Melissa’s Information Product Challenge: Let Me See
Today is the official end of my Information Product Challenge, and I’m super excited to see what you’ve accomplished over the past 3 weeks.
So here’s how this is going to work:
1) Leave a comment on this post with your name and the website address of your new information product.
2) Tell me about your experience in a couple of sentences by sharing what the biggest lesson you learned about information products was.
3) After we check out your product and your comment here, we’ll enter your name into a drawing for a free one year membership to the Sweetie Saturday Report Club.
The winner will be posted here on Monday, December 7th, 2009. Good Luck!
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Melissa’s Info Product Challenge: Checking In
Whew, it’s been a busy month!
I hope you’ve been able to make great progress on your information project, but don’t worry if it’s not done yet. The important thing is that you were working on it.
I’m really excited to see what you’ve been working on, so watch for my post tomorrow about submissions and the special drawing for participants.
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7 Things You Need To Sell Info Products Online
Selling products is one of the best ways to make money online. With a bit of research and some time in your word processing program you can be well on your way to having a product to sell. But before you can sell your product and start making money, there are a few things you’ll need to be an effective infoproduct seller.
1. SITE.
Although you could definitely try to sell a product without a website, you wouldn’t get very far. Your website and domain name will give your product a home online. Working without a website is just an exercise in futility. Try to find a domain that represents your product or is your product name exactly.
2. SALESLETTER.
To be successful, you need a sales letter on your webpage and a link to your payment processor…and that’s it! Don’t link to other websites or show paid advertising on your product’s website. A sales letter will catch the attention of the visitors and convince them why they need to purchase your product. Read up on creating winning sales letters or have one created by a master copywriter for maximum success.
3. SHOWCASE.
You’ll need at least a header for your website and an e-cover for your product to look professional. You’d be surprised how far a few quality graphics can get you when it comes to selling online. People are very visually oriented. If your site looks drab and boring, your website visitors will click away pretty quickly. You can find headers and ecover graphics for anywhere from $50 to $500 depending on the experience of the designer.
4. SOFTWARE.
Information products are delivered as PDF files. They are easy to read but they can’t be edited so the content of your product will stay intact. You can purchase Adobe Acrobat or use a free PDF creator to change your Word document into an easy to read file.
5. SALES.
You can’t sell products without a payment processor. Most people use Paypal, but there are other options as well like Google Checkout. Before you start driving traffic to your sales letter, make sure your payment system is working right. Buy a copy of your own product to be sure that the payment processor is working correctly. This way you can be sure that your visitors are able to buy.
6. SYSTEM.
Although not every information product has a high enough price point to support an affiliate program, you should certainly move toward writing products that will attract affiliates. With affiliate marketing, you can have master marketers driving traffic to your website and creating sales for you.
7. STRATEGY.
Successful infoproduct creators know that once they create the product and build the website they have to drive traffic to the sales page. If you start out with a complete strategy of marketing your website, you’ll be able to put it into place as soon as your website is ready to go. Article marketing campaigns, joint ventures and pay per click advertising can all be part of your strategy.
By combining these essentials with your winning product, you’ll have a formula for bringing money through infoproducts.
If you need some more guidance or you’re just getting started, be sure to pick up your copy of: Information Product Sweetie. You’ll learn everything from how to conduct market research, how to create awesome products and how to follow it up with a great marketing campaign. Plus, there’s a cool bonus report & audio that gives you 21 strategies for generating more product launch sales.
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Melissa’s Info Product Challenge: 6 Copywriting Success Tips
Wow, I can’t believe this challenge is almost over. How are you doing?
This week we’re going to be working on our sales letter, or if you plan to build a list and sell on the back end, your squeeze page.
I gave you some tips for writing your sales letter on your Action Plan Calendar, and split it up throughout the week so you’re not trying to do it all at once. Of course if you want to, you can 
But I wanted to take it a little further, and share with you what I consider to be the key elements for writing your sales letter.
Get Your Copy on Target with these 6 Copywriting Success Tips
Knowing the key elements of successful copywriting is essential when you first begin to write sales copy. The difference between good and bad copy is simply the number of conversions it creates or actions it drives. Once you have mastered the basic principles of good copy you can begin to work on developing your own style and structure, and testing various copywriting formulas that work for you.
Believe in Your Product
In order to sell a product successfully you need to be passionate about it yourself. If you don’t believe in the value of the product yourself, how are you going to convince somebody else to buy it? Get as much information as you can about the product and, if appropriate, test it yourself. The preparation work you put in will shine through your copy, and increase your conversion rate.
Promote the Benefits of Your Product
The primary thing your customers will want to know is what your product will do for them. Outline how your product will benefit them, whether it will make them money, save them time, or increase their quality of life in another way. By the end of your first paragraph, your customers should have a clear idea of why they should buy your product.
