Part 2 - How to tap into your knowledge & generate ideas almost on demand. Then research market viability.

"The best way to get a good idea is to have lots of ideas"

Fortune cookie from a Chinese take-out

The biggest rule of thumb when creating information products is to teach what you know.

My wife and I run a marriage preparation program. It’s a weekend for couples preparing to get married, and it’s designed to help them "touch base" on many different topics including communication, finances, conflict resolution, etc. – basically areas they may never have considered.

I tend to view these weekends more as "conversation starters" than anything else - tools to get them talking and help keep their marriages strong.

My wife says, we hear of so many marriage breakups but we rarely hear about the success stories - the marriages that climbed the rocky path to recovery. Or, even less, those that have stayed fairly consistent in positive growth.

One of the topics we discuss is “Sex and Sexuality” – Which, lately, made me think of a great audio product idea.

NOW JUST WAIT A MOMENT!

Before you take off and decide "My gosh, he’s getting into porn!" - You couldn't be further from the truth!

What this recent sexuality talk did was give me an idea that actually led to a different idea altogether for a product.

The funny thing is that these ideas didn't enter the empty caverns of my brain until AFTER, when I was cleaning up from the weekend and wiping down the "whiteboards". A second idea came a few mornings later.

The point I'm making here is that you already have within you, from your very own life's experiences and activities, the knowledge that other people may be looking for and, hopefully, are willing to pay for. (And, if they're not willing to pay for it, they will probably exchange you their email address for the information - which you can add to your "mailing list" and later promote things they ARE willing to pay for).

Maybe you used to teach something that you still have your notes from.

Do you know how to combine different cleaning products to get particular stains out of clothes?

Do you have a hobby that you're passionate about?

Were you a master of ceremonies for a wedding and found a whole bunch of books or websites to get jokes and all kinds of m.c. things from?

Do you fish? Do you like boating?

Do people ask you to fix their computers?

Do you belong to a service or volunteer group that you can share your experiences about?

Do you write short stories?

Do you have a child who has a handicap that other parents would love to know how to deal with?

Are you a good friend? - You could write about how to be a good friend and develop and protect lasting relationships.

Have you ever helped someone who was grieving or dying?

What's your job? Are you an auto mechanic? - You could write about what to look out for in a used vehicle and what to steer clear of.

Are you a proficient administrative assistant - how do you do your job so well; how do you time manage your work flow; how do you get along with all the different people who demand your time? You could develop and sell a training aide.

Are you a fundraiser or a public speaker?

Are you an expert at computer games, or certain software programs, or you found easy ways to do things, or love to home renovate...and the list could go on and on.

You can also check the classified ads, magazines, and books etc. for ideas.

So how easy is it to develop an information product?

If you can talk to someone about a topic you really like, and are somewhat knowledgeable about, then you can write an eBook, or make an audio CD, or maybe even a video.

The thing is, if you believe and keep telling yourself that you're going to develop a successful Internet business - regardless of where you're at right now, good or not so good, then your brain will automatically kick into gear and look for product ideas without you even realizing that you're doing it.

Are all your ideas going to be great? Nope. Are they all going to be million sellers? Nope. Are some of them going to flop? Maybe.

The only person who can really find out (unless you pay someone to find out for you) is you.

The point is that you have it in you. You just need to bring it to the surface.

Here’s a step-by-step on how to harvest that goldmine buried deep within you.

Take an hour out of your life and write a list of all the things you do throughout the day, the groups you're involved in, teams you coach, what you do in your job or business, ideas you have, things you don't know much about and would like to find out, things you've been involved with in the past, etc. You get the drift.

This is brainstorming, so write down everything, regardless of how far-fetched or ridiculous it looks.

Now select about 10 of those things that you feel most passionate about and comfortable with.

Get 10 sheets of blank paper (if you selected 10 things that is).

On each sheet write one of your topics as the title.

Now, under each title, write words that you think relate to that title. For example, if your title is "Fixing Cars", you could write "pistons, sparkplugs, carburetor problem, won't start, tires, springs, auto body, etc.", to name just a few things. You can write more.

Once you've got a half-decent list, go to this link: www.goodkeywords.com and download their FREE Good Keywords windows-based program. If you have a MAC computer, keep reading as I have another web-based link near the end.

Once you have it installed on your computer, run it and click on the "Keyword Suggestions" button. Type in one of the words from your sheet and click the search button.

This program will return to you how many people searched for that word or phrase on Overture.com in the past 30 days. It also gives you alternative words to the one you typed and the results for those too.

In general, below 20,000 means that there are not enough people searching for the word or phrase to make a substantial income from THAT WORD OR PHRASE (you may just have to find another word or phrase - people may still be searching for your subject matter but just not using that particular word or phrase). Over 70,000 means that there is probably too much competition - too many other sites trying to target that market using those words.

