Product Launching - Packaging Products Together

Whenever you create a new information product - whether it's a book, e-book, audio program or even a full membership site - don't stop at just that product. Instead, spin your product into different forms, and sell them as a complete package. This has a number of benefits - not only for you, but also for your customer.

People consume products in different formats.

Some people like reading, others listen to audio programs at the gym, others watch a lot of video, and others only learn when they are actively participating in the learning. By producing your product in different formats, you help your customer consume it in the way that most suits them, rather than whatever happened to be most convenient for you.

People consume products at different levels.

Some people don't have time to read an entire book, but would happily read a short e-book summary of the main material, and then dip into the book for the most relevant material. If you provide both versions, you help that customer get full value from the book. If you hadn't provided the summary version, some customers would have bought the book with the best of intentions, but might never have got around to reading it.

People consume some products with other people.

Some products are designed to be consumed in isolation, but others lend themselves to group learning. For example, if you write a book about sales techniques, you could include a collection of PowerPoint slide shows for sales managers to use in their weekly meetings. This not only greatly enhances the value of the book, it also means you can charge a much higher price because it could now be positioned as a twelve-month resource for sales managers.

Even a book, which is typically consumed by one person at a time, could be seen as a group learning resource. For example, if you added a postcard with key questions for discussion, you could make it easier for book clubs to choose your book for their meetings!

People consume products in different stages.

In this busy, time-poor world, it's becoming harder and harder for people to consume your product - in whatever format you produce it - at a single session. You can help them get more from it by also delivering it in stages. For example, you could invite readers of a book to sign up for an automatic e-mail course that sends them a weekly reminder about one concept in the book. Or you could conduct regular webinars about the book, connecting your readers with you and each other.

Don't ignore the benefits of product bundles!

A common objection to bundling products together in this way is the concern about duplicating your material. For instance, is it acceptable to provide an audio version of your book if it's the same content as the print version?

In general, the answer is Yes! Your customers will appreciate you taking the time to create the material in different ways, especially if you explain how they can use the different products to get full value from the package.

How Creating Your Own E-Book Can Boost Your Online Revenue   Repurposing Content For The Web - How To Reuse Your Old Content   Information Product Creation - Use Different Learning Modalities To Reach Your Target Audience   The Top Two Mistakes of First-Time Information Product Developers   

Creating a Product and Selling It - The Process of Product Creation

Fact: You need your own product to be really successful. Fact: You have everything you need right to create your own product. Fact: You don't need to buy anymore ebooks on how to create your product.

Lets start with how much money can you actually make from your own product. And let's also discuss what you can charge. And what you can and cannot get away with.

For starters. I would never pay $200 bucks for a one page report on "How Make Money Online." The subject is too broad.

A report is usually given away for free as bait or a teaser. Some reports have been sold for hundreds of dollars.

The average eBook sells online for about $27 bucks. Usually the eBook is packed with info 10-30 pages long. If its longer even better. Most ebooks are filled with affiliate links so people can sell you more of their stuff.

The average video is sold for $27 plus. Skies the limit on videos because you can make them as long as you want and people love watching and learning from videos.

Courses generally sell for a lot more than an average eBook or report.

If I started again today and wanted to create my report. Here is what I would do. And here is what I would charge.

I would brainstorm and create a free report to go a along with an eBook that I had created and give it to people who gave me their email address. Then I would research online and turn that report into an ebook. The easiest way for me is to dictate into an audio recorder and then later transcribe all the audio files onto one ebook. I would keep it very conversational and only edit grammatical errors but not the way I spoke.

This eBook once finished could also be given away for free as a pdf. Or sold as is for $19.95 you can upsell this eBook for $37 bucks by allowing resale rights and master resale rights and or rebranding rights.

If you don't know what any of that is go Google it or search for it in the ezine article world.

Now create a video of your ebook. How you do that is convert your titles for each chapter into power point. Then find a free software that can capture your screen and turn it into a video file. When you push play on power point you simply read your eBook out loud and add some humour to it as well. And maybe make it a bit more detailed than if someone where to just read your ebook. Remember audio files are more valuable than an ebook. And videos are more valuable than an ebook. When your video is completed now you can add it you YouTube and or your website. Now you are starting to be an expert in your field. Many people will not create a video to save their life.

