A trend that has seen massive growth in the past few years is that of information products. Information products are basically any constructed item containing information that customers may find valuable in one way or another.
The most common type of information product is the electronic book or e- book. When you put your thoughts down on digital paper and package it as a salable product, then you already have an information product.
You can start typing out an e-book using basic word processing software like Microsoft Word or the free alternative called OpenOffice available at www.openoffice.org
The hardest part of using information products to make money is not the creation, but the marketing. Setting aside the amount of competition you will face, it is not exactly easy to get people to part with their money for things that have no physical form – though in the past couple of years this mindset has been changing. Nevertheless, you will need to put your writing prowess into not just the creation of the product but also in its promotion.
The length of a text information product varies, but normally it is significantly longer than any given “article”. That means you are looking at something that is at least a couple thousand words long, written in an organized manner and packaged to be a cohesive unit. That may sound like a task and a half, but experienced writers can do this naturally.
Of course, with any material that gets this long, you will need to consider editing. Editing is the process where someone (preferably not yourself) reviews your work for contiguity, flow, and value per section, aside from the usual spelling and grammatical errors.
If you have friends or family members who don’t mind helping you out, then ask them. Don’t forget to acknowledge them in your book’s public incarnation!
In practice, you can even get others to write your books for you, but you must not forget to read it yourself and edit as needed. It should come out sounding like you, or else you risk being “busted” for using a ghost writer.
Almost any topic is fair game for information products. Even hobbies like gardening and crochet get quite a few books written on them. You should conduct your research to ensure that you have a significant market to eventually sell your product to.
Choose your niche carefully and plan the topics you will discuss so you can sustain the cash flow from your information product series.
Information products are generally informative or instructive in nature, but that is not to say that you cannot sell creative information products. You can produce comics, novels, and other static media works and sell them. A business strategy will be required, but let’s leave that for some other day.
On another note, one file format that you may want to look into is PDF. PDF stands for Portable Document Format, and provides improved text flow mechanisms and also greater security – extremely valuable in protecting your intellectual property.