7 Quick Tips for Creating How-to Information Products
March 9, 2010
Do you want a quick set of tips to creating info products? Well, here it is. The process of creating info products isn’t EASY, but it is SIMPLE. What do I mean by this? The process if relatively straightforward. The problem for most people is implementation. Knowing and doing are two different things!
First, you need to think about in which area or niche should you create products. Should you work in an area where there is very little competition? Possible, but if there is a lot less competition, it means that few people may be interested in your topic. Try and find the middle. That area between what is hugely popular and that which is relatively unknown.
Second, you need to write the copy to sell your product. Writing the copy will give you an understanding of what has to be in the product itself when complete. If you don’t know how to write copy that well, take a look at someone like Sabrina Brick. Consider getting a super fast tweak.
Third, you need to create the product itself. Use the copy you created to put together a detailed outline. After you have the outline, have someone interview you (if it’s an audio product) and go through each of the outline elements.
Fourth, you need to design a website to sell your product. I’ll assume you’ve already reserved a domain name, but if you haven’t go to UltraCheapDomains.com. This is one of my sites, but the prices are extremely reasonable and lot of people who sell info products reserve their domain names at this site.
Fifth, you need to drive traffic to your site. Without traffic to your site, no one will buy anything. If people don’t buy anything at your site, as a backup, try and get them to give you their email address. This should be your fallback position if people don’t buy.
Sixth, get those who visit your site to BUY. That’s what is called conversion. Conversion refers to how many people come to your site and what percentage of those people end up either buying or opting in to your list. Once they opt in, then you have to work on getting people to buy.
Seventh and last, you have to get people to come back after they buy your first product and buy again and again from you. To get this to happen, you have to give them a GREAT product. One that’s worth a LOT more than what they paid for it.
Follow these 7 steps and you’re on your way to creating some GREAT how-to information products!
How to Sell Information Products on the Internet
February 21, 2010
I’ve been selling information products for over 25 years. For half of that time, all of that marketing was done OFF line. How things have changed because of the internet! There are so many things I can do now that were impossible before all of us started selling on the web.
In the “old days” we used to sell primarily using direct mail. The nice thing about using direct mail was that everything was trackable. Similar to what we can do now with something like Google Anlaytics, we were able to know our numbers very well.
For an OLDTIMER like me, here are some of the reason why I love selling info products on the internet.
The thing that I love is the fact that now I sell digital products almost exclusively. There was nothing that I hated more than seeing a UPS truck going in the wrong direction. That would mean that someone had taken the time and effort to pack up and send a product back. I can’t tell you how much this angered me. Every once in a while the return was legitimate, but more often, someone had taken the product and copied it before they sent it back.
Digital products make me feel better. IF someone returns a product, there is no physical product to return. All they do is email me and request a refund. There is no physical product to return. I feel less “taken” when I suspect that people have been playing games with me.
The second thing I love about selling products online is that tracking is a lot easier. You could track everything when we were doing direct mail, but it took a lot more effort. Google analytics has made that much easier.
The third and biggest thing for me has been that my business has now become 100% portable. The only thing that still requires physical delivery are DVDs and videos. That won’t be the case for too much longer. As soon as everyone has a super fast internet connection, videos will also be digitally deliverable and practically so.
As much as some people may pine for the OLD DAYS, I’m glad that those who sell info products are now in a position to do their business virtually anywhere. This makes the business a lot more fun and interesting. You can be sitting under a palm tree on a Caribbean Island or on top of a mountain somewhere.
Selling information product on the internet is the way to go!
Information Products Business Plan
February 16, 2010
Any and everyone who markets and sells information needs a plan. A business plan. Selling info products is thought by some to be a simple game that requires little planning. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a REAL business and requires a REAL plan.
As I see it, here are the steps you need to include in any business plan for your info products business.
What market will you try and sell to? You need to come up with a very specific target group. The best way to do this is to figure out what keywords would precisely target the group you are “going after.” For this blog, my exact group is INFORMATION MARKETING. This is exactly the group that I am seeking to find, talk to and sell to.
There are a variety of paid tools you can use to do this. There is also our old friend Google who can get you 95% of the way there with a free tool. I suggest you start with that one. It just makes the most sense. Go to Google’s keyword tool.
The next step in your plan is to figure out exactly what this target group needs and wants. Do NOT try and shoehorn what you sell into this position. You should be selling what your target group indicates that want and will buy. How to find this out? The best way would be to survey this group. If you already had a list of people in this target group, it would be easy.
Without that list, you’ll have to find someone who is already selling to this market and assume that they have done their research. This is certainly not the ideal way to do it, but it will work in a pinch.
Your next step is to decide what form the group would want to have the products produced in. Are they the types that would prefer audio, video, book or ebook?
After you’ve decided that factor, you’ll now need to get to work producing the products themselves. When you’ve gotten to that point, you have now officially entered the market. You’ve graduated from the planning stage to the implementing stage.