Now you can offer your product for $47-$97 complete with an ebook, audio files, videos, and resale rights to the eBook and videos and audio files and maybe even rebranding rights so people can resell your products as though it was their own.

The next step would be to offer a free workshop on topics covered in your ebook. But it has to be way more detailed. Make sure you videotape the workshop as well. This can be offered as a product later down the road. Now you are an expert. You have your own ebook, video series and workshop all on video. Then I would also transcribe your entire workshop and make offer eBook you can offer your customers.

To go even bigger I would have a 2 or 3 day workshop and make sure and bring all your products to sell. At the end of the workshop have people give testimonies on how powerful the workshop was. Also I would get one of your friends to interview you while you are at the workshop and you can be asked questions about your workshop and about your ebook. You can later offer this as a bonus. Make sure and videotape everything you do from here on in and have every video you shoot transcribed. More products to sell. More product equals more money.

Workshops can be sold for as little as $97 to Thousands of dollars per day per customer.

Lets say you had a 2 day workshop and you charged each person $97 to attend.

If you had 100 people attend the workshop that's $9,700 for two days work plus think of all the products you would sell.

Say you had 3 ebooks for sale at 50% off just for attending the course and everyone bought...

$27 x 3 ebooks $81 at 50% off is $40.50 x 100 people equals $4,050

So in one weekend you've made $13,750

Do this once a month for 10 months. That would equal $137,500 a year. So many extra products do you think you could come up with in a year?

What if you became a guest speaker for someone else at their workshop and were allowed to sell your products there as well?

I know it sound hard to believe but you could be making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And we haven't even touched the power of the internet.

Imagine doing webinars, all recorded, phone conferences, Skype, you name it.

The sky literally is the limit.

Now go Brainstorm Your Way to Success!

Shane

How Creating Your Own E-Book Can Boost Your Online Revenue   Repurposing Content For The Web - How To Reuse Your Old Content   Information Product Creation - Use Different Learning Modalities To Reach Your Target Audience   The Top Two Mistakes of First-Time Information Product Developers   How to Create a Three-Dimensional Product   How Gamification Can Turn Businesses Into Winners   

How To Repeat Or Update A Digital Product

When you're creating your report membership site or video course, you need to realize that course is not going to last forever. What I mean is that for example, if you show how to use a certain piece of software, like Camtasia Studio or use a particular website such as Facebook or Google, that information is going to become out of date after a year or two.

What you are going to want to do is approximately every one year, look at your top selling information products and update them or recreate them. Look at what people are asking, what the demand is, and what kind of products your competitors are teaching about. And when your products get out of date or you get bored, you can easily go back and improve that course.

There is nothing at all wrong with taking one of your reports or membership sites and adding a Version 2.0 at the end, and scheduling a day or a week where you simply go through and create brand new videos making the content up to date.

For example, I might have a course teaching how to use webinars, and in the course of a year I might think of a few ways to simplify the process or I might find a new technique on how to use webinars. So what I might do is create a brand new version of the course. I might keep the curriculum the same, I might add or remove a couple of modules, but I will re-record those sessions that I had previously created.

Something I recommend that you do is increase the price and sell this new course for a higher price than the previous course and offer some kind of an upgrade fee for people from - for example, Version 1.0 to now upgrade to Version 2.0. If you use a membership site, you can keep this very easily organized using levels.

What you should also do is look at what people are buying since you released your course. Maybe it's time to promote the old course or promote the course and use that promotion, use that new money coming in as an excuse to create the new updated version of your course.

Finally, there's nothing at all wrong with retiring a course, or taking it off the market if it's not selling. For example, you might have a course about Facebook and Social Media, but you'll realize that for some reason or another your interest does not lie in teaching Facebook or Social Media so instead of updating this course after a couple of years, you will take it off the market and simplify your life and simplify your business.

