Should You Outsource Your Info Product Creation?
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 
Leave a Comment