People are hungry for information.
They go online to...
- Watch makeup tutorials
- Check out unboxing videos of tech products
- Get inspiration on their next travel destination
- Search for cheat sheets and hacks for their favorite video games
- And the list goes on and on...
When you share what you know, solve problems that people have, teach and inspire them, you then have the best online business opportunity available to you, selling an info product.
Offering information products to people has been my web based model since 2009.
In this post:
- You’ll get access to the methods we used to get our internet business up and running
- Find out how to lay a successful foundation from day one
- And how to generate recurring revenue online from your information products.
Don't think you have something inside of you to sell?
We'll cover that too.
Ideas For Creating Information Products - Selling Your Skills
Perhaps you have a unique skill that you want to make good use of, and you've realized that creating information products from what you know is a practical route.
"Possessing a skill is your ticket to ride, and you have to find out how to create information products out of what you know so you can market it and start building an audience, creating a business out of it."
But what if you think you don’t have a unique skill?
Then it's time to start learning something new. Promoting information begins with you choosing something that you can be passionate about and increase your knowledge through an online course or a workshop you can attend, aiming to be a step or two ahead of the average person.
That's what my wife and I did fresh out of college. We learned a skill that resonated with our interests.
The best web based business for my wife to start involved her learning how to create a specific type of meditation, over the last two years, as documented in my Samcart review, she has sold over 700k of mp3's and online courses.
Types of Information Products Can Encompass Anything
Here's a short list to spark your brain:
- Maybe you are great at racing drones?
- Or you know some yoga poses that can relieve stress?
- Or you can help people lose weight, sleep better, or feel calmer?
Are you a school teacher? Then maybe you can offer an info product and online courses by inventing an English language video course online, or through creating modules that other teachers can use for their classes.
Do you have sick guitar skills? Then you can teach people how to play the guitar online, make tabs and chords that aspiring guitarists can use…
Maybe you’re a naturopath skilled in alternative medicine and know some clean eating and detoxing techniques. Then this would be a good place for you to start.
Make it something you love!
As long as it’s something that:
- Can help others...
- Or bring general value to someone's life...
creating the information products and learning how to sell information online is an extremely worthwhile endeavor.
When you're deciding on your information product idea, make sure it aligns with your values, sparks your passion, and you're willing to continue learning and improving on your skills and knowledge around it.
The Web Based Business Model Fundamental to Sell Your Info Products
We will go through two different web based business models to generate leads and sales for your info product.
But, if you pursue either one, or both of those endeavors and do not have this principal at its core, your business will fail.
What is this fundamental for information products?
It is building and nurturing an email list.
Your list is the only way to ensure that you always have an available path for you to sell your information products.
You're up against a lot...
- Search algorithms change
- Popularity of Social media platforms shift
- And digital advertising prices can change simply because of demand.
You own your email list and no one can inhibit you from sending an offer to your list except for you clinging to your perfectionism and never hitting send.
If you do not adopt building your list from day one, you will be starting over from ZERO every day until you do!
When we first started our information product business, we wrote an email series of 7 to 10 emails for our great autoresponder campaign.
These emails are made to be personal, not copywritten for your information product only; otherwise, you will lose.
Just like with any other online business model, you have to:
- Develop a close relationship with your audience...
- And seek to gain their trust...
Some people will buy from you when they first meet you, but most will need to gain trust in you before they're even willing to hear what you have to say.
So you have to find a way to connect with them and let them know that you can deliver results to them and they can benefit from what you have to offer.
The formula of these campaigns is give, give, ask or give, give, give, ask, etc.
In a word, value...
You have to provide value, that will help your customer avatar in their day by solving significant problems and providing encouragement and motivation.
Every 3rd, 5th, or 7th email, or so you have earned the opportunity to:
- Offer an info product
- Promote the online courses you made into information products
- Suggest an affiliate offer for to your audience
- Sell an eBook
- Sell an .MP3 course
- Offer a REAL Book
- Promote a video series
- Offer access to a membership site
- Sell a "deep-dive" report
This consistent giving of value to your email list will create engaged fans of you.
Currently, we send a specialized new email about three to five times a week.
When you do this email marketing thing the right way, over time you'll have great emails you will want to add to your welcome email series.
Our email autoresponder series consists of about 30 automated emails now. Each new subscriber gets to receive these weekly email broadcasts a few times a week.
You’ve heard the money is in the list.
This is absolutely the case...
That is why building your list of email subscribers is one of the five steps an online business needs to take to be successful.
There are two ways to gain email subscribers that will dictate how you will sell your information products online.
Learn more about email marketing in How To Craft Your Email Autoresponder That Gets Results.
How to Sell Information Online
When deciding how to create and sell information online, you're limited but two factors:
- Time (because we are all limited on time)
- And more importantly - your budget.
So, you'll most likely end up spending more time on your project because cash flow doesn't exactly exist for you yet...
That being said... there are three main scenarios you will face at the start of offering information products online:
- You can start for free
- Use what small amount of money you DO have
- OR you can go the funded startup route.
In our case, we were fresh out of college, and we were broke. So we decided to pick an information product business model we could get up and running with no money.
1. Selling Information - Our Content Marketing Business Model
Selling information products via content marketing is one of the best online businesses to start with no money.
You can build and host a WordPress website for your information product business for about $60 a year.
We couldn’t afford paid advertising, so our only route was content marketing and selling online courses from our website that carried no cost.
We would make excellent content based on popular keyword searches like, how do I meditate, what does meditation do to me, and so on.
The information seeker would find our content, read it, then while they are on our website we offered them free meditations via a popup.
A very successful lead generating machine that has generated us 178,632 leads in the past 22 months!