How Creating Your Own E-Book Can Boost Your Online Revenue   Repurposing Content For The Web - How To Reuse Your Old Content   Information Product Creation - Use Different Learning Modalities To Reach Your Target Audience   The Top Two Mistakes of First-Time Information Product Developers   Easy Ways to Find Content For Your Audio Products   

How to Find a Niche Market Worth Creating a Product For

Welcome to Day 1 of my multi-week course on creating and selling your very own product online. I've talked a lot about affiliate marketing and how to get started and why I love it.

There are a lot of affiliate marketers who make more than enough to live on in the 5 and 6 figure income range, but it's the marketers who take that step into product creation who are the ones who are breaking into the 7 figure income level and beyond.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. Today I'm going to talk about step one: how to find a niche market to create a product for.

The other important thing to mention about this series is that it's coinciding with my own product launch which I'll talk about and refer to as this series goes along. The product itself is an informational product, an eBook on songwriting which I've titled "How to Write a Song - The 'No BS' Songwriter's Bible".

The reason I went with songwriting as my niche market is because it's one of my passions and something which I pride myself on being able to do and do well at that. I've been doing it for 10 years now and have achieved some minor success as a musician, so I channeled all of that experience into this eBook.

Note that while my product is an informational product, most of what I'll teach in this series can obviously be applied to any other kind of product whether it's an informational product, some kind of software, or even a physical product.

Now let's take that critical first step by talking about how to find a niche market to create a product for.

Brainstorming Product Ideas

Just like how I recommend you start out in affiliate marketing, I recommend that you focus on niches which you're familiar with.

You likely have something which you've either received a specialized education in or you have a strong passion for. I had the idea for songwriting because it's something which I can do and do well and felt confident that I could write a great deal of information on.

Take what you love then identify the biggest hurdle people have with it. Oftentimes, such as in my case, the problem will be learning whatever your subject is to begin with. With songwriting, the problem is that people don't know how to get started, they try to do it but don't like the quality of what they're writing, or maybe they just have writer's block. These are all things which I cover and solve in my eBook; I really wrote it to be the authority guide on songwriting (without the BS or covering things people already know or could figure out for themselves through common sense).

Identifying Market Demand

The quickest way to identify demand is to do none other than some good old fashioned keyword research.

Now you're going to have to do as I say and not as I do here, because in reality I did not do any research beforehand. I was just eager to write a book on songwriting and didn't check to make sure there was a market for it.

Fortunately I've since done some keyword research and there are a handful of terms getting decent levels of traffic each day, so I'll be doing well if I can secure those search engine positions (fortunately I have a background in online marketing).

Don't be too overwhelmed if when using Market Samurai you find a lot of competing web pages using the keywords you're searching for in their title and other places. A lot of webmasters in these small niche markets don't know the first thing about SEO and won't be too difficult to overtake, so unless you're dealing in the internet marketing or making money online niches, you have a decent chance at ranking.

Knowing how to find a niche market can pay off in spades. Take Earth4Energy, for example. This is an informational product which first launched about 5 years ago. It was once limited to an eBook but which has since blossomed and expanded to also include informational videos.

Still, this is an informational product nonetheless which costs about $50 and which educates you on how to build your own solar cells and windmills from the comfort of your own home and on a budget of roughly $100-$200 using everyday household materials.

Solar cells and windmills are very effective at generating renewable clean electricity to power your home and offset the cost of your electricity bill, potentially saving you a great deal of money each year.

The catch (which the Earth4Energy sales page will remind you of) is that to have these tools professionally built and installed would cost you several thousand dollars, and the appeal of being able to do it yourself very easily and on a budget is very enticing.

Couple that with the ongoing "current event" that our country has been more and more green energy conscious and obsessed in recent years; needless to say this informational product sold like hotcakes and even had a healthy number of imitators and spin offs in the weeks following its launch and success.

It's still one of the affiliate network ClickBank's all-time best-selling products and still generates a great deal of money today. Even I promoted this product when it first came out and made a few sales with it. The product consistently had a gravity well into the hundreds, and if you check out my post on what is ClickBank gravity, you'll recognize that this basically meant that hundreds and just into the thousands of affiliates were making money selling this product.

