Think about your current situation. Several growers have one to several products and services that they provide. If you were to advertise your current products and services on the Internet what would you expect?

We already have the capabilities that you can order perishable products on the Internet and have it the next day. Anything from fish to fruit. We all know that products that can be preserved, have a long shelf life, canned, or packaged have more flexibility to be transported to many locations.

Because the Internet is world-wide do you think you would sell perishable fruit to someone in another country. Probably not, there are legal restrictions with food being shipped, the costs associated, warranties and liabilities.

Consider value-added or adding additional products to make your entire package attractive. Say you had a particular product you think is difficult in your area to market or develop - reasons for this could be because of low demand, continual disease or pest problems, and/or recent competition. How about gradually introducing a new product or consider an organic product. Take a little of your land that is available and grow a new crop. Slowly work more and more acreage each year. This will give you time to learn about the new crop, how it can be grown, harvested, and processed. At the same time it will allow you the time for transition and testing the water for new markets. However, this can only be done with certain operations and careful consideration needs to be sought out particularly with orchard operations because they take years to establish. Several customers prefer only organically grown products. You can use this to your advantage particularly how you market your organic products.

Another example would be to provide attractive services to support your product. A prime example of this is providing people the opportunity to come out to your operation to purchase products. Examples can include pick-your-own pumpkins or strawberries to bed and breakfasts with wineries. Your web site can attract people from larger cities out to the country. Develop partnerships with those that can help you. This would include the local chamber of commerce. Make sure that you have an advertisement on the local chamber of commerce web site. Work with other partners in your community who can help attract people to your community. Take an apple orchard for instance who wanted to get people out on the weekends or evenings from the city to buy their fresh produce. Offer additional attractions and services like hay wagon rides, cookouts, and other events to attract people. If you don't have the time or resources work with local businesses and services in the neighborhood that can compliment your business. For example, advertise on your web site a weekend getaway package or weekend country tour. This could include a weekend stay at a local bed-and-breakfast which would include a planned itinerary for them to come to your orchard for a tour. The price of the package also includes a selection of fresh produce to take home. You could also expand it into a countryside tour which involves stops throughout the community at your orchard, to a pumpkin farm, a sweet corn farm, and other attractions. This would also benefit other businesses who are just like you looking for extra profit. The difficulty in arranging these events of course is the timeliness of when the products are available to be sold.

Think about combining several produces together and make a new product idea and develop an additional web site or web page devoted to the product. A couple of examples, make a web site advertising a food basket. Get several growers together to collaborate on making this basket. It could consist of applies, peaches, and vegetables. Use your imagination and creativity on what you can come up with. These baskets can be excellent holiday or special events gifts. The web site would focus in on the baskets but those contributing can do their individualized advertising on the web site to come back and visit their particular products. Another example would be to get several growers together who specialize in lettuce, carrots, onions, radishes, and cucumbers and make a salad web site. Ideas can be endless. You could even put together recipes or coupons on the web site to provide additional features to keep customers coming back to visit your web site or operation.