How To Create Your Own Products And Services (Part 1)
| Category: Marketing | Date: 2003-03-25 |
Shortly after I REALLY started listening to advice on how to make lots of money on-line I heard one message loud and clear. "You need to develop your own products or services!" Like most people who hear this message, I agreed intuitively, but it took a long time to figure out HOW to do that. Let's shorten that learning curve for you by telling you HOW to develop you own products or services.
In part 1 of this article we'll look at how to develop your own product because I know that is usually more profitable in the long-run. With a service, your growth is limited by the supply of the service you can provide. Providing many services is too labor-intensive or too limited by "the system" to allow unlimited growth.
The easiest product in the world to develop is an information product. It's so easy that I personally know more people than I can count who have earned millions doing it. They develop information products that you produce once - and then they sell them forever, with very little additional work required after their creation.
What do we mean by information products? I use the term to describe books, ebooks, video and audio tapes, transcripts, CDs, digital audio files, and even software. With all of these products, you write them once, produce them once, and then sell them forever with very little per unit cost. You can breath life back into them when they start fading by updating them or issuing a new release.
With these information products, you create them, set up a website, organize a marketing campaign, and then - literally - sit back and watch the money flow in. If you set up your own affiliate program to market these information products you have thousands of people all working diligently to make you a success. Creating an information product really is the easiest thing in the world.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, I don't know enough about any topic to write my own product. I thought that too for the longest time. You've all heard the advice, write about what you know. If you really don't believe that you know enough about a topic to produce an information product, then identify a topic that you would like to know more about, and BECOME the expert on that product. Unless there are already too many experts on that topic, or unless absolutely nobody cares about that topic, you have a guaranteed winner.
To convince you that what I teach is true, let me share a few examples from my own background:
With prompting from my website visitors, I wrote a cookbook. I wasn't sure the demand would be there. However, once I committed to writing the cookbook the project went very quickly. This cookbook sold over $100,000 worth of copies (in hardcopy and digital format combined) in it's first year.
I wrote an book explaining how to publish your own cookbook. This book is available in ebook format and since
so many people have considered writing their own cookbook, this is a natural bestseller.
I'm finishing up a book on how to generate massive traffic to your website. Why did I choose that topic? The single biggest problem facing every webmaster on the face of the earth is getting enough visitors to his site. I researched, brainstormed, and experimented with virtually every traffic generation method I could find. The results is a book that HAS TO SELL. The affiliate program for this product has to succeed. The pent-up demand for a quality product on this topic is that tremendous!
I turned my personal experience with pay-per-click search engines into both an ebook and a tele-seminar. I
hold tele-seminars on how to create a can't fail pay-per-click campaign. The tele-seminar is recorded and participants get reprint rights to the tele-seminar. This generated 3 products really. (1) The tele-seminars themselves, (2) the reprint rights to the tele-seminars and transcripts, (3) the recordings of the tele-seminar which I can market as a separate product or use as a bonus with other products.
I recently spoke at an internet marketing seminar where I got reprint rights to the full audio and video recordings of the seminar. This is a product that easily sells for $300 and I can now market this forever. I market these seminar tapes directly and through an affiliate program.
I've just given you real-life examples of several information products that were produced in very little time. They all have very real perceived value, but cost very little to produce. They will each sell for years to come... some of them will undoubtedly be selling for the rest of my life. That's the beauty of creating and marketing information products.
I'm sure you now see how incredibly easy it is to create information products.
-- With the tele-seminar, all you have to do is make arrangements with one of the numerous companies that offer this service - they can record the event and some offer transcription services.
-- With the workshop, the recording crew just had to record the event as it unfolded.
-- With the books, I just created an outline, added sub-bullets under each major heading and then added more to the product each time I sat down to work on it. I did corroborate with a few other people on the traffic book because I did not have all of the expertise and experience necessary to create a product of this magnitude. People enthusiastically jump at the chance to help with a project like this!
