Earnings Proof ($49,790 in 7 Months)
This course will cover how to create a digital product. Were gonna walk through the process step-by-step, but before that, lets cover exactly what an information product can be and why you might want to create one.
So, some examples could be:
e-books, audio files, how-to videos, interviews (and the transcripts), software, online magazines, newspapers, podcasts, subscription e-mail newsletters, instructional guides, pdfs, even Microsoft Word documents basically anything that you can save as a file and then sell to people online.
http://talk.payloadz.com/top-10-digital-products-to-sell-with-paypal/
One of the nice benefits of an audio or video product in particular is that you can usually sell your product at a higher price than written material. Most people are willing to pay more to hear or see a demonstration of someone doing something than they are for a pdf or a book.
And thats usually what youll be doing - teaching something or satisfying an interest someone has. So really the only thing you need to create an information product is some time and your expertise.
And even if you decide to create a product based on something you dont know much about, you can create that expertise fairly quickly. Ill show you how a little later.
So, why would you want to create an information product?
Information products sold through downloads and paid access are extremely profitable, because you dont have any of the costs of a storefront and because information products are in a way, self-replicating. You can sell a digital file again and again without any need for additional inventory and almost no overhead other than the cost of your domain. Basically, your costs are the same regardless of how many downloads you sell.
Another reason why you might want to do an information product is that its delivered instantly, regardless of the time of day or where your customer lives and you dont even have to be there when it happens.
Someone on the other side of the world finds your site, buys your stuff while youre sleeping and a short time later, the money shows up in your account.
So now you know some examples of what information products can be and some of the benefits over a physical product. In the next video, Im gonna show you how to figure out what to create essentially your product or niche.
If you dont already know what youd like to create, the first thing I would do is start thinking about your interests, clubs, teams or any groups youre involved with now or were in the past. Think about everything activity youve ever been a part of. These can or could have been for fun or work.
Did you play a sport, volunteer with an organization, build model cars, etc. Since you already know what these kinds of people are interested in, youll have a good idea about what theyll spend money on. What kind of problem could you solve for them? What could you tell them that would be interesting?
You should also think about the products you use every day. Think about a time when you said, I wish this was explained better. Dont be afraid to get as specific as you can. I would actually encourage it. Niche markets tend to attract more loyal customers and those people are usually willing to pay a premium for a specialized product or service. People tend to trust a specialists advice more, too.
Just remember, though, its a lot easier to fill demand than create it. So try to find something that has a market already, but take a segment of that market and cater to it more specifically.
Oh, and just as an aside, your product can be seasonal, but be prepared to come up with something else for the other parts of the year. H&R Block gets more than 80% of its sales and all of its profit during tax season and then loses money the rest of the year.
If youre having trouble thinking of an idea or you just dont wanna create a product based on your background, there are a lot of ways you can come up with some really profitable ideas.
I would go to eBays most popular items page and see what people are buying. By the way, all the links I mention are located in the resources box below the video. This doesnt have to be an information product that you search for, only something that could be turned into an information product something that needs an explanation or could be interesting to learn more about.
If you find something promising there, go to the advanced search page, check the completed listings and search for something. Note how many there are for your keyword and which arent getting any bids (to know what to avoid). A category as popular as phones will have more than 3,000,000 completed listings, something a little nichier like paintball will have closer to 200,000 and Labradors will have something like 30,000. The lower it goes, the closer you get to a niche. You just dont want to get too low.
Now go back to the advanced search and instead of clicking completed listings, change it to sold listings. This will tell you how many of those items were actually sold, at what price and with how many bids. A high percentage with a premium price and good demand is a great sign. See if you can identify any with high sales and only a handful of small sellers.
Amazons list of best-selling books is a great resource. Every category is basically an opportunity to compile the best ideas from each book into an information product. Look for one on a somewhat unique topic, something where you dont see much competition. Do a search for that topic specifically and see how many other books there are.
Something like computers will have a lot of competition, but try to get more specific. If theres only a page or two that are really dedicated to it, you might have a product to work with.
You can also use a really cool website called MerchantWords. Thisll tell you how many monthly searches are made for a particular keyword on Amazon. Again, theres no set number for what youre looking for. Just remember that you want a popular general category that you can carve a niche out of.
The competition is too big to compete with in extremely general categories like computers, dogs, or cars. Its much more profitable, for example, to cater to people who want to learn a certain computer program or train a specific type of dog.
What I would also do after you check out Merchant Words is look at the reviews on a certain category of books or items and see what customers liked and disliked about the top-selling items.
The complaints are going to be more important for you, because if someone complains that a product doesnt have a lot of material on blank or doesnt do blank, that would definitely be something to include in your information product.
