Product Creation: Plan It, Produce It, Sell It

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Angela Booth

Creating products which you can sell online is a lot of fun and it can be very profitable too. However one of the biggest challenges creators make is procrastination. They get an idea for a product and then instead of getting it out within a month, they dither and often it’s never completed.

Let’s look at a fast method for creating information products.

1. Create a Overall Plan, and Plans for Each Step of the Creation Process

Planning is essential. Once you’ve created your plans, chunk them down into small tasks which you can complete every day. Have a review once a week. This is especially important if you’re outsourcing some of the product creation work: graphic design, website creation and copywriting.

I like to set a deadline for the entire project, then I work backwards from that deadline and create plans for each stage of the project: creating the product itself, creating the sales page, writing the copy, and promoting the product.

2. Schedule Everything, and Remember Murphy’s Law

Murphy’s Law says that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, at the worst possible moment. Therefore, make sure you chunk down every plan you make, and schedule the processes carefully. I like to give myself a little leeway, leaving plenty of time for each task.

3. Start Promoting Before You Start Creating

If nobody knows about your information product, no one will be able to buy it. Therefore start promoting the product as soon as you get the idea. It’s easy to buy a domain name, and set up a blog.

If you write a couple of blog posts, by the time you’re ready to start work on the product your posts will be indexed, and you’ll get an audience of potential buyers.

Having your blog indexed helps when your sales page has been written too, because you can link directly to the sales page. I like to use blogs as hubs for all my projects, and I encourage you to try it.

Information product creation boils down to three simple steps: plan it, produce it, and sell it. Make your plans and complete your daily tasks, and not only will you eliminate procrastination, but you will give your product the best chance of success.

Build your writing career, step by step

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Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) web writing training gives you highly marketable skills which will build your writing career for a lifetime.

You discover how to:

* Make great money writing simple Web articles

* Develop sites and blogs (using easy, free tools) which you can sell for 12 times their monthly earnings. (For example, if you create a small site which makes you $500 a month, you can sell it for $6,000 and more)

* Create ebooks which bring you in a passive income for years to come

* Develop a successful writing services practice — charge $250 an hour for your writing services

* and much, much more.

Start your new writing life today.

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Today’s affiliate marketing tip: buy domain names for your products

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Angela Booth

Are you promoting affiliate products?

If you’re spending a lot of time and energy promoting a product, go the extra mile: buy a domain name, and redirect it to your affiliate link.

This makes it much easier to promote your product, whether you’re buying Pay Per Click traffic, or are using article marketing.

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Keyword research for beginners

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Angela Booth

When you start out and want to make money online, there’s a lot to learn. For example, do you find the whole “keyword” thing mysterious? Let’s try and make it easy.

Here’s a two part process for finding keywords to use in your marketing; on your site and in your article marketing.

#1 Use Google’s Keyword Tool

Visit the site now.

Where it says “Enter one keyword or phrase per line”, enter all the phrases you can think of surrounding a keyword.

stop dog barking
stop barking
stop barking dog
stopping a barking dog
how to stop dog barking
dog won’t stop barking
barking dog
dog obedience barking
barking dog obedience
training my dog not to bark
how to train my dog not to bark
train a dog not to bark

It will give you the results of those phrases plus any other related phrases it thinks you might be interested in.

Now look at the Global Monthly Search Volume column results for your keyword phrases. You’re not aiming for keywords that have the most number of searches, you’re going for the lower searches because you have a better chance of landing on the first page of Google with those phrases. Look for global monthly search volumes in the 1500-2500 range. These phrases are called longtail keywords.

Click the “add” button for each phrase that fills the bill. You can continue searching if you come up with some more phrases and add them to your list. Next take your new list and save it to your computer as a txt file.

#2 Assess your competition for the keyword phrases

Let me stress there is more to assessing your competition, such as looking at each of the websites on page 1 of Google using your targeted phrase and determining their page rank, number of backlinks, exact text anchors used, etc. But what we will focus on in this article is the number of searches for your longtail keyword phrase. After finding good matches for #1 and #2, you can always explore further.

Now go to Google and type your phrase in quotes into the search engine. Look at the number of search results in the upper right hand of the page. You can certainly use whatever parameters you want, but I generally look for a competition lower than 10,000.

Check each of your keyword phrases that looked good in step #1 and cross them off the list if they don’t look good here in #2. Of course, the more searches there are and the fewer competing sites the better. Sometimes you’ll find a real winner – a huge number of searches and very low competition!

There are different ways to target keywords and many marketers swear by their own approach. This article is meant to give you a start to keyword research in a simple format, but it’s not the only way to do it.

