Work-At-Home Success University

Course: Create a Sell Information

Products

Lesson 1

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Introduction

Welcome to Work-At-Home Success University and Creating and Selling

Information Products!

I’m excited to have you as a valued student in this four-week training program!

Making money in information has been around for centuries. Many mail-order millionaires (pre-Internet), made their fortune by selling information booklets through low-cost classified ads or direct mail. Today , computers and the Internet has made information products creation and sales easier and more affordable. Many online entrepreneurs that start out in affiliate marketing and/or blogging, take the next step into information marketing to earn a bigger piece of the pie.

In this four-week course you are going to learn about creating and selling information products including: what are information products, how are they created, what topics to create products around, and how you can be successful selling information.

Before we begin with the lessons, there are three important things that I need to mention to you... 1) Worksheets - The course comes with instructional materials as you see here,

but it also includes worksheets. These handouts are crucial to your success so don't skip them. They are designed to help you gather and organize information so that you can use it to be a successful blogger.

2) Audio and Video Materials - When appropriate you'll find audio or video

supplements to the instructional materials. These are designed to assist in providing the information in a clear and concise manner.

3) Weekly Lessons - Here is the schedule of lessons for Blogging For Bucks.

Week 1 -

What are information products?

Choosing a topic Week 2 - Creating Your Product

Organizing your content

Creating your content

Getting the content ready for the Internet

Creating hard-copy content (books, CDs etc) Week 3 - Setting Up Order and Delivery of Your Content

Creating a website sales page

Setting up order processing

Storing your product(s) online

Integrating systems so that ordering, payment and product delivery work automatically

Week 4 -

Getting people to your website to buy!

The content in the later lessens may look sparse, but each topic area has a ton of information and step-by-step details. Some of the information will be technical, but every effort has been made to walk you through the steps one-by-one. Now that we’ve gotten the housekeeping out of the way, let’s get to the reason why you’re here … the lesson!

What is an Information Product?

People have been selling information for centuries. If you've ever bought a home

study program or an eBook...or even this course, you've bought an information

product.

Information products can be sold online or off

or both. It's ideal to start online since it's so

affordable and fast. However, you can consider

offering your products as hard copies (as

opposed to digital) to reach people who don't

buy online. Hard-copies usually have a lower

profit margin, but lower is okay if it means

reaching people who wouldn't have bought

from you otherwise.

The biggest challenge in information product

creation is finding the time to create the

product and set up the sales system. There are a

couple of short-cuts that are options, but in the

scheme of things, this challenge isn't that bad.

And this course will guide you step-by-step

through the process.

Information Products

Information product come in many forms including:

Books

Reports

Question: "I'm not a writer

and not tech savvy for things

like videos, can I still create

information products?"

Answer: Yes. First of all, you

don't need a degree in

English and second, many of

the tech aspects to making

videos are very easy and

affordable now. If you can

follow basic directions, you

can create a variety of

information products.

Manuals

Home Study Courses

Seminars

Audio Trainings

Videos

Training Materials

And all these can be delivered digitally or in a tangible product...or both. They can

also be marketed in a variety of ways including a single sale, continuity programs

(i.e. book of the month), memberships or kits.

Getting Started

"I don't know anything..."

Aside from concerns about being able to create information products, one of the

most common questions I hear is about not knowing anything to sell. But I'm a big

believer that everyone knows enough about something to sell the information to

someone who knows less.

List Your Skills, Knowledge and Interests

One of the great things about information products is that you can make money

on just about anything. Do you like to bake with chocolate? Create a cookbook.

Do you know how to tune-up a car cheaply and easily? Create video tutorials

about car tune-ups. Were you able to potty train your 2-year old in an hour? I'm

sure there are thousands of parents that would pay to know how you did it!

To find a great topic, start by listing your skills, interests and hobbies using the

form on the next page. Be as exhaustive in your lists as possible. Under job skills,

don't just list your job title, but also the tasks you need to know how to do, and

the software and equipment required to do it. Do this for all the lists. For

example, if you are an accountant, list accounting, list the industries you work

with as an accounting (i.e. accounting for doctors) and list the software and tools

you use (i.e. Quickbooks). Do the same for volunteer work, hobbies and your

passions. If you like to decorate cakes in your free time, include that in hobbies

along with the skills and tools required. As you work on your ideas, also consider

what your friends and family think you're good at. What advice or tips are they

always coming to you for?

