The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job (11 page)

you do that, several excel ent things happen.

• You separate yourself from al the Buy Now! pushy people.

• You demonstrate your expertise in the topic.

• You provide value for nothing, and that builds confidence in potential customers.

• Those customers are left thinking: “
Wow, if
al that quality information is what

this person has for free, I wonder how good the paid stuff is—it must be real y
great
.”

We talked some time ago about how competitive some markets are. I can guarantee

you that, even in the most competitive of marketplaces, the vast majority of vendors wil

never offer something of value for free. You wil stand out in the very best light.

This phenomenon is not limited to just free special reports, of course. If you deliver a

free audio download from a web site you might accomplish the same thing. Don’t think

either/or, but instead think both/and. There’s no one single Silver Bul et, as we

established in Chapter 1. Therefore, think about coming out with a special report and

later perhaps doing a free audio or video, and so on.

2. Getting-Started Kit

This usual y takes the form of a series of special reports, plus perhaps a CD or a DVD,

al spread out for prospects to see. The idea is to show lots of material for a fairly low

price. High content plus low price is another way to say high value. It can simply be a

repackaging of other items you offered separately, including free ones.

3. Home-Study Course

This has been the bread-and-butter of the info products business for some time. It’s like

the
Getting-Started Kit,
only bigger. This wil be the biggest product that many people in

your customer list wil ever buy because they want a complete system but don’t have the

time or money to invest in a multi-day live event.

The beauty of a home-study course is it can be composed of content you created for

other purposes. For instance, you may have offered a teleseminar or one-day event

where a number of speakers presented information. Those are products in their own

right, but the transcripts can become the basis for your home-study course manual.

It’s common for a home-study course to contain a manual in a three-ring binder, plus

audio CDs and a few special reports. It doesn’t hurt to show a big spread of stuff people

wil receive for their several hundred bucks.

4. Sample Newsletter

This is again in the spirit of give before you get. Why not give people a sample of your

existing newsletter and show them what they’re missing each month? Some marketers

swear by newsletters that are one single page of great content. Other people like to give

12 to 16 pages of good but less-dense content. There’s no one right answer and both

ends of the spectrum are worth testing.

5. Book

This could real y be the topic of several chapters and we won’t do that. You know that I

like books or you wouldn’t be holding one of mine in your hands right now. However, they

are a great deal of work for a list price of around $25, especial y considering what other,

easier products you can sel for $25 or even more.

Stil , there’s nothing like a book to get wide exposure. It’s a great product format for

later, after you’ve already made a bunch of money. On the other hand, if you’re

particularly itching to become a published author, you need not wait. If that fire is in you to

do a book, it just might be the product that puts you on the map.

Just be sure to guard against devoting too much of your time to a book only to

become despondent if you get rejected multiple times by publishers. The truth is that

publishers wil pay much more attention to you once you have a large fol owing of fans.

Don’t think of a book as a great way to get customers—instead think of a bunch of

customers as a great way to get a book deal.

6. Interview Series Transcript

This is more repurposing at work. Some people make tens of thousands of dol ars at a

time by interviewing a series of experts on a topic and then sel ing the interviews for

$100 to $200, depending on the topic.

If they’re smart, they recognize that different people like their information delivered in

different media. If I’m a road warrior with a long commute each day, I might love to have

downloadable MP3 audios of these interviews to listen to instead of the same old news

on a radio station.

If I spend a lot of time at a desk, at home, or in airports I might want a handy transcript

I can pop out and read with a cup of coffee or while standing in line. Therefore, you can

increase the perceived value of an interview by offering both the audio and the transcript.

7. Fast-Start Guide

People are impatient, as you know, and are often wil ing to pay for the shortest shortcut

possible. Marketers sometimes get caught up in a paradox: If they offer a big fat home-

study course they’re giving lots of value to customers, but they may be overwhelmed

when they receive the course in the mail: ‘
‘Wow
, I don’t know where to start with this

thing! I bet the first chapter’s kind of boring, so I maybe won’t start there. Where’s the

real meat? Did
I get myself in
over my head again this time? Should I return it instead?”

You don’t want your customers to have those bad thoughts. Therefore, make it easy to

take the first few bites of your larger course or system by creating a fast-start guide. It

can be nothing more than a summary of what they’l find in other places in your system.

Note: This is typical y not something you sel on its own but instead you include it in a

larger package and assign a separate dol ar value to it, like $49.

8. Pocket Guide

This is a way to take advantage of the downtime people have while waiting in line, eating

lunch, and so on. They’l often appreciate that you create your information in many

different formats, so whether they’re at home, in a car or plane, or just out and about,

your material is accessible.

No one person wil probably use al the media you provide, but by offering different

formats you’l appeal to the broadest possible audience.

9. Checklist

This is an underused category of info product with a lot of potential for you. In a sense, a

checklist is the most-distil ed type of guide you can have because it answers the

request: Just tel me exactly what I should do when.

