Product Creation Tips
INTRODUCTION
Creating your own information products is the most profitable step you can take for your financial future.
There is a lot of information on the web on how to create your own products. However, not many of these resources provide a concise clear step by step plan to get your product out there and making money in the shortest possible time.
If you keep to the following steps, you will have your own killer product that will bring in sales for years to come.
In this introduction we will talk a little about why the right mind set in necessary to creating your own product.
The hardest thing to getting started with any aspect of Internet Marketing is all of the hard work it involves.
You were pulled in at sometime, by all the websites out there that promise untold riches for 5 minutes work!
This is indeed possible, but not when you are getting started. It is a reality if you already have a list of 3,000 responsive buyers that you can send out an email that will make you thousands of dollars within a few days.
To start off you need to create a product, advertize, build a list and get conversions. That will require some good old fashioned research and elbow grease. Get the infrastructure in place first (that will the found in another “tips” document).
The top questions that slows or stops many people from taking action or making them give up are:
- Is this going to work?
- Is all this work worth it?
- Will my product sell?
Yes it really does work.
You will soon see that Internet Marketing does not have some secret formula.
You must keep at it to see things through to the end, have the ability to follow a series of steps and most important take action; and it must be the right action without distractions.
Whether it takes you 5 days or 5 weeks to follow these steps; see them through, you will achieve online success.
Once you create your own product you can do the same thing over and over to build a virtual empire. Each time it will get easier and faster. Promise
Step 1:
Start researching topics for your new information product.
It can be like the search for King Solomon’s mines. But it doesn’t have to be that difficult; you can find profitable niches with ease. It just requires you to think slightly outside the sphere (I would have said box but that keeps me in the box).
At first, particularly with your beginning product, is to find a niche that interests you or are passionate about. It will make the job easier. This is not always necessarily the case; there are plenty of profitable niches that may not really interest you at all, but do those later.
Think about your hobbies, things that you enjoy doing i.e.: cooking, playing computer games, fishing, DIY, eBay, collecting stamps …. etc. Don’t squander too much time thinking about this as it can prevent you from taking action.
Once you have got your idea for a niche, next find out if it is profitable and if people are looking for it.
Determine how many people are searching for your niche. Use a good keyword tool such as: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
There are many others and you can find them by doing a quick search in your browser for “keyword tool”. We will stick with http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com because it’s fast, free and easy.
Go to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com and type in your main topic, i.e. marketing. When you click the button you will see a list of the top keywords on that topic as well as how many times the words have been searched for.
This will tell you if the niche you are interested in is a popular one with lots of people looking for products related to it.
Your niche search results should have more than 500 preferably over 1000 searches per month. This is a rough estimate, but it will still give you an idea whether you should move forward in that niche.
You see that the top main phrases associated with marketing are:
1 marketing (search) 2,553
2 internet marketing (search) 1,632
3 search engine marketing (search) 1,240
4 marketing strategies (search) 1,229
5 email marketing (search) 1,089
Results will vary, but at the time of this writing. Compared to i.e. food safe:
1 is genetically modified food safe (search) 98
2 safe food storage (search) 14
3 food safe plastic (search) 11
4 is it safe to wash pet food and water bowl with bleach (search) 10
5 food safe wood finish (search) 9
Now do the same with the topic of your choice and pick the top 5 phrases that are most searched for in your niche.
If your niche has less than 500 searches per month then you may want to find another. It may not be worth putting the work into creating a product on a topic if there not many looking for it.
Step 2
How will your product make you money?
There are no guarantees that you will make money with your product. However, if you follow these steps it should make you 99% sure that there is a market available.
Make a folder on your Desktop to keep all your work in collectively. Just use your niche name product i.e. Car Wax Product. As make each product make another folder.
Now, find out if all the people who are searching for your 5 phrases are buying as well. Go to http://www.google.com and type in your top phrase (the one with the most searches) i.e. type in car wax. Look at the number of search results the query has.
At the time of this writing there were 3,880,000 for car wax results and with quotes 458,000 for “car wax”. That is a lot of results and this normally means there is a market for “car wax”.
The next thing you do is look at the number of AdWords ads the phrase has. These are the small ads on the right side of your search results page. Essentially the more profitable a market is the more people will bid to place their ads.
Now type each one of the five phrases you picked earlier and make a note of:
1. The number of search results
2. How many people are buying Google AdWords for that phrase?
If your search returns a page with few or no AdWords ads on it; find a new topic; chances are good that no one is buying in that market.