Check out alibaba.com. This is like Amazon.com for the world market. Since you have an information product, you should have no problem selling internationally.
Pinterests page of most popular items for ideas. This is great if you think your audience might be predominately female. Believe it or not, Pinterest drives more traffic than Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn combined. Its second only to Facebook. Think about how you could make it easier to make or explain something on the site.
Or maybe you already use Pinterest (or even Etsy), maybe youre an artist, maybe you like to make things with your hands. You could create a short guide on how to get started or make some videos filming the process in more detail.
The site has a lot of non-female related things, too. They have sections on architecture, education, finance, health, science and technology. I would recommend going here even if you dont have a large female audience. You can never check out too many places.
Take a look at the top online magazines here in the resources. See if you can find one that seems somewhat unique or tailored to a specific group. Those already have a big group of readers. How could you create a niche information product based on one of those?
Theres also a list of really nichy magazines in there to show you how specific you can get.
These are all good places to start, but you dont even have to be this structured. Just be more observant while youre walking around or searching the web. Click on random things on the front page of Amazon and eBay or use a random word generator. Anything can be an inspiration for a successful business.
If you look through all those sites and still cant find anything, theres a good list of niches below for which Id like to thank nichehacks.com. Check out that site for some of the best material on finding niches Ive seen anywhere.
At this point, I would actually open up some tabs in your browser and use some of the channels and methods I mentioned to try to come up with a handful of ideas.
When youre done, check out the next video. Im gonna walk you through some tools you can use to find out a general idea of the size of your market and where your customers are located.
So I have to thank Louis Ogden at Cloud Income for this idea. This is Flippa, and Flippa is a site to buy and sell websites or entire businesses. When you first get there youll have to create a screen name and login. And then you go to the advanced search page.
Once youre there were gonna change a couple of these things. Were gonna pick just auctions, well go down to won listings. These are all the businesses that were sold. Just websites since we are creating an information product. You can add a keyword at the top also but were just looking for ideas.
Were going to do between one year and any age, but we just want a site that has a little bit of history to it. For the profit, well do $2,000 or more. You can pick whatever you want here, whatever youd be happy with as a revenue or profit source.
You can check this to see if theyve verified their Google AdSense data. Itll reduce the results by a lot. But itll give you more exact information. But again, were just looking for ideas.
Once youre done there, you click on search listings. You can save the search if you want. Here is a list of sites that are currently for sale right now. These are entire sites. Were looking in the titles here for good ideas for niches for an information product. We had photographers, we had games, banks.
You can change the site to certain category or niche, you can base it on the number of visitors or the age of the site.
Sometimes youll see ones with the URLs hidden. Youll also see some private deal flows. Just ignore those, were just looking for niche ideas.
You can order the price or the auction bids from highest to lowest so in case you want to see something that sells for an extremely high price.
You can check out comments also if you click on the link for one of the listings. It says the site is obviously on computer or video games. You can see the traffic, you can see how much it makes.
The seller will also give you a little more information, a little more description. If you go all the way to the bottom, you can see comments and these are questions that people asked and hopefully the owner of the site responded and itll give you a little more information on the site.
And this is Flippa.
The one thing that I dont love about Flippa is that when you do click the verify Google AdSense by a LOT, sometimes by 90%. So youre not really sure whether these people are giving you accurate numbers, but as far as looking for a niche, this is another good resource.
1,700+ Niche Ideas & Search Volume
Alright, lets take a look at some cool tools you can use to figure out whether one of your ideas might be profitable. As a simple example and because I used to have one lets say Ive decided to make an instructional video on how to train a Labrador.
I think its small enough that I wont have to compete with huge companies but big enough for a decent amount of business.
First, Im gonna start with Google Trends to figure out which niches within your category are more popular. Here on the screenshot you can see how much interest there is in Labradors relative to dogs over the last 10 years. This is good to look at to make sure your product has steady interest and isnt just a fad.
You can click on the add term box above if you want to see which niches are getting the most traffic relative to the main category.
If you scroll down, youll see this screen. Thisll tell you which parts of the country or world your searches are coming from. You can toggle between region and city at the top right there and you can also view the change over time on the left side.
This can be valuable information down the road when you decide how and where to market the product. Youll get much better results and save a lot of money focusing on the people who are actually interested in your product.
Now lets take a look at Googles Keyword Planner. This is a free tool that you can use to see how many searches are made each month for a particular keyword so you have a general idea of the interest.
If you dont have an account already, go to adwords.google.com and register on the screen. Once youve created an account on here, itll take you to a new screen where you can create a campaign. Were not gonna do that yet.
But if you hover your mouse over tools at the top, itll bring you the menu you see in the screenshot. Go down to keyword planner, click that and itll take you here.
