My last post, where I talked about how creating products and signing up lots of affiliates is the best traffic strategy generated quite a bit of interest. So I decided to dig a little deeper.
In this post, we will talk about how to come up with ideas for creating your products. Remember, we don’t want to create any old product. We want to create products that will double up as a traffic strategy.
People
In every market, there are three types of people:
- Those who will NEVER buy something, no matter what. They keep looking for freebies.
- Those who will buy eventually, if you convince them enough that the product is good, is what they need, doesn’t cost much, and there is no risk involved in the purchase, and so on.
- Those who will buy something the moment you show it to them.
Now, every person at some stage is in one of the above three “roles.” It depends on the person’s mood, what he/she is looking for at the moment, how important s/he thinks it is, whether or not s/he is looking for something at all, and so on.
So, which person/role from the above list is the best, as far as you are concerned?
Why, the third one, of course – the one who will buy from you the moment you present something to him/her. After all, we SBIers are not very good copy writers and don’t want to become too salesy in our approach. It’s better to cater to someone who is already willing to buy. It’s easier to do, more profitable, and leaves us with a cleaner conscience.
OK, keep that in mind.
Products
Similarly, in any market/niche, you can create three types of products:
- Those that no one will ever buy, no matter what.
- Those that people will buy eventually, if you convince them enough.
- Those that will get sold the moment people learn about it.
Which type of product do you want to create? 
The same reasoning applies here too.
Alright, moving on…
You
So what you want to do here is to:
- Create products that get sold the moment people learn about it
- And then present it to people who will buy it the moment you show it to them
Right? That’s the road to maximum, easiest, and quickest profits. Right?
OK.
People
So now that we have decided we want to go for the people who buy something the moment you show it to them, who are these people?
There could be more, but in my opinion, they can be classified into two groups:
- Those who want to get rid of, or avoid, some kind of pain, embarrassment, fear, troubles, guilt, and so on, and want to do it NOW. People with toothaches, babies crying non-stop, some pain in a body part that they can’t tell everyone about, belated birthday/anniversary gifts, and so on.
- Those who are passionate about something to the point of being fanatic and irrational. Sports fans, music fans, pet lovers, movie buffs, coin collectors, and so on. Most hobbies, in fact.
Every market or niche has these two kinds of people. Yours has them too. Look for them.
Products
So if you want your product to sell well, it has to cater to one of the two types of people I mentioned above. And what else?
Remember we are relying on affiliates to come to our aid and promote it for us? But affiliates won’t do it out of charity, or because they are your friends (well, some of them may be, but you would like more of them to promote your product, won’t you?).
And you don’t want to only be “promoted” by affiliates who mass-add affiliate links to some sort of directories or junk sites.
Good affiliates want two things in a product they promote:
- It should sell well. If the affiliate sends X people to your sales page, as many of them as possible should end up buying the product. The more, the better.
- The affiliate should get a nice commission on each sale. The more, the better.
You
You are taking care of the first condition by catering ONLY to the right group of people, as mentioned above.
And in order for the affiliate to get a nice commission on each sale, you want to create a product that has a high price.
Which means you don’t want to create a $7 product or a $17 product. You need to create a high priced item, if you want to attract lots of affiliates. How high is high, depends on your market, of course. Try to keep the price slightly higher than your competition, but not too high.
But a high price implies a high value in the eyes of the buyer, which means you need to create a great product that justifies the price.
Value, of course, has no relation to the number of pages (if it’s an ebook, for example). I once purchased a short report/ebook that cost $97 and consisted of 11 pages. But I was very happy with the purchase, because I used the information in the report and earned $1700 in one day. Gimme more such $97 reports, and I will buy all of them. I don’t care if it’s 1 page, 11 pages, or a hundred pages. All that matters is the value I get out of it.
So don’t try to add fluff to your product just to try to increase its value. Fluff and filler will actually decrease the perceived value of your product. Instead, try to actually add value.
Alright, back to…
People
Now that we understand the theory, it’s time for some action. Let’s look for the people who will readily buy from us.
Go to forums in your niche and start looking for threads that ask a question. Keep noting down the questions. Don’t think, just take notes. The time to think will come later.
In addition to forums, you can also try Yahoo Answers, Google Groups, and so on. Do your research on as many community sites as you can.
