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July 18, 2003 
(c)Copyright Jeff Smith 2003
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Update From Jeff Wow! It's supposed to be the dog days of summer, and yet things have been hopping here at infoproduct central! I've had several questions submitted this last week -- which I figure shows that many of you are getting SERIOUS about your infoproducts. That's way cool!! I want to see the full-tooth smile on your face when you sell the first copy of your very own infoproduct. The questions this week fall into two camps... 1. People having trouble narrowing down their ideas and... 2. People having trouble organizing their product - experiencing the common challenges when you get too close to your own project. Today's feature article will walk you through the surefire formula for making creation of your infoproduct dead simple. Not automatic -- you still have to put some work into it -- but it should be simple and fun, not complicated and a pain in the a** You'll also discover the "Insider" secrets to creating a thriving, full-time infoproduct business in a NON- Internet marketing market in today's expert interview with David Frey of http://www.makethegrade.com Enjoy and stay safe. Jeff jeff@infoproductcreator.com
Producing Income Generating Infoproducts -- It's All About Asking Questions!Copyright 2003 - Jeff Smith Admit it, your forehead is bruised from the number of times you've hit yourself! Every time you see another "How To" product your inner voice screams out... "I could have done that!" Guess what? Your inner voice would be right. You should listen to it once in a while - though I would advise you not to hold public conversations with it - that can be frowned upon in certain areas of the country. I know that many of you are struggling to understand the mysterious, yet compelling world of infoproduct development and marketing. I also know that many of you are making this thing too hard! Harder that it has to be. Here's a tip - great information products are nothing more than a series of questions and answers. That's it. After all...there's a reason they call them "How To" products. For all of you looking for some eBook formatting template or method of organizing your work, here's a few tips you should find helpful. Tip 1: Pick a Topic And Find the Top 10 Questions For a 100-page eBook, 20-Page Special Report, 1-hour audio, teleseminar, etc... All you need is to address 10 Compelling questions. You will answer more than 10 in your work - but the others can be dead simple - what you want is to know the top 10 Questions anyone looking for information will want to see. If you need to find topics that are proven winners, then use the techniques outline in "Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Idea Guidebook" here: http://www.infoproductcreator.com Tip 2: Structure your Chapters or Sections around Those 10 Questions. If you are writing an eBook - create 10 Chapters. If it's a special report - answer them one right after the other. If it's an interview - 10 questions will give you almost 1-hour worth of content. If it's a teleseminar - you have the structure of your call. Tip 3: Develop 5-8 more questions that relate to the main question. Let's say your topic is playing guitar and one of your questions is "How much should I pay for my child's first guitar" Related questions might be... "What types of guitars are there?" "Where can I get the best deals on guitars?" "What size should children use?" "What are guitars made from?" "What's the difference between a $100 and $1,000 guitar?" You now have questions that will fill the first 15-20 pages of your book. Work at answering 3-4 questions per day and in a few weeks, you'll have your product completed. Tip 4: Get Reviewers To Add Missing Questions Send your first draft out for review shortly after getting your outline completed - you'll find that there are other high priority questions that will lead to an even better product. Tip 5: Write, Research, Collect, Survey and Interview Don't get all strung up about not having all the answers. You can use the journalists approach - raise the questions and go out to get answers. Run a survey. Interview experts. Draw from your own experience. Provide an opinion and test it. There are many ways you can get questions answered. Don't make this harder than it needs to be. What makes infoproducts sell well is that they are well targeted, ask meaningful - high demand - questions, get the answers (from experts where necessary) and position it in a unique way. Now, what are you waiting for - what's your next question? AUTHOR'S NOTE: Use This Article With Your Affiliate Link! Please feel free to use this article in it's entirety in your online or offline publication - the only requirement is that you use the following resource box following your article: (Note, sign up for our affiliate program at: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/affiliateinfo.html and substitute your own affiliate link into the resource box): Jeff Smith is an online marketing expert and author of the highly recommended Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package. Discover exactly how to quickly create one hot selling infoproduct after another. Building your own Infoproduct Empire is easy with the Success Package. See it here:
