In the last article we talked about why informational products are the best type of products to sell online. An informational product can be a digital book (known as an e-book), a digital report or a white paper, a piece of software, audio or video files, a web site, an ezine (electronic magazine), or a newsletter. 

Any product that’s informational, instructional, or educational in nature can be considered an info product. 

If you missed last week’s column you might want to un-line your birdcage long enough to read it first so that you have a thorough understanding of what we’ll be discussing this week, which is how to create your own info product.

As covered in detail last chapter, here are a few of the reasons why information is the best product to sell online:

* It’s fast to create, fast to market
* There’s no inventory to stock
* The startup costs are low
* You can automate the sales and delivery process
* There are no shipping and handling charges

One of the best things about information products is that you don’t need a product designer or a manufacturing plant to crank out the goods. You also don’t have to spend months and months doing product development. 

If you have a computer and a word processing program you have everything you need to create a best-selling info product in a very short amount of time. 

Great, you say, but I’m no writer. How the heck can I get into the information business? The good news is you don’t have to be a great writer to create a great info product. If you don’t have the ability to create the product yourself there are several avenues you can take to info product success.

Co-author with a writer
In my opinion, expert knowledge is much harder to come by than great writing skills. If you are an expert on a subject that people will pay to learn about, you just need a good writer to take your expert knowledge and put it in a saleable form.

I know many subject matter experts who can’t write their names in the snow and many excellent writers who don’t have the expert knowledge required to create an informational product that will sell. Co-authoring can be a match made in Heaven if an equitable co-authoring arrangement can be made. Co-authoring means that you both get credit for creating the product and share in the revenues.

If you are an expert on a topic, but not a writer, find a writer to co-author the project with you. Conversely, if you’re a writer without specific knowledge, find a subject matter expert and partner with them to create the product. 

Hire a ghost writer
A ghost writer is someone who will write the ebook for you anonymously, with the writing credits going solely to you. You supply the expertise and guidance and the ghost writer puts it in a readable format. You can hire ghost writers on an hourly basis or for a flat fee, depending on the scope of the project.

There is no shame in using a ghost writer to put your thoughts to digital paper. You don’t really think all those pro athletes and Hollywood actresses can write 300 page books now, do you?

Publish a directory
Can’t think of a subject that you’re qualified to write about? Try compiling a directory. A directory is nothing more than a listing of specialized information that you target market to a particular segment of the buying public. For example, my company publishes a dropship and wholesale industry directory that is a listing of company names, addresses, phone numbers, and website addresses. I simply have someone research the industry and compile their findings in a directory format, package it nicely, and sell it online for $27. 

Sign on with an affiliate program and sell their info products
There are thousands of companies that sell informational products and most have affiliate programs that you can sign on with. Becoming an affiliate basically means you become a reseller of the company’s products. You promote the product, you make the sale, the company delivers the product, and you earn a commission.

The key to creating a successful info product is this: the information must be worth far more than the price of the ebook itself. If you’re charging $27 for your product, it must give the buyer many times that price in perceived value.

I asked info product expert Jim Edwards, co-Author of “How To Write and Publish Your Own eBook in as little a 7 Days” for his advice on how to create a killer info product.

Here are Jim’s Top 5 Tips:

* Niche It – Make sure you are targeting a highly defined niche audience… don’t try to sell to everyone. You can get a lot more money showing life insurance agents how to find more customers to buy $250,000 policies than you can trying to sell a product on generic sales skills improvement.

* Hit Their Pain – Make sure your info product hits a painful problem that members of your target audience will do just about ANYTHING to solve. The more intense the pain, the more they’re willing to pay to get rid of it.

* Give Them A Taste – Give people a taste of what you offer in your info-product by giving them a sample. Just like the wholesale clubs get you to buy tater-tots in a 50 lb. bag by giving you one to try, you can induce people to buy your information by letting them read the first chapter or listen to the first few minutes of an audio.

* Entertain Them – People hate to be bored. Increase the power of your product by adding humor, drama and other entertainment elements that make them want more and more. This will not only help with future sales to satisfied customers, it will also keep your refunds down and increase word of mouth advertising.

* Keep it Evergreen – Don’t make the mistake of creating a product that hits a fad or a fleeting market. Create info-products that can be updated with very little effort. This allows you to create a product once and keep the sales rolling in for years (literally) to come!

Tags: expert knowledge, startup costs, great writer, co author

By signing up as a reseller with us, we put you in control with an easy to use account from which you can register domains at wholesale prices. You can register domain names for your own use or domain names for your clients (you can easily charge any price to your clients).

