Secondary Sales

Once you've developed an audience for a product, you really would like to turn them into a fan base. Fans become engaged with your products and your company; they want to get more information and be more connected to your products. Engaging with your fan base through social networking and blogging and community forums helps to increase the sense of engagement, but it takes time. The payoff is in increased attention for future products, and at some point you'll realize that there's a certain number of sales you can pretty much count on when you release a new product. That's always a good feeling.

Nowadays, once you have a fan base there are many more ways to monetize those fans than just shipping a new product. Here you can find a list of some web sites that allow you to create customized products with no upfront cost to you. Some are well known, like CafePress, others not so much. If you've got some cool artwork, an iconic character, or a spiffy product logo, you can set up a store in these sites and begin selling T-shirts, mousepads, mugs, or all sorts of paraphernalia. This is not only good supplemental income, each one of those items is an ad for your product.