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October 28, 2004
Halloween Edition - "Scary" Infoproduct Mistakes!
A few days before Halloween, I thought I would stay in theme by sharing
some truly "scarry" mistakes many people (including me) have made with
their information product business.
Scary Mistake #1: The "Wet Noodle" Topic and Title
You've heard copywriters say it - it's the headline that sells.
Just as 90% of a copywriter's job is to study and "live" the lives
of their market - 90% of your effort as a book writer must be
to intimately understand what your market wants so badly they can't
wait to pay you for it.
That means living and breathing like your target market - listening,
questioning, interviewing, and generally being a big pain in the
ass to figure out exactly what they really WANT to be, achieve,
do, or be percieved as.
Scary Mistake #2: Nothing To Sell, Means No Sales
Here's a Halloween quiz, how much money can you make selling your
half-completed 600 page ebook? What about an interview you've
completed, but haven't told the world about?
I get so many people that come back month after month telling me that
next month, they will have their book done.
Two words of advice...
If you can't get your 100-page ebook out in the next 2-weeks, then
write a 20-page report and start selling it.
Next thing to do - go pickup a copy of "How To Write A Book On Anything
In 14 Days or Less....Guaranteed!"
books in weeks. Imagine what impact
that can have on your bank account?
3. Scary mistake #3: Finding Channels of Distribution
Before you write a single word, create a single question for an
interview or create a single chapter for your how-to video, you
should have identified at least 10 potential partners who you have
contacted to share your rough idea, and spoken to in-person if at
all possible.
Who would these people be?
You want them to be major players in your market. List owners,
forum owners, ezine publishers, authors, speakers, webmasters with
successful websites, etc...
You want to have a "pick their brain" session to bounce ideas back
and forth, validate your assumption about the market, discuss
different product opportunities, pricing, and eventually - these
people should help you get your product in front of Millions of
eyeballs!
Too many people wait to find partners AFTER they have put months of
work into their product - only to find they either can't find them
or that their product doesn't attract the very distributors they need
to help them make their product successful.
Happy Halloween all - by avoiding these scary mistakes - you too can
finally create and market your own successful information products.
Posted by jbsmith at 02:36 PM
October 22, 2004
What Is Your Sales Target?
OK, a show of hands, how many of you out there are working away at
your business, writing a book, creating an information product,
marketing affiliate programs, etc..
AND don't have a revenue target pasted up on the screen in front of
you?
"Maybe a couple hundred bucks this month would be nice!"
That's NOT what I mean.
Everyone who is remotely planning, building, improving, struggling,
succeeding or changing their business MUST have a revenue target -
6month, 12-month and 2 yrs AT LEAST.
Why?
Here's the main reason:
So many product developers struggle with:
a) Deciding what format or kind of product to develop,
b) What they should do beyond their primary product and
c) How they should price their products.
Something we all do wrong in the beginning is to decide on a format,
business model and price without considering if it will meet the end
goal or not - and in most cases, they are shocked to find out 6-months
down the line that they are far short of where they would like to be.
Example:
"I want to write an ebook about dieting, I can probably get $27 a copy
for it given the content and competition I see"
Do you see the problem?
If this person is looking to earn anything above $40,000 with their
online business, how many copies will they have to sell.
The simple math tells you 1480 ($40,000 divided by $27)
Now, account for the fact that the book will cost $3-$4 to sell
(payment processor fees, and other overhead) AND that at least
some of those products will be sold by affiliates which you give 40%
commissions to - so the real number is likely somewhere around
2200 copies, which works out to about 180 copies each month.
In fact, I know many of you have profit goals much higher than $40K.
Is 180 copies a month feasible - that would be an extremely tough
number to reach and sustain, and would require a number of high-
powered affilaites who would take more commission off the bottom line.
So, the analysis should tell you that you either need to increase
the price of your product, or increase the "back-end" sales.
There are many ways to increase the perceived value of your product,
thereby increasing your price -- that's something we help you with
a great deal in "The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success
Package"
You can:
- Bundle products together
- Create or search for on-target freely available software
- Freelance creation of a software product
- Conduct and record expert interviews
- Add high-value bonuses
- Bundle a free introductory service with your product
- Develop your own "technology", sets you aside from the crowd
- Develop a home video
- Identify high-value "back-end" products to offer to your customers
- Upsell to a higher priced product on order
There are many, many ways to meet a higher price target.