Skills, Knowledge and Interests Worksheet Job Skills Volunteer Work Skills Hobbies and Interests Passions

Is There Money In Your Interests?

The next step is to find out if there is a market spending money on any of your

interests. From your list, identify the top three or four topics that interest. As we

take each topic through the process of determining its profitability, you may

eliminate some and need to return to your list for new ideas.

Step One: How many people are searching on your topic.

Visit Google Keyword Tool to find out how many searches are done on your topic

area each month. Enter your keyword and the captcha to get a list of results like

the example below.

Keyword: Raw Food Diet

With over a hundred thousand searches a month, this is a popular topic. The list

also gives us variations of the topic, which can allow to choose a tighter niche,

give you new ideas and article sub-topics for your blog. At this point though, you

are looking to see that the topic is popular. Ideally, you want several thousand

searches every month.

While we're checking the popularity, it pays to see what advertisers are paying for

these keywords especially if you're interested in using the Google Adsense

program to make money (details on this in a later lesson). Theoretically, the more

advertisers are paying for keywords, the more that can be made through

Adsense. Of course, we can't be sure because Google doesn't let us know the

formula for calculating how Adsense publishers are paid. It also is an indication of

how much money the topic makes. If Adwords advertisers are paying a lot, then

it's a profitable market.

To find out what advertisers are paying for keywords, click on the "Columns"

button.

A box will pop up where you can add or remove columns. Click on 'Estimated Average CPC'.

Click on "Save" and you'll see the new column added to your results.

Advertisers can pay anywhere from a few cents to several dollars, even up to $30

per click. While you prefer to have keywords that have good CPC values, don't

base your topic decision solely on it.

A word about Niches... You've probably come across the niche before, as it's becoming part of the work-at-terminology. A niche is a narrowly defined group within a group. For example, in my market of working at home, women, baby-boomers or telecommuters are niches. The reason this is an important concept to understand is that niches tend to earn more than general markets. Think about when you're searching for something online. You're more likely to zero in on the search result that most closely fits all the variables you're looking for. If you want to know about growing tomatoes, a search result that says tomato gardening will probably appeal more than vegetable gardening. The key with selecting a niche is that it needs to be big enough to have a steady stream of interested people (several thousand searches a month) who spend money. Sample niches are "Acne Cures for Teens", "Losing Weight for Moms", etc. When you search your keyword, pay attention to the list of results to identify possible niches.

Step Two: What does the market want?

In step one, you determined how popular your topic is. The next step is to find

out what the people are looking for when they search these terms.

Finding a profitable information product topic involves:

1) Identify your target market’s problems

2) Find solutions for their problems

3) Give them your solutions to their problems through your information product.

The first thing you need to do is to research:

Who are the people looking for information in your niche? How old? Where

do they live? etc.

What are they most passionate about and why?

What do they spend most of their time talking about (and probably thinking

about) in regards to this topic?

What are their main concerns/problems?

What are they currently doing to solve their problems?

What can you do to offer a solution to these problems?

The best places to go to find this information is the places where your

niche/target market hangs out such as forums, popular websites, social

sites etc.

Find Forums In Your Niche

Do a search on Google for “(your niche here) forum". If it's a good niche, there

should be many forums. Sign up for a few and interact with your target market.

Study the most popular threads to determine the most common concerns or

questions. Keep a list of what you discover. The answers and solutions to these

questions and concerns will dictate the type and content of your information

product.

In addition, another great thing about forums is that you can find out the other

places people in that niche hang out and what websites and resources are

popular to them. You can also find out what kind of products they use and enjoy

and what kind of material they read/watch.

Social Media/Web 2.0 Sites

Social media and community sites are another resource to find groups of people

passionate about your niche topic. FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, YouTube,

StumbleUpon all have plenty of people constantly discussing and sharing ideas

and info on their interests, passions and problems. Of course, I’ve only mentioned

just a few of the web 2.0 sites you can go to; there are many more. Visit these

sites and do a search for your niche or sub niche and you’ll get plenty of

information and ideas!

Get Ideas From Yahoo Answers

One of the best places to discover people's burning questions is at Yahoo Answers

(http://answers.yahoo.com). Here you will find people asking all sorts of

interesting (and shameless) questions on every topic you can imagine.

