Entrepreneurs want to be of service to their community, but at the same time you need to be generating an income.  Have you considered getting some money rolling in quickly by creating an information product? Are you thinking about creating one of your own? How can you tell if your information product will truly appeal to your community and generate revenue?

Here’s a checklist of 6 things you need to ask yourself BEFORE creating your own information product:

Is your product excellent?

People become loyal, repeat customers if they like your product.  However, if they’re not happy, they won’t buy from you again, and they’ll discourage their network from doing so. Selling an inferior product may make you money in the short-term, but it will damage your online reputation and lose you customers in the long run.

Do people need it?  Is there enough demand?

You can have a superb quality product, but if there is no demand you still won’t make any sales.  If you can create a product that people really need, your sales effort will be much easier.

How will it generate sales?

Rather than selling a one-time information product, design one that is suitable for follow-up products and updates that you can offer to your existing customers for a reduced rate.  If the original product is of a high enough quality and really benefits your customers, they are almost guaranteed to buy the follow up product.

Does it look like a professional product?

Presentation is at least as important as content in establishing the credibility of your product, if not more so.  A great logo, clear graphics and a professional high impact front cover will all help to increase your sales and gain the loyalty of your customers.   A few well-chosen pictures can really lift your product and make it look more professional.  Photographs are available for reasonable prices from various image sites on the web.

Did you follow legal requirements?

Entrepreneurs want to avoid infringing copyright or trademark laws when creating an information product.  Online software is available to check your content for plagiarism, and your title and logo for trademark violations.  This will save you a lot of hassle and expense further down the line.

What can make your product stand out as different?

Including personal anecdotes and stories, if appropriate, can add a human-interest element that makes it easier to read or listen to your product.  You may also want to add a list of resources in your product – organizations, websites and other online resources that might be useful to your customers – that can really enhance its perceived value.

(By Guest Blogger, D’vorah Lansky)

In my previous article I shared with you tips for producing your teleseminars. Today I would like to share with you some ideas for promoting your teleseminars. Spread the word, through email and via the social networks, to let people know that you are holding a teleseminar or teleseminar series. Have a way that they can register for details and find out more information.

One option is to offer your teleseminar for free. Let people know that everyone is invited to attend; all they need to do is register. Let them know that, if they register, even if they cannot make the live event, they will get the replay link so that they can listen to the recording online. By offering the live teleseminar for free, you are going to grow your list. You can also provide a paid option for people who would like to be able to receive the MP3 recording and the transcripts.

To build your subscriber list, set up a new list in your AWeber or auto responder system. Post the opt-in form on your blog, on Facebook or on a Web page, and encourage people to register for information and call in details for your teleseminar. Their information will go into your auto responder system, which will allow you to send out a message thanking them for registering. You can also send out the call details and reminders the week before and the day of your teleseminar.

After the teleseminar, you can send out the replay link. If you have provided the live teleseminar for free, provide a way for people to listen to the replay online. On the replay page you can have a gentle invitation inviting people to purchase the MP3 recording and transcripts if they’d like to be able to access the material offline.

Now that these subscribers are on your list, you can drip valuable content to them as well as invitations to future teleseminars. These contacts are going to stay on your list because they want to access your content and connect with you and your community. Your greatest asset of your online business is your list. If you nurture and feed your list, they are going to want to hear from you and they are going to want to learn from you.

Another way to grow your community and deepen your relationship with your subscribers is to have a way for them to interact with you. By creating a page on Facebook or a group on Linked In, you can invite your subscribers to connect with others in your community. In this way they will be able to network, interact and share their interests and ideas. Internet Marketing expert Stu McLaren shares a relevant quote on this topic, “People will come for the content but they’ll stay for the community.”

What are you doing to build community with your prospects, clients and subscribers? I’d love to hear your comments, questions and success stories. Please scroll down to leave your comment.

As part of the Blog Tour that Kim and I are participating in, you will earn points for each comment you leave as well as for each tweet you post about this article using the hashtag #blogworldtour .

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If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to receive a free chapter of my book at www.ConnectCommunicateProfit.com

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best,

Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky

Relationship Marketing Wizard | Author | Speaker | Educator

www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog

Hi, my name is D’vorah Lansky and I’m known as the Relationship Marketing Wizard. I’d like to thank Kim for having me as a Guest Blogger on her site and for participating as a Guest Blogger on my site. Kim and I met several years ago as a result of discovering one another on the social networks. I admire Kim greatly and am so excited for her success and all that she is doing. As her community you know how fortunate you are to have access to such an incredible leader and educator. To view Kim’s articles and listen in to an interview I did with her, visit this page.

