Selling Information To Those Who Need It
I have heard time and again, and I believe it is true, that the real way to making big money online is to create and sell your own products. I am talking about information products, such as ebooks, videos, audios, membership sites, paid newsletters, etc.
What all these have in common is that you are selling the information you know about, to people who want to learn it. These people are happy to pay you for the knowledge you have, because they will get much more than the purchase price in value when they learn and apply your information.
In some ways, starting out your online business with a blog can be distracting you from the more important task of creating your own products. I know this happens to me. I know my blog readers want new posts to read. I am trying to post on this blog at least twice a week.
This creates a deadline for me, which is good, because it keeps the blog active, but also it can keep me from creating the products that I want to create.
I have made up my mind that I want to create some information products, and I am working on one right now. This product is for one of my niche markets, not for the internet business niche.
I think it is important for an internet marketer to have some success in a niche other than internet marketing. At least, for me, it is important. Otherwise it is kind of circular, isn’t it? Marketers selling to other marketers. Making money online by selling products on how to make money online.
There is nothing wrong with this if it works for you, but I personally want to teach things that can be successful in any market, not just the “make money online” market. Then when I do create a product for other online marketers, at least I will feel that I know what I am talking about.
Besides, the niche blog that I am targeting gets about 1200 unique visitors per day, a lot more than this blog gets. And it is funny, but a lot of these people are looking for the same information. I can tell by the search queries that they are using to reach my blog. They are looking for specific information, and I am working on an ebook right now which will give them the exact information they are looking for.
It seems to me that this ebook should do well. People are already searching for this information. They are landing on my niche blog, but they are not really finding what they want there. So I am going to give them what they want, for a very reasonable price.
So that’s my update on what I’m working on right now. How about you? Are you planning to create your own information products?
- Pat Doyle
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I have created a few digital info products, largely to give away as incentives to opt in to my lists/newsletters. These took time and trouble to create but have been well worth it in terms of listbuilding and longer term revenue generation. I thought about selling some of those ebooks, but in the end, free seemed the best way to go with them. I wasn’t that confident that they were worth people’s money, although having seen some of the junk people sell I was probably too harsh on myself
I am also considering production of others and like you, dealing with subjects outside of the IM niche, with the intention of selling through Clickbank or PaydotCom in view of their large affiliate networks.
Time, as ever, is always the enemy.
It seems that the products always take longer to create than I think. But as you say, it will be worth it in the long run. Good luck with continuing to create products. I think it is the way to go.
As far as being worth money, I always question that too. I think I will start out by offering my product at a low price so I know it is worth more than I am asking. I want people to feel they are getting a lot of value for their money. But I do think we are our own worst critics.
Pat I agree that selling your own products is a better business model. At the moment I don’t have an ebook planned, though I do have some ideas for some.
I am working, though on developing a premium theme for WordPress, which would fit the digital product category.
The main thing with digital products is they scale so much better. They take me longer to create than I think in advance too, but still I think it’s worth it.
A WordPress theme is a good idea. I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with! You are right that digital products scale much better. You can sell a good product for a long time.
If you want to learn how to create value just go watch some late night infomercials… Notice how they usually have a huge pack of stuff all fanned out, not just one DVD but several with quick start guides and stuff.
Guthy Renker, Agora, et al play the game at a different level than most…
Jim, good point. I will have to remember that. It would be pretty easy to create quick start guides, etc. Or if it’s an ebook, have an audio version, etc.
Hi Pat. Regarding this part of your post…”I can tell by the search queries that they are using to reach my blog.”
I assume you’re speaking of a blog related to your niche other than marketing. Can you please explain how you track those queries, in other words, how do you find out from where your visitors are coming? Is it straight from a search engine, other links, etc?
Shelley, yes it is a blog other than marketing. And I use Statcounter to do the tracking. It shows you what queries people use to get to you and from which search engines. It also tells you any other sites that visitors come from.
In this post, I was speaking of visitors coming from the search engines. I can tell through Statcounter exactly what keywords they were typing into the search box.
By the way, Statcounter is free for I think 500 log entries. If you want more history, you can pay. I am on one of their paid plans now since I have more traffic, but you can start out for free. I really like them. Some hosting companies do have free statistics packages with their hosting, but I am used to Statcounter now.
Good for you, Pat.
Blogging is distracting big time as long as it is not solely used to drive traffic into your marketing funnel.
As soon as you have your low price front end product, get ready to offer an upsell (like a physical version, extended version with more content. Kunaki) and start creating a medium priced product.
The ultimate goal must be a — actual several — recurring income stream(s).
Yours
John
I agree, John! I have been very lax in creating products, which is the most important part of the business.
You are right about offering higher priced products too. It is easier to sell something else to existing customers than to find new customers.