People want what you know!
They want your stories, your perspectives, your perceptions and your ideas. And in some cases they want your help or they want to learn how to do what you know. Either way, they appreciate the value your blog adds to their life or their business. The value, after all, is why they’re spending their valuable time reading you in the first place.
I was ruminating on this while reading Liz Strauss’ new informational product – an ebook, The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog. In her book, Liz walks you through how to use your blog to create conversation and grow a community. You get insights and suggestions from someone who has close to 70,000 comments on her own blog. I absolutely highly recommend it. And just to be transparent, I did help her a bit on the development and distribution, though I do not receive any royalties from it.
One interesting thing about Liz’s book is that it was created from content she had published on her blog over the past two years. When she came up with the idea to create her informational product, she went back through old posts to use the ones that would fit as content. In all, the core of her ebook is the content from her blog.
Now Liz took the content for her informational product from posts she’d previously written. It worked great for her and if you’ve been writing a while, I’d highly recommend considering developing your own informational products from previously written posts.
Yet, there’s another way to approach using your blog to develop informational products – one that serves product creation and post content at the same time. You can develop and write your info product from new content you post to your blog. With a little planning, it can be simple:
- First thing is to consider what informational products your audience would be interested in buying. Look at what posts were the most read and most commented on. Also, ask them through polls and short surveys.
- Outline the major content themes for your informational product. Whether you mindmap or outline, doesn’t matter. Just get down a basic structure for what’s going to be included in your info product. This will help you focus on your info product’s content as well as blog content.
- Further define your informational product outline. You have the major points, now get specific. What are the individual talking points that your info product will cover? Get as specific and detailed as you can. Layout the entire product so that you can see exactly what needs to be written in order to publish your info product.
- Create a list of blog post topics. A checklist works fine or just an outline. Either way, translate all the talking points into a list of blog posts you can write. That way, you’ll know exactly what you’ll be writing about in creating your informational product.
- Create a special category on your blog. Ideally, this category would be invisible, but it doesn’t have to be. Be sure to put all blog posts that you’ll use for your information product in this category. When you’re ready to compile and edit your posts into your info product, it’ll be much easier to find them all.
- Write. Now that you have your plan, your outline and your post topics, now it’s time to write. In this case, write quality posts. As you write, make sure you’re thinking about how each post will fit into your informational product. Also, don’t feel pressured to make every single one of your next posts for your info product. Write about other things when you’re inspired too. Just remember to return to your info product content.
- Get feedback. Watch the comment box closely whenever you write content for your informational product. Your readers will give you great insight both into what they’re interested in and how they think about the topic. Utilize this to create a better info product. And don’t be afraid to change your info product based on what you learn from your readers.
- Compile your content. Once you’ve written all the pieces of content for your informational product on your blog, compile it. Get it from your blog into your favorite word processing or desktop publishing software. Try to put it together in sections as you’ve laid out in your outline.
- Edit and layout. Now, with your informational product content all compiled, begin editing. Read for content and for flow. And remember to edit for voice. It’s likely you wrote differently on different posts so be sure your voice is consistent. Also, begin laying out how you’re info product will look in structure when finished. You can do this with editing or after – it’s up to you.
- Proof and correct. Once you’ve finished your edits and your layout, get a few trusted friends and colleagues to read your information product. Get their feedback on flow, content, clarity and value. If there are exercises or to-do lists, ask them if they are easy to understand and clear to follow. Highly consider any corrections that your proofreaders suggest.
- Decide on your format. Once you have a completed version of your informational product, you need to decide on the format to publish it too. When deciding on format, consider whether your info product will be delivered electronically or by post. If you’ve created a book, PDF works great electronically and bound publishing for sending by post. Audio can be distributed electronically as mp3 or by post on CD. For video, DVDs work great by post while Flash video, MPEG4 or QuickTime work great for electronic delivery.
- Price and payment. While you can certain go through this process to create free products – which I do recommend, you should also consider creating informational products for sale. That means you have to decide on how much to charge and how you’ll receive payment. There are many ways to decide cost, including comparing to what others are doing. Maybe start with a lower introductory price to get some initial interest and raise the price later. As for payment, PayPal works fine in most cases. They give you a method to collect money and a shopping cart, if you need one. It’s the easiest and cheapest to setup. Otherwise, you’re looking at a shopping cart like 1ShoppingCart and an online merchant account like with Authorize.net.
