Creating Information Products for Fun and Profit

1. Creatinginfoproducts1: welcome to the short course on creating information products would be your host today, Brian Client, I'm gonna be covering kind of overview of exactly what? Our information products. I'm also gonna be given some advice, some tips on creating an information products. I'll share some tools. Some of the website resource is on that I've been able to use over my 12 year Internet marketing career. And I've created hundreds of information products over the past few years. So also offer some insights on some of my successes, as well as some of my many failures in creating information products. I'll also talk about some of the pros and cons of information products because you think about all of the upside potential sitting down, recording a video, writing out e book, putting together some type of training course recording audio podcast. Syriza, webinar Siri's church are swollen description to thes all different types of information products. So we always hear about all the upside potential to create information products, but they are some con someone to share some of those. I'm also going to give some advice on getting started with information products that there's something that you want to do and especially information products are great if you are expert on a given topic. So if you're expert on home repair, are you are chiropractor? Are your expert at runny own catering business for the past 20 years? This experience is highly valuable, highly valuable experiences and even for you have experience in like a service based business. So let's say you've never really created a product. You never lee soda widget to someone, but you had services over the years. This is how you can almost create a product ties service, where you take that experience that 20 year, that 12 year, that five year experience and you record your document, you come up with best practices you offer. Resource is you answer commonly. Ask questions of frequently asked questions regarding your catering business or whatever type of profession on you being in the past few years that has a huge amount of value. Have a quote that have always shared with people that everyone has at least two books in him. Everyone has at least two good books in him, and I mean anyone from any walks of life has at least two good books and I mean, even a homeless person on the street. I've actually read a book. I'm about surviving homelessness, and many people may not know this about me, but I was homeless at one point in my life as well. I wish I had that book then. I mean, it's only been recently that I have read the book on Surviving on the Streets, which was written by a person that was actually homeless, and he talked about how you go about surviving on the streets. So going back to my point, everyone at least, has really too good books in them. And in today's time, where technology is readily available at your local library, almost want to say everyone has a good course in them. Okay, everyone has a good podcast in them. Abel has content. If you have experiences, that means you have content. You just have to take it from your brain to paper, take you from your brain to some type of recording. So that's the whole premise behind information products. So let's get started. So what exactly are information products again? I've kind of talk a little bit about that In show information product is exactly as it sounds, a product unlike a consumable, unlike something that you eat, unlike shampoo that you're putting your hair unlike shoes you put in your feet. It is a product that in nature is heavily information based. So what I mean by that a. C. D is an information product. So, yes, although you may like jamming to Michael Jackson singing along with Whitney Houston, audio CDs are essentially information products now. You aren't necessarily getting information. You're getting entertainment, but still it is a talent. It's a recorded packaged product, and you are consuming that product for your entertainment. Where is with the information product? Maybe you're consuming it for your educational, um, to educate yourself. Eso an example of that could be buying a motivational. Listen, talking about Tony Robinson buying a motivational CD is an example of information products . Okay, this course that you're looking to right now that you listening to right now is an example of information product. Okay, I sit down with the recorder, and I just put the record on, and I started sharing my experiences on creating information products. This is an example of information product. If you ever bought a e book off of Amazon. Kindle that an example of information products If you've ever taken online class Ah you to me dot com skill share dot com course a cooker dot com Khan Academy lynda dot com These are all online learning management systems. The class that you take on these learning management systems is a information products. Someone charged you a fee to access that type of information. So as you see the different types of information products, you now have information products of recording. So let's say we have a live event and maybe I do. Some type of special recording of that live event are a documentary could be an example of information product we actually do recording and you interview experts in a given field on those experts being recorded. You could then package that DVD and sell it as a physical DVD of you could have it available online for live streaming again. That would be an example of information products. So pretty much any way that you consume information can possibly consume information, and it has the potential for being a information products. So ah, book a printed book. You go to the library libraries full of information products. The author wrote that book from his or hers. Research. Our Experiences of Our personal life. Child's our accomplishments, of the successes of their failures on day document that into a book form. And now they're Book is being bought all over the world and read by people from all over the world. That is a prime example of information products. So as you see, the list goes on and on and on about what? We can actually consider information product to be