Appeal to Your Customers’ Emotions
People generally buy emotionally, and then find a rational justification for their purchase later. You want to prevent your customers from thinking too much, as this may cause them to think up reasons why they shouldn’t buy your product.
Spell everything out for your customers, and don’t be afraid you will insult their intelligence. It is better to give too much information than to let them work things out for themselves. Convince their hearts that your product is a good buy and their heads will follow.
Tell a Good Story
Try to find a good angle to use in selling your product, and weave this into your sales copy. Your story may be how the product came about, how it has changed someone else’s life, or anything else that your readers will find interesting and will relate to.
Create High Impact Copy
Edit your writing ruthlessly. If a particular word or phrase isn’t promoting your product then delete it. Every part of your copy should be captivating and should motivate your customers to buy or they may well lose interest and move on. Use the active rather than the passive voice to create maximum impact.
Use a Relaxed Style
You don’t need to be too formal when you are writing copy. You want to engage with your reader and so you need to write as if you were speaking to them. Although you want to stick to basic grammar and avoid typos, some slang is acceptable and you can break a few rules, such as using fragmented sentences.
These are some of the basics you need to begin copywriting. Being passionate about the product you are promoting, outlining its benefits to your customers, and appealing to their emotions will help to create more sales conversions. Telling a story, using high impact words and phrases, and talking to your customers in a relaxed style will keep them interested in what you have to say.
P.S. For more help with Internet copywriting that will convert visitors into buyers, check out Copywriting Sweetie. This complete training manual and software will show you how to transform your under-performing copy to get more satisfied repeat buyers.
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Beef Up Those Info Products with
What’s ALREADY On Your Hard Drive
Melissa has been running a great Info Product Challenge here. She’s taken from getting you motivated, ideas for your products, ways to keep it simple, mini sites and more. I hope you’ve been following along and are well on your way to earning some extra holiday cash.
I thought I’d jump in here with some thoughts on beefing up your info products, with content you might ALREADY got sitting on your hard drive. I’m talk about PLR …or Private Label Rights content. If you’re not familiar with PLR, it’s prewritten and ghostwritten content that you can edit, brand and monetize for your own use.
PLR Comes in a Wide Variety of Formats:
- Ebooks & Reports
- Autoresponder Messages
- Articles & How Tos
- Blog Posts
The most obvious thing to do is use the ebooks and reports as stand-alone products for sale. But if you prefer to create original products, don’t dismiss PLR as a valuable option for adding something extra to your products.
A Few Ideas:
- Create a bonus or two for your main product.
- Make a giveaway report to build a list, so you can promote your product.
- Create an email ecourse using PLR autoresponder messages. The ecourse can be used to build a list or a part of the product itself.
- Put together a membership area for your members where you add new content on a regular basis.
- Make a customers-only blog where you post content and they can ask you questions.
- Take how-to content and make a step-by-step guide.
- Use excerpts or whole articles and make your main product a more comprehensive guide to the subject.
- Make a useful content site that feeds traffic to your sales page.
PLR can be a lifesaver in so many ways. It’s content for your website, it’s food for your autoresponders and it’s definitely a boost to your info products. When you beef up your products, you increase the perceived value AND create more satisfied customers.
More Ideas for PLR:
If you need more ideas for your PLR…or you’re tired of letting great content get stale on your hard drive, make sure to pick up a copy of our PLR Blueprint. It’s a handy desktop reference that shows you how to use ALL of your PLR…and to use it over and over again.
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4 Ways To Package Your Content For High Sales
Experienced information marketers know that creating the product is only half the process. Learning how to effectively package your content so that it is attractive to buyers is just as important as finding your niche. It doesn’t matter how good your product is if no one wants to buy it. The same pages of information can be packaged in many different ways. Look over the following options and determine which method would be right for your niche and their needs.
Remember the acronym P.E.R.M.
P – Physical Products
E – Ebooks
R – Reports
M – Membership Sites
Physical products: Physical products offer you the ability to put something real and tangible in the hands of your buyers. Physical products are often marketed as “home study courses” which can be set at a higher price point than an eBook or a set of online videos. Although you will have to pay for the production of the book, the videos or the audio CDs, you can more than make up for those costs with your price point. With certain topics, physical products just make more sense.
eBooks: Can be anywhere from 30 to 200 pages long. They normally offer a more widespread look at a topic than a short report, but they have the potential for covering a lot more topic areas in the niche. The advantage of eBooks is that they can be priced at higher rates than short reports. They are automatically delivered to your customers so they get the instant gratification of having the product immediately. eBooks can be paired with supplemental reports, audios or videos depending on the niche and how many resources you want to offer your customers.