If it all sounds too complex, here’s a great keyword research tool.

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Make Money from Home: Offer Writing Services

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Angela Booth

Do you want to make money from home? If you write reasonably well, you can offer writing services. Currently, because of the fast growth of the Web, writers are in high demand.

But what will you write? Web articles are simple to write, and most beginners start by writing these short pieces for websites.

1. Web Articles Are in High Demand

It’s a good idea to start with Web articles not only because it’s easy to sell them but also because writing these articles give you experience. By the time you’ve written 50 or 100 articles, your writing will be much improved. You will also have built your writing muscles, which means that you can write more and can write faster, thereby increasing your income.

There’s another benefit of writing Web articles: you get testimonials quickly. Since anybody at all can call themselves a writer, getting testimonials from your first clients is essential, because they will help you to gain additional clients.

2. Focus on Your Clients: Sell Them What They Need

As you begin to work as a writer, you will discover that all clients are different. You can work with several hundred clients, and you’ll never get the same type of work twice.

This sounds amazing, but it’s true, even if you’re writing articles. All the topics you’re asked to write on will be different, and the clients will have different requirements. Some clients will be easy to work with, others will be a challenge.

If you realize this, then you’ll understand that you need to focus completely on what your clients want, and give it to them. By the way, this doesn’t mean that if your clients want something that is patently illegal, such as plagiarizing somebody else’s work, you give them that — you won’t. You need to be completely ethical, because you’re building a long-term career.

3. Use the Social Networking Sites to Make Contacts

As a beginning writer, you won’t have any contacts. Luckily making contacts is very easy because of the growth of the social networking sites. Many writers use sites like Twitter to advertise their availability, and to get clients.

These sites are very useful because they enable you to stay in touch with people with whom you’ve worked, and it’s essential that you do this. It’s always easier to get work from people who know you then from complete strangers.

Enjoy building your writing services business; it’s a great way to work from home.

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Want to make money online? You can, with Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) training.
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Make Real Money Online As a Pro Affiliate Marketer

Posted on June 20, 2009 by Angela Booth

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. Some affiliate marketers are making million-dollar incomes. If you’re serious about your new career, here are four tips which will help.

1. Buy a Product You Want to Promote

Your first step is to get hold of a product which you want to promote. If the product is an information product, read it or watch it. Learn as much about the product as you can.

2. Realize That It Will Take More Than a Banner Ad to Sell It

Next, brainstorm ways in which you can sell this product. Your first step should be to write a review of it. If the product is highly popular, chances are that your review won’t go far.

You need to make it a no-brainer for people to buy the product through your link.

This means that you need to give people an incentive. Your incentive it may be something you create which will be a useful add-on to the product, or which expands on the product, making it easier to use.

3. Invest in a Domain Name for the Product

If you like a product enough to promote it, invest in a domain name for that particular product.

The domain name is useful because you can send buyers directly to the product from your own domain name. This solves the problem of affiliate links, which tend to be ugly and which make potential buyers suspicious.

An added benefit is that when you promote using your own domain, you make it harder for others to steal your sales.

4. Invest in PPC Marketing to Find the Best Products to Promote

Not every product which you start to promote will make money for you. In fact you may need to go through five or six products before you find a product which is profitable for you.

This means that you can waste a lot of time in writing reviews and creating incentives for products which just won’t make money for you. You can shortcut the process of finding good products by investing in some PPC marketing for products you’re considering.

“Affiliate marketing is a scam!”

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I used to think that too, until I found Wealthy Affiliate. Join us: we’re the happiest online marketers you’ll find, and the friendliest too. Turn your hobby into a full-time, exciting career — you get ALL the information, tools (great tools!) and help you need.

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Make Money Online: 4 Signs You’re Not Ready

Posted on June 20, 2009 by Angela Booth

Many people want to make money online. The people who succeed at it, and go on to make huge incomes each year, have usually given up several times before they eventually succeeded. Whether you achieve your own monetary goals depends on whether you’re ready, so let’s look at four signs which indicate that you’re not yet ready.

1. You’ve Bought More Than 5 Make-Money-Systems in Five Months

Anyone who wants to make an online income will find themselves joining many mailing lists, and getting many freebies. Most of the products offered, even for free, are valuable. However chances are that you don’t know enough yet to make full use of them.

The next step is to buy products which promise to help you to achieve your goals. However, if you constantly find yourself buying new products and not putting any of the systems which you’ve purchased into operation, you’re just not ready to make money online yet.

2. You Believe That You Can Make Instant Money, Anywhere

The online world is just like the offline world. From a standing start it’s not possible to make money instantly online, unless you win the lottery.

