There are many ways to make money on the internet, but having your own info product, ebook or information site is by far the primary income stream you should be tackling next because…

• You create a product using 2-3 week's time that can be leveraged for months or years of income development
• There is no product with better profit margins than information.  So little time is spent creating a product that costs you nothing to develop, yet you can sell it for anywhere from $27-$10,000+ depending on the market or type of info product
• This is the only product (other than potentially software) where you can simultaneously make money online AND brand yourself increasing your perceived value online and offline (Can you say EXPERT!)
• There is really very little work once you launch your ebook or infoproduct – an ebook selling business is really a license to print money
• You control your product which means nobody can change the rules, you can't have it taken away from you, removed from the market or otherwise altered – that's why info products are such a secure income stream for you and your family

So how do you get started with your own ebook selling business?

We have worked with hundreds of successful information marketers through the 6-week InfoProfits Course inside InfoMarketer'sZone, if you really want to get started fast, have full support at your fingertips and learn the in's and out's that took us 10-years to master – then go there right now and get your membership, it comes at a very low cost for such detailed, practical training and support.

Just to give you an idea of how to start your own ebook selling business, let's take a quick look at the overview:

TWO MAIN PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESSFUL EBOOK SELLING BUSINESS

1. Always remember that information publishing (ebooks, reports, home study courses, membership sites, consulting, webinars, etc…) are about delivering a solution to a very emotionally charged desire.   That desire may be to overcome a fear of public speaking, learn to overcome shyness, be a better negotiator, learn to be the person you always looked up to. 

2. Never forget that you are targeting a desire that your market has (not necessarily one that you THINK they have).  In other words, you want to look for clues that show the actual language, wording, and copy that people are using to search and buy information online.   How?  By looking at both the keywords that are most searched using a tool like the Google KEyword Suggestion Tool and then looking at directories like Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc… to see what titles are actually selling around those keywords.  These directories list their products by popularity so you get a pretty good sense for what the top sellers are against any keyword.

These patterns/trends don't lie – they tell you exactly what to target. 

Ok, so here are some steps we suggest based on our experience and what we give as guidance to others:

1. Market Research

Start by digging into your marketplace, look at top keyword searches, leading magazine titles in your niche, top books on Amazon, search through Clickbank, look for top seminars, DVD's

This is the MOST IMPORTANT part of your entire process because it will help you decide on a specific topic, guide your ebook writing and title, understand your price range (based on competition), let you differntiate what you have in the market and know how to target your audience in terms of keywords and compelling copy

2.  First Website

Once you have a good idea of #1, get yourself a domain that focuses on a top keyword you will target and launch your website (Wordpress blog is our preference).  You want to begin to blog each day carefully targeting the keywords that are/will be associated with your ebook topic.  That way you begin to build relevant traffic and build a following

3.  List Building

Develop a giveaway (report, video, email series) that you can use to drive your best blog readers into a mailing list so you can continue the communicate path with them via email

4.  Enlist Authority Sites

While you are writing your ebook, seek out some of the top authority sites directly related to your ebook topic and approach them about potentially reviewing your ebook (either before it is completed or in a few weeks when it is completed) – the idea here is to get some feedback, testimonials and early joint venture partners that will help you with your ebook launch

5.  Set Up Operations Online

Get your back-end systems in place – a payment processor (Paypal, Clickbank, 2CO, etc…), an affiliate management solution (Ejunkie, 1ShoppingCart, etc…) your email marketing system (Ex. Aweber) so that you have all systems ready to launch

6.  Sales Letter

Work on your sales letter – the page that will help sell your ebook, headline, some compelling copy (text or video), testimonials as they come in, call to action

7.  Operation Product Launch

1-2 weeks before you go to market with your ebook, begin to launch "teaser" material – Youtube videos, blog posts, articles, social networking posts (Twitter, Facebook), and provide any affiliate partners with teaser material as well – this builds momentum toward your launch

8.  Launch Your Ebook or InfoProduct

Hit the market – and watch the sales roll in.

