Physical Info Product Creation: Using Multiple Formats to Multiply Profits

No matter what type of products you're creating or what market you're in, you should seriously consider offering your products in a variety of formats. This is relatively easy to do and is something you can phase in over time (so you don't necessarily need to hold off releasing your product because you're waiting to add an additional format).

Here are just a few reasons why it makes sense to offer your products in multiple media, including benefits for your customers and for YOU: Read more

Popularity: 8% [?]

Six "Einstein Woulda' Done This" Reasons for Starting an Online Business

No intro on this article…let's just get right to it.  If you're thinking about starting an online business or are wondering if this "Internet stuff" is the right path for you, here are some killer reasons why you should rest at ease and know you've chosen the right business.

1.  Low Overhead

An online business is one of the few businesses with incredibly low overhead.  You don't need to hire a huge number of employees, you don't need to rent office space or stock inventory.  Instead, your online business can run nice and lean, with only web hosting and a few other expenses that are absolutely required.  Anything more is optional.

2.  Run From Anywhere in the World

As long as you have an Internet connection, you can operate your business from anywhere in the world.  There are some huge advantages of this, not the least of which is the freedom of location that this type of business gives you.  Why build a business that forces you to be stuck in one location or that makes it difficult to move to a new area because you'd have to start from scratch finding new customers all over again?  You won't be dealing with any of these issues as you build your online business.

3.  Allows You to Leverage Your Skills, Talents and Interests

This relates mostly to information products, but affiliate marketing and other online business strategies can come into play here too.  When building your online business, you can focus on markets that you're interested or have experience and use that know-how to create tons of great content.  That can include your own information products, articles, videos, podcasts, special reports and so on.  The whole web is based on content and if you're able to tap into something you enjoy and create great content around that topic, you'll be setting yourself up for success.

4.  Earn Additional Income or Full-Time Income

Of course, this is what we're all looking for, right?  A way to earn additional income or even a full-time income via the Internet…to get out of the Rat Race and so on.  Having an online business is clearly one of the best strategies for reaching this goal, for many of the reasons mentioned above.  And by building an online business that brings in additional income, you're able to hedge yourself against uncertain financial changes, market trends and other curve balls life tends to throw our way from time to time.

5.  Can Be Started Part-Time

This is one of the best things about an online business, especially for the "Average Joe"…it can be started part-time.  In fact, it SHOULD be started part-time.  And once it's up and running, it really shouldn't be a full-time effort.  Otherwise, that's just another JOB.  An online business doesn't require you to "man the fort" for certain hours during the day, to answer phones, or to be instantly accessible.  Sure, you need to provide customer support for your buyers, reply to emails, take care of the occasional return and so on.  But online, there's not the same expectation that you'll be instantly accessible as in the case of an offline business (where you might be "leashed" to a cell phone…UGH!).  This allows you to batch your support tasks to take care of them all at once or outsource those tasks altogether.  Product creation and content creation can also be done relatively quickly and during times that are most convenient and productive for you.  This is perfect if you're still working a job and have limited time to devote to your business.

6.  Plenty of Income Strategies to Choose From

Online business is such a broad term and it's important to realize that there are several income models that make up the whole "online business" arena.  Here are just a few off the top of my head:

• You can create information products based on your own knowledge
  (or info you learn through a little bit of research)
• You can recommend other people's products and earn a referral fee as an affiliate
• You can create content sites and add ways for those sites to make money
  (affiliate offers, contextual advertising, paid ads, etc)
• You can create a paid membership site or other recurring income stream
• You can offer coaching or consulting to your target market

For any of these options, I suggest creating a blog to serve as the hub for your products, the basis for your content site, or the place where you add content to go along with your affiliate offers.  There are tons of resources available for learning how to get a blog up and running and you can even use free services like Wordpress.com or Blogger.com.  But if you're serious about building a REAL business, you'll want to have that blog on your own domain, not hosted on one of these free services.

If you'd like to learn the fastest, easiest way to get your blog setup on your own domain, watch me take you through the process step-by-step in my Business Blog Mastery video tutorial.  In fact, if you order by Sunday, 6PM EST (GMT -5), you can get it during a weekend special I'm starting a day early…just $27 vs. the usual $55.00.  Here's the link:

Click Here to Order "Business Blog Mastery" CD-ROM

And while we're at it…if you're interested getting a crash course in online business strategies, how to get started and why this is, without a doubt, the best business to start, you'll want to check out my brand new Online Business Overview Audio CD.  On that CD, I go over a lot of the information above in more detail (and then some) and give you my own personal insights into which online business models are most effective and REALLY worth pursuing.  Check out the back of the CD for details using the link below.

I'm offering an introductory special on that audio CD also.  Regular price will be $35.00 after the special, but you can get it for a measly 15 bucks if you order by
Sunday, 6pm EST (GMT -5).  Here's the link:

Click Here to Order the Online Business Overview (Audio CD)

~Kenton Newby

Popularity: 32% [?]

Benefits of Being in the Physical Information Product Business

I was talking with a friend of mine about some of the upsides to being in the infoproduct business, specifically selling PHYSICAL infoproducts.  If you're not already selling information products, then perhaps this list will help highlight some of the reasons why it's such a powerful (and profitable) business model.

Zero Inventory
You don't have to hold any inventory in your home office, basement or wherever you work out of.  Using print-on-demand services or other means for product fulfillment means that's one less step in the process that you have to be involved with.  And more and more companies are popping up that offer print-on-demand services, making it easier than ever to use that sort of streamlined delivery method while taking yourself out of the equation (if you choose to).