- Write your landing page. Once you have your informational product finished, you know the cost and how you’re going to collect payment and manage delivery you have to have a place to put it on your website. Often this means a landing page. While you can find many great resources on how to write a landing page, the basics are that you write customer-focused copy that illustrates how your info product solves their problem. Focus on your info product’s content but do so by highlighting how your info product will benefit the customer. Remember testimonials – which you can first get from your proofers – and endorsements from well-known sources, and a money-back guarantee. And please make the price and the buy buttons easy to find. Last word of advice on landing pages – don’t get bogged down by trying to make it perfect right out of the gate. Write the best you can, publish it and then tweak it later.
- Market your new informational product. With your informational product completed and your landing page written it’s time to get the word out. But don’t just announce it on your blog – cover pieces of it highlighting, again, the benefits. As your proofers, endorsers and blog friends to do the same. Consider creating an affiliate program around it so people can make a buck promoting it for you. Ask friends to market it to their ezine lists or mention it in your forum. Run a contest with prizes for anyone who buys posts about it. Get it reviewed. Use your social networking contacts to help with the push. Basically, use everything you can think of to get the word out. And don’t forget to publish articles to article banks that focus on specific parts of the content and link to your landing page.
- Get AND USE feedback. This step is often missed and yet very important to the long-term success of your informational product. You want to encourage people to share with you their experiences with your info product. Ask them for feedback. Send them emails or cards by post that ask them a few specific questions about the product. Even better, get them to a short survey for feedback. And absolutely, without a doubt, continue to get testimonials and endorsements. Then USE THEM on your landing page and in your marketing campaign.
Create great informational products and you’ll have something that you can sell for a long time. That means a stream of passive income. Do this a few times and you’ll have a fleet of info products with the potential of a significant, long-term passive income stream.
By using your blog to develop your informational products, you can serve to needs – writing great blog content that benefits your readers while create an info product that can generate sales and passive income.
Which leads me to the questions: Have you ever considered using your blog to develop an info product – whether with new or previously written content?
If you have, what were some of the barriers you faced and how did you overcome them?
And if not, what stands in the way of you creating and offering your own informational products?
Let’s talk about it.
(note: image from Knilram on Flickr, 
some rights reserved)
One problem we have run into is getting our customers (who are not very tech savvy) to read our blog. The difference in readership between young and old (for our clients) is amazing.
Hi, Dawud – I just want to echo your thoughts on the power of using a blog to create info products, particularly #7.
About a year ago I began testing ideas for my first book out on my blog for fellow mediators, and ended up blogging about 75% of the book. I got tons of feedback (most via email, since many mediators aren’t tech savvy and tend to hesitate about comments on blogs) that really helped me shape the final book.
And, as you know (as someone who generously donated to my virtual book launch) my book hit the shelves in February, a far better product because of my blogs.
Hello Dawud,
This is a great article. I am very impressed with your blog. I think you are doing a great service for small business owners. Keep it going!
I have created an ebook on April which is a collection of my 40 articles written on my blog.
I’m giving it for free but I need some more ideas to market it more further, any ideas?
Julian,
What if you forgot about it being a blog and talked about it being a space where people can read and interact with great content? Think about your audience and their needs and meet them where they are.
Tammy,
Thanks for the great feedback. But I can’t let you mention your book, Making Mediation Your Day Job: How to Market Your ADR Business Using Mediation Principles You Already Know without giving a link to it.
How did your blog, then, help with the launch?
Website Office,
Thanks. What’s one topic you’d like me to write about that you’ve not seen here yet?
Tamal,
Get it in hands of bloggers who know your work and ask them to look it over and review it if they feel it’s worth a review to their readers.
Also, there are a number of free pdf banks you could get it listed in.
After that, get it in front of the specific people it’s targeted for.
Karin,
So good to see you back, first off. How have you been?
Sounds like you’re right on track. Let me know when you’ve got something to show; I’d love to take a look at it.
Hi Dawud!