Now get a rough idea of how much people are willing to pay for Google AdWords; this is a good indicator of how much money is in a niche!
Note what the AdWords are selling; this is a good indicator of WHAT people are buying in the niche and can help you creating your product.
What is the top AdWords Ad? For the dog training niche (at this time of writing) they are:
- Tropical Dog Training
- Achieve Behavior that will impress.
- Serving South Florida
This is not necessarily the best product to copy although it does give you an idea of what people are selling in the niche.
After checking out the search results for each one of your phrases and the competing ads, we need to know how much advertizers are paying; for this we use: http://www.spyfu.com/ this site lets you see what sort of money people are spending for their phrases on Google AdWords.
Type your phrases into the http://www.spyfu.com/ search bar and it will display the information you want.
But I will go through the process with the example phrase car wax:
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We are only interested in the top bit as shown above. You will receive more information showing the Google AdWords ads.
Data analysis and relevancy:
Cost/Click is the amount Google charges an advertiser every time someone clicks on one of their ads. Google lets advertisers bid for keywords and generally the higher the bid, the closer the ad is to the top of the page. That’s why there is a range. Some advertisers adopt a strategy of bidding as much as is necessary to always get the top ad position. Others would rather minimize cost by bidding lower and appearing near the bottom of the page. The higher amount is the better; if they are spending a lot of money per click they must be getting sales.
How You Can Use It
When you know how much a keyword costs, you can take that into account when you are writing search optimized content for your website. If a keyword is cheap and gets very little traffic, all things being equal, you probably don’t need to include it in your content. On the other hand if it would be expensive to buy the traffic on the keyword, you should definitely consider trying to get that traffic organically and include it in you content.
Clicks Per Day is the number of clicks that Google estimates that it can deliver from an ad that appears on its search result page for this keyword/phrase. So, assuming that you don’t exceed your max daily budget, you should receive this number of visitors daily if you advertise on this keyword. Higher is better, it means people are searching for information using that phrase.
How You Can Use It
The number of clicks per day is the best way to gauge the traffic that a keyword gets. It is a useful number in a lot of ways. Consider the difference between the keywords “Low Fares” and “Cheap Tickets”. If you are a travel industry insider, you might assume that “Low Fares” gets a lot more clicks than “Cheap Tickets”. Indeed, “Low Fares” is an industry term, but “Cheap Tickets” gets almost 100 times more clicks. Which keyword would you rather optimize your content for?
Advertisers: is the number of domains that pay for an advertisement to appear on Google’s search result page for this keyword. The maximum number is 21 because they only drill down to the second page of ads. Ideally this number should be lower than 20 as it means that there are more than 20 different competing Google AdWords and try to find a niche with low competition. If it is high you can get others to promote your product.
How You Can Use It
The more advertisers as keyword has, the more competitive it is. Competition is not always bad. It probably means that there are things happening in the space, and that there is money to be made. In fact, if you are using the number of advertisers to help you decide whether to enter the market, think twice before entering a market where there are no advertisers. It might be a sign that no money can be made.
Search Results: is the number of pages Google reports to satisfy the search for this keyword. At the top of every search page, Google returns the total number of results. For example searching for “lard candles” returned a result page that says “Results 1 – 10 of about 98,700”. In this case, the Search Results value is 98,700.
How You Can Use It
You can use Search Results to get an idea of the popularity of a keyword. When Search Results is low, it should be easier to rank high when you put the keyword in your content. Conversely, when there are tons of Search Results, it will be tougher to rank high in the search results.
Cost/Day: If you advertise with Google on this keyword for an entire day, assuming you don’t exceed your max daily budget, this is how much you should expect to pay. Google lets advertisers bid for keywords and generally the higher the bid, the closer the ad is to the top of the page. That’s why there is a range. Some advertisers adopt a strategy of bidding as much as is necessary to always get the top ad position. Others would rather minimize cost by bidding lower and appearing near the bottom of the page. If the advertiser is willing to pay more then they must think the keyword is profitable!
How You Can Use It
When you know how much a keyword costs, you can take that into account when you are writing search optimized content for your website. If a keyword is cheap and gets very little traffic, all things being equal, you probably don’t need to include it in your content. On the other hand if it would be expensive to buy the traffic on the keyword, you should definitely consider trying to get that traffic organically and include it in you content.