Youre gonna click on the top option where it says search for new keyword and ad group ideas. Thatll take you to this screen where you can add a keyword. You can also put a URL here. This could be your website, but I wouldnt expect you to yet. You can put a competitors URL here and Google will scan it for good keywords.
After that put the category below that and put in your region and language and click Get Ideas.
Youll see this screen show up showing you how many monthly searches there are for your product and some related keywords if you hover your cursor over a group of words in the list just like you see in the screenshot there.
It says Labrador has 135,000 monthly searches and low competition, which is great. Thats what you want to see.
If you click on the Keyword Ideas tab right below the graph, itll bring up a list of other keywords and the number of searches they get. This is all useful when you set up some test ads later on.
Once youre done here, go to Facebook Ads. Facebook ads has a really cool free tool that shows your estimated reach for a particular product based on their database of profiles and connections between people.
When you get to the page, click create ad. Itll bring up a list of options on the left side like this. Click on the option at the top that says Clicks to Website. In the URL box, you can enter any website, doesnt matter, were not creating an ad right now, were just finding your estimated reach.
When you get to the next page, scroll down a bit and youll see this screen. Choose which countries you want to analyze (probably the ones that speak your language) but you can also add some of the countries you saw come up in Google Trends in addition to the ones that speak your language.
After that, pick an appropriate age group and a language and type in your main keyword in the interest section.
So I had 135,000 monthly searches for Labrador and theres a reach of 78,000 here. Just to make the numbers easy, Im going take a rough midpoint and estimate 100,000 potential customers for a Labrador product.
And just to be conservative, Im going to assume Im able to eventually reach 0.5% of that estimated audience or (100,000 x 0.005) = 500 people.
Well look more deeply at pricing a little later but at $50 for my product, youre looking at $25,000 for just one product. Assuming people like your stuff, you can probably create something else for a related niche and do this process all over again.
And remember, if you put out a quality product, your reach (0.5%) should only go up and you should be able to charge even more.
So now youre at least familiar with some of these tools. In the next section, were gonna get into testing, cause the worst thing you can do is spend hours coming up with something only to find out nobody wants it. So go ahead and click on the next video and well figure how you can go about testing the market.
Well cover the details in the WordPress course but setting up a blog is going to be extremely valuable in not only testing the market but building a small audience for your product, collecting e-mail addresses, and getting feedback.
A blog is also useful because you dont want to create an entire information product before you know whether anyone wants it. For example, maybe you want to create an audio book or a how-to video.
You can post a chapter or two, maybe a post or just some random thoughts on the topic on your blog and see how popular it is.
Or if youre doing a how-to video, you could upload a short piece to YouTube or your site with some material and see if people ask for more.
Remember, its always good to offer something free or cheap* first before going for a bigger sale. People are much more likely to say yes to something after theyve said yes already.
You can do this by giving away a free report or guide related to your niche in exchange for their e-mail address. Usually this helps solve a problem for them and will build up their trust.
I know theres an urgency to want to sell immediately. Of course you want to make money. But its really better to try to establish some sort of relationship before you go for the sale. You dont want to just sell something and then never hear from your customers again.
In the e-mail that sends the free report, ask them what their biggest frustration is with your niche. Study the responses and use the answers to get a better idea of what direction to take with your product.
And dont be afraid to start a conversation with them Relationships are going to be key when you actually start selling something.
Especially with other established bloggers within your category. These are the people with a lot of influence in your niche. Try to get to know them by commenting on their posts and sending friendly e-mails every once in a while. A mention of your product in one of their posts could end up making you a lot of money.
Going for a big launch for a product is not really a strategy anymore. You dont want to create a whole product and then send it out. You kind of want to build up a lot of connections, stories, authority indicators, credibility markers and a good amount of content months before your launch anything.
Anyway, as youre building an audience and getting feedback, you probably have a pretty good idea of what your products going to be. Now you just have to figure out whether anyones going to buy it. And were going to talk about that next.
Hopefully you have an idea of what youre going to sell, you have to figure out whether or not the idea is something people would pay money for. To do this youre going to create some short ads for what the product will eventually become. This is going to save you a lot of time and money if the idea doesnt turn out as expected.
A perfect example of this strategy comes fromZappos. He and his co-founders werent even sure back in the late 90s that people would dare order shoes over the Internet. So they ran a quick test:
Up goes a website with shoe images taken from manufacturers websites, some buy now buttons and orders started coming in. So he would run to the nearest shoe store, find the shoes and mail them to the customer. They lost money on every pair they sold but it was a great test of validation for the service they were offering. They were eventually sold to Amazon for $1.2 billion.