* Domain registrations at $8.95 / year on most popular TLD
* Your own enom.com reseller login.
* You can have your own sub resellers.
* eNom XML API Access.
* eNom Registry Rocket Access.
* Compatible with PDQ.
* Complete control over domains you sell.

Your discount prices are as follow:
TLD Register Renewal Transfer
.com $8.95 $8.95 $8.95
.net $8.95 $8.95 $8.95
.org $8.95 $8.95 $8.95
.us $8.95 $8.95 $8.95
.info $8.95 $8.95 $8.95
.biz $8.95 $8.95 $8.95

EACH RESELLER ACCOUNT FEATURES:

PDQ – full ecommerce site:
PDQ is a full featured customizable e-commerce web site. It is designed as a powerful tool to sell domain names. You give your domain reseller site a name, set a color scheme, upload a logo (or not), and set the pricing. We take care of the website hosting, merchant processing and all other eNom reseller services. There is an annual subscription fee of $99 for PDQ. Any transactions involving credit card processing will also receive the regular credit card processing fee of $0.95 plus 3% of the total transaction amount. All transaction fees will be deducted from your commission account.

Registry Rocket:

Registry Rocket is a customizable e-commerce web page and a Credit Card Processing service for domain resellers. It is designed as a tool for you to sell domain names. You give your site a name, upload a logo (or not), and set the pricing. We take care of the website hosting, merchant processing and other eNom services. Track sales and watch your account balance grow in your enom reseller account. Whether this is your permanent e-commerce solution for domain name sales, or an interim option until you have your own merchant account established, Registry Rocket works.

Here are some of the Registry Rocket benefits:
» Accept credit card payments.
» Fast and secure payments.
» Low fees.

API Software:
With eNom’s API software you can set up a domain search and register facility on your very own site. Knowledge of PHP or Perl is required to integrate this application onto your pages. You will also need your own credit card processing system or merchant bank in order to collect funds for you domain sales.

EVERY DOMAIN REGISTERED (OR TRANSFERRED IN) COMES WITH

* FREE 10 page web site.
* FREE 100 Personalized Email Forwarding Addresses.
* FREE Website/URL Forwarding or Framing.
* FREE DNS Services (Name server hosting).
* FREE Customizable Parking Page.
* Domain Management Control Panel.

Contact me to get your free enom $8.95 reseller account. Be sure to provide the following detail:
Your name:
Your address:
Your phone:
Desire login id:

Tags: domain resellers, domain registrations, account features

Business books are today’s fastest-growing categories in the professional/trade publishing industry. Business books are a great asset to a person interested in starting his or her first small business and in recent years they have fast turned from heavy theoretical textbooks to a far more readable story format. In a recent interview with renowned business columnist Dave Borgner, Jack Yale asked him why it had taken so long for business books to catch on with most people. He answered in part by saying that in the past, between 45 percent and 62 percent of all business books were harder to read than other kinds of books because 68 percent of them used more complex words than we did. David Williamson, CEO of Mark Hallet Financial Services Inc. and the author of the top selling news letter “Brands That Sell”, thinks most business books are too theoretical. The interesting business books are the ones that not only get the facts right but also tell a story in an interesting and appealing manner.

But today, business books are far more approachable than in years past – they tend to be more readable, more useful and may actually help to encourage more people to read this genre. As the business book category has matured, Barnes and Noble insiders report that business books are among the company’s top five categories. Over 5000 new business books are published each year in the United States alone, and we are beginning to see some titles encroaching onto the New York Times Bestseller list. But beyond those red-hot numbers is what some publishing executives call a vast ”gray area” in the way business books are sold, tracked and ranked. Something like 93% of all business books are never read (most readers get thru one chapter and then give up). I think that one of the problems is that a lot of business books are just too general and don’t explain to a reader how to actually implement their ideas, or sometimes even the authors don’t know how to implement their ideas. On the one hand, business books are necessarily about generalizations – on the other hand your company is necessarily all about specifics – so herein lies a dilemma.

The business books are valuable sources of information as well as information on the strategies taken up by a particular company or updated information on the present funding trend, interviews with leading business personalities and suggestions on the ways of capitalization in a business. It can be hard to know which new business books are the most beneficial, and impossible to find the time to read all of them.

Tags: Dave Borgner, business book, Jack Yale, hot numbers, industry business, selling news, new york times