In a nutshell, this is the process we have used dozens of times to launch hot selling info products, you can now use the same process to start your own ebook selling business.

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I like to call these people - "SMART!"

You see they understand that answering questions, solving problems and helping people reach their dreams can not only make them wealthy, but let me ask you…who the hell wouldn't want to give people exactly what they want at a deeply emotional level? 

Yes, writing books and marketing information products is FUN and DAMN financially satisfying.

Just one problem…how does someone new to a market get that market's attention, get them to like you and get them to spend big bucks on what you have to offer?

Hmmmm….

It used to be paid advertising, which meant only those with deep pockets could enter the game

Then it moved to email, but open rates today are BRUTAL

Next came websites and SEO – make it easy for them to find you. 

And now, the rules of the game have changed again…to having them find you…but in social situations rather than as some optimized webpage that pops up when your prospect searches Google.

So, this leads us to the 4 things that you MUST be doing to market your books, ebooks and infoproducts.

1. You MUST be passionate about your market and topics. 

In the detached world of advertising, websites and SEO you could get away with not being passionate because your prospects had very little chance to even know who you really were. 

So, many people faked it for a while, did OK, but eventually fell flat on their face anyway because they didn't have the "all-in" dedication that it takes to continually build your business. 

Today, times have changed and people do need to know who YOU are, so you better show them passion or they will cruise on right past you.

2. Embrace participation with your market. 

People want to like you, they want to know you, they want to believe in you – so give them a reason to.  Use blogs, videos, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and any other method you can to show your market you give a damn. 

3. Be involved

Stay ahead of the curve. 

Customers buy what you have because you give them a short-cut to the time, energy and pain it takes to learn something on their own. 

People are lazy, and you can capitalize on that by giving them exactly what they want.  To do that, you need to be constantly one step ahead of them in your market.  Being able to say I have done X, Y and Z and here's what happened is the most valuable type of information of all

4. Be consistent

I'm not a huge fan of scheduling my day down to the very last minute but I assure you, we know the 2-3 most important things we MUST get done everyday and we do them. 

You want at least 1-2 of these things to be actively engaging with your market – simple as that.

Be in love with your customers and your business, know exactly who they are and embrace getting closer to them, be active in your market and be consistent – these 4 golden nuggets applied to your ebook or infoproduct business will produce massive results.

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Furthermore, you will find the topics of these information products varied across major markets that include health & wellness, personal development, business, relationships, hobbies each producing thousands of sub-niches with thousands of products within each of the sub-niches. 

In general, these products sell for anywhere between $27 up to $10,000+ depending on the format (in this case the range would represent an ebook through group coaching formats as an example).  For these products the creator keeps 75% + of that revenue in most cases whereas traditional book sales are skewed even further in the opposite direction.

So how can you be among the top infoproduct publishers on the market today?

1. Start With Your Strengths and Passions.  Successful product creation and marketing requires dedication, self-discipline and consistent action – all made much more likely if you are passionate about your market and topic.  There is not a market I have come across where you can't take your experience or passion and turn that into something valuable for other people to buy. 

2. Become A Market Watcher/Listener/Detective.  Learn to watch what, how and why people are buying information.  Study top ebook, book and seminar directories to know what is HOT.  Reverse engineer leading books to know what is the desire behind the purchases that have led to a top selling information product.  Study magazines, their headlines and content – what desire are they tapping into?  You will quickly figure out what dream, solution or answers people are spending money to get so you can tap into that money flow yourself with your own infoproducts

3. Information product publishing is a business.  You can't just look at this as a way to have some fun writing or to "try" and make a few extra bucks or as a get-rich-quick business opportunity, instead information publishing is a matter of targeting specific markets with value-add products and services growing over time into your own infoproduct enterprise – so treat it as such

4. Learn the power of leverage.  The sooner you can fully grasp the advantage of working once (creating your product) and then earning profit from that work forever…you will be so motivated to build your online information marketing business fast.  with as 2-hours a day for 4-6 weeks you can have yourself an ebook or information product course that brings in a full-time income this year.  Then, do it again, bring in other experts and help publish their work to your audience…and so on…you get the picture right?

