[jwplayer config=normalplayer file=10-Steps-To-Building-A-Million-Dollar-Information-Product-Membership-Website-Business.mov]
Information products are so profitable because they can be run by an individual without any employees, you do not need to ship tangible products to your customers, and you can offer very high commission rates to affiliates and attract more affiliates than any other kind of business which will allow you to diversify your traffic streams more than any other type of internet business model. My favorite type of information product is the “Membership site”, but ebooks work well too.
You can create an information product for any niche, any kind of website. Ask yourself “what is the main problem that my website visitors want to solve?” Are they trying to learn how to make more money, lose weight, look cooler to their friends, jump higher, get better at a sport, get better at a video game, be healthier? If you sell physical products at your website, what problem does your physical product solve? Figure out your visitors main problem, then create an info product like an ebook or membership site, then sell access to it or give it away in exchange for email optins.
Follow these 10 Steps, and you will be able to create your own profitable Information Product Business.
1. Pick a high profit niche that has at least 20,000,000 potential customers in it, that has a lot of products and competition already with many other websites that are getting lots of traffic and making at least $100 per day based on your estimates. The reason you want to be in a niche with lots of potential customers and lots of successful competition is because you know that even if you are only able to capture 1% of the market you will still do well. Pick a niche that you have passion for and know a lot about. For example, if you know a way to make money, lose weight, or play a game well, do one of those. Don’t get stuck in one niche, if you reach a ceiling in one, try another. Competition should not scare you away, you should see it as a sign that there is money to be made in a niche. The top 3 most profitable niches are health, money, and relationships, because everyone in this world has problems within those topics and are willing to pay money for help. You want to pick a big niche with a lot of competition so that you can also get a lot of affiliates, have a large pool of popular website you can buy traffic from, and get the chance to promote a variety of different affiliate products to your list. You can also choose a smaller niche if you believe you can dominate it, but be warned that you will reach your income limit much earlier than in a larger niche. For niche ideas look through the products at http://www.cb-analytics.com/top-products.php. The reason the top 100 clickbank products are the top 100 clickbank products is because of their niche, along with their high converting sales pages. If the same people who made the top 100 clickbank products decided to make different products in smaller niches, they wouldn’t be able to make it into the top 100 because their niche is too small and their potential customer pool is too small. You niche correlates directly with the amount of money and sales you will be able to make.
2. You need a good domain name. A junk domain name will costs you your visitors trust, interest, page views and sales. Sometimes it takes me a year to think of a good domain name. Sometimes I start out with one domain name, then switch to another because I feel it more perfectly describes my topic and is more likeable. Most of the best domain names are taken, so you either have to pay a lot to buy them directly, or spend time thinking hard to make up a new one that no one has registered yet.
The most I have ever paid for a domain name is I paid $2000 for http://www.howtomakemoneyonline.com . I was trying to buy a domain name for a high search volume keyword related to “make money online” which gets over 2,000 search per day. I sent an email to the owners of “makemoneyonline.com”, “howtomakemoneyonline.com” and “waystomakemoneyonline.com” asking them how much they would sell their domain for. Two of the owners wants over $10,000, but the owner of “howtomakemoneyonline.com” only wanted $1,500, and we ended up settling on $2,000. I sent payment through Escrow.com and he transfered it to me. I wanted this domain because it gets over 350 searches per day, and if you rank #1 in google for “how to make money online” you’ll get about 175 visitors per day, which is about 5,000 visitors per month.
I’ve done well with non-exact-match keyword domains. Just make sure your website visitors can figure out what your site is about by reading your domain name. For example Paintball-online.com is obviously about paintball, you don’t even need to visit the site to know that. Facebook.com is obviously a book of faces, and its catchy, and its nice and short and easy to remember.
Buy a Domain Name that is both catchy, and has a medium to high search volume keyword related to your niche as the first part of its domain name so that it will eventually rank highly for that keyword in search engines. For example if you want to rank in the top 10 for the search term “dating advice” pick a domain name like “DatingAdvicePros.com” or if you want to rank in the top 10 for the search term “golf strategies” get a domain name like “GolfStrategyPros.com”.
Stick to .com, .net, .org with no dashes (-). Only use dashes in .com domains. Two successful domains with dashes are http://www.digital-photography-school.com and http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com.
Get Web Hosting through DreamHost.com or HostGator.com, and learn how to install WordPress by watching the videos in the Website Building area of this site.
3. Create your membership website using WordPress by following the tutorials in the “Website Building” area of this site. You want to create your membership product before driving traffic to your site because it is important to be ready to sell it as soon as you start driving traffic to your website as traffic is expensive time and money wise.