Go to OptimizePress.com and buy a landing page. This is going to cost you $97 but its good for three sites and its a one-time fee. This is one of the best deals out there.
This is the sales page youre going to use to drive traffic to with your cheap ads. Setting up a sales page is covered much more extensively in the Wordpress course we have for you guys so check that out when you actually get to this step in the process. Or if you really dont feel like learning it, you can go to elance.com and type in sales page. You can easily find someone there to do it for you for about $75.
Depending on the complexity or the price of what youre selling, your sales page length can can vary quite a bit. A long-form sales page is gonna help a customer understand something more complicated or expensive. You can see some great examples of those in the resources section.
There are also a bunch of good short-form examples for easy to understand products. Whatever you do, though, make sure to avoid the kinds of sales page in the resources labeled BAD SALES PAGES.
In the meantime, look for sales pages on the internet that catch your eye and save them. If you feel confident in your writing skills, you can just insert the words that describe your product, change the format up a little, and use it as your own.
Were going to be putting up a course on copywriting but if writing isnt your strong suit, you may want to hire somebody for this, too. Again, elance.com, odesk.com or freelancer.com.
Once you have a good sales page set up, you can start thinking about what your ads are going to say. I would start keeping a file of ad headlines that catch your attention. Just the headlines. This is whats going to sell your product. Most people are just scanning when they browse the internet. The headline has to stop them.
By the way, Upworthy.com, which is the fastest growing site of all-time and they did it all with headlines. Their writers have to write 25 headlines for everything they post in order to find the one that grabs attention the best. They also make it a point of changing the title throughout the day to try to see what works better.
Im gonna walk you through a demonstration of how to set up a test using Google AdWords. These are the ads youve probably seen along the side of your screen when you do a search for something. Each of these gives you a headline of no more than 25 characters, two lines of description with a 35 character max each and one line with your URL also 35 characters or less.
This is where the keywords you found on Google Planner are going to help a lot. You can also use AdWords Editor to figure out more specific words you might wanna use in your testing campaign.
Look for maybe 60-80 keywords that you could include to drive sales to your page. The more specific your keyword choice, the better quality of traffic youll get. Its also cheaper.
Go to adwords.google.com and click on create first campaign at the top left. Youll see this screen come up. Im gonna walk you through an example here.
Once you click on Create First Campaign, its gonna take you to this screen. I would just leave it as Search Network with Display Select. Scroll down and were gonna pick your target market. The default is gonna be the US and Canada if you happen to be in the US.
But of course you can enter Australia, New Zealand, England; any countries that speak the language your product is gonna be in. Down here you can manually set you bids for clicks or just have Adwords do it for you and then you can set your budget say $50 a day. I would just leave the ad extensions default for now. Click save and continue.
This is where youre actually going to create your ad. Well title it Labrador Training and our description will be Train Your Lab without Leaving Home and 50% off you order today. Well send them to labradortraining.com.
And on the right youll see how your ads will actually show up when people do a search. Down here, youre gonna select the keywords and these are the keywords that people will search for whenever your ad shows up. Make your keywords as specific as possible.
And then youre taken here where you have a list of your keywords. You can see your click-through-rate (CTR) once youve run your ad for a while. If you click on the Ad tab, you can create the ad that youre going to compare this one to. This is whats called a split test or an A/B test.
Really you can change anything you want but for this example lets just change Today to Now. One word can make a huge difference in your sales. Click Save Ad. And thats an A/B test.
You can test more than two ads at a time but if youre changing more than one thing in each ad, itll be difficult to figure out what combination of things actually resulted in a higher CTR.
You want to make sure you leave it up for a decent amount of time and that you get a statistically significant amount of clicks for one before you decide your winner. Theres a SS calculator for that in the resources. And remember, you can use these kinds of tests to compare titles, names, offers, whatever you want.
So wait a minute, Im creating an ad for something that doesnt exist yet. Yes you are! This is how it works:
When someone clicks on your ad they get to your site (I would have an e-mail pop-up) and attempt to buy your product, you should have it send them to a sales page that says, we are currently updating this product and will have it available for order soon! And thats it.
Once you have validation that your idea could make some money based on your ads, you can start collecting material for your information product. Well talk about that next.
An A/B (Split) Test Walkthrough
Checklist for Estimated Reach & Testing
A Detailed, Visual Explanation of Testing Success
Testing Success Checklist
There are two ways of figuring out whether your test is successful or not. The first, which is very simple to do is in the testing phase, look at how many people actually tried to download your product over the course of say a week.
Multiply that by the price you plan to charge and compare it to how much you spent testing the ads.
If it breaks even or only makes a little hypothetical money, it doesnt necessarily mean no one wants it. It could have been the ads you created, the price, the name. Try offering it in a different way for another week and see what happens.
