How China Direct Sourcing Make Money

I remember first coming across Lindy Chen’s website a few years ago when I was researching how to import from China for a few ecommerce ideas we were stewing over.

For any of you who have researched it yourself you’ll agree with me when I say the information out there on this topic is terrible.

Most sites contain trifling bites of barely comprehensible informationand almost none contain anything approaching authoritative how-to articles.

You can imagine how my ‘buyer’ buttons got pushed hard the minute I stumbled onto a professionally designed, information rich website like Lindy’s, which focused 100% on how to import from China.

So Lindy’s story is simple…

She helps businesses in Australia import from China, which means she can help you find a supplier, make sure contracts are done properly, assist with the importing process etc. A typical consultant service style business.

Lindy decided at some point that it would be nice to add on a passive income source to her business and born out of this were her information products on how to DIY import from China.

At the time I bought her book, I think for $77 or something (this was back in 2009), her offerings were sparse. But now her offering consists of ebook ($47), book + CD Rom with resources ($147) and book + DVD series ($397). Brilliant!

As you can see Lindy has pursued a premium pricing model for this information, which makes sense since true quality info on the topic – I mean all-in-one step-by-step info – is not easily available (for free) and since this is the sort of info that can save businesses $1000s and $1000s in costs (you can better negotiate, find the right supplier, not get ripped off etc).

I’ve mentioned it in other case studies, but I reiterate it here; if you can sell a product that helps people eliminate a fear – in this case the fear of getting ripped off in a foreign land – you have such an easy value proposition. Conversion paradise!

Now before we finish on this case study, let me point out how smart Lindy is with her upsell products.

So after she has first given you a free ecourse, she can then get you buying her ebook for say $97. Then once you’ve further built up trust and see her as the expert, you can buy the full course and possibly all the other things you need to successfully import from China; hello contract templates, NDA templates, purchase order agreement templates etc etc.

She offers everything from the classic NDA to the exclusive distribution template. And the prices range from $97 (eg sample order contract) to $997(eg exclusive distribution templae). Wow!!

You know you need these templates after reading her course and you knowto go to a lawyer will cost you $1000s. So what’s a novice importer to do?! Lindy’s premium offerings are a relative steal.

What a great example of a smart and non-scammy (but rather very useful)upsell path.

What other information product ideas do you know with such a beautiful upsell path?

My advice is to focus on products that serve small businesses or online entrepreneurs. eg you sell people an info product to do with copywriting for sales pages, and then copywriting for autoresponders, and then…well, you get the drift.

PS With China Direct Sourcing, Lindy also uses the info products to upsell her company’s consulting services, which is an interesting combo too, but not passive so not of interest to us.

Visit China Direct Sourcing