You do see a lot of products on the market that you wonder how well they are selling. Therefore, you do need to spend sufficient time in the beginning - confirming that your info product is needed. I generate product ideas by discussing them with others, by "listening" at discussion forums, and by reading books that stimulate my creative faculties. A good book on creative thinking is worth it's weight in gold.
My favorite book on creating info products is by Jeff Smith. It's called The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package. Jeff and I discussed creating information products at length, as he was finishing up this book. If you get a copy, you will also get a recorded interview I did with him as a bonus :-) You can find Jeff's book at: http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/tk.cgi?jeffsmith
I have discovered that discussing your product ideas with other naturally generates additional product ideas. Discussing your product ideas with others both generates new ideas and helps point out the flaws in your ideas. You do have to get over the fear of someone stealing your ideas. That IS a possibility, but there is an endless stream of product ideas. Also, just because a product has been created doesn't mean that you can't introduce
a similar (better) product. Heck, there's still room for hundreds of more cookbooks - this year! Write fast enough and you can catch the incredible Christmas sales :-)
I discussed cookbooks with Armand Morin at the recent Internet Marketing Power Workshop. For those of you who don't know Armand, he generated $4,000,000 in sales from one software product in 12 weeks. The even more amazing thing about this feat is that he doesn't even know how to write software code. He hired
someone to write this program for a few hundred dollars. That's the power of information products and other digital products. Armand told me he has also written a cookbook. That validates the fact that cookbooks are a perpetual hot seller.
In the next installment, we will examine creating your own service. Many of the factors that it takes to create a successful service are the same ones it takes to launch a successful product. If you have questions brought up by this article, why not post them in the forum. Brainstorming is a very powerful force.
If you'd like to see the video series I created you can get more information on it at: http://williecrawford.com/workshop-videos.html For more information on the pay-per-click tele-seminars visit:
http://williecrawford.com/pay-per-clicks.html These are examples of painlessly created info products that you
can examine to see how it they are actually created and marketed. These are living examples that you can use in creating your own best-selling info products.
To your success.
Willie Crawford
Copyright 2002 by Willie Crawford
About the author.
Willie Crawford has taught thousands the secrets of operating a successful on-line business through his free Internet Business Success Course. It's more extensive than many $197 courses. Sign up today and start building your *successful* online business: williecrawford.com
your-own-product@therealsecrets.com
http://williecrawford.com
In part 1 of this article we'll look at how to develop your own product because I know that is usually more profitable in the long-run. With a service, your growth is limited by the supply of the service you can provide. Providing many services is too labor-intensive or too limited by "the system" to allow unlimited growth.
The easiest product in the world to develop is an information product. It's so easy that I personally know more people than I can count who have earned millions doing it. They develop information products that you produce once - and then they sell them forever, with very little additional work required after their creation.
What do we mean by information products? I use the term to describe books, ebooks, video and audio tapes, transcripts, CDs, digital audio files, and even software. With all of these products, you write them once, produce them once, and then sell them forever with very little per unit cost. You can breath life back into them when they start fading by updating them or issuing a new release.
With these information products, you create them, set up a website, organize a marketing campaign, and then - literally - sit back and watch the money flow in. If you set up your own affiliate program to market these information products you have thousands of people all working diligently to make you a success. Creating an information product really is the easiest thing in the world.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, I don't know enough about any topic to write my own product. I thought that too for the longest time. You've all heard the advice, write about what you know. If you really don't believe that you know enough about a topic to produce an information product, then identify a topic that you would like to know more about, and BECOME the expert on that product. Unless there are already too many experts on that topic, or unless absolutely nobody cares about that topic, you have a guaranteed winner.
To convince you that what I teach is true, let me share a few examples from my own background:
With prompting from my website visitors, I wrote a cookbook. I wasn't sure the demand would be there. However, once I committed to writing the cookbook the project went very quickly. This cookbook sold over $100,000 worth of copies (in hardcopy and digital format combined) in it's first year.
I wrote an book explaining how to publish your own cookbook. This book is available in ebook format and since
so many people have considered writing their own cookbook, this is a natural bestseller.