When you look at your online business from a revenue backwards
perspective, it will answer a great many questions on topic, format,
price and business model - not to mention protecting you from
ugly surprises down the road.
Jeff
"Create & Market Your Own High-Income Information Products"
Posted by jbsmith at 12:28 PM
October 18, 2004
Awesome New Idea Tool For Ebook Writing
As infoproduct entrepreneurs, we are always looking for that "next"
HOT market, or for techniques to test our ideas.
Now there are 40 different techniques for finding HOT book, ebook and other
information product ideas AND a formula for testing them over at:
The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package --
Here's a brand spanking NEW one using the hot off the shelf Amazon
search engine...
This one's courtesy of Jim Edwards...
Read his powerful free article here:
Cool New 'Idea' Engine On The Block
Jeff
Create & Market Hot Infoproducts
Posted by jbsmith at 04:26 PM
Does Your e mini course Struggle To Generate Sales?
If you're e mini course is not working, you could
easily be missing out on 4-8X more sales than you are
getting today.
It's true, if it were not for my e mini courses I would
miss out on 80% of my current sales.
Even I was shocked back 18-months ago when I finally got it right,
followed an e mini course formula that seemed to immediately and consistently
turned readers into buyers.
I'll tell you a little more about the system below, but in a nutshell it
was written by the master e mini course developer Jimmy D. Brown, it's title is:
AutoPilot Income Streams
Since then, I continue to see 99% of infoproduct marketers continue to
make the same mistakes in their email marketing campaigns...
They are:
1. Fail to choose a compelling title, fulfilling HOT desire
2. Don't include links back to their sites in the right way. What
Jimmy taught me more than ANYTHING else was how to mix high profile
advertising into content and still make the e mini course highly valuable.
3. Write WAY too much information that does not attract your reader
back to your site
4. Do not create a compelling desire to read the next issue
5. Do not understand how to properly use an e mini course to market
their own or ANY affiliate product.
6. Spend WAY too much time developing each course. You should be able
to quickly and easily create a 7-part e mini course in 60-minutes or less
(I tweaked mine in less than 30-minutes)
7. Do not understand how to market their e mini course to rapidly and effectively
build a large opt-in, loyal and highly responsive subscriber list.
If I had to pick 1 single step I took that resulted in the MOST money being put
into my pocket in the last 18-months, it's an EASY answer --
I used this system --
AutoPilot Income Streams --
to instantly turn 3-4 times more profit out of my e mini courses.
If you are struggling with your e mini course, your conversion is nowhere near
where you would like it or you think that writing your mini course will be too difficult -
then you will benefit from Jimmy's incredible system.
Cheers...
Jeff
HigherTrust Marketing - Your Infoproduct Development And Marketing Center!
Posted by jbsmith at 03:36 PM
October 14, 2004
Book Sales - How To Make Sense Of Amazon Sales Rank
You are thinking of writing a book.
There is a simple, effective formula to tell up-front if your idea will be "in-demand" and will sell like crazy - the system is outlined in the
Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package
One of the main steps in that formula involves checking for products
that are already selling well in your market.
Amazon is the primary online source for giving us a strong hint about
consumer demand for a given topic.
You want to write a book, check Amazon for signs of similar topics,
and judge by the sales rank, how in-demand that topic is.
Now, many of us have always known that an Amazon sales rank of 1000
or less is a very good seller, a sales rank less than 10,000 is
certainly not bad - but a sales rank above 100,000 would be an
occassional seller at best.
I came across an article discussing Amazon sales rank in far more
detail - you can read it
Right Here
While it's clear you cannot map an exact number of sales to Amazon
sales rank, you can estimate a range of product sales by rank - this
is extremely useful in determining possible demand for your own
topic.
Jeff
http://www.highertrustmarketing.com
Posted by jbsmith at 09:06 AM
October 08, 2004
Weekly Trend Watch - WARNING
Hi all -
Thought I would do something different this week.
This week we have a very interesting niche market to explore.
I say interesting because this is a typical market that offers
many potential sink holes (dead ends from a product demand point
of view), with only a very few gems. On the face, there seems to
be great demand, but without pinpoint accuracy on niche demand,
you will be left with a product that doesn't sell.