Low Overhead
Sure, you can build a business with tons of employees, staff, a huge building and tons of equipment.  But wouldn't it be better to not have all that overhead?  That's just more things to manage, more things to go wrong and much more cost.  There are hardly any overhead costs with an infoproduct business.

Speed to Market
With the right tools, you can have a product created and out to market relatively quickly.  Instead of needing thousands of dollars of equipment, like what might have been the case in the past, now you can just use off-the-shelf software and readily available consumer electronics to create fantastic, profitable products.

Higher Perceived Value
You can typically charge more for a physical info product thanks to the higher perceived value.  I know I'd rather have a DVD that I can refer to later if I need to rather than wondering if that website with the online tutorial is still going to be up and running 2 years from now.  There's a place for online info products, but in general, it's just as easy to deliver a finished product to your customers and take advantage of the higher perceived value that comes with that.

High Margins
There are HUGE profits to be made in the infoproduct business.  You've seen how much a typical product sells for.  And you know that the actual "hard costs" aren't anywhere close to that (in most cases).  If you have a bunch of great info that you've packaged into a DVD that sells for $50, you're keeping something like 90% - 95% of that as profit.  That's tough to find in any business.

Repeat Customers
While not something that's unique to an infoproduct business, you can certainly foster repeat purchases from your customers.  That's especially true if you produce quality products in a market that's information intensive.

Leveraging What You Know and Replacing Manual Labor
Creating infoproducts allows you to leverage what you know and generate income from that know-how.  Rather than "doing" the thing, you can show people "how to do" the thing.  That means you're also replacing manual labor by having a product, freeing more of your time.  You're also able to work once and get paid multiple times for your product.  You can also easily scale this model up by adding additional products.

It's FUN!
Would you rather be creating a new, profitable DVD (or other product) on a topic you enjoy or stuck in some meeting for 4 hours with no one getting anything done?  Easy choice.

 

Popularity: 64% [?]

Product Creation Perfectionism and at Least Four Things That Are More Important

If you're serious about getting your online business going this year, you might have already decided that an information product business is the way you'll get started.  One of the things that's likely to come up is "product creation perfectionism". 

One important thing to realize is that the product is really the least important of the items that matter.  It took me awhile to get this.  It sounds counter-intuitive but it's true, assuming that you have at least a decent product - not perfect, but good information that represents a fair exchange of value for what you're charging for it. 

If that's true, then there are more important pieces of the puzzle you should probably focus on rather than trying to make your "good" product "perfect".

1. Getting traffic to your site - of course you need to get people to your site in order to make sales.  This goes without saying, but I'm saying it anyway.
2. Improving the conversion rate of your sales page - once you get people to your site, are they buying?  If not, why?  What can you do to increase the rate at which they purchase and, therefore, how much each visitor is worth to you?
3. Offering a premium version of your product - once people are purchasing, can you add something to the offer to create a premium version?  Maybe you can offer a free consultation, paid support for an additional fee, a quick start guide, or something else that at least a percentage of people will be willing to pay extra for.
4. Offering backend products - are there other related products that you have or that you're an affiliate for that you can offer your buyers?  Are those offers on your thank you page, in your follow up email sequence and other "leaky" places?  Again, the goal here is increasing the visitor value for a given amount of traffic.

Focusing on tweaking, perfecting or adding to your product before you even start promoting it will probably just leave you spinning your wheels and with an empty bank account.  You can always go back later on and add to it, rework those pieces that need updating or tweaking.  You'll also be able to get feedback from customers who purchase the initial version.

So the bottom line is if your product is good enough to get "out the door", start promoting it, get traffic to your site and work on converting that traffic to improve visitor value.  Down the road, you can come back and add to it.  Just be sure you don't start promoting something that's garbage - of course, it should still be valuable information for your target market.

Popularity: 70% [?]

Another Great Reason to Have Your Own Products

The other day I got a really cool gift from someone I don't even know (yet).  It's the best kind of gift too, a totally unexpected surprise.  It was from Richard Lee, a fellow internet business blogger who I've mentioned a couple of times on this site.  Anyway, it was pretty cool to get that in the mail, though I've been lazy about getting over to the UPS store and it's been sitting there for almost three weeks - and he was probably thinking I was an ungrateful SOB for not at least saying thanks (again, sorry about that Richard and my sincerest thanks for the CD).

Okay, so a couple of points.

First, here's the link to the CD:

Motivation and Distraction Management  (goes straight to the order page, not an affiliate link)

So why do I think you should drop everything and go get a copy of this CD pronto?  Because whenever you get a room full of entrepreneurs or wanna-be entrepreneurs together in a room and ask them what their toughest challenges are, staying focused and actually GETTING THINGS DONE are two things that almost always show up on the list. 

My thinking is that anything that can help you knock those off the "what's-holding-you-back" list is a good thing.  In fact, I got several good ideas I'm going to use when it's time to write the next batch of articles to promote one of my products.  If you do the same, you'll more than make up the cost of the product, making that factor irrelevant.  Of course, that assumes that you have your own product…

You DO have your own product, right?

Well if not, this little story is yet another reason for why you should.  You see, by creating your own product, you now have something of value.  Normally your goal is to exchange that value for money.  But what about offering certain products as bonuses, or even giving something away for free (with good reason, not just willy nilly)?  What about trading your product for someone else's?  I know for a fact this is done, though usually behind the scenes. 

Really the sky's the limit but I want to keep this post short.  The point is that if you're just an affiliate or just building AdSense sites, you don't really have much to offer your peers in the way of a "value exchange".  Not to mention the difference in profit potential. 

Something to think about.

Popularity: 98% [?]

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