Sunday, December 03, 2006

Dead Ducks Don't Quack...

I struggled around for almost 18 months before I realized that to have real success online, I needed to have my own product.

After I realized that, I created my first one... then another... and another... I started to get obsessed with product creation.

And that's the topic of this newsletter is creating your own product. I'm going to show you 19 ways to create your own products quickly.

But, before I do, I wanted to talk about a few key things.

1st - don't do all the work yourself (we covered this before when we talked about outsourcing)

2nd - the key is quality content... It doesn't matter if you have to film in on your home camcorder or a recorded phone call... if the content is high quality - your customers will love you.

I paid $50 for a weightlifting DVD the other day, and when I turned it on... the opening scene was black.

Then you heard the guys wife say "I can't see anything."

A second later the guy said, "You've got to take the lens cap off honey!"

You then saw her take the lens cap off, and he started teaching.

Now, that was horrible quality, but the content was amazing. I ended up buying all 6 dvd in his series BECAUSE THE CONTENT WAS SO GOOD!

I know quite a few people who get caught up in making everything look too professional. I had one friend spent thousands of dollars filming and producing one DVD (which turned out very nice BTW) - but all of his budget was spent on that, and had no moolah left over to market the product.

He still hasn't made his initial investment back.

My point isn't to make products that are crap - but to create the highest level quality content as possible, and your subscribers will appreciate it. I've been going back now with all of my old products and now repackaging them now that I can afford to.

3rd - just do it. Remember from before my motto "Ready, Fire, Aim." Get the product idea, create it and get it out there as fast as possible. Money follows speed, and if you don't go fast you will loose out.

Another reason to go fast is because what if your product is a flop? Another important lesson is to fail fast. I've known one person who's been trying to sell the same ebook for the 5 years I've known him with absolutely no success.

Like my friend Marlon Sanders says, "Dead ducks don't quack!" If you have a dead duck - move on to something new - FAST!

4th - people pay different prices for the same content delivered in different ways.

What I mean is that you can sell an ebook for $27. Now, if you take that exact same content, record it into a "book on CD" - you can sell that same content (in a different format) for a lot more - usually $97 or more.

Now, let's say you want to go to the next level... what if you took the audio, and the text, and combined them into a video. You could make a camtasia video that shows the bullet points from the book as the audio reads through them.

Or create an outline from the text, and record yourself teaching the concepts...

There are a million ways to switch forms of content - but just remember that people pay more for audio then they do text... and more for video then they do audio.

Ok - now that that is out of the way - let's get to work.

Here are 19 ways to create a product:

1st - Software Creation - Creating software is one of the easiest ways to create a product fast. You can create something for almost any niche. I have one client who had a public domain book about dream interpretation - so he had someone create a software program for under $100 where the user could type in a word, and if found that interpretation in the book and displayed it for the end user.

2nd - Public Domain - this is one of my FAVORITES!!! These are "works" where the copyrights has expired. You are able to take these and re-package them and sell them as your own products!

3rd - Interviews - interview an expert in ANY field and sell the recordings and/or the transcripts. This is the best way to become an expert in any field - just interview the experts and people will see you as one of them.

4th - Seminar Videos - put on your own seminar, record it with a video camera and sell the footage.

5th - Re-niche content - if your selling a product (or bought rights to a product) - you can re-niche it for a different audience. Example would be if you sell a book about speed reading, re-niche it to "speed reading for students."

6th - Book on CD - record yourself reading your book and sell it on cd.

7th - Resource CD - compile a list of resources for a specific niche, and sell the directory. I've personally bought resources on supplements directories and also one on "spy" stuff. (I know - I'm a geek)

8th - Recycle content - take products or content you've created in the past and re-use it. I'm using this blog post as a newsletter, an article, probably a chapter in a future book... Recycle what you're doing now.

9th - Camtasia Video - this is one of the most powerful tools online marketers have. Create screen capture videos of anything you can do on your computer. Demos of software - PowerPoint slides, how to... anything computer related. Think how much moolah the "computer professor" makes by making "how to" videos for different Microsoft products.

10th - Idea collection - Combine a list of ideas and sell those. I've got friends who sell list of ideas on how to make money quickly, how to clean your carpets, how to take care of lawns, etc...

11th - Others experts submit content - get others to submit articles, or audios, or vidoes, and compile them into a product. I did this with one of my wrestling products. I had people submit their best stories, pictures and poems and compiled them into a product.

12th - Podcasts - like an online radio show that you can download. Have paid podcasts - or record a bunch, then take the recordings and put them onto CD's.

13th - Membership sites - have residual income coming in when people pay you over and over again for access to your membership site. You can provide content in your membership sites - or create software programs that people have to pay monthly to use.

14th - Teleseminars - just record yourself interviewing someone or teaching on a subject that you know a lot about. The majority of my products were created with some type of teleseminar.

15th - Ghostwriters - hire someone (think outsourcing again) to write a book on a the subject that you want to sell.

16th - Free coaching calls - do free coaching calls for your members, track their progress, then compile the recordings into a product.

17th - Mastermind roundtables - get a group of experts together and have them discuss the subject - record the full thing and you've got an instant product!

18th - Private Label - similar to public domain, but usually created w/ the intent to sell w/out a copyright. A million ways to use private label stuff. Most people fail at this because they try to sell the content "as is." Be sure to make it your own and you'll have a ton of success with these.

19th - Case studies - one of the best products I bought this year is 12 hours of case studies. The people teaching the course compiled hundreds of casestudies for the subject we were learning about, and then explained how they all worked.

Ok - there's 19 ideas. Hopefully that will give you an idea for your first product.

To add your comments to this article please go to:
http://www.dotcomsecrets.com/blog/2006/11/the_buzz_about_viral_marketing.html#more

About The Author
Russell Brunson has been a successful internet marketer over the last 4 years, he is actively helping other people to achieve their goals online. For more information go to http://www.DotComSecrets.com.

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