What a Soft Drink Can Teach You About Making Money from Convenience

I noticed a funny thing about my favorite soft drink.

image by locusolus

The two bottle sizes I purchase the most are the 20 ounce and the 2 liter variety. Usually, you find the 20 ounce bottle in some sort of cooler right there in the store. Once you’ve bought it, you have a nice cold soft drink ready for you right then. The 2 liter bottles sit on the shelves because they’re too big for the mini-fridges. You can buy them, but to drink them cold, you have to take them home and pop them in your refrigerator for a while.

Which one costs more? If you said the 2 liter bottles, you would be wrong. The 20 ounce bottles cost more, despite the fact you get far less soft drink. This is because they’re cold and conveniently sized for someone on the go.

What can you learn for this?

• I drink way too many soft drinks, and


• Convenience sells

Enough with the soda pop. How can this help you make money online?

Convenience is an excellent marketing angle, even if you have a digital product or online service. Have a web application that helps make something onerous more convenient, like the dreaded ‘htaccess’ file? It’ll sell. Have an ebook about how to do something faster or easier? Everyone loves fast, easy, and convenient, regardless of your niche. Want someone to visit your web page and click on your affiliate links? Give them a reason clicking on your affiliate links would make something more convenient for them.

Here are some real life examples:

• Web applications that can make web sites quickly without having to build them from scratch are popular. WordPress is being used for rapid web site construction now for just that reason. You get the platform, load it, then create pages for all your different sections. Since it’s already optimized for search engines and has hundreds of different templates floating around the Internet that you can use, you’re set even if you don’t want a blog.


• You’ve probably seen the time-tested link list article. It’s a long list of links to web pages and resources related to a single topic, with an opening and closing paragraph or two. A visitor who wants to know more about that topic, or get resources on a topic, only has to go to one of this kind of article and not spend hours in front of a search engine. These types of lists take hours to research, but they are link love magnets because they’re convenient.


• Review pages are similar, but instead of just a link list, you give your opinion on the products or services you’re listing. This type of page lends itself well to affiliate promotion, because the links to the products you’re reviewing can easily be your affiliate links. This makes it convenient for someone searching for information to find a lot of reviews in the same place. If you do make a review page, give your visitors your honest opinion and do not lie, or you will end your credibility.

Need an idea for a digital product, blog, or traditional web site? Consider the convenience angle. It’s already proven as a profitable product concept and a marketing hook.