The first product I ever ending up creating was an eBook. At that point in time I had zero experience in writing or Internet marketing. I had never created a website, made a single cent online or knew the first thing about writing a book.
I wrote it anyway and made over 200 sales and around £245 per month in AdSense revenue for the next 3 months:
Today I’m going to show you how I did that.
Note: the word eBook can be replaced throughout the article with info-product, online course, video course or any other type of product you can create and sell online.
Determining the demand for your product
There will be nothing worse than spending weeks creating your product if nobody actually wants it
It’s soul crushing, or at least that’s how I would feel it happened to me.
Before you create an type of info-product, see if there’s demand. Doing this is easy. Setup a landing page and throw up some copy informing prospects about your new product which is coming soon.
Then drive targeted prospects to your landing page.
If they want to learn more information or get an email when the product is launched, place a opt-in form allowing them to sign-up. If people have opted-in to your landing page, that is a positive indicator that your eBook is drawing interest.
Pro-tip: you may want to get your copy checked by an expert or fellow Internet marketer. Your product may interest others but if your copy sucks you this tactic may return false positives.
How to create your first ever product
Writing and publishing an eBook is easy. eBooks don’t have to be 150,000 words or 250 pages long like regular books. They don’t even have to use proper English formatting and punctuation (like the overuse of commas and long paragraphs), the only need to provide value and be free of grammar and spelling mistakes.
Hiring a proofread reader solves the latter.
To solve the former, find a problem your audience is having and solve it. For example, I recently created an eBook on how to become an online freelancer.
The problem: people wanted to make money online and travel all over the world but didn’t know how.
My solution: earn money anywhere in the world through freelancing online.
I broke down my solution into chapters, they were:
- Introduction
- What is freelancing
- Creating your profile and finding your niche
- Applying for jobs
- Mistakes I made when I started freelancing
- Other ways to find freelance jobs
- How many can you make freelancing
- Conclusion
That was the skeleton of my eBook. I treated every chapter as a blog post and wrote concise and valuable information around each chapter.
Pro-tip: If you feel your eBook is going to be more than 15,000 words and you don’t have an audience already, write a watered down version (10,000 words max) and sell it for a heavily discounted price or give it away for free. Apply the same theory to courses too.
Creating an opt-in page to measure the demand for your product should be used as a rough indicator only, it doesn’t mean your product will sell just because peopled opted-in. Write a thinned down version of your book and if you manage to get sales and great feedback, add more depth to each chapter and then re-list it at a higher price later.
Publishing your Product
Before you even create your product, you should have an idea where you want to publish it, or how you will advertise it. I already had a popular travel site where I receive thousands of hits per day, so my audience was there, you on the other hand may not have one.
I wrote my book in Word document and converted it into a PDF file using Word to PDF. I also paid someone on Fiverr to format my book so I could upload it to Amazon KDP. Amazon reviews and approves books within 24 hours, they usually accept all types of books as long as they are unique and don’t contain any offensive or overly sexual material.
If you’re creating a video course, try sites like Udmey or Yes Course.
If you have a great product idea but have no audience of your own, ClickBank and other affiliate networks like eJunkie are useful marketplaces to get other marketers to sell your product. Expect to give around 50% in commission though.
Pro-tip: I like to give other bloggers in related niches my eBook for free and ask them to write a review and give one free copy to their fans. This helps me leverage other people’s audiences without having to pay or do too much work.
Pricing your product
Don’t make the common mistake of listing your product for only a few dollars because it’s only a fraction of the size of typical books or courses you see online.
Don’t think of your product as anything other than value. How much value can the reader gain from your book? Will it help them lose weight 50lbs? After watching your video course, will it double their income or make them fluent in Spanish?
Your product should be priced based on the value it provides your readers. Only you will know the right price, I suggest testing a number of pricing points to find the one that converts the most.
Offer money back guarantees
Let’s be honest, there are so many creating info-products and a lot of them are useless. As a result this boxes people like me and you who provide real value and are legitimate with the rest.
I offer all my eBooks with a 7-day money back guarantee if the reader gained zero value from my content. I launched my latest eBook 3 months ago and have sold more than 150 copies and have had a total of 3 refund requests.
If you lack authority in your niche or know your book provides value, offer a refund policy, I’ve been selling 30% more since I did.
Summary
The hardest thing about creating an online product is promoting it. If you have knowledge on a subject and can convey that in your product, creating an eBook or course is a piece of cake. Marketing it and getting it in front of the right people is the difficult part.
Have you ever thought about writing and selling your own eBook or online course? What problems are you facing? I’d love to hear them.