Never before has the opportunity for packaging information as a business been so incredibly open and large.  The very nature of how people buy information is in radical transformation – many people will not set foot in a bookstore this year but will buy more information online. 

By acting now, you can put yourself at the front of this information buying frenzy, take advantage of leveraged income and be in a very different financial position just months from now.  Head over to InfoMarketer'sZone for a Fast Start InfoProfits Course and you can make getting started even simpler as we work with you each step of the way.

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If it is lacking or uncertainty over your market niche or infoproduct topic, then you may be much closer to becoming an information entrepreneur than you ever guessed. 

Great ideas for profitable information products come from the market…they exist today in the form of demand. 

Demand is often expressed as frustration, desire, dreams and wants…a wish to move from where a person is today to where they want to be in the future.

Someone experiencing pain desires to be pain-free.

Someone without money wishes to pay the bills and be financially secure

Someone who has lost a love wishes to reclaim that feeling of being wanted.

A person that is paralyzed by shyness wants to be comfortable around others…and so on.

When we truly understand that great information products come from desire and that desire to be, have, do or become better is a basic human state it becomes clear that topics for infoproducts are infinite as is the opportunity for making this your fundamental online business model. 

A case in point…a grandmother found out first-hand the frustration of having to help her young grandson deal with the dietary restrictions imposed by celiac disease (condition impacted by gluten in one's diet). 

Each day we go through frustrations where help is not immediately obvious…in this case the grandmother did something about it by filling this gap in information with a specific book targeting young kids, helping to explain (in their terms) why they can't eat the things others do – you can read the interesting story here. 

With our members of InfoMarketer'sZone we have helped thousands of others turn basic desire for information into an entire information delivery business – and it all starts with some of the most obvious frustrations and desires.

So don't wait another minute to begin the journey of creating your first (or next) ebook, report, manual, course, video or audio program…look around you and see a desire to improve, access information, overcome a frustration or to become better – then outline your infoproduct and you are on your way. 

Within weeks you can open an brand new source of income for yourself, leverage your time to make sales for months to come and enter the exciting world of online marketing. 

Have a question or a story to share – leave us a comment.

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Watch this video where we walk you through…

• The 3 critical factors that ARE the necessary foundation for ANY successful online business
• How to make sure your ebook publishing or information marketing business brings in profit
• The 4-step process that underlies the Information Product Profit Secrets System taught inside InfoMarketer'sZone
• Knowing the right way to uncover the exact topics, keywords and products that make people in any market want to buy
• The #1 factor that will impact your sales – and why so many people fail to even consider this step (it's step 4 described in this video)

In the video we use an actual niche market (photography) as today's example, but the system applies equally to ANY niche you may have in mind…watch the video now:

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Automatic Money Machine

If you have your own ebook, report, audio or video information product and it is not selling up to your expectations, or perhaps you are just now starting down the path of creating and marketing your own infoproducts, the good news is that there some things you can do to improve your sales. 

Information marketing is NOT new.  As far back as can be remembered the practice of dispensing information and expertise in exchange for either trade or commerce has occurred. 

The packaging of knowledge into "how-to" books, and later e-books, has existed for hundreds of years.  I recently discovered a "golf tips" book from the early 1900's that has since fallen into the public domain. 

Around that same time period numerous top selling books dispensing knowledge and advice around self-improvement, professional and financial advice, coaching and many other topics can be found.

Certainly, the transition of creating digital information products and selling them directly to consumers or business has evolved dramatically over the last 10-years, and it is an absolute truth that we are still only on the leading edge of massive opportunity brought about by these changes in how information is packaged and sold to those who want it the most. 

So yes, you are on the leading edge of an incredible opportunity to turn basic information that is urgently required into your own money machine online…read about our own experiences and techniques over at InfoMarketer'sZone.