(Do not ever think of asking your site visitors or newsletter/ezine subscribers what they want. It rarely works for the group of people we are looking for. It does work, but only when you have a VERY loyal following who will ACTUALLY tell you all about their pains, ambitions, embarrassments, and so on. In most cases, people will tell you they want X, and then when you create it, hardly anyone will actually buy it. So make your decision based on what they do (ask questions in the forums, for example), not on what they say to you.)
When you have exhausted all the sites, and taken as much notes as you can, it’s time to review your list of questions.
Categorize the questions into these three categories:
- Questions that are about avoiding or getting rid of some kind of pain, or embarrassment, fear, guilt, etc.
- Questions that are about some kind of passion related to your market/niche.
- Others. (These are to be rejected.)
Basically, you only want to be collecting questions from people who belong to one of the two groups I mentioned above (avoiding pain, etc., or passionate fans).
At this point, you may have several questions left in your list, and combined together, they represent several potential ideas for…
Products
So which of these product ideas will you work on first? The one that is most likely to sell, right? And which one would that be?
If you can spot a definite pattern in your list of questions, that’s obviously a popular topic that bothers/excites a lot of people, and would be a good candidate for a product.
But if there is more than one such potential product, what do you do? Pick a clear winner, or pick the one that you like better or find easier to create, or if you can’t decide at all, just pick one randomly.
The important thing is to PICK one and STICK to it till it’s done. Don’t make the mistake of working on more than one product at a time. Finish the first one, and THEN move on to the next one in your list.
You
If you think you learned something from this post, you are not getting it. This post is not about learning. It’s not even about inspiration.
It’s about action. Go and take action.
Now!
Because the best of ideas don’t make any money till executed. The better you are at executing ideas, the quicker you put them into action, and the more consistent you are into putting ideas into action as soon as you get them, the more money you will make.
So go and come up with your single best product idea, and post it here as a comment if you want. And if you have any questions, you can ask those too, and I will try my best to answer them.
Edit: Thanks to Mimi from http://www.feel-great-about-yourself.com/ for raising a very important point that I forgot to address in this post. This is what I for focusing on the structure and rhythm of the post too much… People, Product, You… People, Product, You… People, Product, You… bah! Anyway, to read Mimi’s comment click here. Be sure to read my reply just below her comment, and don’t forget to post a comment yourself.
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#1 by Lisa Bladh at June 17th, 2009
LOL, its interesting that you wrote this article right now because I am sitting with this exact problem.
I started writing on an article for my website with a main keyword that I know have very high demand and very low supply (don’t you just love those keywords!).
Anyway, as I was writing I realized I was just passing 1700 words and I know an article should be around 400-600 words, and I wasn’t even half done! Then I started thinking. Should I break this article up in to several different web pages, it could be done, or should I keep on writing it as an e-book and eventually sell it on my website?
Now, I don’t have that much content on my site yet, and I definitely need more traffic. But I’ve been thinking a lot around creating digital products to sell as the main income stream on my website. So thanks for your write up, it was informative and a few good tips in there.
The lurking around in forums is an easy step to do and will definitely make a good picture of what is going on in my niche. Then there is creation time. Shouldn’t be impossible to do.
What about the balance between creating content for the website and creating content for a product to sell? I know the SBI way is to first create content on my website then start thinking about what to sell. But I find that hard. I start writing something for my website and it grows in to much more then just a simple article.
If you have any thoughts about how to balance between content to sell and content to put up on a website that would be appreciated!
Hope this made any sense. It’s hard to get an overview of what I have written in this tiny text box.
#2 by Rohit Sinha at June 17th, 2009
Hi Lisa,
I think it depends on your own priorities, and how much content you already have on your site.
If you read my last post, it was about using affiliates as a traffic strategy, so need to recruit affiliates, in addition to creating the product. Your content creation needs to be done with that in mind.
Here is what I would do:
I would first create enough quality content pages on my site to enable any potential affiliate to take me seriously.
Once that is done, or if I already have that amount and kind of content, I would focus solely on creating the product and putting it up for sale as soon as possible. I would not do anything else till I was done with it.
Because the sooner I can publish the product, and the sooner my affiliates start promoting it, the sooner will I start making money from it. A product launch that is delayed by a month means a month of delayed income. Why put off making money?
