1. Text Products
Text products are the easiest, fastest and cheapest product for you to create. Being at the bottom of the scale they will probably make you the least direct profit.
E-books are one example of a text product. They take almost no investment – just your time researching your topic and then writing it.
(Or the cost of having one ghost written for you.) Or you could create an e-course. This is where you set up a simple optin form where customers can sign up to your course. Then you put your content into a series of e-mails that you load into an autoresponder, to send out your course automatically.
Text products are used to build your credibility and authority as well as to generate leads.
When you create free products and give them away as lead generators for your other products, you’ll earn trust. They can also be low-cost leader products, to direct prospects on to higher priced products.
If you are a florist, consider a book on the art of flower arranging and how to choose the correct flowers for the correct occasion. This could also make a great e-course.
You may also want to write a free report on how to make your cut flowers last longer, or the top ten common mistakes most florists make when building a bouquet.
If you are a plumber, think about writing a free report on the 10 most common shortcuts plumbers make to cut corners on a job and what to look out for as a customer.
In doing so you will build assumed trust. (People will assume that because you are pointing these out, you would not do the same. Hopefully a correct assumption.)
You can use these reports to build lists of potential prospects. This can be useful when you want to offer a promotion at slow times. Essentially The Bones of Your Online Busines
this gives you the ability to run almost zero cost advertising with almost instant results when you need it most.
2. Audio Products
Audio products require a bit more effort to create than text products, but are still in the ‘easy basket’. Because audio has a higher perceived value, you can command a higher price point than text products.
Take the e-book that you’ve written and simply record yourself reading it aloud. If you don’t like the sound of your voice, or if you want a certain accent for a specific market, you can have someone else read it.
It’s easy to do a teleconference call. Organize an expert to come on your call and interview them. Have other listeners ask their questions while you steer the conversation to access helpful information for your listeners.
You can conduct interviews over Skype. Ask the person you are interviewing thought-provoking questions while you record the call.
Later you can edit it if you need to, or transcribe it as the base for a text product.
Although I have heard this suggested many times, a lot of people ignore the idea, thinking it can’t be that easy. Yes it is.
I know many products made this way in just a day or two. Once you have the system in place, audio products can be some of the fastest and easiest to create.
If you run some type of coaching program or service, then to create an audio course should be a must.
If you run a natural health clinic, then interviewing world experts to create an audio program could be leveraged in so many different ways.
You could use it to sell online to customers who live too far away to see you in person. You could sell it to existing clients, or use it as a giveaway on the first visit.
You could use it as a way to build credibility through association (a very simple but effective strategy for building authority).
When other people see your name or face next to a well-known celebrity or leader in a particular niche, then some of their authority status will be transferred to you. This happens completely subconsciously and is therefore, an extremely powerful technique.
If you run a natural health clinic, then interviewing world experts to create an audio program could be leveraged in so many different ways.
The possibilities here are endless.
3. Video Products
Video products are once again another perceived notch up the scale in difficulty from audio products.
Until you are familiar with how to create video products, it can be more time consuming (unless you outsource the work). But it’s more a psychological barrier that stops many people from attempting video products.
With the easy-to-use tools that are available these days, using video can be a fast and easy way to create a digital product that you can sell for a lot more money.
Because video has a higher perceived value than text or audio products, you can ask for a much higher price.
Video clips are quick and easy to create. Visit www.dlwmmm.com/
screener and you can use their screen captured videos to create content quickly. You don’t need software or a camera which makes it effortless.
We will look later at more techniques and details how to build all these product types, but for now focus on the possibilities and potential for each.
The Bones of Your Online Busines
When you create short video clips, you can then use them to build traffic.
With good video you can quickly build up your e-mail list by generating leads from YouTube or other online video networks.
Video interviews are easy to do. Just as with audio interviews, you can have a guest come in who is an expert in your niche. Just record your video call on Skype, or in person with some relatively inexpensive equipment.