Yes to question one – even started a special blog for it – now all I have to find is time (question 2 and 3 answered ;-))
I’m planning to use Camtasia for the creation of a ‘training course’ – do-it-yourself program to learn how to use a specific online software program.
And I’ll be using Paypl, not just for payment collection, but if you connect it with AWeber the correct way it works as an instant delivery vehicle for every information product you’re selling.
(That will be one of the topics in my own info-product)
Biggest hurdle till now: time, time, time!
Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
Book authors are using blogs to create the first draft of their book.
Perhaps the end result will not have the same outline as the table of content, but certainly it is closer to what’s the readers want, based on the feedback from the blog audience.
It’s pretty awesome how one can just take previous posts from their blog, collect them together, and make money from it. That’s what I call recycling!
This is something that I’ve long thought of. However, I think what’s most kept me from creating my own informational products is quite simple: the idea.
I think that it’s easy to create something, but not necessarily something useful.
I will completely agree with you here “When she came up with the idea to create her informational product, she went back through old posts to use the ones that would fit as content.”
But it could be a co-incident
I have just started to blog. I am still learning the technology! I hope that someday I will get to the stage where I may be able to offer an ebook. I am saving this post by copy pasting it in a word document for reference on that day!
Hendry,
I’ve seen that to be the case. Yet it seems that publishers aren’t hip to this yet. How could we change that?
Tommy,
Recycling and profiting.
Kolly,
What would be useful to your audience – whether readers or prospects?
Ramana,
Going by what I’ve suggested, what would stop you from planning your content for an ebook now?
Buy,
Actually, not really a coincidence at all because I suggested it to her. She’s got more than 2000 posts and much more ebook content to come.
Dawud, to answer your earlier question: My blog helped market the book in several important ways:
1 – I already had an audience for the book in the subscribers to my blog, and many of them did buy the book (and took the time to tell me).
2 – People who were new to me or my blog could sample the blogged portions of the book before purchasing the print edition.
3 – People who’ve found the book through other venues, like Amazon, have looked me up and found my blog, which helped them decide to buy the book.
4 – I placed reader-only resources on my blog and blogged about it, encouraging folks to buy the book to gain access to those password-protected resources.
5 – And, of course, I’ve placed buzz about the book, links to reviews, and announcements about book signings, teleseminars and the like in blog posts to continue the book promotion. Other mediator bloggers are also linking, helping promote the book and the blog alike!
Dawud, I am yet to zero in on a informational product. I am just about to start on one subject and see how it works. It may well turn out to be the ebook that I will write.
In the meanwhile, I am getting into a rhythm of writing and getting used to the mecahnisms of blogging. This is vital for me, as I am not a webmaster or anything fancy like that. Simple things like uploading a photograph takes the juice out of me!
I have a free sleep guide and an e-Book, but my e-Book was not very good, so I just rewrote it and about to “launch” the 2nd edition this Thursday.
My biggest obstacle has been what to offer in my free guide that is both useful but not giving away too much that people won’t buy anything from me. 😀
To overcome it, I read “Coaching Millions” and rewrote my free guide and as I said above, rewrote my e-Book. We’ll see if it works.
My main problem right now is knowing what to charge for it. I was told the ideal price for an e-Book is between $27 & $47. On the one hand, I think that’s high but on the other maybe it’s not.
Decisions. Decisions.
Tammy,
Wouldn’t that process be a great set of posts – or even an info product – in and of itself?
Ramana,
Please keep us updated on how your info product goes.
And you don’t have to be a web designer to get this blogging thing down. Just have patience with yourself and ask for you help when you need it. I’m always here to offer guidance and advise.
Andrew,
Think – vision, strategy, plan, action, track.
Nicole,
I applaud you for redoing your ebook. And I love our honesty around it not being very good. Thanks.
For pricing…offer an introductory price at the lower side and see what response you get. You can always decide to leave it at that price – or even lower it if necessary. And you can make any choice on the price and use it as an advantage in your marketing. It’s simple to do and still be honest.
I am a big believer in sharing and selling information. Teach a man to fish… or rather teach a girl to make polymer clay beads… is my motto!
Thank you for the detailed information, I will put as much as I can to use!
Hi Dawud
You’re on the spot, information brings the money today, not physical work.