Google Alerts: Get Knowledge and News Automatically

Google Alerts is a great tool that’s designed to alert you automatically to current

news and information in your niche.

Go to http://www.google.com/alerts to set up your alerts.

For example, if I wanted to create an information product about ‘raw food diets’

I’d enter it into Google Alerts as the ‘search terms’:

Next, select the type of search you want. Select ‘Everything’ because then every

time your search term is mentioned in news, blogs, groups, and videos, you will

receive alerts.

Now select how often you want these alerts and how many results you want. I

suggest selecting to receive alerts daily, but it’s up to you.

Lastly, enter your email address you want the alerts sent to.

Once you’ve done some keyword research (we’ll get onto that next) you could

also enter your keywords into Google Alerts to see what comes up.

Step Three: What is the competition?

Next, you want to find out how much competition there is and what they are

doing. Visit your favorite search engine and type in your keyword. Using an engine

like Google will tell you how many websites are ranked for that keyword. Don't

worry that there are tons of them. Competition is an indication that it is a

profitable market. If there are no or very few websites, it could mean it's a market

that doesn't make money. But if there are millions of results, that could be a

tough niche to break into.

Once you get the results, click on the top few to see what the sites look like and

what they offer. Is it a store? Is it a blog? Does it take you to a sales page for an

information product? Does it say it will give you more information if you give your

email address (a squeeze page)? What sorts of ads are running on the site if any?

Does it offer a newsletter? If so, sign up to learn more about the information it

sends and how it makes money. Does it sell its own products or someone else's

(affiliate)?

Step Four: What are the current trends in the topic?

Is it a fad that will be gone eventually or is it evergreen and have a long shelf life?

Fads are not necessarily bad, but you need to plan to replace the topic with

another one when it's time runs out. Take Twilight for example. Each time a new

movie comes out or the a DVD is released, there is a lot of fanfare making it a

good topic for an information product such as "How to Host a Twilight Party".

However, eventually the excitement will die down and you'll need to find a new

topic.

Step Five: What additional money-making options are available?

Information products can earn income on more than just the sale of the product.

If your product will suggest or recommend other products or services, you can use

affiliate programs to generate additional income from your readers.

Do a quick search on a few affiliate network sites to see if there are products or

services that you can use as a resources. You don't need to sign up or worry

about affiliate marketing at this point. You just want to know there are products

or services related to your topic that you can promote on your blog.

Two places to check are Commission Junction and Clickbank. Search on products

and services related to your topic to see what's available. You really only need

one good product for your topic, but having several products/services gives you

more options.

For example, let's say you were creating an information product that involved

teaching people cake decorating and you had a very favorite brand of decorating

tool? You can check to see if that brand has an affiliate program or if there is an

online store with an affiliate program that sells the tool. Then when you tell your

readers or watchers (if you did video cake decorating) how much you love the

tool, you can offer a link to it. Just be sure that your recommendation is genuine.

You can lose credibility if your information product is full of affiliate links

particularly if they are to poor resources.

What to Create Content Around?

When creating an information product, you want to be answering a question or

solving a problem experienced by a lot of people. The research you did previously

should have indicated what some of those questions and problems are, and

should be considered as content for your product.

Your keyword search should also provide insights into content your information

product should cover. These results tell you what people are searching to learn

about.

For example, here are some keywords from "weight loss", which suggests that an

information product should cover "diet", "weight watchers" (I wonder if it has an

affiliate program?), "lose weight fast", "healthy diet", "fat loss", "detox diet" etc.

Other tips for getting content ideas for your information product:

Search article directories such as EzineArticles to see what others have

written about your topic.

Read blogs.

Make notes from books or magazines you read.

Next week...

This week, your goal is to come up with an idea or two for an information

product. It should be popular (lots of searches) and answer a question or provide

a solution to a problem many people have.

Next week, you'll decide on the type of information product you want to create

(we'll start with a written e-book but cover other options in the course as well) ,

organize your content, and start creating.

If you'd like to get a head start, you can make a list of concepts that you'd like to

cover in your information product. For example, in this course, the concepts I

listed were:

Define information product

Types of information product

Choosing a topic

Creating the product (PDF, Video, etc)

Etc.