Info-Product Creation Strategies

Here are three sources for material to turn into info products:

1. Public Domain Material
There is a huge amount of material on which the copyright has expired because of its age, or which was never copyrighted and always in the public domain (for example, much US Government produced material is free to use for US product creators). You can use this material and republish it as-is, edit and update it, convert it into a different format, combine or partition it and make it your own.

2. Private Label Rights Material (PLR)
This is material created by someone who then sells (or gives away) the right for you to use it and make it into your own product, including placing your name on it as the author, and in some cases (depending on how much you change it) claiming copyright in it. Again, you can (and should) rename it and create new graphics for it, edit and reformat it, add to it or break it up into smaller chunks, and/or convert it to other formats. A good deal of PLR, especially free PLR, is badly written and needs work to make it into a high quality product, but it's still quicker than starting from scratch.

3. Outsourcing
Freelancers of many kinds (writers, transcribers, audio voice-over readers, video producers, you name it) are waiting and ready to work on your content, sometimes for a surprisingly reasonable price. There are also experts who can work with you to produce a product based on interviews or seminar presentations.

Read on to discover how you can create your own digital information products without writing a book - or if a book is your goal, how to create ebooks the simplest way.

Whether you use your own material, PLR or public domain material, or have someone else create material for you, you can turn it into other products instead of (or as well as) an ebook. Even better, often it takes less work to produce these othre products, and you can sell them for a higher price!

Audio products

Almost any existing text material can be turned into an audio product simply by recording it being read. If you have a pleasant voice, and an accent your target market will be comfortable with, you can do it yourself by recording it straight onto your computer. You don't need a "news announcer" type voice for this.

Audio products can also be created directly: you can simply talk into the microphone about your subject (preferably from a pre-prepared outline, to help prompt your memory!); conduct an interview with an expert or have someone interview you; hold a teleseminar and record it. All of these methods create a product very quickly, and have the added bonus that if you then have the audio transcribed and edited, you have a very fast ebook too!

Video Products

Video is absolutely the 'in thing" right now, and it's surprisingly easy to create a basic or even not-so-basic video product. Screen recording software allows you to produce how-to videos showing step-by-step exactly how to use software or perform a computerized process. You can also create a video of a Powerpoint presentation, or use the video from your digital camera to show a talking-head video of yourself or an interview, or take a demo video of a physical product, or... any number of other things.

Events

Events can be money-earning products in themselves, AND can create info-products which you can sell after the fact. In-person seminars, webinars, and teleseminars can all be recorded and the recordings sold as audio or video products (with transcripts for added value). You don't have to be the presenter for these, either: you could involve one or more experts as your presenters and be the organizer or producer yourself.

Consulting/Mentoring/Coaching

When you provide one-on-one service to other people, that service can be packaged as a product. And the writing and talking you do as part of the service, may become a product in its own right later on.

Physical info-products

All these information products - ebooks, audio and video - can be turned into a physical product on a CD or DVD, as well as being sold as downloadable digital products.

Bear in mind that an ebook is often not as long as a "dead tree" book. It's quite normal for an ebook to be only 40 pages - and that's fine as long as the information contained in it is worth the price you charged. So, you don't have to gear up to write hundreds of pages unless you want to.

An outline is your friend. Organize what you're going to write before you write it. The more detail your outline contains, the easier it will be to write your ebook.

Use a speech-recognition system like Dragon Naturally Speaking or even the speech recognition built into Windows Vista. You may even be able to record some of your book using a small digital recorder as you walk or relax in the park, and convert it to text on your computer later.

If you're already familiar with page layout programs, go right ahead and use them to lay out your ebook. But if not, word processing software like Word or Open Office Writer can do a perfectly adequate job. Make sure the font style and size is easy to read on the screen, and use white space to make it easy to follow the structure of your book. Add clickable links to online resources wherever you can.

ebooks are generally in one of a few formats - as an .exe, .pdf, or a proprietary format. A PDF is easiest to create - both Word and OO Writer can produce a PDF directly from your document.

You may want to call your ebook something other than an "ebook", to increase the perceived value (and the price you can reasonably charge). A few possibilities are:

Digital Report
Virtual Book
Downloadable Guide
Manual
How-to guide
Home study course
Forbidden Report
Insider guide

Once you have your ebook in the form of a PDF, you can use a "Print-On-Demand" service to turn it into a dead-tree book that people can buy and hold in their hands - without having to buy a run of 5,000 and store them in your basement for the next 10 years! Lulu.com is one option, but there are many more.

Don't forget that your first product is just a starting point. You want to have a series of products on the same topic at different price points, so that the person who buys your $27 ebook and loves it can then spend $67 to get the audio course on the same subject. You can also have a range of similarly-priced products on different-but-related topics which will be of interest to your target audience. Your product range can be wide and deep to make the most of your opportunities.