How to Create an Information Product: Knowledge is Power ... Now Package It!

Everyone is an expert on something. You may not realize it or acknowledge it, but you are quite familiar with some service, activity, or product. Whether you are a horse trainer who has won multiple competitions or a customer service agent at the local phone company, you have knowledge that others don’t have and surprisingly, you can make big bucks off of selling this information. 

An information product simply has the definition of being any product that ends in the form of information. Basically, you’re selling knowledge you’ve gained through experience so others who don’t want to spend time going through the trenches can learn from your realizations or mistakes.

On average, you can make 1 sale for everyone 100 visitors to your information product’s website. If your product sells for $100 and you make at least five sales a day (equal to about 500 visitors to your website), you can make around $15000 a month.

So you’re thinking, why would people buy an information product when they could just use Google and get the information for free? It’s simple – using Google and searching through all of the websites is a time-consuming task and it’s hard to sort the good information from the bad – not mentioning all the advertisements you’ll have to dodge to get to any information at all. People are willing to pay because it provides them good, valid information that takes them no time at all to find – they can just read it and go to work with their newfound knowledge.

As co-founder of a marketing company and purchaser of many information products myself (Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Dan Kennedy,  Bill Glazer), I have been helping experts design and market their information products for over 10 years to great success and high profits. Here are some tips to helping make your product successful as well:

You can begin with as little as a CD of information, a transcript, or as much as a book. If you have a CD, first create a transcript of the CD and from the transcript, edit it down to your key points. If you have a book, you also need to edit it down to the key points. If the customer only wants certain particles of information from your product, don’t make them wade through everything else (remember – they’re buying your product to save time!). Also, a CD of just the key points should be created as well.

Once you have completed the key points CDs and have your information transcribed in some way, shape or form, create a workbook for the buyer. This way, they have benchmarks to make sure they really understand the information you’re trying to teach them and they know how much more information they need to consume before they’re ready to go.

While you’re creating the aforementioned parts of your information product, you must create a compelling title and subtitle to attract customers to your information product at all. If you don’t have a compelling title, they won’t be as interested in your product. Along with your compelling title and subtitle, you need to have a complimentary image or logo. The title and image must match and look nice when placed together.

This title and image will be used as the face of your company so make sure they are reflective of your product. You will apply the same title and image to all of your products including the CD, transcripts, key points guide, workbook, and anything else you’re including with your product.

Next, write and edit your biography; your information becomes more valid if you have extensive experience. People want to know where this knowledge came from and the different experiences you have had that may impact your outlook. Include your other information products in your biography because if this one is good, they’ll want to purchase your others as well.

Once you are done developing the title, logo, biography, and internal product, you’ll need to create other graphics to advertise your company. For example, take pictures of all of your products and arrange them together to graphically show customers everything they will be receiving when they purchase your information product. This image will be useful for catalogs, banner advertisements, a web store, a flyer, or an Amazon.com sale page.

When you have created your information product and have all of the images in place, don’t forget to market it! No one will buy it if they don’t know it exists – and this is one of the biggest mistakes I see. There are multiple other mistakes that are easily made and can hinder the success of any information product; please read my other article on the most common mistakes made when developing an information product to make sure you’re not making the same mistakes!

How to Shout to Your Customer

Among millions of products, you can’t be the tiny voice at the bottom of the pile saying, “Please buy me …”. You need to be the product at the peak of the product mountain yelling, “Buy me now! You need me; I can make your life 10 times easier!”

Like the cards that sing music when you open them, you need to be able to shout to a potential client – but without the actual sound.

So how do you climb up that product mountain from the base to the peak?

Even though it may seem like the answer should be complicated, it is really not. It is simple: Be creative. Do something different! No customer wants to see the same boring marketing or sales tactics over and over again; they become boring and stale.

Here are a few techniques you can use to shout to your customers:

1) Add a few doodles, oversized words, borders, or other graphics (like arrows and smiley faces) to attract attention to the things you want them to notice.

2) Add color to your direct mailer or sales letter! Don’t be afraid to pull out that highlighter (real or on your favorite word processor).

3) Use an entirely hand-written font so the potential customer feels like you’ve written straight to them.

 4) Attach a bonus offer to your letter – of course, remember to play it up – add a few crazy graphics and obvious borders.

 5) Add a testimonial of a client who loved your product, but don’t do it in a normal Times New Roman font. Like I mentioned before, make sure the font you use looks hand-written so that it is more believable and relatable.

 6) Use stationery that is so out of this world that no one will be able to resist reading the copy that was written on it. Don’t be afraid to draw all over your stationery; customers want the human touch that makes them notice.

 7) Like I mentioned in number 7, add a human touch to everything you do! Maybe the prospective client spent all day doodling at their desk in boredom; now that they see you do the same thing, you are relatable.