Hope that gives you a few ideas. But as I said in the beginning, it depends on your own priorities and your working style.
#3 by Mimi at June 18th, 2009
Hi Rohit,
This is a great article you wrote.
I have a question about collecting questions on forums, etc. What about the answers people get? Can they maybe be used when putting together the product, or could you find out who else already provided them with e-books, etc and should I then rethink doing that product?
I hope this makes sense…:-)
Looking forward to your answer.
Mimi
#4 by Rohit Sinha at June 18th, 2009
Hey Mimi,
Yes, of course you can use the answers on forums as fodder for the material for your product.
But you raised one very important point which I forgot to address in my post… if the information that you are going to include in your product is ALREADY available and is well known, and most of your target customers can get it elsewhere for free or cheap, then you don’t need to bother with this product. Move on to the next idea.
It’s one thing to create a web page that has information available elsewhere, but for products, where people have to shell out money to get your information, it must be unique and not available anywhere else. Unless you are a very good marketer/sales copy writer, of course, in which case you can probably sell anything you want to anyone you want.
Thanks, Mimi, for raising such an important point.
#5 by Kerry at June 18th, 2009
Hi Rohit
You say to make your product a high price. Then you mention to do it and get it out, now. You also told Mimi that our books should have unique information.
So, when I think about those key points, I’m thinking that I should do my first book as an experiment.
I think I should make the price reasonable, so that it captures more of the market. The only way I’m going to do it now is if I stop procrastinating on making it the best it can possibly be.
My point is, if I make it exceptional, I can ask a high price. However, it’s not going to get done any time soon, if that’s the case!
Do you see my quandary?
Kerry.
#6 by Rohit Sinha at June 19th, 2009
Hi Kerry,
Please don’t do the product as an experiment. Doing an experiment means you are expecting it to fail. I don’t want you to expect the product to fail. When you put in the work, it MUST be a success.
Do your research and thinking upfront, and that will greatly increase the chances of your success.
There are several reasons why I asked to keep it at a higher price:
1. It will attract more affiliates.
2. It will increase the perceived value of the product in the eyes of the buyers. For many buyers, higher price = higher value.
3. It will force you to make it more valuable than competing products, which is a good thing if you think about it.
4. It will allow you to give special/exclusive rates/discounts to the customers of some big affiliates and STILL leave enough room for both you and the affiliate to make some nice cash.
5. A higher priced product will attract a different kind of customer than a lower priced product will attract. Think about that for a while too. Which kind of customer do you want, especially if you want to continue selling more products to them in the future?
When you do something, do it with the intention of dominating the market. This is because the top players get to keep all the money, and the others only get pocket change. For this reason, there is no point in being number three or four. Either you are in the top two, or you are out of the game.
So if you try to keep the price low to attract more customers, you will actually end up losing more sales than you think. That’s because fewer affiliates will be interested in promoting your product. And you can’t reach as many potential customers on your own as with the help of affiliates.
Now if you think that it’s going to take you longer to create a high value product, that’s not always correct. For example, consider the $97 report consisting of 11 pages that I mentioned in my post above. How long do you think it took the author to create it?
A higher priced product need not be BIGGER… it can just be better… or different. In exchange of $$$, you could give them tons of iron, or a little gold.
Try to produce gold. Then you won’t have to create a ton of it to make a lot of money.
#7 by Rohit Sinha at June 19th, 2009
Also, Kerry, please don’t limit yourself to ebooks. This is why I keep saying “products,” not “ebooks.” There is no reason why you can’t create other type of products – mp3s, videos/demonstrations, software, or even hard goods – kits, printed worksheets, CD/DVDs, and what not.
#8 by Kerry at June 19th, 2009
Rohit,
Thank you for such a comprehensive reply.
You are right – I want my book to contain gold, not iron.
At this stage, an ebook is the only way for me. I don’t own any video equipment and I have no idea how to do any of that other stuff.
It’s all a learning curve and I can’t rush the process.
Thanks very much Rohit. Just from your post, I got some more ideas. I’m sure that’s your purpose!
I’m going to plan my hibernation soon. It’ll work out well, it’s winter here!
My best to you
Kerry.