It is also fair to say that this will not happen automatically, does require an understanding of…

• What niche markets and products you should create
• How those info products should be positioned for maximum appeal
• Creation techniques that take days rather than weeks or months
• Aligning massive market demand with your own positioning so that you see BIG results fast

Pumping Up Your InfoProduct Profits

Specifically, here are 3 techniques you can use to dramatically improve your infoproduct sales and profits:

1. Hit Your Audience's Hot Buttons.  The desire for information is typically preceeded by a large desire to reduce pain or increase pleasure.  People with painful hemorrhoids, tinnitus, shyness or fear of public speaking all share the same desire to overcome a very emoitonal pain in their life.  On the other hand, those who seek out more self-confidence, a job promotion, a better golf swing are also motivated by the potential to experience pleasure. Always be looking for your audience's hot buttons, not only will this help you create in-demand infoproducts, but you will also be a much more effective marketer leading to huge sales.  

2. Position outside of the crowd.  We have helped information marketers enter extremely competitive markets by knowing the competitive trend and positioning at a higher value proposition than your competitors.  For example, you may find 100 books or more covering your topic, but you may only find a few home study courses – there's your opening.  Your competitive advantage can be format, how your proudct is structured, applicability of your product, how your product is bundled, as well as your unique value proposition. 

3.  Make Yourself In-valuable.  The key to making yourself invaluable in your market is to know your market better than your competition.  How do you get to know them?  You listen, watch and test.  Listen to people you know who have the desire you are targeting.  Watch closely forums, blogs and comments on social networking platforms for comments made about your topic.  Offer small group coaching to get direct feedback from your market.  Hold teleseminars to test ideas and collect feedback.  Test sample webpages for response prior to creating your own infoproduct.

In most cases, information products that are not making money do not have to be thrown away, simply re-targeted to address the main demand wave within a given market. 

If you are just now starting your information marketing business, build these 3 techniques into your business creation and watch your sales grow faster and bigger than they would have otherwise.

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The options are pretty overwhelming aren't they?  Do you work on marketing/generating traffic, creating a website, blogging, writing press releases, running teleseminars, launching an affiliate program, SEO, paid advertising…what should be your priorities next?

Having launched more than 12 information products and helped hundreds of others do the same through InfoMarketer'sZone, we now have a very established, highly effective system down for creating and then releasing information products to maximize profit. 

Once you have decided on your infoproduct topic and are well underway with its development — you want to focus on 3 extremely important areas as your next steps:

 1. Product Testing, Testimonials and Partners – Get your product into the hands of 10-15 potential JV partners (people with lists, websites, discussion forums…etc  ) as well as a half-dozen to a dozen beta customers that can try your product and give you feedback…You want to a) Get some early feedback on your product b) Build some testimonials and c) build an initial launch partner list that can help you hit the market when it is ready to go

2. Create, Test and Improve Your Sales Page – your sales page is everything when it comes to converting visitors into buyers, you need to get a draft of that finished and begin testing some early traffic – you can use an early or partial release to do interim testing so it is ready to go when the entire package is ready

3. Work on your sales funnel.  I bet you have gone to a website before where you read some content they have posted and then couldn't ignore a request to opt-in with your email address to see a video, get a report, receive the latest updates, access a private membership protected site, etc… Upon opting in to get this freebie, you now enter that marketer's sales funnel where, if done effectively, they have a 10X better chance of converting you to a buying customer than if you had just landed on their sales page cold.  This time, YOU want to be the marketer and YOU want the added conversions that an effective sales funnel will provide…

Where are you with your information product?  Still in the planning stages?  Are you writing or recording it right now?  Do you have a product on the market that is not performing well?  Let us know by leaving a comment.

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Many people get caught in this phase for months – even years – and never get to the point of testing or making money from their information product.

When you have 2-3 ideas floating around in your head, what is the best way to move forward?

Here are 4 steps outlined in detail within the 6 Week InfoProfit Formula within InfoMarketer'sZone  to help turn general ideas for information products into top selling products making you daily profit:

1. List the top 3 ideas that you have so far…get them down on paper as they will be your starting point for moving forward. For example, let's say that you have managed to lose 10 lbs in the past using a certain combination of diet and exercise, that could certainly be one of your ideas.  For other examples, look at challenges you have overcome, information you have gone looking for or exciting times you have had in your life – usually these give you an opportunity to share real stories and tips with other people around you.  Even if you don't have enough for a full ebook or book, having a start is a big advantage. 