Harnessing the Power of Teleseminars as a Powerful Relationship Marketing Tool

A teleseminar is an online conference call that you provide to a group of people on a specific topic. By recording your teleseminar and making it available for your audience to enjoy, you will be able to build your list, reach a wider audience, and provide this valuable content to more people.

How to Broadcast Your Teleseminar

There are many options available for delivering and recording your teleseminar. I’ll share with you a free option that is easy to use and has many wonderful features. Visit Free Conference Calling to  and set up a free account. Spend some time reading through their documentation and set up a test call with a friend or business associate. This service allows you to create a podcast of your calls or your call series, download the MP3 of your recording and interact with your audience through a web interface.

Preparing for your First Teleseminar

For your first teleseminar, you may want to simply invite some friends or family members to attend. Deliver your message while live people are on the call with you. There’s something very powerful about delivering your message to a live audience that you can’t capture when you’re recording at home by yourself. When you have attendees with you on the call, you can’t say, “wait a minute let me rewind that.” This causes you to keep moving forward and sharing your message. You can always edit the audio recording and the transcripts afterwards. Once you’ve done this a few times, you’ll be a pro. You get more comfortable as time goes on.

We are a busy society and people have busy schedules. The flexibility of the teleseminar format allows listeners to listen to the call live or afterwards via the recording. If people are not able to attend your live call, you should never take it personally. People have busy schedules. Make the content as accessible as possible for as many people as possible in as many ways as possible.

Make it easy for your audience to access your material. Let them know ahead of time that while it is preferable for them to be on the call live, that if for whatever reason, they aren’t able to make the live teleseminar that they’ll be able to access the recording afterward. By making the recording accessible to your audience after the live call, you make it easy for them to consume and absorb the content. Some people will listen online while others will download the recording to their iPod or burn a CD to listen to in the car. The more ways you can get your content into the hands of your audience the better off you are. This gives your audience greater access to your knowledge and products and gives you the opportunity for building stronger relationships with them.

Ideas for Teleseminar Topics

• Q & A teleseminar where your audience either asks you live questions or you answer questions that have been submitted in writing
• Expert interview teleseminar where you feature speakers on topics related to your topic and/or topics that your audience is interested in
• Book review teleseminars
• Educational course delivered via teleseminar

Teleseminars are very effective in getting your message out to solve the challenges that your audience is facing and for you to become that known expert in your field.

Take the step to hold your first teleseminar. Take notes as to what went well and what you’d do differently. Continue to hold teleseminars, perhaps on a weekly or monthly basis, as practicing will ensure you get better and better. Just like anything in life, you’ll get better with practice.

I’d love to hear your comments, questions and success stories regarding teleseminars. Please scroll down to leave your comment.

As part of the Blog Tour that Kim and I are participating in, you will earn points for each comment you leave as well as for each tweet you post about this article using the hashtag #blogworldtour .

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If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to receive a free chapter of my book at www.ConnectCommunicateProfit.com

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best,

Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky

Relationship Marketing Wizard | Author | Speaker | Educator

www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog

The truth is when it comes to an info product, it’s just a matter of speaking to that person and helping them solve their problem via a product versus live or in-person. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.

There many different types of information products from ebooks to reports to audios to ecourses, so you need to decide which is the most suitable for your ideal client and what’s easiest for you to do – because if it’s too hard or too overwhelming chances are you’ll never get around to actually doing it.

Since ebooks are one of the most popular info products let me share with you some tips on how to easily create your own ebook. Successful ebooks are written with your audience in mind. They’re organized in an easy-to-read manner. They solve a problem, and they offer a benefit.  An ebook can be 20 pages or it can be 200, the important thing is to consider your audience.  Will they read a 200 page e-book on your subject?

Here are a few ways that you can create a book in a short time – often with little or no new writing required.

• Turn your blog into an information product. Taking your previous blog posts and turning them into an ebook is a quick and easy way to produce an information product.  This method works well as you are already considered an expert in your subject area and you have done most of the writing and research already.

• Buy your ebook by using PLR Material. If you don’t have the time or confidence to write your own information product, Private Label Rights material is a great way to produce one quickly and simply.  PLR material is original content that is sold to a specific number of people to be used in just about any way they wish.

• Collect expert information by simply compiling other people’s articles. A compilation of informative articles can be a valuable resource for someone that wants information and a variety of views on a given subject, but doesn’t have the time to trawl the internet themselves.  Packaging your compilation with a professional cover and a well written introduction can turn simple articles into a superior product.
• Repurpose the content from your teleclasses. Once you’ve run teleclasses you can repurpose the content from your transcripts. I recently took the transcripts of three of my teleclasses, around a related topic, and organized the content to create an ebook called The Motivated Mindset.