This just goes to show you how profitable informational products can be and how well they sell if you can identify the right niche and have the right marketing strategy.

Of course there are a whole lot of fizzled out informational products, as well. Just take a look at the ClickBank marketplace and you'll see dozens and hundreds of e-books and other digital products which haven't generated any sales either because the niche had little demand or the products sales page was unattractive and not very compelling and persuasive.

How Creating Your Own E-Book Can Boost Your Online Revenue   Repurposing Content For The Web - How To Reuse Your Old Content   Information Product Creation - Use Different Learning Modalities To Reach Your Target Audience   The Top Two Mistakes of First-Time Information Product Developers   

How to Price a Product - New Product Pricing Strategies

In recent articles we've covered the basics so far on how to create a product and even the aesthetic aspect of how to make a cover for your eBook. Let's not forget one of the most important aspects of your product: its price!

In this article we'll take a look at how to price a product using new product pricing strategies to use with your new product to find that magical sticker price which will both maximize conversions and make you the most money.

You likely already have some ideas about how to price your product. If you're not sure, then your best bet is to check out the competition. Check out other products similar in format to yours and specifically other products within your niche. This will give you a good starting point.

Also, NEVER price something at $30 when it can be priced at $29.95. That "3" can subconsciously turn a person off whereas they'll have no problem with a $29.95, and while it's only a difference of 5 cents, it can make a substantial impact on and different in your conversion rate.

While on the topic of $29.95, there's something about that $29.95 price point which works very well for informational products and which is very attractive to consumers and has been proven to convert well amongst online marketers who use it. It's at a price point which both instills a higher level of perceived quality in the consumer but at the same time it's not too expensive at still being under $30, so most people are able to justify an impulse purchase of $29.95 if they think it will solve whatever problem they're having whether that's curing pimples or learning a new skill.

The best new product pricing strategy which you can employ is to split test multiple prices. Charge one price for the first month or first 10,000 visits (long enough to get a decent sample size), then up the price by a bit for that same sample size. Oftentimes you'll be surprised to see your conversions INCREASE after raising the price because the perceived value is closer to the new price than the older/cheaper one.

Track your results and remember to divide the traffic to the sales page by the number of sales to reflect the dates ranges in which you used both prices individually. In other words, you can't just take a look at the number of sales which you generate at each price point and call that the be all end all.

Ultimately it's all about getting as many affiliates as possible while getting as many sales as possible. If the price of your product is too low (coupled with the commission percentage which you're offering), you won't attract as many affiliates, but if the price of the product is too high, you'll scare off anyone from buying the product which will in turn scare off new affiliates who operate under the assumption that gravity is everything.

One final note, if you're not making as many sales at the higher price as you'd like and you think the product is truly worth that higher price, take a look at your sales page. The sales page is your main advertisement for your product, and if it's written poorly then you could have the cure for cancer and yet no one would buy it.

Conversely, a great and effective sales page can sell utter garbage and for a hefty fee. That garbage product will have a near 100% refund rate, but it's just to exemplify how important that sales page and more specifically how important the presentation of your product is in that it trumps everything else in dictating how many sales you generate.

I'll be testing multiple price points between $19.95 and $29.95 and report my results here in the future after I've collected enough analytical data to give conclusive results.

How Creating Your Own E-Book Can Boost Your Online Revenue   Repurposing Content For The Web - How To Reuse Your Old Content   Information Product Creation - Use Different Learning Modalities To Reach Your Target Audience   The Top Two Mistakes of First-Time Information Product Developers   Creating Info Products in Competitive Niches - The Myth Exposed   How to Make an eBook Into an AudioBook   

Challenges to Creating Your Very Own Digital Product

There is no disputing that digital products are enjoying an all-time popularity level. This is because they are convenient to download for the buyer and easy to create and store for the marketer. Products such as eBooks have resurfaced especially because of the advent of digital e-readers like Kindle Fire, Nook, Cruz and iPad. Marketers who design and create these products have been enjoying a great deal of success and will most likely continue doing so for the foreseeable future. But when attempting to create your own digital product, what are the challenges that you must overcome?