Go through each of your 5 keywords/phrases and see the results using http://www.spyfu.com/ ideally you will be looking for all the figures to be high and the competition low (lower than 10 competing ads can be a goldmine!).
As long as people are spending money and there is a market you will make money most of the time!
Now start thinking about narrowing down your niche for product creation using this tool.
We have been focusing on the keyword car wax however it is a good idea to focus on an actual topic within the subject like “car wax review” or “best car wax”
It means you can focus in on one point and it will be easier when creating your product and more targeted.
Here are the results for best car wax:
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As you can see from this example that the phrase is a lot more focused and is very competitive.
However although it is saying we would receive approximately 3.95 – 5 clicks per day if you created a product on the best car wax you would get more sales than if you created the same guide and bid on just the phrase car wax.
Look for a niche this way that tells people how to solve a problem or offer a solution. So for this example we will use the topic best car wax.
Take each of your 5 phrases type them into http://www.spyfu.com/ and note the results and check how much people are spending to be there. Then select the phrase that solves a problem or that is more focused.
Do your research and record your results to the folder that you created earlier.
The next step will show you how to get started creating your product.
Part 3
Now that you have found a market that is profitable you need to create a killer product to fill that market.
There are many different types of products that you can create but for this product we will start with an ebook even if you do not have a clue about ebooks.
The reason for creating an ebook is it is the easiest product to start with.
If your niche product really takes off you can always come back and create add-ons for up sells, more chapters of a 2nd book, educational videos, or an online course and so on.
First thing you need for your ebook is chapters. Do you know what chapters to put in your ebook? You need to know what people want answers to, within your chosen niche.
Got to: http://answers.yahoo.com/ as a resource to see what people want answers to, within a market. It is a tool to find out what the chapters or sections of your ebook should be.
Type in the market phrase you have decided on into the search bar i.e. Best car wax here is what came up:
From the example it is hard to see, but there are: 152,000 results for “best car wax”:
Search through the results and see what the main questions or subjects that are bought up.
- For instance the the example one of the topics that comes up a lot within “best car wax” is the question what is the best car wax for black cars?
The answer to this question by almost everyone is:
“Well that is a very subjective and opinion based decision. The best car wax can very well depend on what it is being used for and what it is being used on. There is however places that rate the best car waxes against each other to really figure out what is the best car wax.”
So taking by that example I would think about entitling one of my chapters: “Summary from Consumer Reports”
The number of chapters you pick for your ebook is dependent on how many different questions are being asked; but aim for about 5 or 6 chapters with good content.
Make a note of the top 5 or 6 questions being asked as these will be the chapters of your ebook.
If your topic/niche was Dog Potty Training; the top 5 issues found for Dog Potty Training were:
- Should I Smack My Dog When Potty Training?
- Is It Right To Shout At My Dog When Potty Training?
- Should You Use A Crate When Dog Potty Training?
- What’s The Best Routines To Potty Train My Dog?
- What Is The Best Way To Potty Train An Older Dog?
There was actually a lot more but for your first product just focus on 5 or 6 main questions and save the questions in a notepad file and put them in the folder you made earlier. The others you can use for a second ebook as followup development.
These become the main subjects or chapters for the ebook and all you need to do know is how to make a good title for each chapter and add content to each chapter.
Always start with an introduction where you can tell them who you are and what you are going to tell them.
This does not have to be too long however a short story will work well.
For the title of your Chapters use catchy titles following the top reasons xxxxxx works well.
So for instance you could entitle the first chapter:
à The Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Not Smack Your Dog While Potty Training
à or the REAL Secrets You Must Know To Do Successful Potty Training!
You can always go back and change the titles so don’t get too caught up on the titles of the chapters. Just get content into your Ebook under each question.
Use these guidelines to help:
- Try to think of a catchy title that grabs attention
- Use words like Secrets or Never Revealed Before to spark interest
- Also use the top 10 reasons _________ or 10 things NOT to do when_________, as it is easier as you write your book
This does not have to be a masterpiece at this point just thinks of 5 or 6 chapter questions that you are going to tell them the answer to. This helps you focus on the content that you are going to create.
Step 4
Find good solid content for your ebook and have the killer product written within a day!
This method works because you don’t have to waste hours performing painstaking research to write your next best seller. All this because all the research has already been done.
