Info Products
About Info Products
Would you believe that the majority of information products that exist today were not actually created by the person who has their name on the product as the author? It’s true. Most successful marketers have learned to outsource the creation of their products.
Outsourcing can be done in a variety of ways. You may elect to outsource the entire project – or to simply outsource portions of the project. What you will outsource is dependant on several things, including how much writing skill you have as well as how much time you have.
You are running a business, and running a business requires your time. Marketing takes up the majority of your time, in most cases. Therefore, successful marketers have learned to outsource the work, so that they have time to run their business.
Here are some ways that you can outsource your information product creation:
- Hire a ghostwriter to write all of the material. You may just need them to expand on your own written material, or to clean up what you have written. Then again, you may need them to write every word of it.
- Hire a graphical artist to create images for your product, including the ecover.
- Hire a programmer to create a database or software that goes with your information product.
- Hire a professional voice-over person to do audio.
- Hire a professional video editor.
- Hire a proofreader.
- Hire a professional webmaster to create and maintain your membership website.
- Hire a copywriter to create your sales material that pertains to the product you have created.
- Hire an editor to dress up your ebooks and reports. They can manipulate the text and images, and make the product ‘pretty.’
- Hire a project manager, and have them handle the entire project, including all other outsourcing.
Again, you can outsource the entire thing, or just bits and parts of the project. The portions that you outsource will be outsourced either because you do not have the skill to get the job done – or because you simply do not have the time to get the job done.
So, where will you find these professionals who routinely have a hand in creating some of the most successful information products on the market? Well, there are several ways. First, if you know someone who is turning out successful information products, you might get references from them. However, not all authors are willing to share this information.
Another way to find these paragons is through the freelance sites, such as Rent-A-Coder, Elance, Guru.com, or ScriptLance. Make absolutely sure that you see samples of work that they have done in the past if you are going with this option.
In most cases, everything will be handled through the freelance site – including payment. This means that you pay the agreed upon fee through the site, before the work is done, and that money is held in escrow until the work is completed, and you have approved it. If you do not approve it, the money is returned to you, but then you do not own any portion of the work that the freelancer has created for you.
Most of these sites have their own Non-Disclosure/Non-Compete agreements in place, which the freelancers have already agreed to. You can opt, however, to require the freelancer to sign an NDA or Non-Compete agreement that you draw up as well.
As for the copyrights to the work, once the work is paid for, those copyrights belong to you, as this is ‘work for hire.’ In this case, the only way that the creator of the work can retain copyrights to that work is if you do not pay them in full, as agreed. As long as you can prove that you hired the freelancer to create this work, and that you paid them, as agreed, the work legally belongs to you – and this will stand up in any court of law, should it come to that for any reason.
Note, however, that it seldom comes to that. Most of these professionals are exactly that – professionals. They are not hanging around the freelance sites to steal your ideas. In most cases, they are members of the freelance sites because this is where they contract their services out in order to make a living. Just as your reputation is vitally important to you – their reputations are vitally important to them as well.
Filed under Info Products by Almin
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After you have the content for your product down, you have to dress it up. We always say that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover – but then we do that very thing. Your information product will be judged on its look, as well as its quality and quantity of content.
Let’s start with the actual product. For example, if you are creating an ebook, you need to dress up the pages of the ebook. Nobody wants to open an ebook to be confronted with pages and pages of small text.
You need a title page, a table of contents, and possibly a legal page and an index, depending on the scope of your product. The title page should contain some sort of image, if possible, and the pages should have borders and such that make them more attractive.
Many experts believe that you should have plain white backgrounds with black text, but that is not necessarily true. People like colors, as long as those colors are easy to read. You should also include page numbers for easier reference within the product.
If your information product is in video format, be sure to include special effects and audio as well. You might include intro music, exit music, and music or sounds that indicate that you are moving to a new topic. The same is true for audio products.
Really get to know the software that you are using to compile your product – whether it is ebook software, audio software, or video software. By doing this, you will be learning new ways to dress up the end product.
Once you’ve dressed up the inside of the product, you must consider the outside of the product. Now, ebooks are delivered as PDF files, in most cases, and will have the regular PDF icon when the product is resting on your customers desktop – but this is not what they will see when you are promoting the product.
Instead, you need an ebook cover or a box cover. There are numerous great ecover software titles on the market, and you will definitely need one of these – unless you plan to outsource this to someone else.
Some of these products are very easy to use, but don’t produce quality looking covers. You definitely want quality here, since your information product will initially be judged by its cover. Don’t feel that you are fooling your customer – you are not. In most cases, they know what to expect when they download the product – that well-known PDF icon.
Having the cover in your advertising – such as on your sales page – however, gives your product more credibility as a professionally created product. While your customers know that if they are purchasing an ebook, they will have that recognizable PDF icon, at the same time, they will be looking at the ecover that you have created for that product when making their decision.
The same is true for videos. Here, you would use a DVD ecover. If you have created some form of software, it would have an image of a software box cover – just like you would see in software stores offline. Make sure that you use the appropriate image for the product that you are selling.
Your product is intangible, meaning that it cannot be touched. It is digital. But by using ecovers, you make it seem more ‘real’ in the minds of your customers. There has been a great deal of research into online buying practices, and this research shows that products that are depicted with such ecovers always outsell those that do not have ecovers used to advertise the product.
Ecover software costs anywhere from twenty bucks up into the hundreds of dollars. The higher cost products do not necessarily mean that they are better however. Again, each product will require you to learn how to use the software, and this may be very easy, or very hard and beyond your technical skills.
If you are considering purchasing ecover software, it is a good idea to look for those titles that offer trial versions to determine which one will be best for you. Again, take the time to learn how to use the software, unless you are outsourcing.
Just as your sales letter will be designed to make the sale of your product, the sales letters for these ecover software products are also designed to sell the product. Be very aware of this, and make absolutely sure that you try the product out before making the purchase – or at the very least, make sure that you can get a refund for the product if you are not satisfied after your purchase.
Do not, however, make the mistake of trying to sell your information product without an ecover to depict the product. Also note that the image used to depict the product in the sales letter is often used as the background for the title page inside of the product – so it does have an additional purpose, which does make the cost of having the cover created well worth it.
Again, if you don’t have such software, or if you don’t have any graphical image creation skills, you would probably do well to outsource this work. Be sure to read the section on outsourcing, which follows.
Filed under Info Products by Almin
Spread the Word!