I'm finishing up a book on how to generate massive traffic to your website. Why did I choose that topic? The single biggest problem facing every webmaster on the face of the earth is getting enough visitors to his site. I researched, brainstormed, and experimented with virtually every traffic generation method I could find. The results is a book that HAS TO SELL. The affiliate program for this product has to succeed. The pent-up demand for a quality product on this topic is that tremendous!
I turned my personal experience with pay-per-click search engines into both an ebook and a tele-seminar. I
hold tele-seminars on how to create a can't fail pay-per-click campaign. The tele-seminar is recorded and participants get reprint rights to the tele-seminar. This generated 3 products really. (1) The tele-seminars themselves, (2) the reprint rights to the tele-seminars and transcripts, (3) the recordings of the tele-seminar which I can market as a separate product or use as a bonus with other products.
I recently spoke at an internet marketing seminar where I got reprint rights to the full audio and video recordings of the seminar. This is a product that easily sells for $300 and I can now market this forever. I market these seminar tapes directly and through an affiliate program.
I've just given you real-life examples of several information products that were produced in very little time. They all have very real perceived value, but cost very little to produce. They will each sell for years to come... some of them will undoubtedly be selling for the rest of my life. That's the beauty of creating and marketing information products.
I'm sure you now see how incredibly easy it is to create information products.
-- With the tele-seminar, all you have to do is make arrangements with one of the numerous companies that offer this service - they can record the event and some offer transcription services.
-- With the workshop, the recording crew just had to record the event as it unfolded.
-- With the books, I just created an outline, added sub-bullets under each major heading and then added more to the product each time I sat down to work on it. I did corroborate with a few other people on the traffic book because I did not have all of the expertise and experience necessary to create a product of this magnitude. People enthusiastically jump at the chance to help with a project like this!
You do see a lot of products on the market that you wonder how well they are selling. Therefore, you do need to spend sufficient time in the beginning - confirming that your info product is needed. I generate product ideas by discussing them with others, by "listening" at discussion forums, and by reading books that stimulate my creative faculties. A good book on creative thinking is worth it's weight in gold.
My favorite book on creating info products is by Jeff Smith. It's called The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package. Jeff and I discussed creating information products at length, as he was finishing up this book. If you get a copy, you will also get a recorded interview I did with him as a bonus :-) You can find Jeff's book at: http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/tk.cgi?jeffsmith
I have discovered that discussing your product ideas with other naturally generates additional product ideas. Discussing your product ideas with others both generates new ideas and helps point out the flaws in your ideas. You do have to get over the fear of someone stealing your ideas. That IS a possibility, but there is an endless stream of product ideas. Also, just because a product has been created doesn't mean that you can't introduce
a similar (better) product. Heck, there's still room for hundreds of more cookbooks - this year! Write fast enough and you can catch the incredible Christmas sales :-)
I discussed cookbooks with Armand Morin at the recent Internet Marketing Power Workshop. For those of you who don't know Armand, he generated $4,000,000 in sales from one software product in 12 weeks. The even more amazing thing about this feat is that he doesn't even know how to write software code. He hired
someone to write this program for a few hundred dollars. That's the power of information products and other digital products. Armand told me he has also written a cookbook. That validates the fact that cookbooks are a perpetual hot seller.
In the next installment, we will examine creating your own service. Many of the factors that it takes to create a successful service are the same ones it takes to launch a successful product. If you have questions brought up by this article, why not post them in the forum. Brainstorming is a very powerful force.
If you'd like to see the video series I created you can get more information on it at: http://williecrawford.com/workshop-videos.html For more information on the pay-per-click tele-seminars visit:
http://williecrawford.com/pay-per-clicks.html These are examples of painlessly created info products that you
can examine to see how it they are actually created and marketed. These are living examples that you can use in creating your own best-selling info products.
To your success.
Willie Crawford
Copyright 2002 by Willie Crawford
About the author.
Willie Crawford has taught thousands the secrets of operating a successful on-line business through his free Internet Business Success Course. It's more extensive than many $197 courses. Sign up today and start building your *successful* online business: williecrawford.com
your-own-product@therealsecrets.com
http://williecrawford.com
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