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November 22, 2002 Yes, You Can Still Earn Large Profits from Information Products ( http://www.infoproductcreator.com) jeff@infoproductcreator.com Subscribe via Email by Clicking Here Subscribe via Web: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/ezine1.html
Update from Jeff... Hello everyone, welcome to the 3rd last edition of our newsletter for 2002! That's right, only 2 more issues and we'll be talking about New Years resolutions, scary isn't it! We have a ton of great information to cover today. Before I get started, let me give you an inside tip on a a TOP NOTCH and affordable developer of eBook covers and web page banners for you. His name is Ovi Doger and his work ROCKS! A professional looking eBook cover, newsletter cover, web site banner or cover for your affiliates to use can make a massive difference in your online credibility and sales. Not only will you get some of the most awesome graphics development on the net for some of the best prices, I can personally attest to the fact that Ovi will make sure you walk away a satisfied customer. I already have him working on covers and banners for my next projects, he's given me some sneak peaks, and it's better than I ever imagined. Check his work out here: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/absolutecovers/ and here... http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/affiliatecovers/ On another note, I wanted to send a big THANK YOU, to all of you who took the few minutes to respond to our latest web survey on a new product we will be releasing very soon. I'll be closing out the survey by the end of the month, but there's still a chance to get your voice heard - and check out a great online survey service you can use for your own business. Here's the link to the survey... http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=37305145725 Finally, you'll want to check out today's feature article on 7 powerful techniques you can use to pump up your written infoproducts - and get them out the door MUCH faster. Until next time... Jeff jeff@infoproductcreator.com
FEATURE ARTICLE Copyright 2002 - Jeff Smith I've been writing for several years now and it strikes me that I know two types of people. People who absolutely love to write. For them, it's an escape. These people, as sick and twisted as they are, dream about writing for a living. I happen to fall into this camp. People in the other camp loath writing. At the very thought of sitting down to translate their brainwaves onto paper, they get noticeable heart palpitations. OK, so you fall into the latter camp. What I'm going to tell you here may shock you. No matter how turned off writing you are, you can still make money creating your own hot selling information-based product. I know of many people who don't consider themselves writers who have made personal fortunes via selling their knowledge. Here are 7 tips you can use to profit from your knowledge even if you can't bear the thought of writing a word. 1. Passion is the root of all good writing Many people begin writing for profit by looking at what topics sell rather than looking at how to sell what they know or love. By focusing on what you love, writing no longer seems the epic task but instead seems to flow from your fingers like lightning from the sky. 2. Talk To Yourself - As Long As Nobody Sees You Let me guess. You sit down to write and most of your time is focused on how you write down a certain thought you have, rather than developing new thoughts, correct? Most frustration with writing comes from trying to say things you already know how to say in a much harder way than you would normally say it. In other words, write your ideas down as if you were talking to someone across the table. Don't worry about grammar or literary prowess, profitable infoproducts communicate plainly and simply. 3. Step by Step Gets It Done If you were going to explain to me how to program my VCR you would likely say something like this: First, pick up the remote;, second, turn the vcr on; third, hit the "Program" button, fourth, select the "Set Timer" option, fifth, etc.... Think about the simple steps you would take to address your reader's needs or wants. Organize them into a logical sequence and those become the outline for your headings or chapters in your book. 4. Ask and You Shall Receive This is a super technique that literally increased my rate of writing by 10X!! It's from master writing coach Steve Manning at: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/14days For each chapter or heading in your book, write a list of at least 8 questions, from your readers perspective, on what they would like answered by reading your material. Writing then becomes the process of conversationally responding to each of these questions. Approximately 10- minutes on each question will give you about a page of material resulting in 8-10 pages per chapter which is a good number to aim for. The best part of this technique is you can break up your writing into 10-minute increments - I'm sure you can find a few of these even in the busiest of days. 5. Write first, edit after Too many people tend to write a sentence, paragraph or page, then spend 30-minutes ripping it apart losing any momentum they had built in their writing process. I think of writing as a snowball building up speed as it rolls down the hill. Getting started is the hardest part, once you are started, don't stop until you have to. Keep writing, it's always easier to edit completed work than it is to edit as you go. 6. Beware the Reviewer! Don't make the common mistake of passing a few written pages around to your friends of family before your work is completed. If I had of passed my first chapter by my wife, it's quite possible I would have NEVER finished this book. She's not the target of the book, so she just didn't get excited by it. For new writers, that type of response is quite devastating. Understand that you are writing your book for a very specific target market and many strangers will be much more supportive of your work than most family members - even if they are not trying to be negative. 7. Conduct an Interview If you are having a challenge with transferring your thoughts to paper or computer screen, then consider recording your thoughts into a microcassette or digital recorder, then transcribe your conversation into your book. To make it even simpler, take the questions I spoke about in #4 above and have someone "interview" you. Record your responses and viola, a 40-60-minute interview will give you a good sized eBook, all that's left to do is transcribe the interview. No doubt you believe writing can be profitable, but perhaps you thought it was just too hard or you didn't have the skills. It REALLY doesn't have to be that way. There are MANY people that have never sold any of their writing before that are getting BIG results using these techniques.