Your brain is Your most valuable income generator. Train it well.
Great post. I just started my new real estate investing blog and I’m in the middle of creating a new ebook as an incentive to joining my mailing list. My issue is i don’t have enough current online content to draw from to create it. So even though I’m creating it from scratch, I’m going to do posts on all the content anyway so I can get credit from Google for the content. It’s all about the long tail baby!
I will completely agree with you here
“Create great informational products and you’ll have something that you can sell for a long time. That means a stream of passive income. Do this a few times and you’ll have a fleet of info products with the potential of a significant, long-term passive income stream.”
I must agree with Tommy “It’s pretty awesome how one can just take previous posts from their blog, collect them together, and make money from it. That’s what I call recycling!”
To overcome it, I read “Coaching Millions” and rewrote my free guide and as I said above, rewrote my e-Book. We’ll see if it works.
Hi Dawud
A while ago you asked me to keep you up to date on my project.
Almost there: see my new blog for the pre-launch announcement
Karin H.
Ahh.. been looking for good views about landing pages, I found only a few helpful and free info such as this one.. Thanks for sharing us this info, Creating good landing pages is one of the biggest challenges that I’ve encountered… I don’t want to just create some junk pages ’cause I want to maximize my profits and finding good info like this really means a lot..
Thanks a bunch, will also add this to our web copy resource list..
Kudos!
Hi Dawud,
I wouldn’t argue the idea itself ’cause it worth trying anyway, but there is something to add:
before starting your own project define your target audience and it’s size ’cause there might be not enough interest and people worth efforts.
Thanks
Guy
Hi Dawud
Very informative post. Thanks.
By the way , can anyone provide a good resource for good and affordable proof readers?
Also I am planning to create landing page for my e-book and I don’t have any testimonials. Is it worthwhile putting up landing page without testimonial? Any other ideas?
Very True but i want to discuss here about landing page.
The most important part of your selling is landing page where your user will land.
Landing page overview, look and feel create impact on user to stay here or not.
It tack some time to design a good and attractive as well user catching landing page which dragging user to buy some one and not to leave page as fast as he/she come.
This small exercise can create awesome impact on your sell.
The other information provided here is awesome to start initially but never tack landing page too easily as it is a last gateway to earn.
best of luck
It would be better if you have some testimonials on your site, because people nowadays are very careful when they shop online. They usually look for feedbacks, or a good track record, such as testimonials, prior to buying something. Adding a video to your site would also help in grabbing your reader’s attention, and will somehow turn them into buying customers.
Nice and interesting article, thank you for sharing. Please keep on blogging.
Best regards.
I know that an audience loves to see changes happen that they recommended or have a special interest in. It establishes a good connection and improves the relationship. I don’t like it when I take the time to send feedback and nothing happens, or I give up on the site before they are able to respond.
videos, testimonials, and reviews are all really good ways to increase your conversion rates. Also trust verification seals like truste if you require cc or pin information.
Wow…this is actually quite a very good and thorough post. I think the most challenging thing would be to make the book/product cohesive. I have a blog about dancing as I teach dance, and if I were to compile the top 10 articles into a book, it would be for lack of a better term, “all over the place”. One article would be for beginners, the next for advanced, etc… Any thoughts? I suppose I would make two products, one for beginners and one for advanced but then I only have enough posts for say 30% of a product. Well I suppose instead of using my blog to create a product outright I would be using it gauge interest and prepare a product. (maybe I just answered my own question! Sorry this meant to be a question, not my own little brainstorming board!). Anyway, thanks for the awesome post! As you can see it’s got some wheels turning in me 🙂
I found it easy to write but hard to market these info products.
I guess unless you invest heavily in things like professional landing pages and advertising it would be quite difficult to launch.
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Really Informative post Dawud!
I love creating informatoin products mainly because they do so welll o the web.
But getting strated for most people is tough. People will often say they can’t write or they just don’t have confidence in themselves. I think if they could just move past that, they would see the potential this business model has.
There are so many really knowledgable people out there that could really profit on what they know.
One thing that has excited me is the ability to get your ebooks out on Kindle.
You offer so many great suggestions that will inspire people.
Thanks for the great post.
Liz 🙂