"Replacing Your Career With Your Own Infoproduct Business"Special Interview Excerpt - David Frey Today You are in for a REAL TREAT today. After several weeks of trying, I managed to track down the very successful online product creator and marketer David Frey. Now - I don't want to hear anyone say they don't know what topics to pick outside of internet marketing that will be successful. David has produced infoproducts on everything from helping kids do better in school (http://www.MakeTheGrade.com ) to marriage advice pool spas and yes, marketing as well. Discover David's approach to capitalizing on hot markets and get his very private resource list for producing killer multimedia products. Did you know... Every issue of this newsletter, for the last year includes a blockbuster interview excerpt from some of the biggest names in online marketing. If you've missed some of our past POWER Interviews with the experts, then you'll want to hear what Joe Vitale, Yanik Silver, Marc Goldman, Damon Zahariades, Willie Crawford and many others are doing to create, and grow their own Infoproduct Empires. Check out our archives right here... http://www.infoproductcreator.com/ezine1.html Now, for this week's interview excerpt! Jeff [Question] Hi David - I really appreciate you taking the time to share some of your powerful insights with our readers. Your web site http://www.themarketingbible.com tells us about your transition from a successful consultant and senior executive to newsletter publisher and small business marketing expert where you have created many of your own successful information products. David Frey [Answer] Jeff, I was a senior consultant for seven years with a large multi-national consulting firm. I went on the be the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for a $500M company. I got tired of making other people money and decided to venture out on my own. Two things I didn't want when I left the corporate world... (1) inventory, and (2) employees. Both were annoying evils that I hated. I also didn't want to swap my time for money. That's the beauty of selling products, you create once, and you make money over and over again. Jeff [Question] How much testing did you do when you are developing a new product - what are some of the ways you use to know there will be demand for your products? David Frey [Answer] My first product, which you'll find at http://www.makethegrade.com was a test product so-to-speak. I thought it would be easy to write and I'd learn along the way. Having children do well in school can be a frustration and worry for many parents. I knew that products that helped kids do better in school sold well because it solved a painful problem. I had evidence of that because of the product, "Where There's a Will There's an A" sold big time through infomercials in the early 90's before its creator passed away (Incidentally, the same product has been resurrected in a new infomercial). Generally, speaking though I look for painful problems that people have. Any infoproduct that solves a painful problem has the ability to be a good selling item. You can pretty much assume if there is a painful problem, then there are people looking for a solution. So your job is then to find out how to get in front of people who are looking to solve the problem. Jeff [Question] What advice would you give to someone considering, or just starting out developing their own information-based products? What 3 things would make the biggest impact on their level of success in creating and marketing their own infoproducts? David Frey [Answer] 3 Things for Success: 1. Get educated. Read all you can on infoproduct marketing. 2. Get to know people who are already doing it. Form a network of infomarketing friends. 3. See what other successful marketers are doing and replicate their "systems" (not products,but systems). 3 Things for Successful Products: 1. Look for painful problems. See what people are doing (buying) to solve the problem. 