How to Start Selling Product

The first step to creating your own information product is to figure out what people want to know about your niche. Think back to when you first started your business, what questions did you have? Let’s say that you own a business selling floral arrangements created from silk flowers, here are a few questions that people may want answers to:

• How do I make my own arrangements?
• Where is the best place to buy the items needed to make them?
• How do I preserve them to last over the years?
• How should they be cleaned?
• How can I start a floral arrangement business?

All these questions can be answered in one information product like an ebook ( electronic book) , but they can also be split up into a few different ones.

Write an ebook

Using your business knowledge that will teach other people how to start their own floral arrangement business. You can tell them everything they need to know about how to get started, and even provide them with a bonus resource sheet on where they can buy the best items for the best prices.

Write a step by step e course

Split it up into different lessons that teach people how to make their own silk floral arrangements. Once you have the course written, the rest is automated. Your visitor can sign up, pay for the course, and your autoresponder will automatically send them the lessons based on the schedule you have set up.

Promote through freebies

If you want to answer the questions about preservation and cleaning, then write up a tip sheet or small report and give it away to people who sign up for your newsletter. A 5 day e-course is another way to do this, and you will benefit in more than one way. First, youve captured your visitor and placed them on your mailing list and will be able to promote your business to them, but you’re also promoting your information product within the tip sheet, e course, or small report that they are reading.

How To Find Ideas

If you have a good idea of what people within your niche want, but youre having a hard time nailing down specific topic ideas, don’t worry, there are a few things you can do.

Amazon.com

This website contains a wealth of ideas that you can implement into information products.  Imagine the ideas that will flow after you use Amazon! Use the titles to create your own information on the same topic.

Search Engines

If you’re interested in silk wedding flower arrangements as a topic, but you’re not sure where to head with it, do a quick search and scan the listings to see if anything grabs your attention. You could create an entire line of how to e books that will teach brides to be, how to make silk flower arrangements for various wedding themes (country, Victorian, medieval, fairy tale weddings, winter wonderland, etc.).

Article Directories

By reading what other people are writing about within your niche you can create a large list of topic ideas.

Magazines & Books

Flip through your favorite magazines and books written about your niche, and make a note of anything that catches your attention. Headlines are particularly interesting and can spark some great ideas. Remember, when it comes to creating your own information product, you don’t have to “reinvent the wheel,” find out what others are doing that has proven successful and follow their lead.

Surveys

This a widely used form of conducting market research for online products because it is inexpensive (or free), and it can be sent out to your customers through email. If you opt to do a survey, make sure you keep the questions simple and don’t list more than 10. Otherwise, you run the risk of overwhelming them and taking up too much of their time. By keeping it short and sweet, your response rate is likely to be much
better.

Online Research

By using a keyword research tool like wordtracker.com, you can find out how many people are looking for information on your topic. So if you were to type in “silk floral arrangements,” it will tell you exactly how many people are typing that keyword into the search engines. If a lot of people are looking for information on your topic, then it may be worth creating an information product based on it.

Experiment

Test your information product by giving out freebies. You can do this in the form of a free small report or ecourse to test the waters before you create a large information product on your topic. Doing so will give you an idea of how many people are downloading your report or signing up for your free e course. If it turns out to be wildly popular, then an in-depth information product will likely prove to be just as successful.

Tracking

Software programs can tell you where your customers are going on your website, what they are doing, what they buy, and how long they stay. One way to use this method is to set up a category on your site with some information on your topic, and use your software program to find out how many people are going to that section and how long they are staying there. It will give you an idea of how much of your traffic is interested in that topic.