Joshua Black

In case you have been living under a rock for the last 5 years, the information product business has taken off like a rocket. Customers are just recently starting to accept information products and downloadable e-books as REAL vehicles to gain valuable knowledge about a given subject.

This is great news for you!

The cost of starting an information business is cheaper than ever before and now you can build your own international business without having to leave your couch.

Here are some powerful reasons why you may want to become an infopreneur:

  • No employees
  • No inventory to maintain
  • Live or vacation anywhere you want and still be able to run the business
  • No sales tax (in many locations, but this could change)
  • No Shipping costs
  • No face-to-face selling
  • Continuous selling 24/7/365 automatically

…and the list goes on and on

Although the information product business takes a ton of work to get off the ground, and not everyone will succeed doing it, there just might be a chance that this is the small business for you.

Here are the 5 steps to starting an info-product empire from scratch:

1. Make sure you have niche of hungry customers before you start.  This is the single, most-important thing that you can do in order to boost your chances of success. Too many entrepreneurs create the product, then try to find their audience. You got to start with something people want FIRST.

I like to use the  Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Here, you can research any search term that is going through google and you can see how many daily and monthly searches are happening for the term you want to research.  Look for “long tail” keywords that are not too competitive, but are still getting at least 5,000 searches per month.

2. Develop a product that people can’t keep their hands off.  This is the hard part. Not every product you make will be a success. Even the best of the best get it right about 2 out of 10 times, so you will need to create more than one product.

The best way to create a product that people should love, is to completely hold their hand and give them an almost-magic answer to their problem. You want to feed the customer a step-by-step solution, telling them “I know you have this problem and this is the only thing you will have to buy to solve it.”

Here are some things that you should avoid (they are almost guarantees to a failed product):

  • Don’t sell philosophy. It needs to be a step-by-step solution
  • Don’t even try to sell fiction unless you have rabid fans already
  • Don’t sell anything that could get you into legal trouble

Other than that, the sky’s the limit. You can create products that sell like hotcakes in ANY product niche as long as you have customers that want what you have to sell.

3. Develop a professional web site and build a list, starting from day one. You will not sell most of your products on the first visit to your site. You need to have a way to stay in contact with your customers for the long haul.

It is VERY time consuming and expensive to gain a single, PAYING customer. Businesses that rely on getting a new customer each time they have to sell something, do not last very long. Instead, you want to keep selling to your happy, existing customers. Maintain that conversation, keep in touch, and show them how you can serve them with your great products.

Get your site indexed in Google quickly using this tool. I haven’t used it yet myself, because I can get indexed in a few hours now, but if you are just starting out, try the tool.  It is WAAAAAY better than having to wait 6 weeks for Google to randomly find you.

4. Drive that magic traffic bus right to the front door of your site. This is the hardest part. This is where you will spend many sleepless nights, typing your fingers to the bone, but it will all be worth it in the end.

You have to pay for traffic no matter what. Either you will pay for it with money or time, but there is no free lunch. Here are some great ways to drive free traffic with nothing but your time:

  • Write articles
  • Write blog posts
  • Write guest posts
  • Comment on blogs, chat rooms, bulletin boards, and everywhere else
  • Use off-line guerrilla-style marketing (business cards, bandit signs, etc.)
  • SEO
  • Networking with other like-minded people
  • Create an empire of affiliate salespeople

…just to name a few

5. Repeat the entire process and go back to step 1.  Like I said earlier, you will not get rich off of a single product. In order to build an information product empire, you will need to sell multiple products across different niches, at different price points.

You will have a hard time taking a cold customer and selling them $10,000 worth of consulting, but if you start with a $17 book and gradually build a relationship over time, you should have no problem turning a certain percentage of your customers into big-ticket buyers.

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Joshua Black is the creator of the Underdog Millionaire Blog. Having started over a dozen small businesses of his own in the last 15 years, he is small business consultant, copywriter, information marketer and permanent student of small business.  He is also the creator of the Ultimate Information Product Report.  You can also sign up for the daily Underdog Millionaire small business Tip Sheet and not only will you get a wealth of small business, marketing, and sales information, but you will also receive 5 FREE success books (including Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich). Click here to sign up.

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Filed under: Guest Post • Information Business • Information Products • Starting Out

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