February 27, 2010 By

The Problem With Information Products

I announced earlier this year my plans for 2010, which will see me moving away from creating information products. Sure, information marketing has given me the opportunity to quit my job, start a company, and become somewhat popular in a small niche.

But I really want to achieve more than that, and I decided last year that the only way to move forward is to forget about information marketing. Instead, I now see information as the “icing on the cake” type of business.

It’s great and easy to do when you have already built a strong business model doing something else. But to depend on it solely is suicide. It’s the truth.

What is the problem with information marketing?

Firstly, for the sake of people who still don’t get it, “information marketing” basically involves selling in-demand “how to” information on a particular topic. People are willing to pay for that information because they perceive you as the expert who has inside information, experience and a proven method for success.

In my case, the topic has mostly been about blogging and making money online.

Information marketing has 5 serious flaws:

  • It gets outdated easily – Unless you’re in an evergreen market like dating, losing weight etc, from the moment you sell your information product it’s on a downward spiral to being viewed as “old” or “outdated”.
  • “Version 2” always fails to excite – Publish a successful e-book today, lots of marketers are interested in promoting it. A year later come up with version 2 and you’ll be lucky to get the same level of success. There are exceptions of course.
  • Your scope is limited – You may be an expert in one field. But how many different e-books can you spin on the same topic? I know some marketers who produce tons of new e-books and membership sites on just one topic (and are successful at it), but the truth is that each of those products contain 80% the same information. If you are honest to yourself, it is not good value to your loyal customers.
  • It’s not truly scalable – You are the expert. You must be the one creating the actual “information” part of the product. Sure you can have a big team to do everything else, but people buy the product because of you. It’s impossible to train your staff to become you.
  • Shrinking residual income – Now, creating any information product by itself will get you some sort of residual income. But it’s always on a downward trend, refer to point number 1 and 2. The only real solution is to keep coming up with new information products.

Now, I’m not saying that I will never create an information products again. Rest assured, I have mastered the art and I will create them from time to time. However, it’s not going to my bread and butter.

So then what will?

I’ve decided to move towards creating software applications. Not just any type of software, but specifically web marketing software.

After searching my soul for the truth, I realize if I want to move forwards, software is the answer. It’s the only way to keep moving forward, make improvements, and still achieve ever-growing residual income.

It’s the only real solution to grow an Internet marketing company exponentially. It’s also the most profitable option in the long run.

Sure, there are many players in the software game. Just as there are many players in the information marketing game. But I have an edge here that is unique to me, which no one else has. What this “edge” is I rather not say until it’s proven.

I am pretty confident that I can be successful in launching at least two profitable software applications within this year. This is the year that I need to breakthrough to the next level.

I will do it.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , ,
August 6, 2008 By

Why Are You Only Selling To Malaysians?

One thing I noticed about a lot of people selling information products in Malaysia; they design and create a product for the Malaysian market. This is ok if the topic applies only to the Malaysian market (for example what I did with Chapter-M or like Steven Wong’s Credit Card Solution), but if the topic is universal you should really consider designing it for the international market.

The reason is pretty obvious:

  • A much bigger market - Sometimes there just isn’t a big enough market online for the topic of your e-book, if it’s just focused on Malaysians. However when you make it global, the size of the market and hence your potential customers increase dramatically.
  • Higher income per sale - If you sell an ebook for RM20, just change it to the dollar sign (USD) and I’m pretty sure the global market would be stepping on each other to buy it. Sometimes just by making small changes to your existing e-book, you can easily earn 3 times more per sale and triple your yearly income.
  • Longer product life - You have to understand that for every product, only 1-4 people out of every hundred people who visit your site ends up buying your product. So if your product is targeted at a Malaysian market only for which there is less than 1,000 potential buyers online, after a few weeks your product is as good as dead.

Here’s what I recommend you do.

