Information
marketing is probably the easiest and fastest way to build a business on the
Internet. (Already I can hear you say “Duh
– Everybody knows that!) Most people won’t
try to make money using this venue and when they do, it is usually done wrong.
However, when
you think of it, if everyone were great info-marketers the market would be
absolutely saturated. (Kinda like brick
and mortar video businesses back in the 80’s.)
Not to say it isn't highly competitive in certain niches already, but if you know how to target a hot niche or sub-niche,
you can still rake in the bucks.
The Reality of the Info-Marketing Business
– or – That Dirty Four Letter Word
I like to
frequent forums where IM newbs (slang for Internet Marketing newbies) hang
out. Most of them are wide-eyed
optimists, and right out of the starting gate, they make posts like this:
“How can you
make $2000 a month selling info-products?”
“Frustrated
with trying to make $$$ online”
“I’m totally
broke and desperate and need to make good money now!!!”
You know, the
usual.
My response
to them is:
“Did you
think this was going to be different than starting any other type of business? It requires A LOT of WORK!”
Information
marketing IS lucrative, but you have to work it like a madman or woman to make
money at it.
Consider What You Need to Do to Make
Money
Outside of
actually creating the actual product (videos, eBooks, reports, blog posts,
etc.) you still have a load of work to do to actually get your product onto the
market.
Market Research
Let’s say you’re
going to sell a 100 page eBook. You need
to research first to see if there’s a market for it. If you do it right, it may take you a few days
or more of work to find out whether your product has merit.
The reason I
say this requires a few days of research, is because you really need to find
out on the front-end of your project whether or not there is a marketable niche. You need to find out if the market is large
enough and hungry enough to buy what you’re trying to sell.
Unfortunately,
these venture capitalists are very experienced and business savvy. If the budding entrepreneurs haven’t sold too
many units, or have any existing market data to back up their claims, they won’t
get a deal.
As one of the
sharks on the show likes to say, “You’re dead to me.”
Marketing Plan
Once you've finished writing, formatting, branding and packaging your product, you still have a crap-load of work to do.
You've got to
figure out how you are going to attract your target market. What methods are you going to use to attract
and keep the attention of the people you want to have as paying customers?
What type of
a sales funnel are you going to use?
What is your unique selling proposition? If you structure a plan based on the
sales funnel model, you’ll need to decide what channels you are going to use to
broadcast your message.
Execution
Once you've figured out how you’re going to market your business, you've got to execute
it.
The Most
seasoned marketers will tell you to use as many different types of marketing
channels that you can manage. That way,
if one channel goes out for one reason or another, you’ll the other channels
that you can still promote your business through.
For example,
if you are accustomed to using nothing but YouTube videos to promote your
product and then Google decides to kill YouTube for some reason, you’ll still
have 4 or 5 other channels like social media, blogging, or whatever that you’re
still using.
Selling
Once you get
your crowd through your sales funnel, you’ll want to set up a sales page. (Actually the sales page is part of your
funnel, but let’s not split hairs here!)
You've got to
have a page that convinces your readers that if they don’t buy what you have to
offer, life on planet Earth will end. You
either have to have the skill to write compelling copy or hire someone that’ll do that for you.
Delivery
Once you get
everything else in place, you’ll need to make sure you've got a way to collect
money and deliver the product. There are
all sorts of ways to do this from making on line delivery systems to sending
your product directly to the customer by way of snail mail.
Hot Tip #1 - If you have a PayPal account you
can sell eBooks online relatively easy. PayPal
will process your transaction, but it will not DELIVER your eBook. For that,
you’ll need an intermediary site.
There is a
site called Upload –N- Pay that you can use as a
delivery system. The setup is fairly
easy and you can be running in no time.
Hot Tip #2 – if you
want to produce your own physical Audio CD’s or Video CD’s there’s an excellent
company called Kunaki that silkscreens the CD and packages it in a
nice case.
A while back, I was making sports videos for
kids that wanted to get scholarships for college, and I needed a way to get the
video CD into a box. I used Kunaki
because they print on demand.
I uploaded
the video, sent in the case photo and for an extremely reasonable price got my
video and case created.
An
absolutely amazing service! Here is their price list: Kunaki’s Prices
To Your Success!
Mark “Elmo” Ellis
"When it Comes to
High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"
(859) 797-9560
elmo033057@gmail.com