Information Marketing Learning Systems
February 11, 2010
I just spent the last 48 hours in a room with the consultants who catapulted Scott Brown into the Senate seat. He was the guy who beat Martha Cokley for the “Ted Kennedy” seat in Massachusetts. All I could think of while I was sitting in the room sucking up all the new information was: How could I turn this experience into a product?
The guy who led the session was from something called the Shawmut group. His name is Rob Cole. He KNEW his stuff! It was fun to sit in on a learning session as the student and not the instructor or seminar leader. Particularly with someone who REALLY knew his stuff. He was NOT a POSER!
Rob went through the presentation to show the group how to put together and structure a campaign. He used a chart to illustrate the structure of the campaign. His famous: “7 boxes plus one”. As someone who does a ton of info products, I resonated with a 7 STEP program. It made sense. The “plus one” was a nice additional touch.
If you’re going to to do products, KNOW your stuff. Also, know how to structure your products. A list is good. Structure is important. Knowing how to put the steps in order: equally important. As you put an info product together, think of what you’re doing as a LEARNING SYSTEM. A way to show people HOW to DO something.
As you put together your product, think of it as an information learning system.
Information Marketing Measurement Systems
February 4, 2010
I’ve started a very specific routine for keeping my weight “in check.” It involves getting on the digital scale every morning when I wake up and every evening before I go to sleep. Some people may think this is excessive. I don’t. If you’re really interested in losing or maintaining your weight, then you need to monitor it OFTEN.
How does this relate to your website and the selling of your info products? Simple. If I were to take a random survey of 1,000 people who sell information, I’d ask them this question: “Do you have a way to track the four most important elements of success on your site?”
The natural follow up question you’re asking is: What are the four most important elements that you need to monitor on your site?
1. Unique Visitors: Without an idea of how many unique people come to your site, you won’t be able to know how your marketing efforts are going. You’ll have no way of assessing your efforts to drive people to your site.
2. Conversion to Sales Rate: Let’s say you get 100 visitors to your site. Out of those 100 people, 4 people buy from you. Assume you’re selling a $50 digital product. The conversion rate is 4%. Four out of the one hundred people bought something, so your sales conversion rate is 4% in this example.
3. Conversion to Email Sign Up: In the event that 100 people visit your site and 4% buy, there are also 96 people who are about to leave without buying. If out of those 96 people, 22 people sign up to receive your ezine or special report, you have a conversion to email rate of 22%.
4. Average Visitor Value: In the above example, 4 out of 100 people bought a $50 product. The total dollars generated is $200. Divide $200 by 100 and you get $2. That is your average visitor value. This piece of data is critical because we live in a pay per click world. If you can BUY clicks for $1 and your average visitor value if $2, then you want to do this as many times as you possibly can!
Make sure that you have Google analytics or some other method of tracking set up on ALL of your sites. Also make sure that you can get instantly put your hands on these four critical tracking elements.
Information Product Marketing
August 1, 2008
Just because you have or have created an information product doesn’t mean it’s going to sell. Once it’s done you have to concentrate on how to market your information products. Without marketing, you won’t make any money.
The BIG question is HOW?
The answer is it DEPENDS on what you’re selling AND your own skill sets. Different types of information products will require different types of marketing.
You’ll also NOT want to concentrate on those methods of marketing that are uncomfortable or don’t come easy to you.
There are basically two types of ways to market information products: PAID and UNPAID.
Paid marketing techniques include using Google Adwords and other forms of pay per click advertising.
Unpaid marketing for your information products include writing articles, blogging and giving speeches and seminars.
If you’re not the type to enjoy public speaking then the last two mentioned above probably won’t work for you.
As you accumulate all the possible methods of marketing for your information products, you’ll want to concentrate your efforts where there is a fit between what will work and what works for YOU.
Information Marketing Articles
July 31, 2008
Articles are an excellent way for you to market and promote your own info products. Information marketing articles are a perfect tool for the info product seller who wants to maximize their
There are a ton of information marketing articles out there. Many don’t give you a whole lot. most articles on the topic are geared to help the author accomplish their goals rather than helping the reader get what he or she wants.
I think this is the wrong way to go about things.
Instead, I would have you read information marketing articles that actually give you solid useable content about how to do things.
I have always had the philosophy that if you give people what you promise them and what they truly need, you’re going to get what you need in return. There are very few information marketing articles that provide you with anything but fluff.
That’s the big problem.
I only wish that the search engines could screen out this kind of material and make it difficult or impossible for people to produce a lot of junk and get rated highly in the search engines. At this point in time, that’s not yet possible.
To screen out which information marketing articles you should take seriously, do the following:
1. Read the article and ask yourself: Is this person trying to help ME or THEM?
2. When you’re done, ask yourself: Can I now DO something that I couldn’t before?
3. Ask Yourself: Am I closer to achieving MY goals as a result of reading this article?
The answers you get to those questions will help you figure out whose articles on information marketing you should continue to read in the future. I teach this and other concepts at the Fred Info Bootcamp. I’d love to have you attend!
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