Webinars are another way to create video content (as is filming a live event). Just present your content and record. Some basic editing after you finish and your product is ready to go.
The great thing about video is, it can be another powerful way to build trust. People get a real feel for you in video and so building rapport can be much easier.
If you are a car mechanic consider making a YouTube series on basic home repair tips. Truth is, most people will be too lazy to fix their car themselves; but for those who do, will still remember you when something more difficult comes along.
Used car salesmen could create a video series on what to look out for when buying a used car. Again this will build assumed trust. You can then offer this information for free from your online or newspaper advertising.
If you do a good job, people will share the videos and you will generate a lot more leads through word of mouth.
Music or martial arts teachers could easily create video courses to sell to students for extra home study, or to make money from students who live too far away for in-person lessons.
Remember, this not only builds additional passive income, but builds authority too and therefore increases the rates you can charge for lessons.
4. Membership Sites
Membership sites can provide recurring income. Though not usually for as long as most people would like.
The reality with membership sites is that people drop out after only 3-4
months on average. Using the micro continuity model instead, is highly recommended.
This is where the program is a fixed length, for example 6 months.
By doing this, you increase the average length of time someone remains with your program and you only need to create a fixed amount of content.
(The main problem with membership sites with no end date, is coming up with new content every month.)
If you run a financial advice service you could easily provide an ongoing membership service that kept people up-to-date on the latest currency or stock exchange information.
Taking the previous example of a music or martial arts teacher, the same video course could be cut up into sections and drip-fed over time.
The best value membership sites will contain a mixture of video, text and perhaps audio, along with resource links and industry updates.
5. Software Products
It is more difficult to create a software product than video, audio or text products.
There is high risk involved in creating software. But if you can make it work you can enjoy a high return and even be set up for life.
If you want to go down this route, it’s best to at least have some experience developing some of the other types of product first. Too many people lose all their money just getting started with software development.
The Bones of Your Online Busines
Subscription-based software is a great model if you can find a way to make it work. Autoresponder services are a great example of subscription-based software.
Every single month you have to pay to use their service. Many people rely on an autoresponder and are willing to pay for this service for as long as their online business lives.
Some software also chooses to use advertising as a monetization model.
This can work well if you have a large audience, and can be distributed through many of the free software networks.
Also known as adware, software that uses this monetization method will display some form of advertising either when it starts, when it’s closed down or in the interface while it is being used. Ads may be privately sold to customers, or provided by an ad distribution network.
If you have a really good idea for a software product, but do not have any experience, consider partnering with someone who has. It will help save a hard learning curve, and will likely save you a lot of time and money. (Plus your project is much more likely to succeed and actually make money.)
One idea though for small businesses is have some small, simple but useful software written for you as a free giveaway. This could be used to acquire leads, and/or thank current customers.
Examples include: a mortgage calculator for a mortgage broker; software to help calculate renovation costs for builders, real estate agents or property investors. In the example of a weight-loss specialist it could be software to help track your weight loss, calculate your BMI and/or estimate calories for different meals.
Be sure to brand it with your company logo. Also contain a link to your website to maximize credibility, and help spread the message should people share the software with their friends.
Chapter 4.
Action Steps
• How could you apply the different product types to your business or your niche ideas?
If you have an offline business, consider how you may use them to increase your authority status, generate leads or make additional passive income.
• Think about how you may be able to link other products in to generate additional sales or affiliate commissions from your different product ideas.
• We will discuss this in a lot more detail later, but for now just see what ideas you can come up with yourself.
Chapter 5.
“Passion is the
genesis of genius.”
To Passion or Profits?
~ Anthony Robbins
To Passion or Profits?
To Passion or Profits?
Should you go straight for the money, or go after a niche you know inside out that you’re really passionate about?
When you don’t have any enthusiasm for your chosen niche or don’t know much about it, you can run into problems later on.
