Copyright 2002 by Willie Crawford

Shortly after I REALLY started listening to advice on how to make
lots of money on-line I heard one message loud and clear. "You
need to develop your own products or services!" Like most people
who hear this message, I agreed intuitively, but it took a long time
to figure out HOW to do that. Let's shorten that learning curve
for you by telling you HOW to develop you own products or
services.

In part 1 of this article we'll look at how to develop your own
product because I know that is usually more profitable in the
long-run. With a service, your growth is limited by the supply
of the service you can provide. Providing many services is too
labor-intensive or too limited by "the system" to allow unlimited
growth.

The easiest product in the world to develop is an information
product. It's so easy that I personally know more people than
I can count who have earned millions doing it. They develop
information products that you produce once - and then they sell
them forever, with very little additional work required after their
creation.

What do we mean by information products? I use the term to
describe books, ebooks, video and audio tapes, transcripts,
CDs, digital audio files, and even software. With all of these
products, you write them once, produce them once, and then
sell them forever with very little per unit cost. You can breath
life back into them when they start fading by updating them or
issuing a new release.

With these information products, you create them, set up a
website, organize a marketing campaign, and then - literally
- sit back and watch the money flow in. If you set up your
own affiliate program to market these information products
you have thousands of people all working diligently to make
you a success. Creating an information product really is
the easiest thing in the world.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, I don't know
enough about any topic to write my own product. I thought
that too for the longest time. You've all heard the advice,
write about what you know. If you really don't believe that you
know enough about a topic to produce an information product,
then identify a topic that you would like to know more about,
and BECOME the expert on that product. Unless there are
already too many experts on that topic, or unless absolutely
nobody cares about that topic, you have a guaranteed winner.

To convince you that what I teach is true, let me share a few
examples from my own background:

With prompting from my website visitors, I wrote a cookbook.
I wasn't sure the demand would be there. However, once I
committed to writing the cookbook the project went very
quickly. This cookbook sold over $100,000 worth of copies
(in hardcopy and digital format combined) in it's first year.

I wrote an book explaining how to publish your own
cookbook. This book is available in ebook format and since
so many people have considered writing their own cookbook,
this is a natural bestseller.

I'm finishing up a book on how to generate massive traffic
to your website. Why did I choose that topic? The single
biggest problem facing every webmaster on the face of
the earth is getting enough visitors to his site. I researched,
brainstormed, and experimented with virtually every traffic
generation method I could find. The results is a book that
HAS TO SELL. The affiliate program for this product has
to succeed. The pent-up demand for a quality product on
this topic is that tremendous!

I turned my personal experience with pay-per-click
search engines into both an ebook and a tele-seminar. I
hold tele-seminars on how to create a can't fail pay-per-click
campaign. The tele-seminar is recorded and participants get
reprint rights to the tele-seminar. This generated 3 products
really. (1) The tele-seminars themselves, (2) the reprint rights
to the tele-seminars and transcripts, (3) the recordings of
the tele-seminar which I can market as a separate product
or use as a bonus with other products.

I recently spoke at an internet marketing seminar where
I got reprint rights to the full audio and video recordings of
the seminar. This is a product that easily sells for $300 and I
can now market this forever. I market these seminar tapes
directly and through an affiliate program.

I've just given you real-life examples of several information
products that were produced in very little time. They all have
very real perceived value, but cost very little to produce. They
will each sell for years to come... some of them will undoubtedly
be selling for the rest of my life. That's the beauty of creating
and marketing information products.

I'm sure you now see how incredibly easy it is to create
information products.

-- With the tele-seminar, all you have to do is make arrangements
with one of the numerous companies that offer this service - they
can record the event and some offer transcription services.
-- With the workshop, the recording crew just had to record the
event as it unfolded.
-- With the books, I just created an outline, added sub-bullets
under each major heading and then added more to the product
each time I sat down to work on it. I did corroborate with a
few other people on the traffic book because I did not have all
of the expertise and experience necessary to create a product
of this magnitude. People enthusiastically jump at the chance to
help with a project like this!

You do see a lot of products on the market that you wonder how
well they are selling. Therefore, you do need to spend sufficient
time in the beginning - confirming that your info product is needed.
I generate product ideas by discussing them with others, by
"listening" at discussion forums, and by reading books that
stimulate my creative faculties. A good book on creative thinking
is worth it's weight in gold.

My favorite book on creating info products is by Jeff Smith. It's
called The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package.
Jeff and I discussed creating information products at length, as he
was finishing up this book. If you get a copy, you will also get a
recorded interview I did with him as a bonus :-) You can find Jeff's
book at: http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/tk.cgi?jeffsmith

I have discovered that discussing your product ideas with other
naturally generates additional product ideas. Discussing your
product ideas with others both generates new ideas and helps
point out the flaws in your ideas. You do have to get over the
fear of someone stealing your ideas. That IS a possibility, but
there is an endless stream of product ideas. Also, just because a
product has been created doesn't mean that you can't introduce
a similar (better) product. Heck, there's still room for hundreds
of more cookbooks - this year! Write fast enough and you can
catch the incredible Christmas sales :-)

I discussed cookbooks with Armand Morin at the recent Internet
Marketing Power Workshop. For those of you who don't know
Armand, he generated $4,000,000 in sales from one software
product in 12 weeks. The even more amazing thing about this feat
is that he doesn't even know how to write software code. He hired
someone to write this program for a few hundred dollars. That's the
power of information products and other digital products. Armand
told me he has also written a cookbook. That validates the fact that
cookbooks are a perpetual hot seller.

In the next installment, we will examine creating your own service.
Many of the factors that it takes to create a successful service are
the same ones it takes to launch a successful product. If you have
questions brought up by this article, why not post them in the forum.
Brainstorming is a very powerful force.

If you'd like to see the video series I created you can get more
information on it at: http://williecrawford.com/workshop-videos.html
For more information on the pay-per-click tele-seminars visit:
http://williecrawford.com/pay-per-clicks.html
These are examples of painlessly created info products that you
can examine to see how it they are actually created and marketed.
These are living examples that you can use in creating your own
best-selling info products.

To your success.
Willie Crawford
---------------------

Willie Crawford has taught thousands the secrets of operating
a successful on-line business through his free Internet
Business Success Course. It's more extensive than many $197
courses. Sign up today and start building your *successful*
online business: www.williecrawford.com

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