another information product, believe it or not, are APS absent information products? So a software application someone purchased them software from the Mac OS store and Iowa Store Android Store on the application can be an example of information products a, uh, sago amazon dot com. And let's say you're trying to get in shape, Um, a body building chart. Okay, a chart that has a human body of the different muscles in different type of exercise you can do to build those muscles. That is an example of the information product. Someone took a piece of information and, you know, took the human body a sketch of the human body came out with the workout plan. Okay, that is an example of information product, so information products are really all over the place. If you ever watched late night infomercials call tin sheets back in the day. Robert G. Allen How to flip houses and do all these different, you know, make money and get rich overnight. All of those are examples of information products, so you've probably have a few in your garage as you've bought over the years. You probably on a daily basis, buying some type of information products. If you have some type of act this guiding your workout plan, that's information product because it's measuring your workouts. Give me feedback when you work out able to post your workout again. This is a an example of information products. I've kind of spread the gambit off everything from a book to software toe wall charts, two audio recordings to webinar to live streaming video. So physical book. All of these things are considered information products. So how do you get started in creating information products? So this is a very popular question. Now consider this gave you a laundry list of what is considered information product for most people. Typically, it's much easier to write a book, a small a book. So it doesn't have to be a Pulitzer Prize winning book that you're gonna get nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for just being spectacular. Author. That's typically the holdup for most people really getting started an information product business. So what you want to take a look at is probably outlining a basic book, Basic e book. Will you just answer calmly are frequent. Ask questions regarding your area of expertise. So going back to my fitness example, if you were once very overweight and you came up with an F it on how to shed pounds are lose weight in a healthy manner, um, EU document in that process, then that has a tremendous amount of value for someone that may be in your same position. So all you would need to do is take your outline, take your journal, take your diary okay and outline your process outlined your process in a word document. Our text foul outlined the process. Okay, what did you do on a daily basis? Would you do on a weekly basis? What were your challenges that you face What were the things you found? Easy. What? Major weight loss. Easy. Okay, you may talk about the type of foods that you ate. Kate. When did you eat? How did you prepare your foods? Would you eliminate fried foods completely? Did you eliminate bread? Did you only eat me only vegetables? So document your whole process from step A two steps, Z. Okay, So documenting a whole entire process will have a tremendous amount of value in the marketplace where someone is in your position of trying to shared a few extra pounds. So once you've kind of outlined, um, this book on this e book, You know, when a challenge yourself. So you pretty much want to challenge yourself to write 2345 pages a day. So once you have his outline, you can elaborate in greater detail. You can maybe take some pictures. If you document it. Your weight loss adventure with photos, you can then take some pictures and document that whole process at those photos in. So if you're riding, you know, 2 to 4 pages per day. You know, at the end of a week, you have a decent size. Um, e book, right? So you have 20 some odd pages in your e book, Okay, so I would just say, focus on getting as much content to papers possible. That's the fastest way to get started and dedicate. Do that for at least one week. Okay, At the end of that week, you have, you know, 20 some odd pages, give or take. Maybe did more pages, maybe wrote up. More pages are wrote up less pages on any given day. And then on your second week, I will go back and start to edit what you wrote in that first week. So the editing process, okay, is another kind of hiccup or hang up for a lot of people, creating information product is that they wanted to be perfect. They want not to have, they don't have any typos, and we'll have any grammatical mistakes of any type. And this is not the way to approach create information products. You want to separate the writing process from the editing process as much as you can, And in doing so, it would allow for your thoughts and ideas to flow a lot easier versus kind of holding back and being overly critical of the process. So your first week you want to try to aim to create, you know, right out. 2 to 5 pieces are pages of content per day. The second week you want to go back and edit, so go back and edit several pages. My editing process uses ah few tools without share with you. One is graham early dot com g r a m m a r l y dot com graham early dot com There is a fee associative family dot com, so I do want to share that with you and give you the heads up. It's a nominal fee, is about $30 for an entire year, but it pretty much edits anything from email to a dissertation. If you can upload it to the grimly website, and it will check your paper on about 250 commonly made mistakes with from spelling to readability issues too overly using pronouns, etcetera. So, um, I kind of take whatever manuscripts I have. Put Ingraham early it. Then there's another app that I like called the Hemingway App, just like Ernesto Hemingway, the famous author talking about Pulitzer Prize winners. Um, you can use the him way app to further. So after you've gone through the graham early dot com process of editing your work on that second week, you could then take your document your manuscript and go to the Hemingway App and copy and Paste in the Hemingway App and that will again check um, some commonly make mistakes that will