Yesterday’s post offered some additional details from my 2 1/2 year journey to become a profitable infopreneur. Today’s post fills in a few more missing pieces.
The road to information product sales is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s a time consuming journey filled with bends and twists in the road, lots to learn about technology and other things, and the potential for overwhelm. Patience, tenacity, and resolve are required.This is a long distance run and not a sprint.
In the beginning, it’s easier and definitely more profitable to trade time for dollars than to develop and learn the systems for sustaining and promoting a line of information products. My revenues actually dropped the second year of this transition as I dealt with a pretty steep learning curve.
Create products in printed and digital versions to appeal to customers with either preference. Bring the content alive for buyers with accompanying workshops or telephone coaching sessions that are priced right so customers can connect personally and get the guiding help they need to be successful.
Be prepared to learn a new vocabulary of terms and tools to grow the information product division of your company. Affiliate program, joint venture, blog, online shopping cart, merchant account, auto-responder, and broadcast email are just a few of the new ideas to learn about, apply, and sustain to lend fuel to a successful effort.
Just because you post the letter to your website or blog doesn’t mean people will buy. You have to build traffic so people will read it. Growing your list of customers and potential customers is essential. You have to experiment to find the right price point that invites people to buy, and offer extraordinary guarantees to remove the risk associated with any purchase. And, you have to remember that people take their time to get to know your expertise over time. They buy when they are good and ready — or they don’t.
Products that appeal to sight, sound, and experience sell better than those that appeal to one sense alone. Creating a “best value” toolkit that involved audio files and printed materials in brief, mid-length, and longer length elements made a big difference in generating ongoing and consistent sales results. Offering Seattle Chocolate Company truffles, Biscot-Tea™, and freshly brewed tea helps to transform workshops into “mind, body, spirit” events that are delicious and inspiring.
Don’t underestimate the appeal of a sassy event name. When I created the Publici-Tea™ Workshop to bring alive the content within the Authentic Visibility Publicity Toolkit, sales escalated immediately. The magic of this name and the “comfort and joy” approach to delivering the information has proven to be very inviting for event guests who appreciate receiving a guiding hand to ensure their DIY publicity success. Special thanks to my friend and colleague Michele Lisenbury Christensen, co-founder of Working with Power, LLC , for suggesting this memorable and well branded event name.
Buy a digital recorder, and learn how to use it. Every speech, workshop, and presentation becomes potential content for audio products to serve customers beyond your own backyard. My digital recorder of choice is the SONY PCM-D50 Linear PCM Recorder. Purchase affordable audio conversion software like Blaze Media Pro so you can conveniently convert your files to MP3 format.
Learn how to sell your products from the back of the room to make every speaking engagement – paid or not – pay back to your business for your investment of time, passion, and effort. One big idea I came upon was to ask professional groups to pay for my speaking services with quantity booklet purchases. Now, everyone who listens to my presentations gets a valuable gift from the sponsoring organization. I am compensated for my speaking efforts, And, everyone in the room leaves with useful tips and inspiration that will lead them back to my door at some point in the future.
Articulating your unique selling proposition in an inviting, emotionally connecting, and visual way is well worth the time and effort you apply to getting the message right. And it’s not easy. My ideal customers most definitely want to “Get seen, heard, and celebrated in their own backyards … and beyond” through the power and impact of free publicity. This message resonates, reflects favorably on how my company serves, and invites the right customers to my care.
Quality packaging contributes to a favorable, high-value customer experience. Big box office supply stores are rich with fabulous packaging options that can make your offering look polished, professional, and inviting for potential customers. The right information products well presented sell better than those that show up in a generic folder every day of the week.
Promote products in a wide variety of ways consistently. Press releases, pitch letters, blog posts, long sales letters, newspaper columns and articles, teleseminars, webinars, speaking engagements, panel discussions, meeting notices, networking events, joint ventures, radio interviews, videos, and ezines represent a sampling of tactics that need to be consistently and tenaciously applied to deliver the message on an ongoing way to invite consumer purchases. Not every offer delivers the same response. Be prepared to test a variety of terms and offer details to find the perfect blend that works for your customers.
The time it takes to do all of this is not “passive income” by any definition. This is a lot of hard work. And it is well worth it if you stick with it and keep learning every step of the way. Finding ways to diversify income streams, serve new customers, and leverage expertise over larger groups of potential customers is a good thing in the best and the worst of times, especially for a solo practitioner such as myself.
By the way, the 8-year anniversary sale of my newest audio file and best-selling information products is in 
progress. Now you can enjoy fabulous deals on the new Publici-Tea™ Workshop audio file, the Authentic Visibility Publicity Toolkit, and the Authentic Visibility Publicity Tips Booklets. These are well reviewed and well-used tools to empower your DIY publicity success. Whether you have $8 or $88 to invest, there is something at the DIY Publicity Store to suit you needs and budget. I’d be honored to earn your business and your referrals.
You can even join my affiliate program and be one step closer to earning income for product sales that flow from your recommendations. How cool is that?
If you have gained value from the information shared in this and yesterday’s post, feel free to track back to it and forward it to others so more people can benefit and accelerate their journey to information product prosperity. Thank you.
