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January 03, 2003 Your Guide To Making Your Own Personal Fortune Online ( 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... Update from Jeff... Welcome To 2003!! Happy New Year to everyone! Welcome to all the new subscribers joining us in December and welcome back to those that joined this last year. I trust that your heads have stopped aching, and your bellies have digested the extra 20lbs of food you ate over the holidays? It's a brand new year -- I am going to bet that you are looking at 2003 to be your breakthrough year? What are the key steps you can take in 2003 to ramp up your infoproduct business to reach your ultimate goals. This week's feature article will touch on 5 techniques you can do right away that will have a MASSIVE impact on your business this next year. As promised, you'll get the second half of last issue's interview where Jason Anderson pummeled me with terrific questions on Steps A-Z for making money with your infoproducts. *** SPECIAL NOTE: A New Year's Gift For All Of You... *** I spent some time over the holidays reading a terrific new book from master internet marketer Chuck McCullough called Search Engine Secrets. It's chalk-full of incredible, proven tips - many of which I have already put in place on my own sites. 5-minutes of work using Chuck's tips will make a big difference on your ranking in the search engines - HERE's YOUR COMPLIMENTARY COPY ... ==> http://www.infoproductcreator.com/download/seprimer.exe This is a direct download link, simply click on it and save the file to your PC for viewing. Enjoy!! Finally, I've been busy in December and early January lining up some very exciting interviews with successful infoproduct developers - including first-timer success stories and industry TOP GUNS. We are going to pack incredible value into upcoming issues, enjoy and be sure to drop me a line on what you like most or what else you would like to see in Infoproduct Profit Secrets Newsletter. Until next time... Jeff jeff@infoproductcreator.com
FEATURE ARTICLE Copyright 2003 - Jeff Smith Have you been dreaming of a lifestyle that you just haven't been able to reach yet? How about the false starts? Have you tested the water by trying a few different businesses but found they just didn't work for you - for whatever reason? What about your confidence level - is it a little shaky? Maybe deep down you know you can replace your full-time income marketing information products, but you need to break through the invisible shield that's holding you back. Perhaps you've just come off your best year, and you desparately want to take your success to the next level. You've achieved more than you ever dreamed and now you see even bigger things in your future. Whatever your situation, 2003 can either be more of the same, or it can be a BLOCKBUSTER year. You're either sitting still and the traffic is whizzing past you or you are in the fast lane making incredible process toward your goals - there is no inbetween. Here's 5 ways you can move from the slow lane to the fast lane, shift from neutral to overdrive in next to no time. 1. Become Intimate With Your Market: If you do one thing differently in the coming days, commit to selecting a niche market that you are passionately interested in and learn everything you can about that market, including: - Demographics (who, what and where the people are in your market Discovering more about the prospects in your market will make you BIG profits in the coming months by guiding you to the exact products and services your prospects will buy. Here's a super e-course you can use to help find high- profit topics to write about in your chosen target market http://www.infoproductcreator.com/minicoursenew.html 2. Create a follow-up marketing system A good follow-up marketing system can easily double or even triple short-term sales from your website and can provide you a prospect list that, over time will be the basis for long-term security in your infoproduct business. Spend a few days this year and develop a series of follow up autoresponders, e-courses and commit to developing a bi-weekly or weekly newsletter to build loyalty with your list. Here's a super autoresponder service I've been using for the last 6-months... http://jbsmith.proautoresponder.com 3. Survey your market Short, focused, targeted surveys are very valuable tools to increase profits from your business. You can learn more about existing prospects and discover how to attract new customers by running a survey a month in 2003. Survey software and services are available for well under $100 - with some, such as surveymonkey.com, offering free trial services you can use for your first few surveys. 4. Find Your Speaking Style What approach will you take with your market - direct and blunt, humorous, literary, I've seen all of these work - here's the Secret - Have a voice. This is the method many people use to set their business aside from others. 5. Work On Branding Yourself It's great to have a product or two, perhaps run your own newsletter, and work on marketing your products. However, what you will notice about many of the high achievers marketing infoproducts on the internet is that they position themselves as "the expert" on a specific topic of high interest. Terry Dean - http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/net.html has successfully branded himself as a master list builder. Damon Zahariades of: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/damon.html is "the expert" on developing Special Reports, and Yanik Silver brands himself a master of developing high powered, profit turning sales letters - as you can see here - http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/ysales.html You really can put your business on the fast track to massive returns in the next 12 months. Even better, you'll continue to reap the rewards for years to come. Often times we don't take action becuase we are unsure about which direction to take. Clear direction with some hard work can produce incredible results. Make 2003 the year you changed your life.