2. Do some market research around each one – mainly look at Clickbank Marketplace, Amazon, Commission Junction and do a general web search to find leading ebooks, courses, seminars, etc… What you are looking for here is to see

a) Can you find other ebooks, books, seminars, courses or video packages that are selling well?  Do they have a decent gravity on Clickbank?  What about their Amazon sales rank?  Can you find evidence that certain products within this space are being sold by many affiliates? 

b) What angle do they take – meaning what question do they specifically answer for their audience and what keywords have they targeted.    For example, I happen to know there are certain weight loss keywords that tend to have higher demand than others (Ex. Love handles or Leg Fat tend to be real problems that people search for solutions – rather than just fat loss or losing weight)
 
3. From your market research one should stand out as the best market – from there I would recommend you start a website and blog – blog about the topic for a few weeks (a post each day) so that you begin to draw traffic. Ideally, you create or license material for a quickie report on your topic to give away, this will help you begin to build a customer list AND tests out the concept you would turn into a larger product

4. When you begin to see some takers on the report, you go ahead and outline your ebook. It is a good idea to keep your first ebook small and focused, improving it based on customer feedback in subsequent editions.  That way you can get your ebook out quickly, it satisfies a very directed demand and opens the door to additional products and services as you advance in your niche market.

Getting past the idea phase of your information publishing business is perhaps the most important step toward succeeding with self-publishing.  Following the 4-step plan above will get you going and get the momentum working in your favor.

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The fact is we have several sites bringing in income from ebooks, here is one that I hope helps people understand what it takes to make money with your own ebooks

Here's how one of my sites earns $100-$150/day consistently. 

1. I identified this niche (sub-niche within personal development and self-improvement niche.  Thre are three main methods I use to find these niches a) I look at busy discussion forums within my market of interest and study the topics that get the most attention, activity and reads…they tend to point to the HOT topics b) I then look for signs of existing infoproducts selling in this sub-niche…I like to find at least one or two that are selling well and c)uncover the main keywords that people use to search for solving the problem or geting the results that make up the sub-niche.  Using these 3 methods you are guaranteed to find a high-potential niche you can turn into your first ebook topic

2. Built a platform using a blog – Your platform is simply a way to reach your audience and could mean one or more of a blog, content website, series of Youtube videos, social networking presence, etc…

My preference is a blog to which I direct traffic from videos and social networking sites if I have time.  It is important that you get your blog or content site rolling to get indexed and ranked in Google and get some traffic flowing…often a few weeks of dedicated posting and some proper boomarking and back-link work can get you to this point

3. Put together your 1st Edition eBook. When I launched my ebook in this niche it was 62-pages in length, of whiche I had written 30-pages or so myself over a 1-week period, the remaining pages came from a combination of outsourcing one chapter (cost me $75 – we share how we did this inside InfoMarketr'sZone), and interview transcript from an expert interview that took me one hour to put together. 

4. Grow your list. On your blog you should focus on converting your readers to subscribers (email subscribers) by putting together some freebies tat will be of value to your readers.  These freebies could be reports, articles, a video, an interview, a teleseminar, access to a private page, etc… This way you pick off the more active and more desperate (ie. most likely buyers) from your overall readership

Converting blog readers into subscribers or customers – believe it or not, this is an art in itself.  There are tons of blogs out there that have lots of traffic, readers, but that can't convert those readers into subscribers for the life of them.  Most have a weak form off to the right ( that most people ignore), do not have compelling offer and do not mention their opt-in offer in their blog posts – if you do these 3 things you can convert more readers into active subscribers and buyers.

5. Sell on the thank you…we've done this with our own products or even with affiliate products (before our own products are ready) in the past.  On the thank you page after someone subscribes to your list you give them a SPECIAL one-time offer of getting your ebook for 30% less (we priced it at $47, so they paid $33 on that day only…early 30% of subscribers bought right there!)

