication for arthritis.

You’ve been going back month after month to get your medicine refilled as well as purchase that cream, and now, you need something for this burn. You go to your pharmacist, who is happy to look at your burn and make a recommendation for treating it.

This is the same pharmacist whom you can call at home in the middle of the night to fill a prescription that you got from the emergency room for your sick baby – or the pharmacist who will meet you at the store on Sunday morning so that you can purchase a humidifier for your sick baby.

Why does this pharmacist go out of his way to meet your needs? He does this because he knows the value of your business. Without you even realizing it, he has made you a lifelong customer, and he knows that you will continue to get your prescriptions filled and purchase medical supplies and over-the-counter medicines from him – even if you could purchase the same things cheaper elsewhere – for as long as you live, or for as long as he is in business.

He knows how to look at what you are buying, and to make recommendations for other products that are related to what you are buying. You need to become just like this pharmacist.

When you do that, you will become an expert at selling high-ticket backend products.

Selling a high-ticket backend product isn’t as hard as most people may think it is. Again, it is a question of leading your customer to it through your sales system, making sure that you are offering top-quality products, establishing a relationship of trust with your customers, and of course, paying attention to their needs and desires.