The other way of determining whether your test was successful is a little bit more involved but also a little more exact.
Lets say I dont have a ton of experience with Labrador training so I have to read a lot of stuff for my Labrador training program, its going to take me 60 hours of time to create the product and Im just going to arbitrarily add 15 hours to that, because things always take longer than you expect.
Lets say it takes me 75 hours to eventually create it (thats an hour and 15 mins a day for two months since Im working full-time).
Im gonna multiply that by whatever I think my time is worth per hour perhaps whatever you make right now or made in your highest paying job lets say $40 an hour. So now we have $3,000.
And then add that to the amount you plan to spend on test ads. So lets say $350 for a total of $3,350.
Then lets add in the cost of your domain, your sales page and a little help from a freelancer to set it all up well call that $150. So, $3,500.
Divide that by the amount you plan to charge for the product and come up with a breakeven number of customers.
Lets say we charge $50. That means you need 70 customers to make it worth your while.
Think about how many people clicked through to buy your product during your test run? Lets say you ran the ads for a week and got 10 people to actually try buying the product.
That would be $500 assuming we advertise at our $50 price.
Lets then multiply that number by 8 (which is the number of weeks in two months, which is how long I spent creating the product). Thats $4,000, about $500 more than I spent in time and money to make it.
Ten sales per week is also about 500 people per year, which is what we expected based on the number of searches and our estimated reach 100,000 multiplied by a rough estimate of 0.5% market penetration.
And this doesnt include searches for Labrador Retriever, which could easily net me even more sales.
I would actually recommend starting a timer or looking at a clock anytime you work on your product and figure out the total when youre finished.
The thing is, working alone on the first one might take you 75 hours assuming you did a product on a topic you knew little about, but youll learn what you can outsource very cheaply and the next one will take you a quarter of that.
By the third one, youll be knocking it out in a little over a week. So dont get discouraged or overwhelmed after the first one. Its just gets easier from there.
Your job will be a lot easier if you decide to create a product based on your existing expertise, but just in case you dont, heres what you can do.
Search your topic on Amazon, order the results by the average customer review (4 stars and up). Take a look at the highest ranked books and then Google best books on blank. There will probably be five or so lists on the front page of Google. Look for the books that seem to be on all those lists and then read the top three to five books and take notes.
Once youve done this, youll know more than probably 95% of the general public on your topic. I used to only read physical books, but now I like e-books better because I can copy and paste passages into a Word document a lot easier. You gotta type all that out with a physical book. E-books are also cheaper. Libraries are offering e-books instead of physical copies now.
After youre done reading, I would look back at some of the keywords you found on Google Keyword Planner or Long-Tail Pro. Google some of the keywords you used. Google those keywords and read all the blog posts you can find on the topic.
Save the good ones as bookmarks or right click and choose Save as so you can read them offline. Copy and paste all of the good information into a Word document. I would also listen to 15 or so podcasts and interviews and maybe 25 YouTube videos for your niche. Youre going to paraphrase all this material later on.
And yes, theres a lot of free information on the web, but its fragmented and most people dont have the time to read it all. Youre going to put it altogether for them and get that money.
Once you have some material put together, I would recommend creating a short video to go along with your information product.
Go to Toastmasters.org, look up the club closest to you, go to a meeting one night, pay for a month (about $10) and do a 5-6 minute speech on your niche. Bring two friends to film it so that it looks like youre giving a seminar. Upload that to YouTube or your blog to gain credibility and as a nice piece of content.
Another way to gain credibility and get good material is to send e-mails to several of the authors of the books you read or perceived experts in your niche and ask to interview them by Skype.
Its easier than you think. Because in small niche categories, most people are flattered to be interviewed. Plus, it helps them sell their stuff. Try it! Record the conversation using Camtasiaand then upload short clips of the interviews to YouTube. Keep some of the material for your product, though.
You can transcribe everything using material using Windows 7 or 8 or you can pay to have it done.
Another great idea* is to use a free voice recorder app to record you and a friend who knows nothing about the product talking about it. Tell him/her your ideas. Use his questions as things to research further or include in more detail. I would even have your notes out.
The best thing about this is that it sounds natural because its a real conversation. You can transcribe this and use it later as actual material.
I would also set up a survey using like SurveyMonkey and ask what peoples biggest complaints about your niche are.
At the same time, create a profile on Quora and ask something along the lines of, What would you change about blank, or what are your biggest complaints with regards to _______? Use the responses as ideas for your product or answer the questions as part of your product.
If your product is going to be sort of a how-to, you can record your screen using Camtasia. You get a 30-day free trial. And dont be concerned about sounding unprofessional because you dont have a recording studio or sound effects. People appreciate something genuine especially if youre teaching them how to do something. Its almost like someone is right there with them.
