There are tens of thousands of us that earn our income from publishing information into books, audios, videos, membership sites, physical products, training programs – otherwise known as information products — or infoproducts,
Just as the freelance writer or author has an idea for an article or non-fiction book manuscript, the process is to bring interesting, meaningful and often usable information to our audience who hopefully (if we’ve done a good job of targeting our market) have a strong, passionate desire for the information we have to offer.
Sometimes we already know the topic we are covering, know our customers extremely well, have an understanding of what they want and will pay for. Other times we enter a new market where we don’t know these things, but have ways of researching a market and matching up a field of information with their desires.
In either case, one of the toughest routes to go (yet it is almost always the only route we think of) is writing a book or ebook.
Even for those of us who love to write and can write extremely fast, an ebook can take weeks (sometimes even months) to write – then we are somewhat capped as to what we can charge – right?
It’s tough to ask $97 for an ebook unless we bundle lots of other goodies with it. On their own, books and ebooks tend to sell in the $17-$47 range – of course all of that is profit for you, so yes, they can be very lucrative if you self-publish – but we still have the issue of it taking a long time to produce information products this way.
VIDEO PUBLISHING IN YOUR HOME OFFICE
Another way is to get yourself a screen capture video recording tool like Camtasia from Techsmith and record on-screen tutorials as you guide people through your topic.
What would you record?
- A tutorial on using a new tool or application online such as MS Word, Excel or a specific software tool that has just been released, or even the latest video game.
- A lesson recorded while you walk someone through a particular website – one example would be "eBay buying basics" or "How to research your family tree online"
- Use presentation software like MS Powerpoint and create a few slides to review each section of your "course". This means creating a series of slides for your material, but that will go much faster than writing an entire book AND you have a ready-made presentation that you can take and deliver in seminars, workshops or even online through live webinars
- You can even mix recordings of yourself in with your screen capture video – the latest version of Camtasia makes it easy to mix in webcam video of yourself speaking – I’ve even recorded myself in front of a whiteboard – as if I’m teaching a class and mixed that in with Powerpoint slides to form a very professional set of recordings.
WHAT IS THE PROCESS THEN
Yes…this really is a simple way to create a mid-tier ($50-$200) product in just a few days.
More specifically, here are the steps you will want to follow:
1. Everything starts with identifying a target market and hot desire. It doesn’t matter what you sell online, if people are not convinced that your information will help them achieve a highly desired outcome, it won’t sell.
2. Then, you must have a top-notch title that hits a nerve, captures their attention and convinces them that you have essential information to helping them achieve a certain outcome
(NOTE: #1 and 2 are the single MOST important factors in building a highly profitable, fast growing and substantial online information publishing business. We offer a complete training system to help you with all aspects of getting your Information Product Publishing business up, running and earning income paying special attention to finding your market and ensuring you are capturing your market’s primary attention – all of this is inside InfoMarketer’sZone – the #1 Information Publishing Training resource on the web).
3. You want to have outlined your product appropriately – I too like using Powerpoint – that’s how I design 90% of my products, as courses first, then some of them I have turned into full-blown written infoproduct while others have become video series and all out training systems. It’s tough for our minds to think in terms of thousands of words on a page — it’s much easier for us to think in terms of a few bullet points.
4. Next, you want to have the basics of Camtasia down including the best settings for recording and producing your videos (depending on the delivery format being web or DVD)
5. You want to find a few quality, meaningful bonuses that you can add to the package
6. You need a quality sales site, method to accept payment, affiliate program, etc…
So yes, product creation can be very easy – and even the steps above can be learned in very little time, but I commonly have students that stumble on each of these 6 areas causing huge delays or a flop in the marketplace – that’s why it’s best to have someone alongside you the first time until you get the hang of it like we do over at InfoMarketer’sZone with our weekly tutorials, tools resource center and private mentor’s forum.
The great part about this system is that once you have gone through it the first time, it gets easier and easier until you can do it blindfolded – having the power to quickly launch information products is one of the most fulfilling, powerful wealth-creation skills you will ever know…when will you be ready with your first screen capture video product?