You need background and experience. This is why you shouldn’t get downhearted if you’ve failed at your money making efforts. Each of your attempts has taught you something.

However do realize that the likelihood of you making $10,000 this week from your online efforts if you haven’t even made your first dollar is somewhere between zero and none at all.

3. You Believe Everything Should Be Free

This is a big hurdle in your efforts. You won’t make money online until you realize that you do need to pay for some things. As with every other business, you need a little bit of startup capital. Online businesses tend to be lean, so you won’t need the many thousands of dollars you’d need if you were starting an off-line business, but you do need to spend money.

Once you get over the belief that everything should be free, you’re well on the way to starting to make money online.

4. You Suspect That All the “Make Money Online” Talk Is a Scam

There are many scams online. However it’s a mistake to believe that just because you’re not making any money online no one else is, either. Especially in the Internet marketing area many people are making incomes which far surpass anything they could make at a day job.

Isn’t it about time you stopped TRYING to make money, and actually made some?

here’s how. Stop trying — and do it.

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Niche affiliate marketing: looking for teeny niches?

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Angela Booth

From talking with my Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) students, I know that many want to find tiny niches with X number of searches and Y results pages. I always advise against this.

Here’s why:

* Small niches mean small search numbers, and fewer high-paying affiliate products in the niche

* It’s an overused strategy that worked well in 2004. Times have changed

* It takes just as long to get traction in a teeny niche as it does in a “big” niche.

An, as Don’t Be Afraid of Big Niches | Click Consultants Affiliate Marketing Blog points out:

“Big niches are more saturated and there is more competition, but there is also a ton more volume and keywords that work in these niches.  In smaller niches, if you start getting into the long tail keywords of 3 or more words, you very quickly realize that you’re just not able to get any decent volume, while in bigger niches, you are able to go into these long tail keywords and still rake in the volume because there are just that many more people searching for these products or services!”

Need a fast flood of traffic? Try this great new social bookmarking and blog commenting tool.

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How to use your Internet marketing list

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Angela Booth

As I’m sure you know, “a list” is what an internet marketer calls the people who have subscribed in order to get something of value from her. Typically, the marketer has a sign-up box, or opt-in box, on her blog or website and she gets people to sign up by offering something of value for free.

This can be:

* a report
* an ebook
* a newsletter
* tips and info
* a podcast
* insider secrets
* an ecourse
* a teleseminar

When someone signs up to your list, they get the freebie and you get their email address. Why is this important? Once you have their email address you can go about building a relationship, earning their trust, and selling products to them.

If studies show it takes a marketer an average of seven contacts with each person before they’ll buy, then a list is a must. Yes, the marketer can sell products to people who’ve come to her website one time and decided to buy. But then those people go away. If she gets them on her list, she can market to them again and again as she creates more products or promotes affiliate products .

Not only can you sell to your list, you can get feedback from them about what products they’d like you to create next. Set up a survey or poll and find out what they want. You can also gather up the questions they’ve sent you and make the product based on that. Just think of how many buyers you’ll have with your product tailored to their issues.

A cold list vs. a warm list

A cold list is the one that comes from giving something away for free in a giveaway event. You’ve lured these people in for the freebie, but now you have to do some work to keep them. Give value before you start promoting to them. Emails showing some of your personality along with some no-strings-attached information will go a long way in building a relationship with your subscribers. You will eventually start throwing in some promotions too, but there’s no rush. It’s true that some freebie seekers will opt out of your list as soon as they receive your freebie, but they probably were never going to buy from you anyway.

A warm list may have started out cold, but they’ve been primed and are eager to buy from you. Many of them already have and because you give great value for the money, they’ll buy from you again. Don’t get sloppy and stop sending value in your emails. Sending nothing but promotional emails is abusing your list and even people who were once happy with you will unsubscribe.

Having a list is very important for your internet marketing success. Having a lot of people on your list is great, but what’s important is remembering they’re people. A good rule of thumb is to send out the kind of emails you’d like to receive.

“Affiliate marketing is a scam!”

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I used to think that too, until I found Wealthy Affiliate. Join us: we’re the happiest online marketers you’ll find, and the friendliest too. Turn your hobby into a full-time, exciting career — you get ALL the information, tools (great tools!) and help you need.

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Go an Opt-In Newsletter? Here are some tips

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Angela Booth

When you’re trying to figure out what you can send to people in exchange for their email address, give some thought to doing a newsletter.

People in your niche might like the idea of opting in to your list in order to get more information from you, an expert, in this niche. Newsletters turn out to be a great vehicle for delivering information to your subscribers because not only can you give them quality tips and advice, you can also send promotions for your own products and affiliate products.