Awesome! You got your material. Now you just have to put it into some sort of format. The first thing I would do is write one sentence saying exactly what youre going to do for your customer with this product, right at the top of the page.
Then create categories that will achieve your products purpose, based on the notes you took from all your sources. If you already have expertise in this niche, imagine yourself as a potential student. Think back to when you didnt know anything about your niche. How would you have wanted someone to explain it to you?
Put it in step-by-step format, making even the simplest things, obvious. Most people are not good teachers. If you can figure out how to make something easy to understand, youre way ahead of the competition.
Once its grouped into categories, read it over a few times. Cut and paste it into something logical. Combine similar passages and notes and come up with a general idea of each concept.
Put it into your own words and clarify it, but make sure to include original thoughts to avoid copyright infringement. Always keep your target market in mind when communicating. Speak their language.
Once its in some sort of working order, send it to some acquaintances of yours. I recommend acquaintances because your friends may be too nice and you dont want nice. You want a genuine appraisal of your work. Is it missing something, is it hard to understand, etc?
The criticism is a lot more important than the praise. Send different parts to different people. The more feedback you get, the better. Make sure to do this after you put your product out, too. Well talk about the name or title and a USP in the next video.
Checklist & Resources for Gathering Material
How to Profit (Heavily) from eBooks
The Special Features of Audacity
How to Transcribe Your Audio for Free
A Very Unique Profitable Way to Sell Your Existing Content
The Easiest Way to Create an Audio Book
How to Make Your Videos Look Insanely Good
Checklist & Resources for Free Programs
Now that youve put it altogether, you need to think of a title or a name for whatever youre going to be offering and also a little on unique selling proposition (USP). This is gonna be one of the most important things you do.
Most people only read the headlines when theyre deciding what articles to read or advertisements to click on. So if your name or title isnt catchy, youre probably going to lose a customer.
However there are a few things you can do:
You could use alliteration (using the same letter twice or more Coca-Cola, BBBY, Weight Watchers), rhymes StubHub, or even in your tagline (Rob Popeils Set it and Forget It!) and numbers (such as The 7 Habits of Highly, top 10 reasons)
Come up with at least 200 ideas. The one thats right should make you excited. You should know it when you see it. It should be something you have to ask someone for a pen to write down on the back of a napkin. Theres no guarantee that the name will be perfect but at least you can weed out some really bad stuff.
Microsoft went through thousands of choices over several months, came up with BING and the day it comes out, someone turns it into an acronym for But Its Not Google. So try to think of all the possibilities.
Its like naming your kids. You dont want to give them a name that is gonna get them beat up at school. And you dont want your product to get beat up in the marketplace.
If in your Google Trends search, you found that a non-English speaking country is particularly interested in your product, but you plan to sell there, make sure the name of your product translates well. Microsoft Vista had problems in Latvia because of this.
Check with the USPTO to see if there is a trademark on the name. Also check with your states dept of corporations to see if the name is taken. To actually go through with a trademark would require a lawyer, 6-18 months of waiting time and a $275 fee, not including the lawyer.
Remember you can (and should) in many cases include a sub-title giving more detail about the product. You can also often get around trademarks by using a sub-title. Make sure to include terms that would be likely to be searched in your sub-title.
Information Products will generally have longer names than physical but there are limits. Title length has been shown to affect sales. According to a 2013 study by the worlds largest independent e-book publisher, titles with five words or fewer and less than 25 characters sell more books*. A short title also makes it easier to say and remember. If its some sort of how-to, it should tell the customer what to expect.
Ask yourself a few questions: Is it easy to spread? Is it something unique? Does it make people curious? And make it a point to test out different names. Change the name of your course, your book until something hits. Be sure to check out the case study article by Charlie Hoehn on creating a New York Times Bestseller.
Checklist for Names & USPs
A USP is like the promise youre making to customers and its really what differentiates you from your competitors. It needs to be believable but also catchy and original tell them something they havent heard before. Give them a timeframe. Theres a guy with a site called Fluent in 3 Months. He teaches people how to speak another language in three months. Thats his USP.
Stand out, but remember who your audience is. Are they conservative, liberal, young, old? Look at the other products in your niche, especially on the first page of Google for your keywords. How could you improve on their names? What could you offer that would top their offer or product?
Remember also to search your strongest keywords and see what ads come up in Google. This is your competition. Look at their USPs and see if they draw you in. What would make YOU click?
Try to play with a word or make a combination of words or use a common phrase within the category that still makes it obvious what youre selling. Carlton Sheets called his information product No Down Payment common phrase and a USP at the same time.