give you kind of great level readability that will check for, as a said, with the Gramley app over using pronouns not being descriptive enough. Readability issues run on sentences, so I kind of have a two step editing process. And once I put it through family and then I put it through the Hemingway at, I now have a raw document, so I'll let it sit for a few days, you know, creating your first information product. It's probably going to take a solid month, so that's kind of the track. Gonna mourn If you're over ambitious, you could do it in a lot shorter period of time. But tipping for your first information product. This is what you want to do? Yeah, so now that I have this raw document I've gone to Gramley of posted it there I've conquered Hemingway app. I've got the feedback there have made the necessary corrections. The next thing you want to do is actually share this document with someone I know you like , man, but it's not ready for the market place. Well, you have to get it ready for the marketplace. They need some feedback. So if you are a caterer or if you're a person has lost significant amount of weight, you may have other friends. They have lost weight. You may have trainer friends at the gym. If you continue your weight loss journey, you want to share that manuscript with them and actually get appropriate feedback. So send it to three people and this is called the review process. So, for example, I'm working on a academic book right now with a very large publisher, and we're updating academic book. I want to be right on a few chapters in this particular book. So before I even start riding, we actually send the book to get reviewed by professionals to get feedback on what we should include in the new, updated version of the book. So this is that whole process, but on a smaller scale, you just go to people that you know, people that are familiar with fitness familiar with weight loss. And you send them your manuscript that you've already edited. So you shouldn't have any major titles and issues like that Should have any readability issues, because the Hemingway app should take care of that It grandma? Yeah, particular that. And then you get this feedback from these 345 individuals depend upon how many people kind of in your mastermind a support group for this information product, you get their feedback and you then make additional edits. Okay, are improvements because they may say you need to add this elaborate on this more. This isn't quite clear. So you make those adjustments those review adjustments and then once you finish that step of getting feedback from your support group, you didn't want to go to its many websites and get additional information. Now, here, this is a crucial step. You want to make sure that you are citing your sources. You don't want to be copying and pasting. You don't want to be copying word for word from these other websites that this would get you in legal trouble before you even actually make any money. You just want to make sure that you're including the latest information is relates to the top of the Jordan nature that you're researching. So you might want to go to Wikipedia and check out some articles there on new weight loss techniques. You might want to go to YouTube. Look at a few videos that you can maybe reference in your guy. You may want to go to Cora and see some commonly asked questions regarding weight loss. And look at some of the answers people provide. And look at the source is that people are referencing in those answers. May wanna clues from those sources in your guy. You made it one about a slide share dot com and look at some some other presentations. RPGs relating to the topic you may want. Also try to include those in your book is references and sources as well. So you want to take your personal experience that you want to take feedback. You wanna edit it? Do you want to take feedback from other reviewers of people in that space? If you want to go out to the marketplace and kind of see what others are promoting what they're suggesting. The sources and sites that you want to add that to your document. Do you want to go back and kind of do another at it? So once you've kind of done the second ad, it, you know, have feedback from your review team, you have feedback from additional sources online that you can include his references to make your book that much more helpful to someone losing weight. Because, yes, you have your personal experience and it's a ton of value there. But you also have reference these outside sources that are gonna be very beneficial to you are very beneficial to your reader. Okay, so now that you've added that information, go back, you do your final kind of edit on and then, bam, you have your first information product. Um, and with that particular information product, you convince in, do a lot of different things. You can create a video, are training course using that document, that manuscript as the outline you can take that content added in a power point and do a recording just like I'm doing this particular recording. You can Then now take that information use screen cast a Matic, which is a $20 program that you can record your screen. So just take that manuscript, make a power point out of it. A fire but microphone record your screen. And now you can create a video course on how you lost your weight. So now you have that video course. You can take that video content. You can upload it to a variety of different sites. We can sell this video training course, such as you to me dot com skill share dot com. You can also take that content and turn it into a DVD. So now you have a DVD and you can sell that screen cast. You can take the audio from that content and now have audio book that you still along with the main scripts and when you start your website. Www dot how I lost £10 after my baby dot com, You now have audio book that taken down low. You have ah e book. They can read, and you have a video course now in the video course you Point Woman added a little information. Little more information because it's perceived higher value, so you probably charge a little more, but you also need to add a little more value to that particular product. And now, out of three weeks essentially of writing the document ed