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August 27th,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... Welcome back everyone and hello to all of our first-time readers. Thought I would share with you an interesting phenomenon about self-publishing your own infoproducts. In the last month I have been solicited and then turned down twice by both major online and offline publishers (no not Amazon, as I am listed on Amazon's site) interested in publishing the eBook found in my Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package. In both cases, here is the reasoning behind the decision (Note - I am paraphrasing, but the messages were both the same). Here's what they said: Our best suggestion for you would be to continue to offer your products through your own web site. Our services would not be able to match the results and profits that you currently bring in, so we cannot offer you an advantage at this time. To put this into perspective - these services specialize in making products available to Hundreds of the largest booksellers in the world. Admitting they cannot do better than a single self-publishing company speaks TONS about the current state of publishing AND the bright future of self-publishing. Here's the bottom line. In order to be represented in these bookstores you need to SIGNIFICANTLY lower the price of your product, give up incredibly high commissions to various levels of distributors and wait months for all this to happen. Oh yes, and I should add all of this does not market your product, but simply make them available for order. Well folks, if you ever doubted the self-publishing route, DON'T - for many high-value infoproducts it's the ONLY route that makes sense. Today's feature article shares with you some "hidden" sources of infoproduct topics. If you have ever held of developing your own product because you thought you were not a subject matter "expert", then be sure to read today's feature. Enjoy today's issue. Jeff Discover "Insider" Techniques Used by Infoproduct Masters To Choose Profitable Topics for Their Information Products. Don't Waste Time Developing Products That Won't Sell - 40 Techniques You Can Apply Right Away to Generate Hot Selling Products. ===> Limited Time Bonus Interviews with Infoproduct Masters Yanik Silver and Willie Crawford. Visit: http://www.infoproductcreator.com Now. FEATURE ARTICLE Copyright 2002 - Jeff Smith As someone who always likes to have hundreds of potential ideas in his back pocket, I make it a habit to wander, in a meditative haze, through my local bookstore waiting for products, titles, topics, or ideas to JUMP out at me. Amazingly enough, this happens 90% of the time. The other 10%, I just chalk it up to my brain being so full that you just can't cram another idea in. On a recent visit, one book jumped out at me for two reasons. First, the title was a play on a very famous book title first published back in 1937. Second, the topic was so different, so simple that I couldn't resist reading. The book is called "How To Lose Friends and Alienate People" by Toby Young. An obvious play on the legendary "How To Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. Apart from the commercial appeal of the title, the idea behind the product is fascinating. What did Toby write about? ===> FAILURE Sure, the book does focus on the environment in which Toby struggled - the city of New York. Ultimately though the idea behind this book is to outline a string of failures (career, social, professional, personal) that litter Toby's life in the last few years. Could writing about your failures, challenges and issues work for you? Why does this idea work? Here are a few reasons why writing about your shortcomings and associated experiences in a certain field will appeal to buyers: 1. "Underdog" factor. Everyone loves to cheer for the underdog. John Daly is loved by many golf fans because he shares his personal struggles with his fans. What about "The Little Engine That Could"? Admiring the moxy one has to have the confidence to share their deepest challenges is an extremely appealing characteristic. 2. "Human" Factor. We all experience challenges in our lives. Most of us are too afraid to share those with others for fear of further ridicule. So when someone does take it upon themselves to show their human side - we are interested in how we may relate to that person or that person's work. 3. "Entertainment" Factor. Let's face it, we read and hear about success stories every day. What we don't hear about is how someone like you or me failed many times and how they dealt with such failure. If we can relate to a story, then we are far more likely to buy it. 4. "Courage" Factor. It takes courage to try again after failure. To pick yourself up and dust yourself off, then get right back on the horse. Truth be told, we all want that kind of courage - if we can find it in someone else then, we'll definitely pay for that. The next time you put off your dreams to write or develop your own information product, think again about your challenges, failures, disappointments, let-downs and how you overcame adversity. If you can summon the courage to write about these experiences - you may just have your next hot selling book, eBook, booklet or workshop out before you can say I FAILED!
