What is your favorite way to earn money online? Do you create ads? Are you involved with affiliate marketing? How about selling your own products that you create? There is a wealth of opportunity in online businesses through the use of technology. Many entrepreneurs work virtually and have built successful online businesses this way. The best way to create an online business is to figure out what you love doing and find a way to market it. Creating information products that you sell online can be profitable, and it’s very much in demand.
What Is An Information Product?
Information products are simply products that provide information and use your knowledge and expertise. Consumers can download these digital products from your website. In some cases, information products are not digital. Coaching and mentorship can be non-digital information products. Most people refer to this as a service, not a product; however, they have the same outcome of providing information. Some other types of information products are:
- Ebooks
- Webinars
- Membership Sites
- Online Courses
- Reports and analysis
- Templates
- Live event recordings
What Is So Great About Selling Information Products?
If you are a freelancer, you have a lot of knowledge in a specific niche. You likely have a valuable skill set that people already pay you money for. You can turn your expertise into a product.
Information products are a great online business because you don’t have to store or ship anything, and there is no overhead. You create the product once and then sell it over and over again. Once you have created the first product, it doesn’t cost you anything to produce more copies of it. When you make a sale, it’s almost entirely for profit.
It’s much easier to sell an existing customer a second, third, and fourth product than it is to find a brand new customer. Once you’ve done all of the work earning their trust, they are more likely to return for more of your products. Information products are great because they help solve a problem that your customer may have. To create the next product, take a look at your customer and what they need to do next. Do they have another problem that you can help them solve?
The Information Product Sales Flow
The first product you sell might be an eBook or a course on setting up a WordPress site. Next, your client will need to create content for their new website. They may need to learn how to create the type of content that attracts the right kind of reader. Your client may need to know about web traffic, list building, and effective social media strategies, also. Each one of those items can be a new information product you can sell to your customer. These items can also be new content for your paid membership site.
Once you know the types of informational products you want to create, it’s important to keep putting out new products consistently. You always want to have a new product available to your existing customers. You will also attract new customers along the way who will not only buy your new product but may also buy some of your previously created products.
How To Be Consistent With Your Business Strategy
Start with a list of products that you want to create and research how to create them. Estimate how long it will take you to create each product and all of the infrastructure that goes along with it. That could be a sales page, autoresponder, and emails to create a schedule and block out parts of your calendar with time to work on your product launch. Doing something every day and being consistent is what impacts your business growth.
Once your business expands to the point that you can’t do it all, you may need to enlist helpers. You may decide to outsource the graphics to a graphic designer. You may choose to hire writers to help create the products for you. Or, you may choose to bring on a Virtual Expert ® to provide your email and calendar management or content management. A team of Virtual Assistants can take care of all of these things, including customer service and marketing.
And that is how you build a successful online business by creating information products from start to finish. What types of information products do you want to create and sell to your customers?