Margie Garrison- "How To Profit From Your Life Experiences" Special Interview Excerpt Today Writing about what you know can really make you a fortune. Today's interview is with Margie Garrison, who, in her mid 50's, decided she had a story to tell about how she conquered a debilitating disease that had affected most of her life. Check out her fascinating story here... http://www.cureyourarthritis.com Her writing is not fancy, it's not flashy, and she's not a professional writer - yet it is highly effective because she writes about her own life experiences and knowledge. While Margie won't come clean on exactly how much money she has made, she did hint that it's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and she has sold a whopping 240,000 copies of her book so far. It's also interesting to note that though she completely self-published her book, most were sold offline with her online business picking up steam. Today's excerpt will provide some terrific insights how a mother of 4 and grandmother with no previous writing or marketing experience had her lifestyle changed by just one book. If you missed the last few powerful interview segments with Yanik Silver, Marc Goldman, and Willie Crawford then you can find them in our new online newsletter archive available at: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/ezine1.html Now, for this week's interview excerpt! Jeff [Question] Can you please give our readers some background on how and when you developed your first information product - How I Cured My Arthritis and You Can To Margie[Answer] Yes Jeff, I'm a mother of 4, 2 grandchildren, 2 great grandchildren. My background is in sales, I've always been a direct salesperson, and after 43 years I was so angry, and I mean REALLY angry that doctors could not help me and in the end, in a matter of weeks, I had no more arthritis. So my husband said, go for it, write a book about this, and that's exactly what I did. I just sat down and wrote it. Jeff [Question] Did you ever think, when you sat down and wrote this book that it would ever sell this well? Margie [Answer] No, my husband said hey, we'll spend a thousand dollars and if it does something it does and if it doesn't it doesn't, because that was in the days you HAD to print. Jeff [Question] When did you write the book? Margie [Answer] In 1981, I wrote it, released it and started marketing it by television. Jeff [Question] So you sold offline for a number of years, when did you first start using the internet to sell? Margie [Answer] That was in 1999, I was 71 years old and had been into RVing, full time retired and travelling in an RV with my husband until he died and my son then said Mom, you are now settled more, why don;t you do something else? So he bought me a computer and a printer - that's how I started. I made ALL the wrong mistakes. I had more money than brains evidently. I spent money on all the get rich quick schemes and I failed. My secret of success actually is that at 2:00 in the morning Mike Enlow called - I'm sure everyone knows who he is - he said do what you know how to do. Well I thought - and I know how to sell arthritis books, and that turned me around. I started to sell my arthritis books on the web. Jeff [Question] That's a terrific lesson right there. People often try to make things too complicated. Even generating product ideas, I talk to allot of people that spend years trying to come up with the perfect product idea when really it may be right under their nose and just getting it done and getting it out there is the big secret. Margie [Answer] Yes - you mentioned $141.18 per WORD in my book, well it's a 120 page book, so people can work out the math, hah, hah.. But I want to tell everyone what I bombed at, because I think this is very, very important. When I first started out I wrote 2 ads for a newspaper in Philadelphia in a lotto magazine, of all places. I made $20 Profit on each one. I thought it was a failure, and never wrote another ad for that magazine. However, from those two ads I got a request to make a trip to Africa and do a tour. That fell through. I also got a call from someone from France who wanted to sell my book in that country. They gave me a $4000 advance and converted the book into French and I made $16,000 more on it and I thought those two ads were a failure. Another thing, if I had netted $20 per ad, if I had gone and put in a 1000 ads, you know.... Then what I did, I sent 5000 letters to catalog companies. One called me back. From that one catalog, I got $5,000/month for 18 months from that one catalog. Then about a year later, they re-ran the same ad - because they run out - and I got another $2000/month for another year. I went out and got another 5 catalogs. I was heavily into the apartment house business and didn't do a whole lot more with it at that time - so you can see, I was kind of a dummy! I sold over 2200 health food and drug stores, many of them still ordering from me and some having dealt with me from way back in 1981. Jeff [Question] So what you have told us here is that selling your information requires steady work, sound marketing approaches rather than any one single killer technique that will fill your pockets with money. It's a matter of getting word out and attracting people to you. [Editors Note] Watch for the complete interview with Margie Garrison to be released in the coming months - the tips, techniques and strategies used by Margie that led to her phenomenal success with one single book is a fascinating lesson in how powerful information product marketing can be. Check out Margie's site at: http://hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?ideaguide/arthritis
** WZ.com Closeout Sale, eBooks, Audios, Ezines The closeout on WZ.com assets continues. Audri and Jim Lanford have added Reprint Rights to interviews and many of their active and inactive ezines and lists. While the content and lists up for sale are clearly NOT for everyone, you may just find something that directly links to your topic, or your area of interest which may provide the foundation for your infoproduct business. You can see their latest offerings at: http://ebooks.wz.com and.... http://ebooks.wz.com/ezines/ ** Internet File Sharing as Viral Marketing Tool? As far as I know, I'm one of the first people who have written about this technique. I'm sure many others have thought about it, and quite frankly, I'm surprised to not have seen more on this already. Many of you are no doubt aware of file swapping software such as Kazaa and Morpheus. Usually these are used to exchange audio, video, games etc... Something I will be trying in the coming weeks is making viral ebooks and Special Reports available on a shared drive to the massive user base. For examaple Kazaa alone reports around 100 million downloads so far. The recently released v2.0 Kazaa software now makes web page searches possible as a file type. As such they are also entering the keyword selling game - selling keywords to sellers who want special exposure for their sites when a search is done - similar to the Pay-per-click search engines. You'll want to keep your eye on file sharing as the next big vehicle for internet marketing - and hopefully you heard it here first :) http://www.downlinx.com Excellent source of freeware, shareware file utilities such as file splitters, hard drive utilities, and much much more... http://ixquick.com Need to make sure you get full coverage of the net when you search, try this metabrowser - it's powerful That's it for this week folks... Have a super and successful week! As always... Be sure to contact me if you have any comments or feedback - You Can Mail Me Here Jeff Smith http://www.infoprod uctcreator.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 Information Product Profit Secrets webmaster@inf oproductcreator.com http://www.infoprod uctcreator.com |