4. Create a very professional pitch page with a white background using WordPress and Thesis. Get a logo from 99Designs.com or Fiverr.com/logo that is very nice. Take your logo seriously, its the first thing people see, and what they will remember you by. Your pitch page can have a video with an email opt-in underneath, with a high quality free report that solves the most important problem of your visitor, or you can just make your homepage a direct pitch page for your product with an optin to get to your “checkout page” to maximize your sales conversion rates. It might seem counter intuitive, but giving away your best secret in exchange for an email opt-in is one of the most powerful things you can do because it makes your visitors trust you and like you, but on the contrary your sales conversion rates will be lower so its something you have to test. Watch the video and optin at http://www.doubleyourdating.com/ and read the emails he sends you to see what his strategy is. He makes over a million dollars a year with a $19 per month product, and he gets you to join by sending you daily emails with interviews with customers, helpful tips, and discounts.
5. Set up an affiliate program with Clickbank.com, and make a very nice affiliate resource page with banners and pre-written emails for people to send to their email lists. It should have banner ads(made by 99designs.com, LogoNerds.com, or Fiverr.com), email optin to get the affiliate resources so you can have a way to contact your new affiliates, and pre-made emails for affiliates to send to their lists. The nicer you make this area of your site the more affiliates you will get. Your payout should be between 50% and 75%. Reoccurring billing is the best, so try to make your product a membership site which you can charge a monthly fee for access to.
6. Aggressively promote your affiliate program to competitors within your niche. Focus on sites ranking well in search engines, sites getting a lot of traffic, and sites with big email lists like sites in the top 100 http://cb-analytics.com/top-products.php. Offer them bonuses to promote your affiliate program like a higher percentage payout if they make so many sales. Offer them a coupon to give to their visitors. Offer to pay them to do a mail to their list, do a review blog post, or post an image banner on their site.
7. Buy listings on eBay, Google Adwords, BuySellAds.com Ads, and banner ads on websites by emailing websites ranking well in google and bing and asking them how much they want then offering them half and negotiating from there.
8. Start a blog, and take your profits and hire writers from other blogs in your niches and eLance. Blogging is the best way to get long tail search engine traffic, and free traffic is always a good thing. Every post you add to your blog has the chance to rank for more keyword phrases. If you add one post per day for a year, that’s 365 posts with the potential to rank for various keyword phrases.
9. Guest post on other blogs in your niche, interview other players in your niche. Post videos to YouTube.
10. Get bloggers to do featured posts about you and get interviewed.
These are the 10 steps. Now that you know them its time to get started. Its a lot of work, but hard work and time is what it takes to succeed, with some luck thrown in along the way.
————————————-
How To Sell Information That People Will Actually Buy
“Information is one of the FEW things that can be made FAR more valuable – with an amazingly small amount of time, effort, and energy. The way information is presented makes all the difference. Say something one way, and no one listens. Say it a different way, and people will pick up guns, head for the voting booths, or take out their wallets. Here’s the most important lesson you’ll learn in Information Product Marketing: How You Say It Matters! By saying something a slightly different way, you can TRANSMUTE the value from very low… to very HIGH.” – Eben Pagan
Yes there is tons of free information online for every topic you can think of, but people are willing to pay for information when they have a problem that they are having a really hard time solving, and if you package the solution in a easy to use form for them. Examples of problems that people have a really hard time solving are things like making more money, improving their love life, or curing a health problem they have such as being overweight or having anxiety problems.
Also, its not just the information they are buying when people decide to join a Membership Training site, its the desire to be apart of an exclusive elite club of people with similar interests.
Its the way you package the information that gets people to buy it. People are buying the box since they can’t actually look inside until they buy, so you have to make the box(pitch page/website) look and feel as look as possible, but at the same time make your product as good as you can so they aren’t disappointed after they buy. And a lot of info product owners just try to stuff their products with tons of information, but what people really want is just the best information in a simple easy to follow package. Remember when you were little and you would sometimes see a toy that you wanted so bad that you could dream about it at night, then once you actually got it and pulled it out of the box, you played with it for a day then got bored. Everything in life is like that. Make your product like that cool toy, so that people really want it when they see it. Think of your membership site like an exclusive club that costs money to join.
Study successful membership sites like DoubleYourDating.com and SEOBook.com. Look at the layout of their sites, the colors they use, their professionalism. Listen to the tone of their voices in their videos, their confidence.
Read The Tale of Two Men