Remember to make it easy to remember. The most important thing though is to include the benefits. How is it going to improve your customers lives?
For example, a company that sells a strength training program. Ten pounds of muscle in two months or well buy you a gym membership. Its a win-win.
Do something that stands out, though. Think about how many times you hear 100% money back guarantee. Its so overused that its lost its effect. It doesnt really convince anyone anymore. If you really want a boost in sales from a product, you need to do something no one else is doing.
That could be a 110% money back guarantee. I actually know someone who did this and he saw sales go up in the high double digits and returns actually dropped.
The fact is, most people are honest. Theyre not gonna buy a product just to make 10% on their money. It takes time to get a refund and then you throw in the fact that a lot of companies make you jump through hoops to get a refund and its just not worth it.
Zappos, for example, offers a 365 day return policy. And theyre making a lot of money without a lot of returns. Go above and beyond what everyone else is offering and itll pay off.
Theres a good list of really successful USPs in the resources, just in case you need some inspiration.
Now you have your material and a good checklist for titles, names and USPs. Your products ready to go. Now you just have to decide how much to sell it for. Were gonna figure that out next.
How I Eliminate 99% of Pirated Material
How much should you charge? Well, it depends on whether you create a one-time purchase. The example Im going to do in a second will be for a one-time purchase but if you can create a subscription-based product, I would highly recommend it.
That can be anything from a paid blog to a teaching service, a software license, a monthly newsletter, really anything that you can continually offer great material for or that people will pay to be able to keep using.
And you can actually lower the price for a subscription service since itll be paid continually and make a lot more money over the course of a year.
To give you a better idea of how much to charge for your product, lets consider some average prices of information products. According to SmashWords, the optimal price for an e-book is $3.99. Thats the price at which more e-books are sold than any other price.
Audio books, meanwhile, typically go for about $20. An online subscription to the NY Times sells for $15 a month while the WSJ goes for $29 (WSJ) a niche newspaper (see how the price goes up?) Courses on Udemy go for anywhere from $0 - $1,000, but Ive heard some estimates saying the average is about $75.
So, depending on what type of product you choose, your asking price is gonna vary quite a bit. Our example product is a training program for a dog, which you could say is a little like an online course. So we at least have a starting point, knowing that Udemy classes are selling for close to $75.
Some simple resources you can also use are WorthMonkey.com here to check prices for similar products and gives you a good appraisal of the market.
Then go to eBay, do an advanced search and choose to see only the items that were sold by auction (you just have to unclick the But It Now option) to see how much people are willing to pay.
You can also find out how much people might be willing to pay by figuring out how much people spend on your category over the course of its lifetime.
So just staying with my dog training product for Labradors, lets figure out how much people typically spend on Labs. I just searched the web a little while ago and saw prices ranging from $300 to $1,500. Lets take the mid-point and say $900.
But well also have to consider the annual costs. Youll have to pay for food, veterinary care, grooming and toys. I saw estimates from $1,000 - $3000 a year. Lets say $1,000 to be conservative.
The average lifespan of a lab is 12-13 years, so lets use 12 here. So $900 for the lab and $1,000 a year for 12 years almost $13,000. Would people mind paying $50 for a product that they spend almost $13,000 on in a lifetime? $100?
Price is a tricky thing. I mean, whats the true value of anything? Your products price should be what a representative group of people in your niche are willing to pay for it. And the only way to know that is to test out different prices and see what hits.
Another way to get an idea for pricing is to look at your competitors. How much are they charging? Are you going to be doing something unique something nobody else is doing or doing it in a way thats more efficient thats going to save people a lot of time and money?
If you can make a better product (and you should), you can easily charge a premium as long as you justify it.Show people why your product is better. You can do that with case studies posted on your sales page or blog and with plenty of testimonials.
What you can also do to justify a higher price is offer a package of things a pdf newsletter, a video with a transcript and premium access to your blog.
Dont be afraid of charging more than the competition if you really believe you have a great product. Higher prices means you dont have to sell as many, people associate it with higher value and your customers are easier to cross-sell, meaning you can sell them additional products more easily.
And if youre at all worried about your information product being drowned out by the competition or undersold, dont be. Most niche products arent pursued by big companies or people with a ton of resources.
It doesnt make sense for them financially. Which means its gonna be easier for you to stand out and charge a higher price.
Now that you have an idea of how to price your information product, were going to take a look at launching your product.
Top 10 Places to Sell Your Digital Products
There are a handful of things you can do to promote and launch your product. First, youll need a way for customers to pay so Google paypal button and choose the top result. Thatll take you to the page in the screenshot.
Click create your button now and youre going to be taken to a screen where youll actually get to choose what your button says Add to Cart or Buy Now.