To find good quality content for your endeavor the first place you should go is Ezine Articles: www.ezine.com (wait a few seconds for it to load). There are thousands of articles that you can use for your product content.
Do not copy people’s articles, take the main points from an article and re write in your own words. It requires some editing and writing, so stay on track and you will do ok.
Go to www.ezine.com and type your search term in the search box. This will return a list of all the articles in the database. Use the advanced search option so that you will get the best results.
Here is a screen shot of the result for a search for “car wax”
As you can see on the screen capture picture above there are 3.760 articles on this topic. You could write hundreds of chapters, but you only need 5 or 6.
Now it’s time to begin collecting content for your ebook. Start by finding 3 to 4 good articles on each topic that you have chosen for your chapters.
In the folder you created earlier, create separate sub folders for each of your chapters and copy and paste 4-5 articles for each chapter from the articles that you are going use content from. Use the ideas from the articles to create your own do not copy the articles word for word if your finished product. Now you have everything that you need to do is start creating your project.
If you did not find enough to work with at www.ezine.com articles, there are other article sites that you can try:
http://www.articledashboard.com/
You can find more specialized information by doing a forum search in Google for your topic. This brings up all the forums to do with your niche; so if you are looking for something more in depth you can find it there.
Go to: http://www.google.ca/ig?hl=en Type in your phrase/chapter and the word “forums” in the search box. For instance I typed in car wax forums and Google brought back Results 1 – 100 of about 1,010,000 for car wax forums with Safesearch on, (maybe too many) so tried “car wax forums” and Google bought back Results 1 – 15 of 15 for “car wax forums” with Safesearch on which should be plenty enough for every chapter for a car wax product.
Forums are a good place to go if you need a specific answer to a problem that you cannot find anywhere else or answering question your readers/ customers may ask you. Just sign up as a member of an appropriate forum and ask your question and you will get answers.
When you are doing your research in forums say “Hello” and introduce yourself first and add a bit of content before you start asking for help. It does not need to be anything special just tell them about whatever your subject is and what you are looking for.
You will have more than enough information to write your ebook and start making money from it too.
Next a few pointers on how to put the information you’ve collected together as quickly as possible.
Step 5
The best advice is just start. Put it all together. All your research is done. A folder for each of your chapters contains copy of the 4-5 articles you are going to use in each chapter. Write how you speak. The product does not have to be an Aesop masterpiece as long as you are putting in good solid content; people will appreciate that more than any fancy words or filler content.
Take the 4-5 articles for each chapter that fit the title of the chapter; i.e. the first chapter could be something like:
Chapter 1: The Do’s and Don’ts of __________________________
Write an opening paragraph:
- This chapter covers the main Do’s and Don’ts of _______________ so you can get a rough idea of what you should (and shouldn’t!) be doing!
- These tips are from my own personal experience and can really help you get started on the right track.
- Here are the things you should make sure you are doing for effective _____________ and an explanation of each method, and how it helps:
Simply take the main points from each of the articles that you collected and start writing. So for this example you would find your articles on ____________ Tips and take the main points and put them into your own words.
- Tip 1/ Explanation
- Tip 2/ Explanation
- Summary of chapter
Rearrange the information and make sure it is in your own words. A good way to construct each chapter is:
- Start off telling them what you are going to go over in the chapter.
- Then put in your main content, tips and advice.
- At the end of the chapter summarize what you have covered and tell them what you are going to cover in the next chapter.
Just get started and write down your first thoughts, then go back over your work and improve it (spelling, grammar, format, etc.) afterwards; but don’t get paralysis of analysis.
Step 6
Upload it to wherever/however you are going to distribute it and start advertizing and list building. Keep in mind that there are plenty of ideas to go around. After one success, move on and duplicate it again and again.
Spin out more products and keep advertizing & list building; these are the 3 things that are going to bring in the cash. You can also promote other peoples products or services too, but if you don’t advertize & list build you wont get any conversions and that is where the $$$,$$$,$$$.$$ is.
Summary Checklist:
- How many people are searching for your niche? http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
- Who are searching for your phrases that are buying as well? http://www.google.com
- How much people are paying? http://www.spyfu.com/
- What do people want answers to, within your niche? http://answers.yahoo.com/
- Make a note of the top 5 or 6 questions being asked for your chapter titles; copy & paste.
- Find good solid content for your product. www.ezine.com
- Consolidate, rearrange, put into your own words.
- Advertize and list build
- REPEAT
