One of the best ways to create an informational product to sell online or to offer as an incentive to build your list or reputation online is to create an audio product where you interview an expert within your chosen field.
Creating your own interview-based product, whether audio or written is a key step in our newly released 6-Week Information Product Profits Formula Course available at InfoMarketer’sZone.
Once you know the market you will target, problem you will solve for your market and angle you will take to position yourself into the market you can easily develop 8-12 quality questions that will translate into an hour-long information product to sell online.
Question is…when you want to interview an expert, what would you have to pay them?
For example, what if you wanted to provide relationship or personal advice through a life coach or relationship coach?
The first question to ask is whether that person is in business for themselves?
Why is that important?
Anyone who is in business selling either their own products or services wants publicity and so your strongest card is not to pay them for their time, but rather offer them a copy of your product, coverage of their products or services inside the product (and perhaps to a list if you have one).
If they are NOT in business for themselves, then yes, you may need to pay them for their time – but again see if there is interest in loading them up with a copy of your product.
For example, I recently established contact with an experienced yoga teacher who is willing to conduct the interview only requesting a finished copy of the product in return.
Bottom line is that you should try all of these before getting into paying for time….
1. Mentioning their product or service in the interview for publicity
2. Offering a copy of the product to them when it’s finished
3. Offering them license to the product to use either under certain conditions or as they wish
4. Super affiliate status to resell the product to their customers at a higher commission rate
5. Access to other products or services you may have available
6. Preferred status and recommendation of their services with a finder’s fee – this can become a back-end product or service for you
Should all of this fail, then paying for time is certainly feasible and can range anywhere from about $50/hour to a few hundred dollars depending on the expert.
The only caution in all of this is to avoid partnerships if at all possible. Even if you get along with your expert very well, the issue is owner of copywrite, tracking mixed sales, etc…
For example, if you decided to jointly develop a $97 infoproduct and can manage to work out an arrangement for sharing profits, there is the issue of what happens if you want to provide different licensing terms down the road or even sell the business outright – those sorts of issues can become very problematic with co-developed products.
If you do co-develop, stick with a low-end report, ebook or audio program designed primarily as a lead-generator, that way you don’t have too much of your business value wrapped up in the co-developed product.
Thanks for posting this as I am currently in the process of working out how to do this myself. Would the finished product need to be downloadable or is offering it as a CD sufficient? If I was going to provide a download option can you recommend any online resources that can inform me on how to do this?
Terrence, you could do either. I have had products only downloadable, only physical and some where I had both versions available at different price points.
The key is your audio editing software. Once you record your audio using either a phone tap or something more involved such as the Inline Patch from JK Audio – you transfer it to your computer where you can use something like Audacity from Soundforge (free software that really rocks) to edit your recording – adding music intro, removing any unwanted parts, splitting it into multiple parts, etc…
The final stage is to produce or render your audio – you can do this from Audacity into an mp3 format for download or burned to a CD using CD burning software such as Nero (as one example).
If you have any specific questions – let me know.
Jeff
Thanks Jeff. I was planning to use GarageBand on a Mac but will look into Audacity as I also use a PC. What about distribution of the finished downloadable product?
Would that need to be done using a Shopping Cart package or is there some other way?
I thought about doing it as a Podcast but you can’t charge for Podcasts on iTunes.
Terrence – you need a few things in place to sell and distribute your digital products:
1. A sales letter – pretty self-explanatory
2. A payment link which you have setup with a payment processor (could be Clickbank, Paypal, 2Checkout.com or a Shopping Cart such as 1ShoppingCart) I have used all of these (and still do for different products).
3. A method of downloading your infoproduct. This could be done by simply triggering an autoresponder email to be sent once successful payment is processed (a function supported by Clickbank and 1ShoppingCart) that tells your customer where to download your file(s)(Which directory you have put the files on your webhost). You can even provide a certain level of security on the product directory using your webhost – My preferred webhost is this one http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/tsphere/ which supports password protecting sub-directories. Then – you simply include the login/pswd as part of your email to the customer. Only issue with this approach is 1) Sometimes the emails don’t get through and 2) You should change the password every month or so.
4. You can purchase a security script such as DLGuard which works with most payment processors to offer a one-time, time-limited, non-traceable , secure download link – this adds another level of security to your digital product delivery.
Hope this helps…let me know if you need more clarification.
Jeff
Thanks for the in-depth response. Also, I signed up at InfoMarketer’s Zone yesterday.
Great to have you on board Terrence – first thing you’ll want to do is head over to the Download Library and download the Ultimate Information Product Marketer’s Checklist – a 30+ page outline of the exact steps you’ll need to take to go from concept to advanced marketing and traffic generation techniques…we’re also right in the middle of recording a 10-hour video training course that walks you through the Checklist via virtual training.
Also – use the forum for any questions that come up along your journey.
Look forward to helping you succeed with your goals.