Adding Revenue Streams To Your Business

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Feb 8, 2013
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Every business is looking for ways to add additional income to their current revenue streams. Most business owners make this process complicated. Rather than looking at what they can adapt, add-on or change they look at new products or services they can sell.
Adding a new product is not always the way to go. Making changes to how existing products are delivered can sometimes return greater revenue than the original product did.
Making changes to your product types can appeal to your existing customers in ways the original product never did. It’s a bit like repackaging your content into different formats.
Ask yourself this question:
“Can I make my existing product easier to use and deliver to the customer?”
I’ll give you an example.
The nursery where my 2-year-old son goes during the week have morning singing time. Over the last few months my son has started singing some of the songs and for us as parents we would love to sing along with him. Like other parents, if you don’t know the songs you feel left out or a little helpless as you can’t encourage more singing.
Then your child looks at you wondering why you are not continuing the songs he/she have been singing all morning. Their smile fades and that’s when you know you have to learn those songs.
The next thing you do is go online and see if there’s YouTube video where you can learn the words and more importantly the rhyme. The rhyme is the key part here, it is for me.

The Product

Since day one of him attending nursery we were told they have a song book for sale which costs £4. When he started nursery he wasn’t singing so the song book wasn’t on the agenda. After a little searching online you can find words to most of the nursery rhymes so the book loses its value.
Now you have a product with not much value.
It’s great to see the nursery offer a song book, here are some benefits:
  • It’s another revenue stream.
  • It can be produced fairly cheaply using print on demand.
  • It’s low-cost!
  • Requires no shipping!
  • Sold in the nursery.
Excellent a product! Easy to deliver, little or no support. It’s related to their niche!

The Problem

A song book for Dad’s like me doesn’t cut it. I want more. I want to know how the rhyme goes! I can’t find everything on YouTube.
While I’m excited to see they offer a book, I’m disappointed (being a product developer) that they don’t offer a music CD or digital version.
Don’t laugh! It’s so easy to record a group of people singing using modern technology it’s an excuse to not try it. Can you see where I’m going with this?

The Solution

This is what I would do.
Record the staff singing all the nursery rhymes and you now have a new product which can be delivered in the 21st century. Have the staff sign a performance rights agreement giving you permission to sell the recording.
The new product is the audio version of the book. Even if you can’t get all the staff together you could record the songs with one person singing. This product is for parents and child to enjoy together. They can learn the rhyme as well as the words. It doesn’t have to be amazing iTunes edited, award-winning quality. Make it fun and deliver a good simple product.
The singing is recorded in MP3 format, burned to disk and sold. The parents would then put the disc in their computer or download the files online.
One advantage of being in a nursery is that some of the parents may have the skills you need to produce this kind of product, keep that in mind.
Here are some other advantages:
  • Can be recorded easily on iPhone, PC or Mac to .mp3 format.
  • Can be recorded easily at low-cost by a professional (possible parent).
  • Sell it in the nursery.
  • Sell it online.
  • Delivered digitally online via download (zero cost).
  • Promoted easily in monthly email newsletter.
  • Duplicated easily on disc (most computers have a CD Burner) or by a company.
Again, this product does not have to be awarding winning quality! If my nursery offered me an mp3 file I could buy and listen to on my phone I would purchase it without thinking. It’s a no brainer.
Listen to the songs and learn the words with the rhyme.

The Product

OK i know, It’s easy to write ideas like this but there is some work involved.
If I was to take this project on I would put together a short proposal explaining the product, the advantages and then give a fixed price for doing the work.
If you own a nursery and want to take on this project, do the following:
  • Record some audio on the iPhone and test quality. This will be the hardest part. Lots of testing to check quality.
  • Find a duplication company and get quotes (optional) .
  • Setup online payment on your website (PayPal or Merchant Account).
  • Setup online delivery using E-junkie (works with PayPal).
If you wanted discs in cases then get a nice cover designed it can add a more professional look to the product. Having a CD for the customer to take away does have perceived value so the disc should look nice. To save on costs you don’t need a fancy CD case just a standard plastic clear case. The customer will probably copy the files to their computer and bin the disc. Try and encourage the customer to take the digital version.
You can purchase disc printers or disc label stickers from most stationary shops if you decide to go the route of printing the discs in-house but for about £40 you could get 50 inkjet printed CD’s delivered to you.
One of the advantages of using E-junkie to deliver the files is the ability to also email a download link to the customer after purchase. The sale doesn’t have to be online and you can still send them a secure link to download the audio files. You can even limit the amount of times they can download it to avoid sharing.
You could also price differently for the digital version. The digital version cost you nothing to deliver. To encourage sales offer a slightly reduced price to that of the CD
  • CD – £5
  • Digital MP3 – £4

Why I Like This

The main reason I like this product is because it’s NOT about making a product to generate revenue. It’s being created for the users benefit and selling the product will add revenue anyway.
I’m not saying this idea will generate huge returns but hopefully inspire you to try changing an existing product range.

Food For Thought

I hope you can get some ideas from this article. There are always ways to repackage your existing products and deliver them in another format.
Will I take on this project? Not right now, I may sell the idea to the nursery and see if they come back to me wanting more information but right now I don’t have the time to work on this project.

Your Feedback

If you are stuck for product ideas then comment below and we will throw some your way.
If you have repackaged any of your own products then please share your stories.
I'm David Frosdick a content marketer & course creator. I spend my days working with OptimizePress, coaching clients, producing online courses, digital products and generally seeing what's working online with marketing. Thanks for visiting my blog and feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Written by

David Frosdick

I'm David a content marketer & digital product creator. I spend my days learning about marketing, testing new ideas and working with business owners to improve internal processes and automate what they can. Feel free to contact me if you want to chat.