From Jim Rohn's Treasury of Quotes Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become. Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. Don't take the casual approach to life. Casualness leads to casualties. Success is the study of the obvious. Everyone should take Obvious I and Obvious II in school. It's too bad failures don't give seminars. Wouldn't that be valuable? If you meet a guy who has messed up his life for forty years, you've just got to say, "John, if I bring my journal and promise to take good notes, would you spend a day with me?" Success is not so much what we have as it is what we are. Success is 20% skills and 80% strategy. You might know how to read, but more importantly, what's your plan to read? Average people look for ways of getting away with it; successful people look for ways of getting on with it. These quotes are by Jim Rohn, America's Foremost Business Philosopher. To subscribe to the Free Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine, go to http://www.jimrohn.com/ Excerpted from The Treasury of Quotes by Jim Rohn. Copyright 1994 Jim Rohn International. All rights reserved worldwide. Yanik Silver on Developing Your First Infoproduct Special Interview Excerpt This week I thought I would do something a little different. I have had the great pleasure of interviewing many very successful information product developers. Their responses to questions were open, honest and cholk-full of useful information for anyone looking to develop or market their own infoproducts. So, for the next few issues, I'm going to include a transcribed response to a question I asked them in my one-on-one interviews with them. I think you'll enjoy hearing first-hand from some real pros in the business. This week's excerpt comes from a very powerful interview I was able to get from Yanik Silver. Anyone who is not aware of Yanik must have their head in the sand, because he is everywhere. I was lucky enough to talk with Yanik for almost an hour and draw from him information that he normally charges over $500/hr to give - IF you can get it from him at all. ===> You can download the entire interview with Yanik as a valuable free bonus in the Information Entrepreneur's Success Package found at: http://www.infoproductcreator.com Jeff [Question] Yanik, it's terrific to have you with us today. Can you start by giving us an overview of your first information product, how you broke into the industry and how you came up with that first idea? Yanik [Answer] Sure Jeff, I kind of got into the internet in a round about way, like anyone else, you know you don't grow up an internet marketer. I started off selling medical equipment and there was a doctor client that gave me a Jay Abraham tape when I was about 18 and that kind of opened my mind to direct response marketing. From there I went off to resources like Dan Kennedy, Ted Nichols, Jeff Paul and all these other different people and they kept coming back to selling information products was the way to go. I finally created my own information product, which was a paper and ink product, originally, for cosmetic surgeons, since I had experience in the medical field. Teach medical surgeons how they could increase their practice. That was in 1998 and we sold, um..., probably about 100...no 120 kits for about $900 a piece. That's when I got my first taste of direct marketing success there and since things did very well, I decided to quit my job selling medical equipment. Then I was paying attention to the internet and saw people like Marlon Sanders selling ebooks, electronic books and I thought to myself, hey that's really cool because there's no fulfillment cost, low product cost, and everything could be run on autopilot. So I thought let's see if I can do something like that. And then, in the middle of the night, at 3 o'clock in the morning one night I woke up and thought Instantsalesletters.com, that's what my first product's going to be. I jumped up, registered it [the domain name], it was available....and...that was January of 2000 when I first registered it and February of 2000 is when we first...we sold our first copy. Jeff [Question] Wow. So that was one of your first information products then? Yanik [Answer] Ya, Instant Sales Letters was my first information product that was strictly a web only product...and those are sales letter tools and templates, fill in the blank templates for people to write their own sales letters Jeff [Question] Sure, and when you first developed that product did was it as turnkey as it is today? Did you have those templates in place right from the very beginning? Yanik [Answer] It was a...it was templates, but there weren't nearly as many as we have today, we've updated it allot and added more products which is something we should probably talk about, or cover later on... When I first created my product we had...oh I don't know... maybe 20 templates and 1 or 2 bonuses, so it definitely evolved in the months and years since it has been available. And I think that's the one thing that stops allot of people from creating their own information products is they want it to be perfect...and I'm not so much of a perfectionist that I won't release something to see how it goes and see if anyone is interested at all, rather than take 6-months to make it perfect. You can always go back and make it better, give people free updates and raise the price. We were originally selling it for $29.95 and now it's at $39.97 and gold is at $54.97 Editor's Note: To hear this exclusive interview with Yanik Silver in full, as well as another 30-minute interview with master information product developer Willie Crawford, visit http://www.infoproductcreator.com to get your copy. |