Think about what pilots do before a flight. They’ve had years of training and we hope

they know that airplane inside out. Yet they rely on a preflight checklist to make sure they

remembered the procedures in the correct sequence. That method of displaying

knowledge can work in other contexts besides aviation.

The other great thing about checklists is they are the opposite of the daunting, giant

package of material for someone to have to wade through. They seem simple and

inviting and that leaves the correct impression in the minds of your customers.

Often a checklist only makes sense in conjunction with a longer, more descriptive

document. You may go into great detail in the longer document about al the variations

and possibilities of something and then summarize in the checklist the key actions the

reader should take.

10. T-shirt

There’s something about T-shirts that animates people. In the course of my (Dave’s)

dozens of live events around the country, I’ve offered al sorts of prizes and fun bonuses.

T-shirts are definitely one of the most popular.

If you offer a T-shirt, make sure it’s a cool one. In other words, if it’s a cheapo shirt with

plain lettering of your web site name, that’s not going to be worn proudly by anyone

except you and your mom. You’re going to have to spring for a nice design or a wel -

known quote that resonates with your audience. It’s pretty hard to describe a formula in

matters of taste, so I won’t attempt it. When you hit it right, you’l know because people

wil buy whatever you have in order to get the bonus T-shirt.

You’re not much of a designer? No problem. Just go to www.99designs.com and

create a contest. It’s a very neat web site that’s something of a clearinghouse for people

who need designs and designers who need money. You can create a contest for around

$100. If you offered $500 it would be considered a lot of money. Then you establish the

guidelines of what you’re after and set a deadline.

Designers from around the world wil create T-shirt designs and post them to your

private contest area. You then should critique the contestants’ work by saying things like,

“You’re on the right track here with the al igator motif, but I don’t like that color,” or

whatever your impression is of that work. Your ongoing observations help the designers

to get a better sense of what wil be a winning entry. By the way, al the designers

typical y see everyone else’s entries so it can become pretty competitive, which is good

for you.

At the end of the contest you pick the winner. You get the design sent to you in large,

usable format and the designer walks away with the money.

You may feel uneasy about al the other designers who didn’t win but that shouldn’t

bother you. First, no one forced them to compete and they knew the rules. Second, we al

know that, in life, you win some and you lose some. Third, there’s nothing stopping you

from hiring one of the other designers for future work if you liked his or her work.

This whole system is just another example of the Internet creating opportunities and

value for people. In the bad old days you’d have to pay big bucks for a professional

designer at a big firm to create that T-shirt. Fewer designers were employed because

even the big firms couldn’t hire them al . Now that the middleman is out of the picture, it’s

a win-win for both the designer and the customer who needs a great design.

11. and 12. Poster and Laminated Poster

People love posters. Similar to checklists, they seem compact, less daunting, and they

get right to the heart of a topic. I’ve had great success with offering posters as either free

items to get people to give me their names or as paid products.

I separated these items in the checklist simply because you might offer a free poster

that’s a downloadable document for people to print out on their own. Then, for perhaps

$19 to $49, you can offer to send them a mailing tube with a beautiful, four-color large

poster with tons of information on it, professional y designed.

By the way, you could do another contest at www.99designs.com for the poster. On the

other hand, you can go to other sites like www.elance.com, browse the portfolios of

graphic designers, and hire one directly without going through the contest route.

Posters can be great products because their brevity works in your favor. Let’s say you

list on a poster three dozen ways to get something done. That’s valuable to the expert

who only needed reminding of those methods. However, the beginner might be left

wanting more information about those ways. Having your name at the bottom or top of

the poster means that anyone viewing it may then contact you and say, “Hey, I saw your

poster—do you have more information on those last five items on there?” What a great

way to offer motivated people more of your stuff!

13. Calendar

This is not a new concept by any means, but it’s just as valuable as it was in the

precomputer era. Back then insurance companies and gas stations offered calendars to

customers, not because they were just good guys but so that their names literal y hung

around the house al year.

What could you create that has a nice calendar in it, but also would perhaps subtly

remind people of your products and services? If you Google the term custom calendars

you’l find a huge selection of companies that can do this work in any quantity including

very smal amounts.

14. Game

Robert Kiyosaki is famous in the real estate and personal wealth arena for coming out

with his Rich Dad Poor Dad book and his Cashflow 101 game. What a smart move to

think of creating a game in an industry that previously had none.

There’s an old story of two shoe salesmen who went to Africa. After the main office

back in the United States had not heard from them for months, final y two telegrams

arrived. The first one said, “No luck. Coming home. Nobody around here wears shoes.”

The second salesman’s telegram said, “Send boatload of shoes. Nobody around here

wears shoes.”

It’s al how you look at it. Wel , Kiyosaki viewed the lack of a game in the personal

wealth arena as an opportunity and he became the pioneer. Maybe a game in your

chosen product area would work and maybe it wouldn’t, but it’s worth considering.

15. Mug

This is the same concept as a T-shirt—if it’s real y attractive, you’l get people to want it

as much as the main product you’re offering.