#9 by Rohit Sinha at June 19th, 2009
Kerry, great! Go and kick butt!
#10 by Angie at July 7th, 2009
Hi Rohit,
I’m just in the beginning of the selling my own product process. I wonder if the price issue and some of the other points will vary depending upon your niche.
Here’s my situation… I wrote a couple of Christian books for women a few years ago. This was before I started SBI or had any idea of internet marketing. I paid to have the books printed myself and then I was able to make enough back in sales of the books to cover the cost of my initial investment (which was my main goal at the time).
My ‘market’ was the ladies in the churches my husband and I visited while on furlough from the mission field.
Okay, fast forward 2-3 years and I’ve discovered SBI, built a couple of sites (unrelated to this niche) and finally started my newest site angieberg.com so that I CAN make my books available online and hopefully some future products, too.
I converted one of the books to pdf and set up e-junkie to make sales and have affiliates. I priced the book lower than what you would find in a Christian book store ($9) because I feel uncomfortable charging too much for what is in essence a “ministry” for me – although the extra income is a real blessing.
I still have to make some time to actively seek affiliates. I know that I won’t really start selling until I make that effort since my site is not at the point yet where I’m bringing in enough traffic on its own.
So, in this type of niche, do you think I should leave my prices where they are or increase them? Do you have any particular advice that may apply specifically to this situation? Your feedback is appreciated.
Blessings,
Angie
#11 by Rohit Sinha at July 8th, 2009
Hi Angie,
Yes, of course the exact price depends on the niche. But I want you to think about this for a moment:
If you were an affiliate, and saw a product that costs $9, would you be interested in promoting it?
Remember that both PayPal and e-junkie will take their cut from the retail price before either you or the affiliate see a single cent, so that leaves very little for each of you.
As an affiliate, would you be interested in actively promoting a product that makes you 4′ish dollars per sale?
I hope you get my point.
But if you feel uncomfortable charging a high price for this product, I would like you to do this exercise:
Suppose the product cost $97 instead of $9. What features or components would it need in order to make the purchase justified at this price? What if the product cost $197? $297?
I am not just throwing these numbers at you randomly. I really want you to go through this exercise. Think about the product as if it costs $97, $197, and $297 respectively.
What form would the product take? Audio? Video? E-book? Something physical? All of these? A plaque with something nice engraved on it? What extra value would it provide to the buyer in terms of spiritual fulfillment or the attainment of whatever they are looking for and the product helps them achieve?
Suppose you get an actual priest to recite portions of your book, and record it, do you think it will add to the value of your product?
So my recommendation would be to pick a high price and then increase the value of the product so that the actual value delivered to the customer is MUCH higher than the price.
That way you can feel happy charging a high price, because you KNOW in your heart that the actual value delivered is much higher than the price you are charging, and the customers get a great product. That way both you and the customer are happy.
A win-win situation – the best thing possible!
Hope that helps a bit.
#12 by Angie at July 11th, 2009
Hi Rohit,
I have to say, for some reason I never actually looked at it that way.
That’s a great exercise to consider.
What can you do to increase the value of the product, or what would it have to be to be ‘worth’ that much?
Those are very valid questions. I can certainly see the point of a low cost product not generating as many affiliates.
I suppose my problem with this scenario is that I’m time poor at the moment. I don’t really have the time to do what is necessary to create a higher value on the product, even if I did have the skills or the wherewithal.
That was part of the appeal of making these books available online – they were already written and ready to go.
Still, I will have to give this one more thought. If nothing else, it certainly puts a new perspective on how I will approach creating my own future products.
Thanks for turning on the light switch!
Angie
#13 by Rohit Sinha at July 11th, 2009
Hi Angie,
What is the ONE question that your prospects would like answered? If that’s a burning question for them, would they be willing to pay big bucks to know the answer or solution?
Can you start an “Online Church” enabling those who are always on the move or don’t have enough to attend? I’m sure you will see a great demand and offer a GREAT service to people. And you can charge a monthly membership fee (I’m sorry if it doesn’t work like that or the appropriate term is something else – please let me know if that is the case). But this would allow you to bypass this whole product creation thingy. It will likely take more time to form partnerships, do your marketing, etc. But it will be much more fun and fulfilling and meaningful at the same time. And think of how many millions of people you can help!