Add to Cart typically converts better but test out each one and see which gets you higher conversions. Putting the button on your site is simply a matter of copying and pasting
When youre business gains a little traction it might be good to consider something for people without Paypal accounts like Yahoo! Shopping Cart. If your sales are between $12K and $80K a month, itll cost you about $26 a month for the service. If youre just starting out, the free PayPal button is probably sufficient.
If you need a little help, theres affiliate marketing services like ClickBank. Affiliates typically take a percentage of the sale for pitching your product.
You might also think about distributing a press release withPR Newswire,BusinessWire and PRWeb. If youre looking for a less expensive option,http://www.free-press-release.com/allow you to share news for free.
You could use some Google Ads like you did in the testing phase but you can also do some more organic things. Start building up some hype before your product comes out.
Send an e-mail to the people that gave you their e-mail during the testing phase and the time youve spent building an audience. Letting people know on your blog a month or two ahead of time can do a lot for your sales.
People need to be reminded that somethings going to happen. Theyre busy, they forget. You want your product launch etched in their mind. Apple does this really well before product launches and of course movie trailers are always put out months before a movie comes out.
I would recommend putting up an option to pre-order your product right alongside a message telling them a specific date.
If youre doing a book as your product, you can use Publishizer to do this for free. You get to keep all the rights and royalties. They take 5% of funds raised on successful campaigns. If you dont reach 1,000 pre-orders, you dont pay anything. Its free to launch a campaign.
Pre-orders are good because they build buzz and give people a chance to tell their friends.
At one week intervals in your lead-up to launch day, put up reminders and little teasers about your product.
Send free copies to the established bloggers you started reaching out to in the testing phase (check Klout.com for the influential people in your space) and start getting the word out on all your social media accounts ahead of time. Check out our course on social media marketing for good ways of doing that.
Make sure all your website and order links are working the day before the launch.
To the people that buy, send a personal, genuine thank you message and let them know they can e-mail you any time with feedback.
After your product has launched and your marketing and public relations strategies are underway, consider tools such as UserVoice or GetSatisfaction to get an idea of what people would like to see in the future.
An information product is essentially a recurring profit for life, as long as you keep it relevant, up-to-date and pay attention to what your customers say. Put out a new version each year or change the name of a stagnant product, give it new features, material, chapters, whatever, and market it as something new.
At this point, you have everything you need to create an information product, but I have a little gift for you in the next video.
Checklist & Your Two Free Gifts
Tony Robbins on Selling Digital Products
[REQ] How to Make $5,000 / Month for Life: 2-Hour Digital Products . Hello, Could anyone have a free copy of this product? Code: https://www.udemy.com/digital-products/
97% off How to Make $7,000 / Month for Life: 2-Hour ...
Coupon Details. Learn How to Create a Profitable Digital / Information Product, Build Hype, Increase Demand & Make Money While You Sleep Lectures 35
How to Make $5,000 / Month for Life: 2-Hour Digital ...
How to Make $5,000 / Month for Life: 2-Hour Digital Products Coupon How to Make $5,000 / Month for Life: 2-Hour Digital Products Coupon
How to Make $5,000 / Month for Life: 2-Hour Digital ...
How to Make $5,000 / Month for Life: 2-Hour Digital Products Coupon | Only $19 SAVE 94% Off $297 Discount Coupon Code. Home; Free Courses; Share Coupon; RSS; Register;
96% off How to Make $5,000 / Month for Life: 2-Hour ...
96% off How to Make $5,000 / Month for Life: 2-Hour Digital Products course coupon $10. Heres what students are saying about 2-Hour Digital Products:
How to make money with amazon kindle see how I rank no. 1 on amazon
http://johnhayesonline.com/makemoneyonkindle How to make money with amazon kindle There are lots of ways to make money online,
Interactive Marketing Jobs: Customer Service Resume
Interactive Marketing Jobs: Customer Service Resume - How Interactive marketing has help full service marketing firm. http://tinyurl.com/YouTubeIMJ I've
Olympus DS-7000 - Buy Online Now!
and feel that we have come to expect of Olympus products. The DS 7000 accepts long-life lithium battery. of mind offered by the Olympus DS-7000 Digital
Small Business Answers - Coca-cola Swot analysis?If I ...
MY PAGE ABOUT HEALTH AND BEAUTY PRODUCTS BUSSINESS ONLINE?I live with Life Insurance (AIL After taxes, I figure I need to make $2000 a month
Accounting Gateway Exam Study Questions flashcards | Quizlet
Accounting Gateway Exam Study Questions Last month, direct materials Cow Farming Inc. purchases a tractor for $200,000 which has an expected useful life of 10