Still not sure where to come up with content? See what entrepreneur, Heather Stephens, has to say about this dilemma (in a shameless plug for my new program …

“Think It, Create It, Sell It was brilliant! It helped me figure out how easy it can be to come up with great content. I especially appreciated the PLR training because now I see that it’s something I can make my own, as a springboard for ideas. I appreciated that even though every little thing we know is something we learned from someone else, when it’s coming from me, in my voice, that makes it uniquely mine.”

My next Think It, Create It, Sell It program starts on July 6^th. I’ll share four techniques to streamline your product creation that suit your personality (since not everyone is a writer).

The amount of people you can serve and the amount of money you can make is somewhat limited.  What you need is your own signature product that will get your brilliance out there even when you’re at a soccer game with your kids, on the phone with a friend or even sleeping so you can keep the sales coming in. Having a product will allow you to leverage your time and breakthrough to the next level.

It doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated. It does have to provide high value content and it does have to be YOUR product. Affiliate marketing is useful to generate some cash but your own signature product is a must if you truly want to profit from your ideas.

How to use information products to launch your business.

There are two main uses of information products: selling them or giving them away.  The reason for doing the first is obvious; you receive a fixed amount of money for each product that you sell. This is a profitable business and roughly twenty percent of Internet sales come from information products.

Here are a few of the reasons you might consider giving away an information product:

• In exchange for a name and e-mail address for your list
• As an incentive to subscribe to your membership site
• Because it includes affiliate links that will make you money in the long term
• To increase your reputation as an expert on your subject matter
• To build credibility with your customers so they will buy a higher value product

Most online businesses will seek to fulfill at least two of the above when putting together their information products.

Advantages of online information products

Online information products are cheap, simple to produce and they’re low risk products that you can create yourself.  Even better, they’re always in demand.  Many businesses love information products and use them regularly as part of their product line and marketing plan. 

Here are a few of the advantages of selling online information products rather than traditional physical products.

• Low start up costs. Producing quality information products requires very little investment.  Once you have a domain and a host, you only need the ability to create PDF files and you are ready to create your product. The production costs remain the same no matter how many copies of your information product you sell.  Creating multiple products is the same as copying a file.

• High service levels. There are no packaging or shipping costs with online information products and they can be delivered to the customer within minutes of order, with no possibility of getting lost in transit.

• Low overhead.  With an online information product you will not have to employ someone to oversee production, to manage your inventory, or to organize shipping.  You will not have to buy or maintain expensive equipment to manufacture your product and you will not have to hire premises to house that equipment.

Using an informational product allows you to continue with what you do best – provide high value to your ideal client. But it ALSO allows you to leverage your time and expertise much more efficiently, which translates into an exceptional income.

On July 6th, my program Think It, Create It, Sell It will re-launch. This time instead of packing the content into 3 weeks, I’ve organized the content into digestible bite-sized pieces and spread it out over 8 weeks so you can enjoy your summer AND get it done. I will pull back the curtain and share ALL my steps with you so you can reach a larger audience and make more money.

Visit this page to learn more details of what you’ll learn. (You’ll also  receive a special gift from me to get you started on the process of creating your own product in case you don’t want to wait until July 6th.)

You answer questions and problem-solve on the spot every time you work with your client, and the problem-solving probably comes quite naturally to you, and your clients  value the information you provide.

The question becomes:  How can you reach a broader audience of ideal clients who need you to solve their problems? One answer is to create an information product that will meet their needs.

So you can make this happen quickly, the key is to figure out what you know TODAY (without any extra learning and that’s already in your knowledge base) that you can use to help others.

After teaching this point emphatically at my recent class of Think It, Create It, Sell It, Theresa Anderson then shared:

“Finally, I am observing myself’ as I do things that seem routine for me. I’m writing down my processes so that I can see if there are things that I may be able to use to help others.  As I gather things from my computer folders, I am actually quite amazed at how much I have written or created!”

As you consider creating your own product, start observing yourself and how you do all the things you do. Especially those things that come naturally to you. Carry around a notebook for a week and jot down the questions you’re being asked along with your answers. Notice what you do easily.

Don’t underestimate what you have to share with your ideal client, nor take for granted that which comes easily to you. (That’s a pretty good sign it’s your special gift).  Too many entrepreneurs, especially women, think they’re not enough and that they need to learn more. My guess is that you know a lot more than you even realize, and you’ve got plenty to offer TODAY just as you are!

If you’re ready, right now, to get your info-product done so you can help more people (and make additional income) join me and a great group of dynamic entrepreneurs for Think It, Create It, Sell It. 

One of the biggest A-Ha’s participants got from this first class is that it’s MUCH easier than they thought it would be!

The belief is often that creating  an info-product is so hard…

But it doesn’t have to be.