Think about keywords...
Melanie, my wife and business partner, was posting each day. Writing our nice long posts and using Google’s keyword tool which was before you needed to find a Google keyword tool alternative, to make sure her writings had search phrases in the titles and content.
We relied on the old Google tool to choose keywords and keyphrases that our content was based upon which helped our website get a high probability of coming up on search results whenever users were searching for those keywords.
For the first two to three years in our entrepreneurial endeavor, we were doing content marketing, all organically. Free traffic, as people would call it.
What wasn’t free was all the time spent on doing the keyword research, creating content, spending time to learn SEO and optimizing our posts for search engine marketing.
You either got:
- Time...
- Or money...
Rarely will it be both...
At that point in our lives, we decided to stick with that method since we needed a better alternative to Facebook advertising and made time to spend doing it.
Video can go a long way in this world too. Consider doing a video each week on YouTube. For some people putting out content via video medium will work best... Others may still like to write.
How to start an Information Product Business Online With Content Marketing
- Know and find your audience
- Become a content creator
- Utilize Keyword Research and Learn SEO
- Capture leads with a Pop-Up tool
- Dominate search engines with a full content marketing strategy
- Email Market the right way
We were full on content marketing, making some money online and headway, but our income consistency was not there. And we were FAR from making any type of passive income.
Four years into building our information product business, I purchased an information product, lol, by Mike Dillard.
This showed me a whole new strategy and model so we added in this model and it was the BEST move I ever made!
2. Promoting Info Products Via Sales Funnels
Dillard’s philosophy focused on using a predictable strategy to generate leads and revenue that you can scale.
Unlike whatever you do online that's just a hobby, earning you minimal cash flow, sales funnels are an essential element when building a REAL web based business in selling information products.
According to him, a real internet business that you can build your life from allows you to anticipate everything - from the lead cost, cost per customer, and the revenue per customer.
Not only are these predictable, but these are also measurable.
Tracking is VERY important...
By doing all of these, you’re able to create profit instead of just spinning your wheels, digging your hole deeper, and not getting anywhere in your web based business.
Because of Dillard's Info product, we gained the knowledge of how to close the feedback loop and tighten up our business approach.
"It used to take hours and even days for someone to discover our content and join our email list. Now it only takes minutes for someone to go through the process and become a customer. "
Before, we wouldn’t even offer them anything to buy until the third day they were on our list.
If I started over again today, I would do the content marketing, because it is a fundamental to a successful business online.
But I would scrape $5 dollars a day together and master the Facebook Advertising $5 a day strategy.
Info Products via a Sales Funnel
- Create an Excellent Lead Magnet
- Craft a Great Opt-In Page
- Create a Sales Funnel
- Learn How to Advertise on Facebook
- Email Market the right way
We put a little bit of cash into advertising, which in our case was as low as $10 a day. Then, we delved into building an email list, which we did by offering a product for free in exchange for people’s email address.
Paid advertising to sell information products is an ongoing analyze and adapt strategy.
In my case when I had created my first sales funnel, I tested Facebook Pay Per Click.
I even tried:
- Google Pay Per Click...
- And even Pinterest Ads...
- LinkedIn Ads
- Instagram Ads
Eventually I learned that my cost per customer was much lower on Facebook.
Then I just focused on and maintained Facebook marketing because of the lower cost, which helps give me a higher profit.
Earn Residual Income With A Membership Program
If you want to up your game in the entrepreneurial world, then you should add a membership program in the mix.
Why?
Recurring revenue...
With a recurring revenue model, these memberships generate consistent, predictable cash flow each month.
Our information product business now includes a sales membership funnel.
We offer a $1 trial for the first week, which then turns into a $37 monthly recurring membership revenue.
After they subscribed to the $1 membership trial, we give them a one time offer to have a membership for an entire year at a discounted rate of $197.
If you do the math:
- $37 per month for a year...
- Comes out to $444 for the year...
- So by offering it for $197...
- It makes it a $240 a year discount...
And here’s the kicker - it was a time-sensitive offer, so that gives them a sense of urgency to join because this offer will NEVER be available ever again.
We additionally offer a 30-day money back guarantee which makes it more difficult to say no. We make it super clear in our sales message that it is absolutely risk-free.
At the same time, people become more confident in us and trust us because of that guarantee.
They know they can trust us, they know we don’t dupe people, and they love the perks they get from becoming a member.
They’re happy, and we’re happy.
And that’s the kind of strategy and model that we want - where it’s a win-win for everyone.
You can see our online membership model in My Six Figure Membership Funnel Hack.
Start Offering Information Products Today
It all starts with the types of information products that bring value and can easily be expanded upon on your part.
Your website could revolve around a specialized knowledge or acquired skill or the desire to help people. You also want to make some profits out of it.
Make email marketing and list-building the marketing priority in your information product business.
Start creating content either for search engine marketing, or your sales funnel, embody the 5 fundamentals of a successful business online, and create your best web business by promoting information products.
Think about the relationships you want to build...
The MOST important thing underneath everything that you do when you are promoting information products is to:
- Develop trust
- Nurture and maintain a relationship with your audience.
- Be responsive when they ask for something
Give them something valuable, something that can change their lives for the better, and always deliver on your promises.
When your audience realizes you’re legit, you’re actions reflect your words, and your sincerity in helping them is real, then they’ll stay loyal to you and spread the word about the positive things they have received because of you.
Not only do you gain a customer.
You gain a large following that will be with you for the long haul.
This type of information product strategy and model will give you the abundant cash flow you desire that will allow you to live the lifestyle you choose.
Comment below if you have any questions, I'd love to chat!