  • If your product is about making money online, make it relevant to the international market. My product WordPress Adsense System has been producing about 18-30 sales a month, every month, since August 2006. If I wrote this in BM it would have already reached every potential buyer in a few months, after which it would have been considered old. Sure, there are new people coming online every day who may be interested, but in Malaysia alone the market is too small.
  • If your product is Islamic in nature, why not target other Islamic countries as well. Our neighbor Indonesia has about 10 times the population of Malaysia and it wouldn’t be too hard to get someone to create a version for them, would it?
  • If your product is only for Malaysians, at least have 2 versions,one in English and another in BM. Don’t just create a BM version and lose the opportunity to sell to those who would not want to read it in BM.

Make no mistake about it.

Selling to an all-Malaysian crowd will make you money. It’s not wrong to do it, just don’t do it at the expense of earning a better income is USD from a bigger market,especially when the possibility is just a few clicks away!

At the Internet Millionaires Bootcamp, I teach you how to do both. I have experience creating information products both for the local market, and for an international audience. I know based on my success (and failures) exactly how to design for each market, and address each differently.

At the bootcamp, we’ll go through some examples from my own products, and a step-by-step guideline on creating popular, profitable information products. Make sure you attend it.

Filed Under: make money online Tagged With: , , , ,
May 8, 2007 By

Top 5 Easy Ways to Create Information Products

In response to Darren Rowse’s Group Writing Project, I’m creating my top 5 list of how to create information products that you can sell on the Internet.

These are meant to be “easier” solutions as compared to writing a full-fledged 90-page ebook or creating your own software. Most of these things can be done under one week:

  1. Write A Solution for Desperate Situations – Based on the Desperate Buyers Guide method, research in-demand information on a market and create your own short ebook. Since your information is laser-targeted, all you need to do is prove that you have a solution for their urgent problems, and document the process step-by-step. Sell it via PayDotCom or Clickbank, to “desperate” people who need to get their problems solved NOW, not tomorrow.
  2. Interview An Industry Expert – Interview an expert one-on-one, and turn it into an MP3 + PDF transcript combo. You can easily record using Skype and a PC-based recording software called Pamela (no, not Anderson), and edit your recording using Audacity. Make quick profits by selling it using the $7 Secrets concept, and build a list at the same time. I’ve done one on MySpace Marketing which I give away for free to market an affiliate product, and another one on Blackhat Adsense SEO that I sell. I have a full course on creating audio interview products if you’re interested to know more..
  3. Provide Training for Complex Software – A lot of popular software like Macromedia, FrontPage, MS Word, Photoshop etc do not have enough documentation when it comes to performing specific tasks, like creating an ebook cover, creating a brochure, creating a namecard, etc. All you need is a Camtasia screen capture device, and create 5-8 short videos (about 3-5 minutes) on how to achieve the specific results. A friend of mine did some video tutorials on designing “mini-sites” with Photoshop, and he’s doing quite well with it. When you think about it, there’s really a LOT of opportunities for this type of information product, almost anything that can be explained on a computer screen..
  4. Compile Other People’s Articles – I did this as part of the Easy Blog Traffic product. I just collected a bunch of email newsletters that was never published on a webpage, and turned them into a series of related articles, compiled into a PDF report. You can get tons of articles fro newsletters you already subscribe to or look at www.EzineArticles.com but just make sure you get permission first. For even better results, contact specific authors first and ask them if you can compile their work into a single document, and promised the give them a clean version of that so they can also use it for their own business. You can give this away for free, with a list of related “resources” included, coded with your affiliate links..
  5. “Flip” PLR Ebooks – This is so easy I cant believe people are not doing it. Buy some ebooks with Private Label Rights on your niche market, and improve it by adding a little more content, screens shots, images, and improving on the sales page. Create a new ebook cover using simple Photoshop action scripts, and walla, a new product. By “flipping” you take the raw PLR, and add value to it before you sell it. You can use the $7 script to sell it easily, while also building a list that you can use for your other products.

There you have it, the Top 5 Easy Ways to Create Information Products in under one week, or even in a matter of days if you know what you’re doing. Try it, before you say “Oh it’s not that easy” or “Oh but I have never done it before..” and you just might end up with a information product that can increase your bottom-line by $200 – $2,000 a month..

Filed Under: Ebook Marketing Tagged With: