Make Money Online with Information Products

This article is guest posted by Mike Ndegwa.

There are numerous ways in which people make money online. The  most common one is affiliate marketing. In its broadest sense, an affiliate marketer seeks a niche that is proven to be profitable and builds their online business around that niche.

One can be an affiliate to a company that ships products like Amazon or sells electronics and so on..  One of the main reasons why people prefer to be affiliates other than set up their own businesses as product owners is the low set up costs. With a registered domain, some review content, list capture and traffic the business is all set.

Today I’d like us to focus on a new Online Business model:

The Information Products Business

In the last couple of years I’ve tested various market places and digg into niches and sub niches to create high converting information products. There are 3 main marketplaces you should focus on that have proven to have demand for content and readers are willing to spend their money. The three marketplaces are listed as follows:

1. Lifestyle
2. Health
3. Wealth

When I say marketplace means its very broad. For example if you pick Lifestyle it you could have a niche ranging from dating to sports and hobbies. So its really broad, and the more you digg in to a small niche the more you’ll make sales.

Creating an Information Product

In most cases you’ll hear Gurus tell you not to go through the pain of creating your own information products – Just visit ClickBank, see what sells and start promoting. Well this model works in the short term but not if you want to be an authority in a particular niche. In this regard, you really should focus on creating your own product even if you are starting.

Here are 10 quick steps to creating your info-product and have it launched in Minutes.

1. Product Research – Visit digital products marketplace i.e. clickbank, paydotcom, click2sell, plimus e.t.c Visit one of the three categories listed above, drill into subcategories and look for a product that is selling i.e. has a high gravity. The next thing you want to do is visit their sales page and see what their sales pages look like. see what bonuses they are offering, whether the product is an ebook, a multimedia course e.t.c. Of the three purchase one of the products, if its an ebook go through it. this helps you to demystify the “block” of writing your own ebook – in most cases you’ll find you can write such an ebook given time to research more
2. Creating an Ebook – the fastest way to write an ebook is to think of how you can solve a problem in that niche. Once you do write down a table of contents with chapters and sub chapters. You can either from time to time research on a chapter and write it down or you can outsource from freelancers to write for you. I prefer to outsource and concentrate on other factors in the business.
3. Set Up a website – register a domain related to your ebook, install wordpress and wordpress sales theme on it. Most hosting companies have auto install for wordpress on their cpanel. Optimize your website for search engines, using all possible wordpress tips
4. Sales letter – Writing a sales letter is easy, here is why: you write to make your readers focus on one thing without many actions required. Just one goal, to introduce your product and the value it brings and the action is for the reader to purchase
5. Testimonials – I recommend creating a group on facebook or if you have a few contacts who might be interested in your product. share a beta testers and offer it at a very low cost or just give it free.  However, let the participants beware that feedback will be required once they’ve used the product. Use all positive feedback as testimonial on your web site. use positive criticism to improve your product.
6. Set a payment flow. most vendor or merchant networks will provide you with tutorials on how to go about it. I use plimus.com to accept payments and to manage my affiliates. as of this writing to be #1 on a chosen category is easy as there is no much competition like on Clickbank for example.
7. Review your own product and post it in blogs, article directories, squidoo.com and other content networks. This is to ensure that when your product becomes popular, you can at least dominate the first 10 search results. optimize those articles and reviews with your product name as primary keyword.  These reviews are what affiliate will use to discover what’s inside your product and they can review your product and post the reviews on their blog.  Also a 2 minute to 6 minute video should also be posted youtube and other content sharing network.
8. Now that your product is ready for launch. you can start marketing, if you have a list you can tell them about the product. you can also invite affiliates to promote your product. create  pay per click ads, banner advertising, guest posting, yahoo answers e.t.c. use Google analytics to measure how various campaigns are performing.
9. Free report. create a free report with valuable information in relation to the product. reveal a little bit of the information inside your product and make sure you call to action is for readers to purchase your product. free reports are not hard to write. even a simple 12 page report can do wonders for you. you can use the free report to create a list as well as to market yourself as an authority, this will make your product look credible and make people want to buy from you. A free report that is originally authored by you can skyrocket your sales. try and see for yourself.
10. By now you’ll have made some sales, listen to your customers and think of what products you can upsell after people purchase your product. Keep measuring, keep improving and keep promoting.

Once done with your first product, you’ll have overcome the beginners block, and your experience will make your second product much easier to make.

Discover how you can Turn Content into Cash on GotContentGetCash.com

To your success,

Mike Ndegwa