For example, customer service can be incredibly hard (and boring) when you’ve got to answer questions on a niche you know little about. (Of course, long-term you will want to be outsourcing this task. However, initially it is a good idea if you can get your hands dirty so you can understand your customer’s problems or concerns.)
5 Reasons to Follow Your Passion
1. Fun Factor
If your niche is about how to cook lasagna and you have zero interest in this, then it’s not going to be enjoyable for you. You’ll not find it fun researching, selling and providing customer support on a topic you think is dull.
However, when you love a particular subject, it won’t be a chore for you—it will be a pleasure.
2. Stronger Sales Copy
When you have personal experience and know your subject inside out, you’re better at communicating certain things.
Knowledge and enthusiasm combined is a powerful integration. In your sales copy, this will help you come across naturally and effectively.
One of the hardest parts to writing good copy is to know the product and get into the mind of the customer. Have passion for your niche and the hard part is already done.
3. More Money
Because you are so familiar with your niche, you’ll understand what other products your customers could also benefit from.
You’ll therefore have the opportunity to release other closely related products to a customer base you’ve already built a rapport and connection with.
4. Increased Loyalty
When you share the same passion as your customer base, they see you as one of them. When people like you, they are more likely to trust you.
Trust—leads to customer satisfaction, commitment and ultimately more sales.
5. Leverage Your Network
You can potentially get a helping hand from your existing network.
Those friends and contacts who share your passion in the off-line world, may want to help with your content, distribution or other areas of your business.
Interview them and you’ve got instant material. Or perhaps an expert would like to share their expertise in a special report.
One of the most time-consuming factors in any business can be building contacts. Yes, who you know does make a difference. Save time by making the most of what you already have.
To Passion or Profits?
Broad or Targeted Niche?
A niche is an area, subject or topic you build your product around. You can have broad or targeted niches.
1. Broad Niche
An example of a broad niche would be weight loss.
Although broad niches catch a wide net of people, it can be hard to get noticed among the crowd.
You have the potential to attract a lot of people, but you will probably be up against a lot more competition. Also, conversions will be lower because of either the lack of focus, or the range of choices available to the consumer.
2. Targeted Niche
An example of a targeted niche would be weight loss for female teens.
Another even more targeted niche would be weight loss for female Asian teens who suffer from diabetes.
Although in narrow niches there are fewer customers, they are easier to target because they’re searching for something specific.
A customer going to Google searching for a weight-loss solution may end up landing on ‘weight loss for female teens’. This may or may not be a good match.
However, if someone types into Google ‘weight loss for female teens’
and lands on ‘weight loss for female teens’ this is going to be a great match, because you’re solving their specific problem.
Even though the content may be identical, people feel it applies to them more when you have narrowed your focus and talk directly to them.
By focusing on narrower niches you increase your chance of being found (by reducing competition), and increase your chance of a sale (because people like to buy what is the closest match to them).
You can always replicate and repackage your information for more people in different demographics if your content allows. This way you can reach more people and enjoy maximum conversions.
For an offline business for example, an electrician could provide specialist services to the elderly or to retails stores.
While their qualification would allow for either job, by targeting their marketing to specialize in specific areas, they are more likely to stand out of the crowd for that target audience.
The ability to stand out is simple—speak directly to those you wish to reach.
Just the same as you can hear your own name in a crowded room amongst a background of conversation, so too will your marketing stand out in the chaos that is today’s advertising world.
3 Questions to Answer to Ensure Your Niche is Profitable Creating a product around your own passions is recommended, but only if it will be profitable. Personally while I do focus on niches I like, I could build a business in any niche that has potential. The reason?
My passion is business and marketing. Simple as that.
I love the process and therefore it is that passion that drives me more than the actual niche itself.
While there are no guarantees in life, these three questions will help ensure the maximum probability that your niche can be profitable.
