The Five
Easiest-to-Complete Information
Products
by Marcia Yudkin
Your
first time out of the gate, you’re
going to be tempted to tackle an
information product project that is
much too complicated. After all, you
know so much and can’t leave out any
of the valuable points! Or, you lack
confidence that anyone will pay you
a dime unless your ebook, book or
course is crammed with every
imaginable tip and technique.
Don’t give in to this temptation, or
you’ll be hamstrung and unable to
finish that crucial first
information marketing project.
Instead, choose one of these easy
formats for compiling and packaging
useful information, and you’ll have
your first product on the market –
and making money for you – in no
time.
Five Easy Information Product
Formats
1. Compilation of expert
contributions. Here you request
others who are respected in their
field to provide you with content
that you bring together into a
product. Why would busy experts
provide you with original,
thought-provoking and useful
material? They often will do so at
no cost if you come up with an
interesting enough question for them
to answer and tell them their
contribution should be a page or
less.
Promise them a copy of the finished
report, where they’ll be able to see
how peers and competitors responded,
too. Also tell them how you’ll be
publicizing the product. No matter
how well known they already are,
prominent people love publicity.
After all, that’s how they got to be
renowned in the first place. In most
cases, you’ll set up this
compilation as a downloadable PDF
report.
Example:
"Online Profits at the Speed of
Light" by Bob Serling
2.
Q&A report. Instead of asking
many others one question, you can
create a product by asking yourself
– then answering – many questions.
This works well when you simply
collect commonly asked questions.
You can also focus or the hardest
ones, the most unusual ones or the
funniest questions. If you find the
idea of writing a formal article or
a book intimidating, this may be the
ticket for you. When it comes to
anything you know more about than
the average person, you’re probably
in the habit of answering questions
on a daily or weekly basis anyway.
This one too would get sold as a
downloadable PDF report.
Example:
"Answers to the World's Toughest
Questions about Law of Attraction"
by Andrea Conway
3.
Audio interview of an expert. In
this option and the next two, you
create an audio product in just one
hour plus a little preparation time.
Simply persuade someone whose
opinions, experiences and knowledge
others want to hear to be
interviewed for an hour, and record
the session. Voilà, a product! Many
experts will agree to do this for
free providing they receive a copy
of the recording and permission to
sell it or use it as a bonus product
for something else.
It’s easiest to record such an
interview on a conference-call line
using a service like Free Conference
Call (http://www.freeconferencecall.com).
Sell your interview either as a
downloadable MP3 or as a CD that you
send to the buyer by mail. Some
information marketers also provide
the option of customers buying a
transcript in addition to or instead
of the audio recording.
Examples:
"Paying for College"
"Inside the Mind of a Listing
Expert"
4.
Audio interview of you. Just
flip option #3 upside down, and you
have another quick-start information
product: Someone else interviews you
for an hour. The interviewer could
be a friend or someone with a great
voice and smooth interviewing skills
whom you hire to do the interview.
Record the question and answer
session, and in little more than one
hour, you have a product to sell.
Prepare for the interview by writing
an introduction and conclusion for
the interviewer to use and a list of
questions. Keep the illusion of
spontaneity by not writing out in
full your answers to these
questions. Instead, make notes on
the points you want to make during
the session and keep them in front
of you as you and the interviewer go
through the agenda, question by
question. To the listener,
interviews arranged in this way
sound exactly like those in #3, so
I’m not listing separate examples.
5. Teleclass recording. This
audio option differs from the
interview format in that it’s
instructional in flavor and may
include participant questions and
your answers. You can charge for
this kind of session in two ways:
First, those who participate in the
call might pay to do so, and second,
those who were not present on the
call can purchase the CD or MP3
recording. While some teleclasses
become products as a multi-session
series, it’s best to start with just
a single one-hour class.
Examples:
"Creating Donor Evangelists" by Marc
Pitman
"Create a New Financial Identity" by
Joan Sotkin
When
you’ve chosen the content carefully,
provided useful information and
described the product temptingly for
your target market, these
quick-to-produce information formats
sell well. Henry David Thoreau put
my point best: Simplify! Simplify!
Marcia Yudkin has been selling
information in one form or another
since 1981, including conventionally
published books, audiotapes, CDs,
downloadable reports and multimedia
courses. Learn more about her
home-study course on becoming a
successful information marketer: Launch Your Information Empire
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