6. Your autoresponder sequence…We then run them through a daily autoresponder sequence for 14-days, (using our preferred autoresponder )  the first 3-days they get 25% off, the remainder of the sequence they get 20% off.  After that I continue to publish weekly updates, articles, tips and newsletters to the list and sometimes put in 20% off offers, but a fair number still will buy in the future at regular price.  Finally, I do also mix 2-3 offers of 3rd party affiliate products to my list each month, I try and always negotiate a joint promotion with the owners of those affiliate products so that they send me even more traffic to keep my pipeline fresh and growing. 

So, using this approach I have consistent income generation on this ebook, have a rapidly growing list of both buyers and subscribers and grow my Clickbank proudct popularity due to the consistency of sales…works extremely well.

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So, here are a few questions that often get people stuck when they get started online — (If you have others, leave a comment and we can build this into an amazing resource for information product professionals)

1. What do I use to write and publish my ebook or written info product.  If you already have it, then use MS Word to develop your ebook, report or infoproduct.  We have some great looking templates to use that will give your MS Word ebook that professional look inside InfoMarketer'sZone, but you can do it yourself as well.  Another alternative is Open Office – a terrific, free Wordprocessing program that also has a built-in ability to generate PDF published versions of your ebook.  Ultimately, that's what you want to have – a PDF version of your ebook to distribute online.

2. What do I use to create my website?  It used to be that I would always say HTML is still the best and that you use a simple editor like CoffeeCup to create your webpages – and you still can do that, I do it all the time.  But today, you have other options such as using Wordpress (free blogging software from Wordpress.org) where you can use some of the more advanced templates out there to create your own sales pages as well as the typical blog look you have as part of your Wordpress install.    Today, I would not hesitate to go Wordpress all the way – for static pages (like your sales pages and articles) as well as dynamic posts (typical of daily blog posts). 

NOTE:  If you get your webhosting from a C-panel host such as the one we recommend at Hostgator, they will include a quick install that automates the process of intalling and configuring Wordpress blog on your web domain. 

3. What do I use to take payments, provide an order page, handle all transactions (returns, sales, etc…) and allow me to manage my own affiliate program?

Ejunkie with Paypal is certainly one easy way to take payment and operate an affiliate program

Clickbank is another – which does pretty much the same thing, costing you a little more in fees/commissions but also opening to a wider potential Marketplace of affiliates

You can also go with a more robust option that gives you everything from a front-end shoppping cart, ad trackers, integrated autoresponder, affiliate management and more that works with Paypal or other payment processors – we like 1ShoppingCart for this sort of application. 

4. How do I build a list, setup automated autorresponder follow-ups , send out newsletters and broadcast new announcements to my list?  list building is one of the best ways to increase your profits – many marketers earn a full-time living from a few thousand, high-response subscribers to their lists.  The foundation of your list including the up-front sign-up forms, ongoing autoresponse messages, newsletter templates and broadcasts, list management and integration with social networking sites is your Autoresponder Service.  Pretty much the unanimous choice is Aweber - we have used them for nearly a decade with great success and satisfaction.

5. Where do I get professoinal looking graphics for my ebook covers, ebook title pages, webpage banners, blog banners, logo's and the like…?

Regarding professional graphics – I ALWAYS get them outsourced.

There is a great source of royalty free images online here where you can often get some great pictures and graphics to add to your info products and/or websites.

Otherwise, for $50-$100 you can get great looking graphics developed by professionals on outsource sites such as  elance, or vworker.com

6. What is a squeeze page and how do I create one of those?  Squeeze pages can be done in Wordpress or HTML – there are many, many templates available for each or you can more or less copy the design (not content or graphics) from pages that you want to emulate. Simple, strong message and above the fold are the keys to a successful squeeze page

Here is an example of a squeeze page targeting ebook writers we have that converts extremely well.

Yes, this all seems like a ton of learning and can be overwhelming, but really you are learning skills and tools that can build you a high-income online information product marketing business – once you know this stuff, you can duplicate it again and again in minutes – well worth the effort for sure.

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