Profit from digital information

How to sell your own information products

FACT: It’s never been easier to create your own digital products than right now. Information is one of the primary reasons people go on the internet. Millions of people, heck, billions of people browse the internet every day to find information they need for one reason or another. And guess what? A huge percentage of these people are looking for information that you could help them find, and even profit from. The fact is, there are already thousands of savvy internet marketers already carving out their fortunes simply by providing and selling information that people need or want.

How do they do this?

Basically, in three ways. They either provide free information via their blog or website and monetise their site with advertising. (i.e. AdSense or some similar advertising revenue sharing program) or through promoting and recommending products as an affiliate, in which case they can earn commissions on any recommendations that lead to a sale of a product or service that they promote. The third method however, can easily be the most profitable….

CREATE YOUR OWN DIGITAL INFO PRODUCTS!

Being able to create, sell and distribute your own digital information products can generate an amazing income. Providing you do your research and get it right.

It basically boils down to this….

Find a hungry market. One that lots of people are searching for information about. Three of the most popular niches are healthcare, making money from the internet, and online dating. There are many other popular niches too. Ideally though, you should always consider how long the niche is likely to remain popular, or ‘evergreen’. That way you’re much more likely to receive profits from your work over a much longer period of time.

Of course, simply choosing a popular niche is unlikely to lead to instant success, because the demand for most mainstream topics have already been saturated with information products. And many big companies have cornered the market for the best keyword searches, thus ensuring they dominate the marketplace. So it’s pointless trying to cempete with them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take a bite out of the lion’s share. The next best thing you can do is to pinpoint a highly targeted ‘sub niche’ of the topic people are searching for, then provide really useful information that will help the reader satisfy the questions they need answering.

For example…. Instead of writing an ebook or course about ‘Training your dog’ you can be more precise in targeting people with a certain type of breed, and approach the subject from a different angle. For example… you could write an ebook called ‘How to train your German Shepherd to be obedient’ This would be more appealing to dog owners with this type of dog which is having behaviour problems. Or you could maybe produce a series of videos instead and make them accessible via a private website.

So, I’m sure you get the idea. You choose a niche market and drill down to the more highly targeted prospects with answers to their problems.

By doing this you can then create an info product that is ‘saleable’.

Now you may be thinking… ‘well I don’t have a clue about dogs, or cats, or any other kind of animal’.

But there are literally thousands of possible subjects that could be turned into an ebook or training course, or used as ‘paid for’ content in a private membership website.

The amount of subject matter is almost endless, and the potential for profits can be enormous. Just think, what if you had your own army of affiliates promoting your ebook? All this is possible when you know how to achieve it.

The first step would be to simply write a list of subjects that lots of people are interested in, peferably something that also interests you. Do you have any hobbies or interests that you’re passionate about, or even just have a mild interest in, but have enough knowledge that you can teach others about the subject with a little bit extra research? Once you have chosen a subject that you have an interest in, you may be surprised at how much knowledge you have within your own mind. Knowledge which you can expand upon with some basic research, and which you can pass on to others.

Create an outline for your info product

Having chosen a subject, the next step is to create an outline for your ebook/course and break it down into easy to follow step by step instructions.

This might be as follows…

1. Introduction which states the purpose of the ebook/course and what the reader can expect to learn from it.

2. A foreword which can include details about why you wrote the book and what your own experience has been from using the information you describe in the ebook.

3. Table of contents – list each chapter or section of the ebook/course. You may also want to add sub-sections for each chapter. e.g. 2.3 (chapter 2/section 3)
If the information you’re trying to impart has a lot of detailed content, creating sub-sections would make it easer for the reader to locate the information quickly.

4. Chapters and sections for each stage of the training or advice that you’re providing.

5. At the end of your outline you could then provide a closing statement that thanks the reader and encourages them to use the information to fulfil their reason for buying.

Producing the product

Using the outline above you can then get to work writing and compiling the information into a format you think would work best. An ebook perhaps, or a short or intensive course of training, or perhaps a series of video tutorials that can be accessed online.

For ebooks I recommend using Serif’s PagePlus X8 software for creating them in Pdf format. A course of training manuals in pdf form can also be produced in the same way (perhaps as ‘modules’) The Pdf files can then be made available for download after the buyer has paid for the item and given access to the download link. Ideally this should be made available via a secure distributor such as PayDotCom or Clickbank. (An advantage of using these companies is that they can provide you with an affiliate program)

Delivering Your Information

In order to deliver information such as an ebook as a downloadable file, you may need to compress it into a zip file using a utility such as Lzarc. This will make file sizes more manageable for the buyer and quicker to download. Once downloaded the customer can use the same utility i.e. lzarc (which by the way is a free program) and unzip the file on to their hard drive. If it’s a Pdf file they will also require Adobe Reader to read it. Most computer users have Adobe Reader already installed, but if not, it’s easy to obtain and is a free program available from Adobe.com.

If you want to produce video tutorials and publish them instead, or as part of a package, I recommend using Easy Video Player 2.0 and get an account with Amazon S3 services to host the files. Access to them can then be provided through a private members area once the customer has paid and received their log in details.

Marketing your products

Producing and distributing your products are only one part of the equation. In order to sell your products, first they need to be found and appealing enough to buy. So before you make your products available, make sure that when you promote them so that they look and sound like a great product. To do this you need to make the promotional literature and advertising extremely appealing.

Make sure that all advertising copy is well written, and if possible, by an expert copywriter. Also use professional looking graphics in your advertising. Which is not too hard to produce these days with programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw. Other programs you could use are Serifs DrawPlus X5 or if you’re on a really tight budget you might want to consider using Gimp which is a free open source graphics program.

Taking Orders

In order for you to begin taking orders for your digital product you’ll need to have the ability to accept payments via credit cards, otherwise you may lose a lot of sales. Don’t rely solely on payment providers such as Pay Pal. Even though Pay Pal provides a credit card payment option, ideally, it’s better if you can arrange to get your own merchant account. However, if this becomes a problem then my advice is to use Clickbank to accept credit cards. They will enable you to accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Eurocard, and Visa-Debit, MasterCard-Debit, and Novus cards. They charge a low one-time activation fee, and a small percentage fee per sale. As I mentioned before, Clickbank has a strong established network of affiliates that can help promote and sell your products.

Because of the high profit margins that selling digital information products provides, Clickbank is the ideal solution that will enable you find affiliates that will automatically get paid a sales commission when they send you a customer who goes on to buy your product. In other words, you only pay for sales. Even if yu provide the affiliate with 50% commission, you will make money because your overheads are practically zero.

When a potential customer decides to but your product and goes to the payment page provided by Clickbank, they will bill your customers via their payment form, then they will pay you, and then they will pay your affiliates a commission if the sale was generated by their affiliate link. So basically, Clickbank is the ideal solution.

For more information on creating and selling digital information products go to Making Money Online UK where you will find a wealth of useful information.