If you can't, or don't want to download the Good Keywords program OR you have a MAC computer, (I use both), then go to http://www.resultsgenerator.com/ for a similar outcome but all web-based. You may have to play around with ResultsGenerator because sometimes the left side of the screen says it's no longer in service,  yet the right side still delivers results.

This is called “market research” and is something you should be doing all the time with your ideas.

Keywords are crucial:

Keywords are an intrinsic part of websites, articles you write, sales letters, and just about anything you might write or have written for you. They are crucial to people being able to find whatever you’ve written, which in turn leads them to your products.

Because of this, you need to include them in any body of text you publish that relates to people eventually finding your products.

Search engines don’t place as much importance on keywords that you add into a keyword “meta-tag” any more. The Keyword meta-tag is found in the html code of your website.

A Keyword meta-tag is almost similar to the index at the back of a book and the Table of Contents at the front.

This used to be where the search engines "looked" to see if a website offered the topic that a person was searching for.

However, because of so many abuses, where a site may have a keyword list on everything to do with boating - because boating is popular - but offer nothing to do with boating. When you get to the site you discover they are actually selling pharmacy drugs. That's an abuse.

Now, search engines check the actual site or blog content for those searched keywords. So, make sure you add them throughout your content as part of the natural flow of information.

You may even want to revisit your texts and update them with newer keywords as you determine through your ongoing keyword research. You won’t be able to update everything but you will be able to update some.

Get “narrow-minded”:

An important thing to remember is that the Internet works best when you market to an extremely narrow niche market rather than a broad market. It’s called the “long tail” effect.

Case in point - I found a site last year - I can't remember what kind of expensive, luxury sports car this was, but one thing about the car was that people were always stealing the hood ornament from it and they were very costly to replace.

So, this one individual found a company that could make knock-off copies of the hood ornament for a fraction of the cost of buying another original. The car owners thought this was great because now people were only stealing the knock-offs and it saved the owners a lot of money.

Now, while you can sell almost anything you want over the Internet, and believe me people do, this product is mostly geared toward the marketing of information products that are designed to be downloaded – or, in other words “digitally delivered.”

This media book is geared toward individuals who have little or no prior knowledge of how to start a business on the Internet or develop digital products.

This media book also has an audio version built-in – if you have the “.exe” Windows/Mac-Intel version - which is geared toward people whose primary learning preference is through listening rather than reading.

So, to sum it up, this information product is targeted at individuals and companies who want to make money on the Internet by primarily selling information, but don't know how to do it.

I would say that's fairly narrowed down.

I could, however, narrow it down more by defining the actual information market, such as individuals selling information to people buying used cars. But that's not what I chose to do at this point.

Just as a quick note: Don't be afraid to delve into areas you know nothing about. If you can research it, and maybe interview some experts, people would be willing to pay for that information.

What you are doing is gathering together information from various resources and compiling them together into a presentable format that others can use to learn from.

Now you know how to develop a product idea, research it, flesh it out, and narrow it down to a particular, narrowed niche market.

The crucial note is that whatever topic you choose you should be able to digitally deliver it, which means that you must be able to download it. A digital product is basically a computer file, which could be a piece of software, an mp3 audio file, a Microsoft Word document, or a media book like this one – basically anything that you can store on a computer.

Your customer should be able to go to a website, click a link, purchase the product, and then download the product immediately to their own computer. As you’ll discover later, this entire process can be automated, meaning you don’t have to be there when the sale happens, as long as you use a digital delivery model.

You can produce, for example, a DVD set but then you get into having to duplicate and ship a product, unless you use a fulfillment house or a drop shipper, which cuts into your profit – but is still a viable option.

A FULFILLMENT HOUSE

A fulfillment house is a company that will make, keep in stock, and deliver your physical product for you – such as a physical DVD or CD set, or a set of training manuals you designed and are having them duplicate and ship for you. When a customer purchases the product from your site, the fulfillment house is also notified and they package and ship the product on your behalf. This way, you can still automate your business and operate it “hands off”.

Speaker Fulfillment Services is a highly used (by major names in the Internet Marketing world) fulfillment house and comes highly recommended . Check out their site at: http://www.speakerfulfillmentservices.com/

A DROP-SHIPPER

A drop-shipper is a company that basically owns a warehouse full of products and pays you a commission to promote and sell those products. Like the fulfillment house, the drop-shipper ships the product directly to your customer. They collect the money and send you your commission.

The main difference between the two is that the drop-shipper owns the product and sets the price. At the fulfillment house you own the product and set the price – you just pay them to manufacture the product, hold an inventory for you, and then ship it to your customer.

There are pros and cons between both a physical and a downloadable product.

So, the choice is yours – a digitally downloadable product, or a physical product that you or someone else has to keep an inventory of and ship - and both have their purpose. But, for a first-time, startup business, I would highly recommend digital delivery.

Whatever you choose though, the information in this media book, while geared toward a digitally downloadable product, can be used for either.

PREVIOUS  NEXT