I love information products and what they can do for professional service providers. Not only do they allow you to leverage what you know into passive revenue, but they allow you to serve a far larger audience.
But so many information products out there are poorly written, hard to understand, data dumps.
How do you make sure your product one your customers will praise (versus bury).
Do entrepreneurs want to make their own information products or would they rather hire other people to do the work for them?
I know, I know, it depends but depends on what exactly?
I’m developing a new program to help small business owners create simple but valuable information products. An associate who is working with me to develop the program presented the concept to a group of small business owners to get their reactions.
In marketing-ese we did a “proof of concept.”
The owners liked the idea of having information products. They love the idea of passive revenue. But they balked at spending the time to actually create the products preferring to hire someone else to do it for them.
Hmmm.
So I’m wondering:
Business owners interested in information products need to either
If they are unwilling to invest the time or money either
It’s possible re point #2 that we haven’t done a good enough job establishing the value of having an information product (in which value is the perceived net of benefits less time/$$ invested).
We need to find people who are already sold on the value of information benefits but are stuck and a little coaching & structure is all they need or clarify the net value (lower costs; increase benefits; or both).
Just posted the most recent Contagious Marketing ezine. If you think you need expensive equipment, a sound engineer, and Steven Spielberg to create a decent information product think again.
I’m drawing on Man with the Paper Clip, Angus MacGyver, for inspiration.
Ok, I’m going to use the Highly Contagious Marketing Blog to track progress on the new program I’m developing to help small business owners create simple information products.
I’d also like to use this as a way to invite collaboration although I’m not certain just how much of the project makes sense to publicize. Some of it feels pretty sensitive.
Latest developments today:
Added “Guiding Philosophy” points which will help set some boundaries around the project
Added a “People” section to begin tracking people I’d like to involve in the project
Feeling pretty solid around using the metaphor of a “cookbook” to introduce the idea.
I’ll make a .pdf document of the mindmap available but password protected
One of my favorite films is Amadeus. Besides simply being a great story well told there are some interesting messages about the nature of genius and of creativity in general.
If you haven’t heard of the movie, it tells the story of the great Austrian composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who, in his relatively short life, composed hundreds of extraordinary symphonies, operas, concertos, and pieces for small ensembles. Mozart lived during the 18th century, a time when it wasn’t unusual to die at a relatively young age. And Mozart liked drinking and gambling and staying out late which probably didn’t help.
Amadeus suggests an interesting twist on the composer’s early death, that a court rival Antonio Solieri manipulated events to put so much pressure on Mozart that his health would inevitably suffer. Although there really was an Antonio Soliari there is not evidence whatsoever that any relationship, rivalry or otherwise, existed between the two.
Still, it’s an interesting idea.
Anyway, back to the subject of information products.
There’s a scene in which Mozart is struggling to complete two large commissioned projects. He desperately needs the money and each project sponsor is pressuring him to finish the work they’ve commissioned. At one point Mozart tells the theater manager who has commissioned him to compose an opera that “it’s finished.”
“Then where is it?” growls the theater owner whose patience has just about run out.
“In here,” says Mozart blithely pointing to his head, “in my noodle. the rest is just scribbling…”
The theater owner is apoplectic. “It’s no good to me in there. Write it down.”
Mozart does eventually finish the opera we now know as The Magic Flute. However, he dies before completing the second project, a Requiem Mass.
The point, here is this: if you’re an independent business professional, much of what you do is based on years of experience, expertise you’ve acquired, and resources you’ve carefully developed.
In our modern world of antibiotics and cutting edge medical technology, most of us can expert to live far longer than those living in Mozart’s day.
But that doesn’t mean we’re doing a better job getting it out of our heads and documenting what we know. In fact, we could learn a thing or two from Mozart who was extraordinarily prolific in his 30 or so years.
A lot of small business owners I talk with are well aware of the advantages that come from having information products. “I know, I know,” they tell me, “I’d love to have a source of passive revenue and a way for prospects to “try me out,” before they sign up for a major engagement. But it’s not like I’ve done anything that special.”
Hearing this makes me a little nuts because they’re wrong. There will ever be another person who sees things in exactly the way they do or has the exact same ideas. And there are people who really need to hear what we have to share.
So take my advice. Or better yet, let the work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart inspire you. Get it out of your head and get it on paper or on an audio recording or in a video. Because as long as it’s in your head, nobody benefits and you don’t get paid.
It’s funny because most entrepreneurs I speak with know about information products and they know they should probably have a few. So what holds them back?
One reason I hear a lot is: “I just don’t have the time.” they envision creating an information product as some sort of Herculean task. They see themselves hunkered down in their office with big piles of paper all over the place, brow furrowed, with a “Genius at Work” sign on the door and duck tape festooned around it so that no one dares disturb them.
How realistic is that? No wonder so few small business owners ever create the information products they “know” they should have!
If this is your mindset, I’d like to encourage you to rethink information products.
Here’s one way.
One of my favorite marketers, who doesn’t even refer to himself as a marketer is Dean Jackson. Dean works almost exclusively in the real estate industry but his ideas are easily applied to any profession.
Dean sends a weekly email on Mondays (called “Marketing Mondays”–surprise!) and there’s always at least one gem of an idea that I and my clients can use.
Today Dean showed how he used a digital camera to document the process he uses to get things done.
Now, the topic itself, “getting things done” was the real subject of this week’s email. I’m an efficiency junkie and I’m always up for finding ways to get the right things done faster.
But what really got me excited was Dean’s use of his digital camera. Why? Because using his digital camera, he quickly, easily, with very little time and effort created an information product.
Now Dean is giving this away for free and you can check his little video out at http://www.marketingmondays.com (June 4 2007 entry). But he could easily do a little editing and sell it.
If you have a digital camera you can do this, too. Very easily.
Do you have a business process or system that you use which makes your life easier? Could you create a short video with narrative showing how you use your system? If so, I bet you have an easy info product you can create in a couple hours.
Think about it. Better yet, try it out and let me know how it works.
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