1. Find Out What Your Customers are Searching for?
A great way to see what your customers are looking for, is to visit To Passion or Profits?
www.dlwmmm.com/seo - a leading SEO blog. After you’ve signed up for your free account, type your niche into the search bar.
Now you’ll find out the search volume and exactly how many people are searching for that keyword. It will also break down the keyword you’re searching for and show you lots of different related keyword ideas.
Often these keyword ideas can lead you on to many new sub-niche possibilities you may never have even thought of. I recommend small businesses do the same, as they often find markets or ways to apply their product or service that they too would not have considered.
This tool is also great if you want to rank in the search engines and provides valuable information for those playing the SEO game.
If you want to do multiple searches, www.dlwmmm.com/trends is a great tool from Google. You can search for the most popular, seasonal and country terms.
You can also compare the volume of searches between two or more terms. Google Trends integrates news stories and events to give you a reason why the search volume might have spiked for a particular week.
Find out if a niche is hot or not by looking at Google hot trends. This displays the top 100 searches for the last hour. It will give you blogs and news stories too.
www.dlwmmm.com/keyword can give you an idea of the cost per click.
This is useful for knowing how much it will cost you to advertise on Google. If competition is high you can be fairly sure there is a lot of people searching in that niche. (You can also use this tool to check search count and keyword ideas in the same way as seobook).
2. Is Your Niche going to be Profitable?
Go to www.dlwmmm.com/cb Clickbank is a marketplace that has about 9,000 products for sale, and offers statistics on all their products.
Type in your niche and see what comes up. To determine how profitable that niche is, the gravity is a good indicator. You can see how much the product is making, what percentage it pays out and the percentage of sales that are referred by affiliates
A gravity of zero means the product isn’t selling. If a product has a gravity of 30 or more it means that product is selling OK. If the gravity is into the hundreds, it’s selling well. (Gravity can go as high as 1,000, but that’s rare.)
Go to www.dlwmmm.com/google Type in your niche into the search bar and see how many ads show up on the right hand side.
Lots of ads indicate people are spending money getting traffic to their website. If these people are spending money, it means they’re most likely making money too.
If there are no or hardly any ads displayed, it may be good to avoid that niche. You need to decide if your niche idea is an undiscovered gold mine waiting to be tapped into, or simply an unprofitable area.
Some common sense and looking at the other variables in this chapter will help you decide. If you are unsure, there are some market tests you can perform which we will talk about later.
Be aware of the location or country you are carrying out your search from. If you type in your keyword from Australia you’ll get different results than when you type in your keyword from the United States in the local search area.
You can manually change this, and is worth doing if your target audience is in a different region from you.
Visit www.dlwmmm.com/flip Flipper is a popular place to buy or sell new or existing websites. Flipper can help you determine whether your niche will likely be profitable, because you can see how other websites in your niche are performing.
To Passion or Profits?
The website owners must display how much their site makes, as part of being listed on Flipper.
Be aware that you might not get results every time. If your niche is very targeted, you might not find any websites that match yours. Also beware that some of the claims are not always true.
3. Can You Generate Traffic for Free?
It’s important when you’re first starting out and your budget is limited, that you can market your website with zero-cost strategies.
There are three easy ways to generate traffic for free (that we will talk in more detail about later):
1. Affiliates (not strictly free, but no up front cost), 2. SEO (natural search traffic), and
3. Forums or news groups (specific or related to that niche).
Make sure there is potential for at least one, ideally two, or even all three methods of traffic generation.
Chapter 5.
Action Steps
• Have a look through your list of ideas. See if there is any potential for targeting your products or services to narrower niches.
• Use the research tools in this chapter to ensure there is still a sufficient number of potential customers for each idea.
Chapter 6.
“Teamwork is the
ability to work together
• Evaluate your ideas so far, based on the passion versus profit potential. It Your Financial
toward a common
is important to enjoy what you do—make sure that making your ideas a vision. The ability
reality will be fun for you.