in the document, getting feedback, adding that feedback at in and it getting doing additional resource is and references, adding that your last week you wanna look at your distribution of different types of content that you want to do. You could move for the e book are you can do a recording to do a video so the videos online and different video Szasz course sites can sell the DVD a kilnockie dot com upload. Your video content can knock. You now have a physical DVD. You can also take that manuscript formulated and put it on Amazon. Kindles and I have a Kindle e book. You have your own PFE cell from how I lost £10 fast After having my baby dot com, you can also sell in all my books on Google books, and I have a book distribution at several different sites. So it's a lot that you could do that one document, so it's very exciting just what you can do. Over 3 to 4 week period of creating your own information product. So now I'm going to give you kind of outline example of how to get started. I'm gonna share some pros and cons information products. Now one of the prose is that you see anyone could really fire up the microphone, fired the word document and share their experiences. Put the experiences on paper. So one of the major prose is that you don't really have any overhead. You don't have to pay someone thousands of dollars to learn how to do this. You just need to do it, come up with your content it, then start focusing on distribution of market and a later date. But that's also one of the cons, because there's nothing keeping the guy across the street from saying, Hey, well, my lost My wife lost £20 after our baby you, and he lost £10 after your baby. Let me come out with my how I lost £20 after my first baby dot com. So there's really nothing keeping a competition away now. Obviously, they can't copy your your book because you can copyright and copy protect your book, and I'm not going to talk about that in this particular course, because that's more kind of advance information product development that I'll probably cover in a course at a later date. But essentially, there's no real Berries of entry, which is great because something's working a marketplace. You can easily copy that, right? So goes both ways to sort swings both ways of the sword cuts both ways, So one of the prose is also one of the cons. Also, one of the prose is pretty easy to get distribution. So once you have that manuscript, it's several sites that will be willing to partner with you to actually sail, you're given e book or your manuscript. There are also several sites that will help sell your video course, as well as several sites that will help sell your audiobook. So, um, a C X is where I've sold a few of my audiobooks. Kindle Amazon is where sell a lot of my e books, create space dot coms where I sell my printed books. So once you have one document you can create into a lot of different mediums, you can't audio version video version. You can have the E Elektronik version, the e book version, you can't the printed version. So for one manuscript, you can literally create 4 to 5 to six different products off that one manuscript. And that's why I highly suggests write in a book first, because the book is much easier. So let's say your first information product was a DVD. Okay, it's going to be very hard to go back from a DVD to write a book. It's easier to go from it from e book toe a DVD than these from a DVD toe to a book. So that's why I suggested that particular approach. But other than that, um, not there a lot of bears. And they're not many barriers of entry, which is great for internal market but also is bad for fighting off competition there many opportunities for distribution. So if you're not very good at marketing, you can go on one of these platforms. They could sell your content for you. They'll give you a commission on that. Content are royalty now that you have so is called royalties. When you're talking about information products are books are selling of DVDs that things such as that, so you have the opportunity to gain some type of royalty there now. Tool for creating information products Already mentioned. A few. You need some type of ah, with processing word processing tool. Could be a word. Could be a text document you need screen cast. Dramatic. If you want to do video screen cast overs, you need a quality microphone. I use the Blue Yeti Mike, you could go Amazon and look at you. Just want a microphone. It our connects via USB. Okay, so that's what I always suggest. You need some editing tool. So graham early dot com is kind of 1/3 party tool that I use outside of Microsoft. And just because I want to make sure that my writing is coherent and my writing is dramatically correct because people judge the value of your product of your info products by these different types. So I'm gonna finish up, Um, this particular video here there will be a part two will continue on the tools, but I just didn't want to go too far over 25 minute mark. If you have any questions, as always, feel free to message me, shoot me, email our give me a shout out on Twitter 2. Creatinginformationproduct2: all right, some back here and video number two on getting started and creating your first information info product. I ended in the last video on a few tools that you need a zay said the first basic tool that you need. Is this a word document? A word processing on? I mean, there's open office. If you can't afford word of a typically most computers, Mac and PC's comes some type of word documentation. I'm also if you don't even have a laptop, you can go to the local public library. Actually, when I first got started believing not for my 1st 2 to 3 years in business online, I did not own a laptop. I was constantly going Teoh buddies that had laptops was consciously working in the in the library. So you do not need a computer, believe it or not, to get started with creating your own information products. Now I may be a little tedious of scheduling times and, uh, limited times in the library because that maybe people are waiting list of some type of process there, but nonetheless, you can't get started even if you do not own a laptop. So basic word processing some type of tool to edit. He's going to be very important as well. You