Pay SPECIAL ATTENTION to this example, I see many more examples of products that struggle with topics that have these same characteristics - and the effect is often not pretty!
First, let's look at the numbers on some promising keywords:
soccer: 542,493/$.63
youth soccer: 25,204/$.76
soccer drill: 22,348/$.12
soccer coaching: 9,983/$.60
soccer game: 8,646/$.12
This is a perfect example of a market that tricks most product developers.
You have very good demand online - half a million hits per month is
nothing to sneeze at!
Offline, you have a sport that is seeing a rapid increase in popularity.
However - if you dig deeper, there are some harsh realities that indicate that there are basically two areas that show proven demand
in this market - all other topics suffer tremendously.
Notice that soccer coaching and youth soccer are the two words that
get both significant demand AND significant investment in advertising,
as you can see from the +.60 per click investment
Second, a look at book sales from Amazon indicates there are two
corresponding topics that sell much better than other titles:
Youth soccer
and
Soccer coaching
Example: "Coaching Youth Soccer: A Baffled Parent's Guide"
"Teaching Soccer Fundamentals"
"Coaching Girl's Soccer: From the How-To's of the Game
to Practical Real-World Advice -- Your Definitive Guide
To Successfully Coaching Girls"
Not by accident, these titles address the keywords that are in
most demand from an investment point of view.
So now you have proof of demand, proof of money being spent on very
specific topics.
Your next step should be to seek out discussion forums, clubs,
soccer coaches, parents of kids who play soccer to identify a list
of things they would like to learn, see more information on or
questions they want answered.
Finally, read through a few of the best selling books on the topic
you choose, match the demand you see from the market with what
is already out there - improve on your competition and then begin
organizing your very own product.
If you are struggling with writing fast, organizing your written
infoproduct, knowing HOW to publish information - then here is the
only course you will EVER need:
http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/14days
Apply this same formula to any market you are considering - you will
become a much better judge of profit potential with this system.
Jeff
http://www.highertrustmarketing.com
http://www.create-e-mini-course.com
Posted by jbsmith at 10:47 AM
October 03, 2004
Another Hot Topic Idea To Help Write A Book
You may wonder what the "secret" to developing eBooks, books, reports,
audios, videos, courses, or workshops that become proven money makers
as opposed to those that sell a few copies each month.
Well - here's the simplest, yet most powerful forumula you may ever
see, so simple in fact, many people just don't follow it.
Hot Selling Infoproduct = Passionate Desire+Reachable Market+Proven
Propensity To Spend+Compelling Solution
Following our last post, let's look at another example - this one
is from the high-growth home improvement market.
First, let's look at the numbers:
home improvement $3.41/76,906
home improvement remodeling: $1.88/106,220
home improvement contractor $1.50/5123
home improvement tip $2.00/5,000
The first number is the top bid on Google Adwords - the price per
click top advertisers are willing to pay to EVERY lead that clicks
through their add under that particular keyword. this measure gives
you an indication of profit potential in that industry.
The second number is last month's total searches for that particular
keyword.
In this case, both measures look extremely positive - lots of searches
across many keywords, and the investment in advertising is quite high,
indicating spending and profit generating activity is high.
The market looks good, next step is to examine what has already been
written (Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, internet search) to find patterns,
and gaps.
For example, on Amazon we find:
"Haley's Cleaning Tips" with a nice sales rank of under 3100
"Real Simple, The Organized Home"
"2001 Amazing Cleaning Secrets"
"The Complete Guide To Contracting Your Home"
In general, there are a few patterns that seem to sell better than
all others:
1. Cleaning Techniques
2. Organizing - finding more space and order in your home
3. Tips on large-scale renovations (finding contractor, saving money,
etc...)
4. Relaxing in your home - including Feng Shui
Next - you should either match your own personal experiences to
some of these proven sales areas OR dig in and find out more about
the market, speak to contractors, hang out where your customers hang
out, find out what their desires and motivations are.
Whatever you do - don't blindly bank on your topic or ebook selling
like wildfire. You have many tools and techniques for predicting
demand, there is no need to risk leaving it to chance.
Jeff Smith
www.highertrustmarketing.com
Posted by jbsmith at 01:55 PM