Research

So you've decided that other than being an affiliate marketer, you want to create your own product and sell it under your own terms. But where do you start? How do you know what is selling and what is not? Many product-creation beginners get stuck here. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of new digital products out there. Product creation involves ideas, brainstorming, and extensive research in order to know what products are trending and how to get them created and marketed to the right audience.

Writing

There are very few digital products which do not involve their own eBook. Even with videos, an eBook product or a sales page pitch will be required. This may also mean a product review or press release and all this involves writing. Many marketers are not good writers, indeed many of us and this poses a formidable challenge to anyone wanting to generate their own product digitally. Some say that this issue can easily be correctly by simply outsourcing article creation. This is true and has worked for many, but good writers especially those who are reliable are in desperately short supply.

Packaging

A large percentage that is enjoyed by those that have created highly successful digital products has come from packaging. Presentation is extremely important when selling products digitally online. We are living in an age where computers, phones and eReaders are equipped with highly powerful graphics cards which render graphics in stunning color. That means that the average Internet surfer now expects products that are packaged in stunning graphical presentation. If you want to succeed in creating your own product that attracts the masses and causes them to whip out their credit card, you want to make sure that it is visually appealing.

Sales page

This really refers to website development and this is another area where many marketers are not skilled in. Selling your digital products involves putting up a sales page with a compelling sales pitch and then having the actual sales page site created and uploaded.

How Creating Your Own E-Book Can Boost Your Online Revenue   Repurposing Content For The Web - How To Reuse Your Old Content   Information Product Creation - Use Different Learning Modalities To Reach Your Target Audience   The Top Two Mistakes of First-Time Information Product Developers   How Gamification Can Turn Businesses Into Winners   

How to Make a Landing Page For Your Product

The landing or sales page for your product needs to be incredibly strong and convincing because this is where all of your affiliates are going to send their traffic to. Once they've done this, the rest is up to you or more specifically your landing page.

Consequently, it helps to know how to make a landing page which will overwhelm your visitor. Luckily, there is an effective formula which most marketers follow because it works so well, so let's talk about how to make a landing page for your product right now.

One format which converts very well and consequently gets used frequently by marketers online in all different niches is to create one long sales letter.

There are several elements which you want to incorporate onto your sales letter/landing page:

Headline - An attention grabbing headline is job number one. People have extremely short attention spans, so your headline should pull them in right away, otherwise you've lost them forever. You can do a lot of things with your headline such as addressing your reader's problem while offering the solution in an exciting way with this headline. Design - The design is a large part of your landing page. This includes the overall design of your site in terms of where and how things are placed and also includes things like using dynamic font styles and colors. Graphics/Media - Solely using text won't engage your reader; you need images and possibly video to engage your reader. A lot of landing pages use a persuasive video above the fold in combination with a great headline as a truly effective way to kick off their landing page. Testimonials - The Federal Trade Commission and certain affiliate networks have changed their regulations about what passes for an acceptable testimonial, so make sure that every testimonial which you use can be backed up. That being said, testimonials are still an effective way to assuage your reader of their doubts about your product after they see other people have given their approval. Call to Action - A strong call to action is essential in convincing your reader to take your desired action which in this case is purchasing your product. Your Background - Don't forget to include your credentials if you have any which vouch for your experience. If you've written a book on a medical problem and you've got some kind of certified background in medicine, you'll want to make that very clear from the start of your landing page as this will give you more credibility and even put some people's minds at ease about purchasing your product if they were on the fence. If you don't have official credentials, then make sure to explain your story about how you were once a long time sufferer of the same problem which your reader is currently experiencing before you took it into your own hands and found the solution (found in the book). Putting yourself in the same place as your reader creates empathy for you and is a good way to get them to relate to you and get them on your side early. This is one of my many sales page copywriting tips which you should use when designing the your landing page. How Creating Your Own E-Book Can Boost Your Online Revenue   Repurposing Content For The Web - How To Reuse Your Old Content   Information Product Creation - Use Different Learning Modalities To Reach Your Target Audience   The Top Two Mistakes of First-Time Information Product Developers   Tips for Editing Your Audio Products   Working With Top iPhone Developers for Best Solutions