also want to look into some type of quality microphone, especially if you want to start doing screen overs. Offer won't start audiobooks of recording on books That will be something that highly suggest you take a look at as well, a grand. I use the Blue Yeti Mike uh, the blue mike. Uh, and I used the very quality. So blue is kind of the brand, so they have a variety of different microphones that they use. And I highly suggest ah, the blue blue brand, as's faras other tools. Those a kind of the basic tools that you need. A lot of people will tell you that you need, you know, studio and that you need all these. I forget the name of this to scream Veena scree ver some type of process that help you write a book to me. Is this kind of play around that particular tool? Is this kind of a waste of money? If you're disciplined enough and you have word processing on your computer, you will not need to do ah, use all of these expensive tools. When I first got started, I literally had access to a word, and I had a free pdf developer tool. I didn't even have the adobe. Pdf tool actually has some free. PdF Creator Tool is like FAQs Pdf creator. And that's how I got started developing my own e books. That was this kind of the basic tools they needed getting started. So if you have any questions on tools, as always, feel free to reach a post your question. All right, advice and tips on information products assists. I guess the major thing here are vice, I would give is just be consistent. So if you come out with one particular book and what I mean by being consistent is both being as far as output from output standpoint, Soas faras your creation of content be consistent on creating that content on a weekly or monthly basis to challenge yourself every month. I want to create X amount of new E books. I want to create a e book event. I want to create a printed book, and then I want to create a, uh, a video course. So whatever you do, we just want to be consistent in the output. You also want to be consistent in the niche on the market that you serve very transparent. About one of the major mistakes I made the beginning of my digital market careers, I was focused on too much. I was at shiny objects and drone. So I'll be in one niche one day, another niche, another day, another niche to other Dan and never really got full traction. Anyone given niche on it took me several years to actually get that traction, and I started seeing some amazing results. Once I've started focusing a little bit, so be consistent with the market you served. Be consistent with the output. Um, also make sure that you focus Justus much on marketing as you doing content production. Another mistake that I've commonly made is that I'll focus so much on creating content. I'll focus so little on ah, the distribution on the marketing of that content. So what? What happened in the today? I have all these books laying around, and I'm not making any money off because I got really good at creating content. But I didn't get so good at distributing that content on monetizing that content. So makes the, um make sure that you're focusing just as much effort on the marketing side distribution side as you are on the content side. So that's another piece of advice that 1/2 for you and enclosing a Sfar as information product wrap up. This is probably gonna be one of the easiest business ventures on that you can get started because there's really no berry of entry. As I said, everyone has at least two good books in them. Is this about documenting and pulling that experience out of your head and kind of putting it somewhere where you can share it with the world? So a great business model has been around for a very long time. People always sold information. Information is a commodity. Information is what makes the world go around information what separates the wealthy from the poor. Okay, so never underestimate the power of information. Okay, So if I had the information on what the hottest stocks are gonna be over the next 10 months , and I could easily become a 1,000,000,000 it off that information, right? So that's the power of information. Are if I had information? Are the research on the cure to cancer, right? Could become very wealthy off the information. So it's everything starts with information. So do not look at this as kind of like, Oh, this isn't it's cool up a business as you know, selling exotic land, beginning cars and drop shipping Lamborghinis in China. Okay, no, that may be a cool, cool business model, but this is a business model. There is a proven This is a business model that has been around for quite some time. And this is a business model will continue to be around as we become more of information based economy on a global scale. So do not underestimate, um, you know, information product businesses. Well, is the earning potential people making millions of dollars selling information? Everything from direct mail to some of these major membership sites where you know, people just distributing content and millions of people in charge and everyone a few dollars for that. So this very powerful business model But the first thing is first is to take a step okay and to actually start to really focus on that first product, that first book outlining that book challenge yourself to create consistent content in that book. Doing, editing, getting review, doing additional research, enhancing the product. That book They're focusing. Going very hard on the marketing. Okay, this is something for doing your part time. It's something you can do in your dorm room. I've proved that I started my Internet business when I was in college. A za college sophomore. Pretty much college softball, college freshman. I didn't even own a computer then was constant and friends room. So you mean the computer it started in this business? Okay, what? You do need to be consistent. It is something need to be focused on and does. Something has a lot of potential. Hopefully, this will motivate you to get started and start creating your first information product. And until then, I will see you feel free to always reach out to me on social media are shoot me, email our post, any question that you may have on the discussion board until van me walk in peace and walking these