Reports: Short reports are typically between 5 and 20 pages. They go in depth on a small part of a topic instead of giving a general overview like most large eBooks do. With a short report, you’re normally giving someone an actionable plan that they can use to fix an aspect of their life. “How to Calm a Colicky Baby”, “How to Improve Your Golf Slice” and “How to Lose 5 Lbs this Weekend” are all examples of the narrow focus of short reports. If you have a larger topic, sometimes breaking it down into short reports and offering them separately is a great way to make more money and establish your authority in the niche.
Membership sites: If you have a lot of information on a niche and feel that you can provide month after month of content, you can create a membership site. The benefit of making a membership site with your content is that you earn money each month from multiple members. Instead of having a one time sale for your content, you can earn from it continuously. Your membership site can take many different forms. You can offer weekly or monthly reports delivered to your members’ inboxes. You can host a forum where members can meet and discuss the niche. You can also offer training through a private blog. The options are endless!
Before you decide on your product delivery system, make sure to research your niche to see what the norm is. Figure out what would be best for your niche and proceed accordingly.
If you need some more guidance or you’re just getting started, be sure to pick up your copy of: Information Product Sweetie. You’ll learn everything from how to conduct market research, how to create awesome products and how to follow it up with a great marketing campaign.
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Tips for Researching Your Info Product Content
Research is the most important part of putting together a quality product. You will find a lot of information product creators slapping content together and selling it for high prices. When you take the time to research your topic, it shows. You can stand head and shoulders above those marketers that do the bare minimum and present a quality product that people will recommend to others.
I use the acronym S.I.T.E. to remind me of the major sites to visit when researching for new ideas…
S – SUPERCENTER.
I – INFORMATION hubs
T – TARGETED search
E – ENVIRONMENT
1. SUPERCENTER.
The first place most people look to find out information on a topic is Google. It’s THE best place to search for information on virtually any topic on the planet. If there is a “supercenter” of search, then Google has that distinction. Begin your research at this giant. In fact, you might never leave it. Search for “how to” and “ways to” in addition to keywords and keyphrases associated with your topic of interest.
2. INFORMATION hubs.
By all means, use the first page of Google results to get a general idea of your topic. You can do the same with general information sites like Wikipedia, HowStuffWorks and eHow. These are great information hubs that will provide you with numerous ideas to get your creative juices flowing. These sites can help you get a snapshot view of the topic and give you some insight into the major concerns in the niche. But to make your product useful, you should dig a little deeper.
3. TARGETED search.
Look for information that is off the beaten path, but still relevant to your topic. Consider using some specialty search engines like Questia (http://www.questia.com/Index.jsp) to give depth to your topic. If you’re working on a health topic, you should look at medical journals and studies to make your product complete. By looking beyond the first page of results, you’ll be able to find information that the average searcher can’t find.
4. ENVIRONMENT.
In addition to using specialty search engines and looking deep within the search engine results, you can use forums on your topic for additional research. Forums offer the perfect community-style environment for picking up ideas. The people that visit forums in your niche often have specialized knowledge for resources and other sites that either don’t show up in the search engine results or aren’t easily found. By searching in forums you can give your product that insider’s view that is so important. If you aren’t an insider on your topic, you can fake it by researching in a forum.
BONUS: Don’t forget the library! If it’s applicable, you should hit the library or your local bookstore to get deeper knowledge on your topic. Some topics, like Internet marketing, change too quickly to be accurately represented in book stores. However perennial topics like baby care, gardening or finances can greatly be enhanced by research through books. Dust off your library card and spend an afternoon studying how other people have organized information on the topic.
These research ideas will help you make your information product a useful resource for the people in your niche. Although digging deep into a topic may take more time than rewording a Wikipedia entry, it will definitely be well worth it when you have satisfied customers!
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Melissa’s Info Product Challenge Day 9: Your Mini Site
According to your action plan calendar, next week you’ll be doing some serious writing in order to meet your end of November goal – a brand new information product.
The whole idea behind our challenge is to start selling our new product throughout December. But in order to do that, we’re going to need somewhere to sell it from, and that leads me to today’s topic for our challenge…mini sites.
But instead of writing a big long post today, I want to invite you to listen to my interview with Alicia Boywer on the topic of mini sites.
Here are a few things you’ll learn from this interview:
* The definition of a mini site and how it’s different from what people normally think of as a website
* Find out what the key parts of your sales letter are and how you can generate income from those
* Highly effective ways to promote your mini site and start building a list
* 4 common mistakes marketers make when it comes to mini sites
You can download the zip file here: Mini Sites Interview (contains an Mp3 audio & PDF transcript)
P.S. Don’t forget to grab your copy of Information Product Sweetie to fast track your way through our challenge.
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