You may have some questions though… How often should I send it? How much work is it? What should be in it? Will I run out of things to say?

Keep in mind that you want to send out helpful info so that you establish a relationship of trust and showcase your “expert” status. Those two things will encourage people to buy from you.

You might be feeling very gung-ho about your newsletter and you want to send it out once a week, but be realistic. You have a lot of other stuff to do to run your business and unless you’re going to outsource the whole thing, you’ll be creating a lot of stress for yourself. A more realistic goal is once a month.

Your first newsletter will take you the longest to prepare as you try to figure out what you want in it. Establish a format that you can follow with each newsletter. To decide on your format, take a look at some of the newsletters you like to read and note their structure.

Newsletters should be short and jam packed with useful info. Your reader will unsubscribe if your newsletters are long, drawn out, and full of fluff.

Here are a few ideas for your newsletter:

1. Do a monthly top 10 list.
Top 10 favorites, top 10 mistakes, top 10 resources, top 10 tools, top 10 blogs, etc. You’re the expert and they want to know your opinion. Plus, top 10s are fairly easy to put together.

2. Have a tip of the month.
Make it something extra special like a secret about something to do with your niche that not many people know. Here’s your chance to show your stuff.

3. Explain how to do something.
People love checklists, action plans, or blueprints. Explain how you do something or the best way to do it and your readers will thank you and ask for more.

4. Answer a reader’s question.
People will email you with questions about anything to do with your niche. Instead of answering all the questions individually, pick one or two to answer in the newsletter each week.

Here is an example of the structure of one of the newsletters I subscribe to:

Short personal note
Latest industry news – three items only
Link to his short blog post (brings readers to the blog where they might purchase something or click on an ad).
Secret industry tip
Plug for a product (two if one is a freebie)
Reader Q and A
Wrap up and request for feedback

The newsletter owner follows this structure pretty consistently but I’ve noticed he will change it on occasion. It depends on the information he wants to impart on his readers.

Starting a newsletter can be a great way to go to build your list, establish trust, and be seen as a niche expert. The first newsletter will be the hardest, but after that you’ll have a template in place, and eventually you may be able to outsource the whole thing.

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Testimonials and how to get them

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Angela Booth

You’ve created an information product, and you’re raring to go. You (or your copywriter) wrote the sales page, but there’s a stumbling block… testimonials.

In short, you need them, but how do you get them?

Testimonials have been around a long time in the offline world, and having testimonials on your online sales page or website is no different. People are giving their endorsement of your product, and this goes a long way as social proof. Potential buyers may be on the fence about buying your product but when they see positive comments from others who have tried and benefited from the product, they see it as proof that it works.

Getting testimonials may not take much effort on your part if you’re a well-known marketer who has a trusting relationship with your list, but it takes a little more work if you’re untried and unknown.

Here’s what you can do to get testimonials:

Offer your product free on a forum you frequent in exchange for honest comments, and a testimonial if they liked it. Some may see this as bribery, but really you are asking them for honest feedback. Sometimes they give constructive criticism that you can use to improve your product before you release it for sale to the public. Put a limit on the number you’ll give away for free to get comments or you’ll get bombarded with too many requests.

If you see a request from someone else to try their product and leave them a testimonial, do it. When you’re done reviewing it and offering a sincere (not over the top and gushy) testimonial, you can ask them to do the same for you.

Think about calling in some favors. Have you helped out a fellow marketer in the past by proofing his copy, leaving lots of comments on his blog, or retweeting all his promotions? Ask for the testimonial. Email him a request and don’t forget to add the link for his complimentary copy. And who knows, he might like it enough to want to become an affiliate.

Go to your list. Explain that you will give out your new product for free to the first 5 or 7 people if they promise to give you a testimonial/feedback in 48 hours. Not only do you get testimonials but this works to create some buzz around your product.

This is a bit after the fact, but you can always put a request for feedback or positive comments in a READ ME file in the zip folder that goes out to everyone who buys your product. Grab the first couple positive responses and quickly put them up on your sales page.

Give a time limit on all your requests to keep people focused. Send them reminders when the time is up and many of them will drop everything to comply. But keep in mind there are some people who will take the product and run without so much as a thank you or testimonial, so ask for more of them than you think you’ll need.

Testimonials are a very important way to help convince potential buyers to purchase your product. They are the social proof you need on your sales page so take some time gathering them, preferably before your product goes live.

Are you making all the sales you need? Get persuasive copy written by a top copywriter. I (Angela Booth) have been online for a couple of decades, and I’ve been writing copy for longer than that. Persuasion isn’t optional: it’s the difference between a business goldmine and survival. Get persuasive Web copywriting that works.

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