Categories: Business

23 Tips for Starting an Information Business

If you want to do well online, the biggest growing market is to publish information products. Here are some tips to help you with this:

Instant gratification is the strongest appeal you can use when creating a low-ticket, entry point level information product. For example, if you had a toothache, which dentist would you rather go to – the one that will fix it in two weeks, or the one who can do it right away.
Narrow your focus. Just like the highest paid doctors are also the most specialized, creating a product for a very specific market or on a very specific topic makes everything else easier… easier traffic, easier conversions, higher price points, etc.
The best audience to go after is one who is completely neglected by all others, and who is buying mediocre products knowing they’re mediocre because at least it’s better than buying nothing.
The criteria for creating a “one sitting” product: a solution your customers can apply and see benefit the first, second or third attempt; it can be easily linked to saving/making money; and the pain of their problem that you’re offering to solve increases each day it remains unsolved.
Use the Amazon.com best seller books list to find a best selling book in a category within a category within a category – then, “look inside” the book and find a single chapter that meets the above criteria. That’s how you find your product topic.
When creating your product, remember to focus on outcomes over information. People don’t want to learn nearly as much as they want to change limiting behaviors.
The better someone feels about following your solution, the more likely they will buy it and benefit from it. (It’s less about what they know, more about how they feel about what they know.)
During your research phase, look for things that are easy to accept by your audience and easy for you to explain. Focus on tactics. Sell them a small win, and then you can sell them an even bigger win.
Find and deliver information that helps remove one or more negative emotions and replace those with one or more positive emotions.
Parkinson’s law is either your best friend or worst enemy. Since the task at hand (creating a product) expands to fill the available time, if you don’t use time limits, you’ll never finish. This is the most important law to your financial freedom!
The best places to do research are YouTube videos, Medium.com, Slideshare.net, podcasts and forums. Listen at 2x+ speed.
Product creation hack: most top-of-class experts you can pay less than $100 for an hour or more of their time… interview them and you have all the materials you need. Bonus points if you tap into their proof. (And if you do it right, you pay them zero royalties for any product sales plus you can target their followers.)
A great question to ask when creating an information product: “if I only had 6 pages to present my solution, what would I share and what would I leave out?”
The only two ways to effectively teach someone something: (1) step by step or (2) factors. Not only does this make it easier for you to create content, your content is far superior to 99% of what other content creators are putting out.
For each step or factor you share, following this formula: why it’s important, what’s involved, how to do it, and what is likely to happen as a result. Repeat for each step or factor.
Tap into the three dominant motivators: empowerment, achievement and connection. (Here’s how this will empower you, here’s what you’ll be able to accomplish and here’s how it will bring you closer with…)
Start with a simple eBook as your first product unless you’re horrible at writing and you’re amazing at speaking off an outline. Any ebook you make can be turned into an audio or video product later and sold to the same audience who bought the ebook.
Crawl, walk, then run. Most gurus teach the end result of their decade plus experience and insight – this is why their audiences fail because the “expert” fails to meet the audience where the audience is currently at. If you’re just getting started or haven’t produced money online yet, it’s a must you check out product eclass.
The sales letter for your info product contains just (1) A headline, (2) a lead, (3) some bullet points (4) a call to action and (5) urgency. Your letter should be of a simple design, and less than 1000 words.
Price and position your product to create “impulse purchasing”. There is no easier way to get a complete stranger to buy from you than doing this… and once they do buy from you, then you can sell a higher level, higher price “similar” solution.
Borrow proof if you don’t have it but want it… and remember that this system requires no proof for you to be successful, meaning you can sell products where you have no proof.
For getting traffic, make your product focus as narrow as possible. Then your product will be able to be more easily found by those who you want to offer it to.
My favorite traffic getting technique involves getting a commitment from an influencer to send traffic to my product before I create it. But this requires you know the best way to create the product.