After our first class, Theresa shared:

“My key nugget is that my product doesn’t have to be hard. My product is going to be something that I already know…. I’m making a list of the things that I have already written (either for a client, for a class, or from a college course) that I may be able to re-purpose.”

So if you’d love to have an info-product with YOUR name on it (so you could make money even while you’re on vacation) but don’t know where to start here’s a tip to get your started…

Do what Theresa’s doing and create an up-to-date list of all the content you already have. List everything you can think of – blogs, newsletter articles, class outlines, letters responding to client questions (stuff sitting dormant on your hard-drive)…

It comes down to repurposing what you already have.

And if you need more ideas then join us and we’ll brainstorm together – this is a very fun, interactive and implementation-focused group.

(By the way, it’s not too late to join us, you can listen to the recording and be up-to-speed for our interactive Hot Seat call Thursday.)

I love to "follow" entrepreneurs that I admire and see what they’re up to and what’s working from them. There is incredible value to be found learning from others. But the danger is losing yourself in the process. Every single one of us is so different.  So yes learn from others, but ultimately you have to get it done in your own way.

Maybe you’re a writer and you’ve convinced yourself that you need to go on a speaking tour all around the country to promote your new book. But the idea isn’t attractive to you at all. You’re more of an introvert. You hate to speak and you have young kids and don’t want to leave home…  But "somebody" told you that you should go speak around the country. Chances are you’re speaking tour won’t be a success because your energy isn’t there. Listen to your gut, there are other ways to get publicity for your book. If it doesn’t feel right for you it’s not authentic marketing.

My business girlfriend, Laura West, and I have had many conversations on this topic. She coaches entrepreneurs and helps them to see how authentic marketing of themselves is what they need to be focusing on and I love her philosophy of attraction marketing. Basically when you come from what is unique and special about you that is very attractive to others. When you’re being authentic and you have integrity, it’s appealing and engaging. People respond because they don’t feel like they’re being sold to, instead they’re being connected with.

So what’s the best cure for entrepreneur envy?

In addition to taking seminars, reading books, and "following" other experts, you need to take the time to do a little "internal research." You need to get to know your gifts and really own what is special and unique about you that nobody else can give. It’s when you get clarity on that that you can achieve authentic marketing of your business.

If you want some help on how to identify your authentic marketing style, check out my next blog. You’ll receive the clarity you need to move forward in your authentic marketing strategy, and your business will really grow because of it.

I’ve been there many times and I tell you it’s awful – there’s nothing fun about it. My energy’s drained. I start feeling bad about my business and where it’s going, and I used to wonder if I had a choice.  The truth is not everyone is your ideal client and you absolutely have a choice with whom you work.

When I interviewed Lisa Cherney, the Founder of Conscious Marketing, for my Get It Done Training call and she spoke on how to attract ideal clients. It was fascinating to learn that even though Lisa has a lot of corporate marketing experience, when she started her own business she was initially attracting the wrong clients and started dreading Mondays.

She turned it all around, started enjoying herself AND making a great income working part-time when she became clear on who her ideal client is. So I want to share some of her tips with you.

Your ideal client is not the same as your target market. Your target market is more about demographics – age, gender, location, income etc. This is helpful information to have but you’re really just scratching the surface with this information, it’s not the “juice” of who your client is.

To market consciously, Lisa suggests the following basic exercise:

First, focus on yourself and what you want to offer. What makes you unique? What are your talents and gifts? And THE most important point to get clear about: What transformation do you offer to clients?

Then, concentrate on the clients you love to work with and analyze why. Ask yourself, “Why do I enjoy working with this person?” Usually, the answer lies more in this person’s interests, qualities and desires, than in their demographic profile.

Finally, think about who benefits most from what you have to offer. Think about which of your clients are seeing results and are enthusiastic about what you’re offering. It’s important it is to be of service but it’s not just about serving everyone. It’s about being clear with whom you can provide the MOST benefit and value.

Becoming crystal clear on who your ideal client is the first step to successfully marketing to them. Without that clarity you’re wasting your time because you’re not communicating effectively. As motivated entrepreneurs we want to get it done so we can easily focus our attention on the “doing” of marketing – blogging, social networking, systems, etc. However, it can be a waste your time to focus on these marketing strategies if you’re not clear about the message you’re communicating.

When you’re clear on who you want to work with, it’s easier to share this with others – it just rolls off your tongue. This leads to better quality referrals, higher energy (because you interact better) and everyone getting better value.

One more tip! As you evolve and changing as a person your ideal client is probably evolving too! Spend time, at least once a year, going through the exercises to fine-tune who your ideal client is. This will help you effectively market what makes you unique and be better equipped to attract your ideal clients.