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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
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
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
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
subject. Here are
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
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
arena and is not known on
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
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
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
reprint rights to this book? Many products out there include
right to resell
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
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
right to resell
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
number of resellers to only
serious ones.
5. Will
author/seller offer you technical and marketing support? Make sure
person you purchase
rights from will keep in touch with you and help you get started with
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
rights from
author: after all, he or she knows this product
best and is
only one who can answer all
questions that you (or your customers) might have.
Once you purchase
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
rights.

Milana Nastetskaya is a full-time web developer and the author of 3 books: "Create Your First Business Web Site in 10 days!", "65 Instant Web Answers!" and "How To Install and Troubleshoot CGI scripts". http://www.helpingfoot.com/REPRINT_RIGHTS