23 tips for starting an information business
If you are someone who loves to express yourself and share your expertise or knowledge, starting an information business may be a good starting point for your online business. So what exactly is an information business? Here information business refers to a business whereby you sell information products such as ebooks, audio and video products. In fact, if you want to do well online, the biggest growing market is to publish information products.
Recently I took this course from a Master in information products and learnt so much that I would love to share here with you. If this is something you are interested, read on. After attending the course, I have gathered some tips to help you get started:
Instant gratification
1. Instant gratification is the strongest appeal you can use when creating a low-ticket, entry point level information product. For example, if you had a toothache, which dentist would you rather go to – the one that will fix it in two weeks, or the one who can do it right away?
Narrow your focus
2. Narrow your focus. Just like the highest-paid doctors are also the most specialized, creating a product for a very specific market or on a very specific topic makes everything else easier… easier traffic, easier conversions, higher price points, etc.
Best audience to go after
3. The best audience to go after is one who is completely neglected by all others, and who is buying mediocre products knowing they’re mediocre because at least it’s better than buying nothing.
Criteria for creating a “one sitting” product
Use Amazon.com to research
5. Use the Amazon.com best seller books list to find a best-selling book in a category within a category within a category – then, “look inside” the book and find a single chapter that meets the above criteria. That’s how you find your product topic.
Focus on outcomes over information
6. When creating your product, remember to focus on outcomes over information. People don’t want to learn nearly as much as they want to change limiting behaviors.
The feel-good factor
7. The better someone feels about following your solution, the more likely they will buy it and benefit from it. (It’s less about what they know, more about how they feel about what they know.)
Simplify and make it easy
8. During your research phase, look for things that are easy to accept by your audience and easy for you to explain. Focus on tactics. Sell them a small win, and then you can sell them an even bigger win.
Help remove negative emotions
9. Find and deliver information that helps remove one or more negative emotions and replace those with one or more positive emotions.
Use Parkinson's Law to your advantage
10. Parkinson’s law is either your best friend or worst enemy. Since the task at hand (creating a product) expands to fill the available time, if you don’t use time limits, you’ll never finish. This is the most important law to your financial freedom!
Places to do your research
11. The best places to do research are YouTube videos, Medium.com, Slideshare.net, podcasts and forums. Listen at 2x+ speed.
Product creation hack
12. Product creation hack: most top-of-class experts you can pay less than $100 for an hour or more of their time… interview them and you have all the materials you need. Bonus points if you tap into their proof. (And if you do it right, you pay them zero royalties for any product sales plus you can target their followers.)
Leave only what's necessary
13. A great question to ask when creating an information product: “if I only had 6 pages to present my solution, what would I share and what would I leave out?”
Two ways to teach effectively
14. The only two ways to effectively teach someone something: (1) step by step or (2) factors. Not only does this make it easier for you to create content, your content is far superior to 99% of what other content creators are putting out.
Formula to follow
15. For each step or factor you share, following this formula: why it’s important, what’s involved, how to do it, and what is likely to happen as a result. Repeat for each step or factor.
Tap into the three dominant motivators
16. Tap into the three dominant motivators: empowerment, achievement and connection. (Here’s how this will empower you, here’s what you’ll be able to accomplish and here’s how it will bring you closer with…)
Start with a simple eBook as your first product
17. Start with a simple eBook as your first product unless you’re horrible at writing and you’re amazing at speaking off an outline. Any ebook you make can be turned into an audio or video product later and sold to the same audience who bought the ebook.
Crawl, walk, then run
18. Crawl, walk, then run. Most gurus teach the end result of their decade plus experience and insight – this is why their audiences fail because the “expert” fails to meet the audience where the audience is currently at.
Your sales letter formula
19. The sales letter for your info product contains just (1) A headline, (2) a lead, (3) some bullet points (4) a call to action and (5) urgency. Your letter should be of a simple design, and less than 1000 words.
Price and position your product to create “impulse purchasing”
20. Price and position your product to create “impulse purchasing”. There is no easier way to get a complete stranger to buy from you than doing this… and once they do buy from you, then you can sell a higher level, higher price “similar” solution.
Borrow proof if you don’t have it
21. Borrow proof if you don’t have it but want it… and remember that this system requires no proof for you to be successful, meaning you can sell products where you have no proof.
Maintain a narrow focus
22. For getting traffic, make your product focus as narrow as possible. Then your product will be able to be more easily found by those who you want to offer it to.
Using influencers for traffic
23. My favorite traffic getting technique involves getting a commitment from an influencer to send traffic to my product before I create it. But this requires you know the best way to create the product.
What’s the absolute best part of it?
Instead of procrastinating, you’re going to create a product in a single sitting, hook, line, and sinker. From there, the sky's the limit. So what are you waiting for?
I hope this helps you. If it does, OR if there’s something we can do to make it MORE helpful, please leave a comment below! I’d love to hear your feedback. ?