Success Depends
to direct individual
• Cross off anything at this point that will not work, based on lack of on Your Team
accomplishment
customers or lack of interest. Start to narrow down your ideas.
toward organizational
objectives. It is the fuel
that allows common
people to attain
uncommon results.”
~ Andrew Carnegie
Chapter 6.
“Teamwork is the
ability to work together
Your Financial
toward a common
Success Depends
vision. The ability
to direct individual
on Your Team
accomplishment
toward organizational
objectives. It is the fuel
that allows common
people to attain
uncommon results.”
~ Andrew Carnegie
Your Financial Success Depends on Your Team
Your Financial Success Depends on Your Team
No matter the type of business model you follow, if you don’t have a team you’ll run into trouble. Maybe not immediately. But sooner than you think.
Without a strong team behind you, your business will either never get off the ground, or it will die a quick death.
Too many internet marketers overwork themselves and struggle too much on their own. And every single marketer I know who has succeeded has done so with the help of others.
Without exception, not one has done it alone. (I have met some who claim contrary to this, but when questioned in more detail it soon proves otherwise.)
Perhaps you don’t have the money to hire staff? (Not a valid excuse.) Or perhaps the entrepreneur in you wants to do everything your way? (One of the hardest things to overcome for many of us, especially me.) If you don’t already have a team, now is the time to create one.
Anyone who has enjoyed serious success will tell you the same thing—that they couldn’t achieve their wealth, or success, without a helping hand. This is true for musicians, movie stars, sports professionals and business men.
How Ordinary People Can Make Extraordinary Money Teamwork is the ability to work together towards a common vision. It’s the fuel that allows uncommon people to attain uncommon results.
With more people on-board, the opportunity to create huge money becomes realistic (and not just a far-fetched dream).
Famous profiles such as Richard Branson do not do everything alone. They are not special people who are better than anyone else.
What makes them so successful are the teams they’ve created around them, the people who carry out their vision.
5 Reasons Why You Need a Team
1. More Gets Done (And Faster)
Once you structure your business properly—the more people you have on your side, the faster things can move, that is, assuming they are structured correctly. (There is a point at which the reverse can happen if you are not careful.)
If you’re like me (and I believe most entrepreneurs are) you want everything finished yesterday. You have an idea and you want it completed sooner than it’s possible.
Every new person you get on board taking responsibility for their area of expertise unburdens everyone else. Things become easier and your company can grow so much faster.
2. Experts Quality
When I first started in Internet Marketing, I tried doing everything myself: graphic design, product creation, sales copy, HTML, lead generation and search engine optimization. Anything that needed doing, I’d try and do.
Now I have experts who are strong in their specialist area. As a result, my business has gone from strength to strength.
These experts do the job far better and quicker than I ever could, saving me time, headaches and money.
Another bonus having experts—your marketing presentation and the quality of your product will improve. This helps increase sales and customer satisfaction.
Your Financial Success Depends on Your Team
If you think you can compete as a one-man-band against companies employing a range of experts, then you have either been misled or are just fooling yourself that you can do it alone.
Yes, you can make money—but not as much as you could do; and your products and services will be inferior.
There are rare exceptions of course, but if you like those kind of odds then you probably also play the lottery. There is no need to take such a huge risk in your business, and nor should you.
3. More Support (And Fun)
There’s no doubt you will experience days from hell. Every person who is successful has encountered challenges along the way.
When you feel frustrated, at the end of your tether and you feel like you want to throw everything in, you’ll be glad you have your team.
Your team should believe in you, your vision and the product you’re creating. If they do, then they will help carry you through those down times.
A team will also make working fun, so make sure you have a team who can laugh with you. It will make your business less stressful and more enjoyable.
Remember to see business like a game. You will want a good team on your side. Playing with passionate, talented and genuinely nice people will make the sport more enjoyable.
I refuse to work with people if they do not meet all three of these criteria.
It is worth the wait to find the right people. Not waiting will often cause more problem