Since we’re looking for independent artists and other creative types to sell your stuff on CybaSumo, we’re well aware that you may be creating stuff for a niche – even a small niche.

The good news is that niches are the hottest thing in marketing and sales right now. Consider that there are people out there successfully selling videos on how to repair your RV, fashions for cats, and Klezmer music.

Niches can be extremely profitable for you. Here’s why.

First, targeting a niche means that you have a ready-made, easily identifiable market. If you choose women golfers as your niche, you know how to identify them (women who golf) and that you are only going to market to them and not to women at large, or all golfers.

Second, niches have their own methods of congregating online or offline. There may be forums, blogs, magazines, Facebook groups, and Livejournal groups dedicated to women golfers. So, instead of just going anywhere online and saying ‘hey, buy my e-book/hat/video for women golfers,’ and taking a shotgun approach, you can take a sniper rifle approach and go on the women golfers Facebook group to tell them about your stuff. It’s cheaper and easier for you to market to a niche, once you find out where they hang out.

Third, it’s easier to develop a real relationship with your niche. When you participate in blogs or forums relating to your niche, you get to know the movers and shakers – as well as what they’re looking for, and the language they use.

What if you’re not selling information, but music or art? The same principles still apply. You can choose to sell your stuff to the general public – or you can see if your art appeals to a specific segment, and target them.

Why the ‘Long Tail’? Chris Anderson wrote an influential Wired article in October 2004 about a way of looking at niche markets. Before the Internet and the Long Tail, businesses would only provide the most popular products (10 types of pizza, for example), because it cost a lot of money to design, launch, and sell new products.

With the low cost and ease of selling on the Internet, businesses and people can affordably and profitably sell to customers who are looking for hard-to-find or ‘non-hit’ items – the Long Tail.

Rare, curious, and funky products all have a place on the Long Tail, and on CybaSumo. Bring us your cool stuff, and find your niche – and your profits.

Many people dream of lying on a beach, without a care in the world. You may be one of them – I know I am!

One of the hottest theories to hit the Internet in recent years is that of passive income. The idea is that you set up a business or money-making opportunity that runs pretty much on its own. The money rolls in while you relax, on the beach or otherwise.

If you’re interested in reading more about becoming a ‘lifestyle entrepreneur’ and making money through passive income and other minimal-involvement strategies, be sure to check out Timothy Ferriss’s book and blog, “The Four Hour Work Week.”

What can you do to create passive income, and how can CybaSumo help?

The most common forms of passive income are royalties and automated sales systems. Think of creating a new invention and being paid a small amount every time a company sells a product based on the patent. That’s one example of royalties – and it requires you to not only come up with something completely original, but also negotiate with large companies.

Automated sales systems are easier to create and manage. You create a digital product once, and then sell it multiple times. The effort required to sell the first copy is the main work you need to put in – advertising your product, and setting up the sales system. Copies #2 through 1,000,000 take virtually no effort and no cost.

CybaSumo is the perfect automated sales system for your business. We handle catalog management, transactions, and digital fulfillment for you. All you have to provide is the product, and market it. We do the rest.

Now you may be wondering how you can automate the marketing of your product. It’s possible, and Tim Ferriss’s book goes into further detail. Here are some ways to automate your marketing:

• Put our CybaSumo store widget on your Facebook profile, blog, and Web site.
• Advertise on Google AdWords
• Insert a link to your CybaSumo store in your email signature.

Some of the biggest-selling digital products online are ebooks. Our Bookbarn section is an ideal place for you to sell your business ebooks online. Since our fees are so low, you get all the benefits of a full-functional digital store with none of the aggravation of managing it.

Passive income takes some time to build up, and we’re not saying that you’re going to be lazing on the beach doing nothing by next week. What we are saying, though, is that CybaSumo is an excellent platform to sell your digital goods unattended. As Ron Popeil would say, with CybaSumo you just ‘set it and forget it.’