Jeff Smith - "How To Create Hot Selling Infoproducts" Part 2 of 2 Special Interview Excerpt Today As promised, the second part of Jason Anderson's (http://www.achievenetprofits.com) interview with Your's Truly You'll find a fair mix of my own experiences and those of the high-income earners I've got to spend time with this last year. You'll want to print this one out folks, and keep it in your reference file. If you missed the first half, you can catch it in the December 20th issue right here... http://www.infoproductcreator.com/news/IPPSDec20-02.html 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! PART 2 OF 2 - Jason Interview's Jeff Smith on How To Develop Your Own Hot Selling Information Products Jason [Question] What are 3 common mistakes that you see beginners make when they do their first ebook, and what should they be doing instead? Jeff [Answer] 1. Write about something then try and create demand - this hardly ever works. Instead, find a wave of demand and write your eBook 2. Failing to stick with what you know. You don't have to write about marketing or the internet - if you know about cars, then write about how people can fix up old cars, save money buying their next car, etc.... I've seen successful eBook on almost any topic you can think of - you just have to make sure you position the topic to hit a nerve 3. Consider other formats. eBooks are often a good format, but can you communicate your information in another format - ie. an interview, a workshop, a teleclass, an online e-course, a Special Report, etc... Consider the best method for communicating and reaching your target audience. In addition - you can run a free or low cost teleclass to test your idea - then take your feedback to produce an even better eBook. Jason [Question] Several of the top marketers (Terry Dean, Jimmy D. Brown)seem to be doing this, and you alluded to it earlier in this interview. Do you feel that offering something physical with an info-product (tapes, CD, printed book, etc) is going to become more common in the future? Do you see there being advantages in doing this? Jeff [Answer] Two points on this question. First, mixing formats and media is something I've found gets a very good response. Some people are visual learners while others are auditory - prefer to hear the information communicated. So, if you can bundle complimentary products in multiple media formats, it substantially increases the perceived value of your products. Second, I do believe that physical products are seeing a comeback. There are many reasons why, but here are a few. 1. Having physical products opens up new marketing methods to you - you can market offline and on online auctions such as eBay - as well as through Print on Demand publishers such as LightningSource. 2. It's proven that if someone gets a physical product they put a higher perceived value on that product - so you can typically ask from 20%- 50% more for tangible products. 3. Return rates tend to be lower for physical products - it's not as easy to return them. I like to offer both options to people - a less expensive digital infoproduct option and a CD-ROM version at a slightly higher price to cover costs. As you mentioned - this trend is returning to the internet marketing approach. Jason [Question] What are your thoughts on using affiliate links in ebooks? What are the pros and cons for using affiliate links? Jeff [Answer] Let's discuss two different purposes for eBooks. You can produce an eBook as a viral marketing tool, where you are not aiming to make money from the eBook itself, but instead using it as an information guide leading your customers to products and services you link to inside. The second eBook is a for-profit eBook,where you really do intend to provide solid information for sale. Obviously with the first type, you can get away with more affiliate links as people are not paying for your eBook. In either case though, my rule of thumb has always been - if the link fits very well with a point you are making, will be of benefit to your customer, *and* you have purchased and used the product you are linking to - then it's ok to have a limited number of affiliate links in your eBook. Jason [Question] Choosing a price for anything electronic is difficult. How do you go about determining the price for your ebooks? Jeff [Answer] I actually do something that may be quite different than many people online, though I learned it from one of the industries top guns. I start with a business plan where I set my goals for my infoproduct business. Look at how many quality products I can release in a year and then determine the price I need to charge to achieve my goals. If I find that the price is unrealistic for an eBook I develop, then I increase the value until it is worth many times more than the price I need to get for it - I always believe in OVER-delivering. So - for instance, in my Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package, the main eBook tested well at $37 by itself (ie was more profitable at $37 than at either $27 or $47) but I really wanted to sell it for at least $47 - so I worked hard thinking of ways to help people get real life examples of the techniques I included in my eBook. Then I thought, well once they have used the ideas in my eBook, what will then need next? All this led up to me including 2 30-minute exclusive interviews with proven infoproduct creators around the topic of my eBook. I also added two Special Report bonuses that guided my customers through the entire process of creating their own infoproducts and getting the most value for them as a next step to creating hot selling ideas covered in my eBook. Each of these add-on products could have been worth $27 or more itself - so I packaged them all into the Success Package and now sell it for $47 AND get well under the industry average for returns because I over deliver on quality and quantity of information. Jason [Question] That's some great information Jeff. Thank you very much for sharing it with us. |