By now you are hard at work, getting ready to make money online. You started by committing to action and promised yourself you would start an online business. You have already chosen your niche, narrowly, based upon the three-question test I've recommended.You may have also started a blog or an e-mail newsletter, and once you've got it up and running, you are going to create fresh content every day. You've even got a plan for your first...more
In the first four steps to information marketing success, we looked at the need to commit to action, choose a niche, start a blog and begin creating content every day. Next, it's time for you to develop what you are going to sell, and there is one very simple solution.Step #5: Create your first information product. Now I recommend, in this day and age, that you start with a simple product. And you should do it in real time. I'm going to give you...more
For those who have been following along as I've been introducing ways of succeeding at Internet marketing, this will be a bit of review, but with a twist. Let's take the best practices I've been recommending and apply them to an information product we'd like to launch. Let's see what needs to be done, step by step.I have mentioned free-line content before. Let's see how we might create an information product sample to give away and generate leads. And when we're thinking about lead generation, we want to really become disciplined. We want to focus in on one particular type of content.We always begin by asking ourselves, "What is the biggest pain? What is the biggest frustration? What is the biggest problem that our customer is facing right now?" Then we want to create some free teaser content, or some free-line content, to give away.For example, let's say that we are going to create an information product course on "How to Get Out of Debt." We know that our prospects' biggest pain and biggest frustration is their credit card debt. We know that their problem is making their monthly payments.Okay, let's say that we have figured the entire course out and thought it through. We need to...more
Did you think that giving away flyers was as simple as standing on a public place and just handing them out? While that idea can give you a small response from your market, it is hardly effective flyer printing if you do not think about your distribution well. When you print custom flyers you have to have game plan in mind on how to give away your...more
The term has changed with the times. Before the industrial revolution, most any product could be called handmade. Tools were certainly used that may have been powered by water, humans, or animals, but there was no ability to mass-produce identical items. Since everything was "handmade", there was no such term.As an example, in Pre-Revolutionary...more
How well do you know your customers? You capture a lot of data about them. You know what information products they buy from you. But how much more do you know?For example, do you know where your customers live? Can you tell how old they are? Are they mostly male or female? Fat or thin? Tall or short? Just how much do you really know about them?I always say that successful information marketing must be based on building relationships with individual human beings. When you adopt that philosophy and apply it to your entire information product business, you really need to get close to your customers. That means knowing them better than anyone else they do business with through Internet marketing.With that in mind, I suggest that you create what I call a customer avatar. You need to combine all of your customers together in your mind, and make them into one person. You can use averages, or modal classes, or generalizations, or just pick out one person you feel is representative of everyone elsewhatever works best for you.I've heard that they actually do this at American Express, the credit card company, in their marketing department. They have life-size cardboard cut-outs that...more
The "four learning styles" is derived from the work of Harvard Psychologist David Kolb. He spent years studying how people learn. My friend Wyatt Woodsmall taught this formula to me, and I adapted it to the purpose of information marketing.Kolb...more
The first thing a lot of people who want to start an online business ask me is "What niche should I go into?" My initial answer is to make sure you choose a niche where people are already buying information products or they're seeking things that...more
I grew my information marketing business from zero to over $20 million in annual sales in just eight years. Was it some kind of fluke? Can other people still do that now? How about you?I keep saying that the time is ripe to start an online business....more
Things are going on right now in information marketing that you need to know about. You can't see them. You can't touch them. But they could help you make money online, and the only thing you need to do is tune in to what's going on.Specifically, I...more
Today, anyone can be an information product publisher. You don't need a printing press. You don't even need paper and ink. The Internet has brought about the biggest revolution in communications technology since the invention of moveable type, 500...more
You know that expression about someone who "can't see the forest for the trees." I think it applies to a lot of people when it comes to the Internet. They can't see the information marketing opportunities for all the web sites.There are some...more