Making Money in the Age of Digital Distribution

We are at the beginning stages of one of the biggest power shifts in the history of content distribution. No longer is it necessary for you to have vast amounts of money to get your products to consumers. With services like Google Search, Google Video, Adsense, Apple Computer's iTunes, Blogger, Ebay and UPS, the world is wide open to you.

All this presents a golden opportunity for the enterprising hustler. Weather you produce music, video material, clothing or text based content you now have an easy way to get you products out to the masses.

Take Google's Adsense program for example, there are companies out there that could not exist profitable if it were not for this program. Let's look at Weblogs Inc., which was acquired last year by AOL. Weblogs Inc., is a publishing consortium of 100 independent bloggers who produce more than 1,000 blog posts a week across over 75 industry-leading blogs, including the popular consumer technology blog Engadget, luxury goods blog Luxist, and car-focused Autoblog. Weblogs Inc., generates $3,000 a day in revenue from the Adsense program. That's over $1 million dollars per year in revenue.

If you have a small independent record label it is now profitable for you to exist on sales of 10 000 albums. Take away the need to manufacture and distribute CDs and a major expense road block has been cleared from your path to profitability. Lets take the iTunes pricing model for example, Apple sells a track for 99 cents and albums for $9.99 of which about 60% goes to the record company. Now as a small producer if you sold 10 000 albums that would have earned you just under $60 000. So if you spent $30 000 to produce and market that album, you have earned almost $30 000 in profit from just selling 10 000 albums. Now if you were to have consistent releases which sold more each release, your profits will continue to increase but distribution cost will not, and with the money you save from manufacturing and distribution you are able to better market your product. Maybe even producing low cost digital videos for internet distribution, which you can sell or give away. The really cool thing about this however is how easy it is for you to have you product reach an international audience.

Now lets say your were able to get you hands on some really cool items every once in a while or you make really nice clothes. Why not open an Ebay store to help you move your product. Your store would be open 24 hours a day and your products would be available internationally.

These are very basic examples of what can be done in the new age of internet marketing and distribution but as a good hustler you should be able to see the great money making opportunities that are now available to you. Remember Google has only existed for about seven years but is now worth $140 billions. Be the ultimate hustler and create the next online empire.