2. Create a plan for marketing your product before you create it. 3. Get your first product behind you quickly. Even if it fails, you'll have learned a lot in the process. Jeff [Question] You have included audio and video captures as part of your infoproducts - can you share with our readers how you incorporate audio and video into your products? What tools do you use or do you outsource this work? David Frey [Answer] I always try to do my products in text and audio at a minimum. Right now I'm working on the audio version of the Small Business Marketing Bible http://www.themarketingbible.com Here is my rolodex of resources: Cassette Recording - Marantz PMD 222 for audio cassettes Digital Recording - Model DDR-3128 128MB (look on ebay under digital recorders) Digital Recording and Editing - Cool Edit (www.CoolEdit.com) Audio cassette duplicator - Sony CCP 1300 (www.histapes.com or www.kingdom.com) Video duplicator - Go Video DDV 2110 (www.kingdom.com) Outsourced duplication of cassettes, CD's, and video (www.histapes.com)Very reasonable, good service Website audio - Sonic Memo - (www.sonicmemo.com) For audio to flash (.wav to .swf) conversion - Boomer 4.0 (www.gfx2swf.com) For graphic to flash graphic (gif or .jpg to .swf) conversion - Boomer 4.0 (www.gfx2swf.com) For audio recording off the telephone - Radio Shack 17-855 Wireless Phone Recording Controller For manual duplication - local Housotn business - (www.drcopy.com) .03 a copy Graphic covers - www.killercovers.com or www.ebookwow.com Online Shoppingcart - www.1shoppingcart.com Telephone hotline service - www.automatedmarketingsolutions.com (mention my name and they drop set up fee) Video Learning production - Visual Communicator Pro (www.seriousmagic.com) Video Movie production - Pinnacle Studio 8 (www.pinnaclesys.com) Merchant account - www.Skipjack.com PPC management - www.paidsearchenginetools.com Website software - MS Frontpage Graphics program - Micrografix Picture Publisher (discontinued) Crap work (editing, data entry, writing articles etc.) - www.elance.com I think that's it....? Jeff [Question] Wow David - that's an incredible resource list, thanks for sharing that with our readers. David Frey [Answer] Here are my sites: http://www.MarketingBestPractices.com (Sign up for the Marketing Audo Minute) http://www.InternetMarketingBookstore.com (affiliate sales site) http://www.PitBullSecrets.com (money is in the backend!) http://www.MarriageAdvice.com (under development) http://www.Market-Your-Services.com (roll out July 24, 2003) http://www.TheMarketingBible.com (best dang marketing book you'll find!) http://www.SpaPoolSuccess.com (my niche market) http://www.MakeTheGrade.com (if you got high school kids, they need this!) http://www.AdvertisingCourse.com (due out by October 2003) http://www.TradingToolkit.com (joint venture with trading company - the front end of a very large marketing system
** Complimentary eBook "Internet Fortune on A Shoestring!" Just released by Larry Dotson - tons of contributions from the likes of Joe Vitale, Michael Green, Willie Crawford, Neil Shearing, Wayne Yeager (Trafficology), Diane Hughes, and even Your's Truly! Discover what these successful internet marketers would do with the last $100 in their pockets! It's in Adobe .pdf format, you can download it here... http://www.infoproductcreator.com/download/100.pdf ** The Best Topics For Your Own Subscription Based Websites. Saw a link to this article from the wonderful private product development forum over at: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/myers It's a terrific article on exactly what it takes to turn your content into a monthly paycheck. Access it here: http://www.swepa.com/public/429.cfm?sd=39 ** What are Your Options For Converting MS Word To pdf? I do all my eBooks, Special Reports, and manuscripts in MS Word format. It's easy, comes with most PCs and provides some good formatting features for digital products. So what are your options for converting MS Word files to Adobe pdf format - the accepted eBook format? 1. You can save MS Word files as HTML file and use HTML Doc to convert into pdf format... http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc/ 2. You could use pdf995 suite (free version has minimal adware, or $20 for no adware version) http://www.pdf995.com/ 3. You can get 5 free documents converted at adobe.com and pay a nominal fee per month ($10) after that. 4. You could invest in the full Adobe Acrobat product which will give you the best functionality, and flexibility - but it will put you back a few hundred dollars. You can always check eBay, I've seen copies at substantial discounts. Have a super weekend. Be sure to drop me a line with what you like or don't like about this little rag! mailto:jeff@infoproductcreator.com Jeff Smith http://www.infoproductcreator.com ATTENTION: There is only one way that you could be receiving this ezine, that is you, or someone using your email address, subscribed. There is no other way of being added to this list. We do not make this list, or your address, available to ANY other companies or individuals. We value your privacy. Although we work hard to make sure that all of the information in the Profit Secrets newsletter is accurately and genuine as possible, neither the publisher, nor the editor assume any responsibility for the accuracy or otherwise of the information presented. By reading this information, the Information Product Profit Secrets reader assumes all responsibility for an inaccuracies or other risks associated with the information within this newsletter. Jeff Smith Editor Online Marketing Secrets Revealed webmaster@inf oproductcreator.com http://www.infoprod uctcreator.com |