Successful Info Product Creation [Part 4]

Okay, we’ve come to the conclusion of our discussion of how to create an information product and then market it. Here’s what we’ve covered so far:

1. The creation process of an info product
2. The presentation of what you’re selling
3. The importance of creating systems to maximize efficiency and sales

So what are we discussing today? Well, in this post we’re going to cover the marketing aspect of this information product. But instead of giving you a thousand different ways to get traffic, I’m only going to review two primary methods. (In my opinion, it’s better to master a few techniques then to take a scattered approach to your marketing.)

Let’s get started…

#9- Your Affiliate Program

There’s a reason that I recommend using Clickbank to process your payments— Affiliates can easily find you. Clickbank is widely known as the place to locate a best-selling information product. That means your site can attract a lot of eyeballs if it’s located high enough in their marketplace.

With enough work you’ll have lots of people promoting your site. And the funny thing is many times you won’t even know who they are.

Here’s what I mean…

Last weekend, I had an affiliate make 40 sales. I don’t know who this person is and I can’t seem to locate their site. All I know is she (or he) is selling the heck out of my info product. Seriously, this is a pretty awesome feeling.

Now…this didn’t happen overnight. I spent many months building an eBook affiliate program that people would want to promote. For instance, here are a couple of things that I included:

High payout– Like I said in the last section, I give away 75% of my profits to affiliates. (Including the upsell option) My reason is simple. Getting people to promote your info product is a competition. And in a competition you play to win. I know that giving away a lot of the profits will attract more attention than a site with a low commission structure.

I recommend that you offer a high commission on your info products. Don’t worry about not making a lot of money on the front-end. The best way to earn a long-term profit from your customers is to create an extensive back-end system which solves multiple problems that they’re experiencing.

Multiple Profit Streams– Don’t just give your affiliates a commission on a one-time sale. You create a lot of loyalty for your program if they can earn recurring revenue or a chance at additional sales. So if you you own a 2^nd information product that you sell on the back-end, then let your affiliates in on the action.

Affiliate Marketing Tools– Most affiliate marketers are lazy (Myself included). So a way to stand out from your competition is to offer a wide of variety of tools they can use to quickly make sales. Here’s a few things you can include:

• EBook covers
• Banner ads
• Presell videos
• Free reports or lead magnets
• Autoresponders or email recommendations
• Articles
• Review page copy
• Web traffic plans
• Sample PPC ads

This list could go on and on. The point is you want to make it brain-dead simple for people to promote your site. Just the easier you make their job, the more sales they’ll produce.

Communication– This is one of the most important ingredients to this entire process. You want to answer any question that an affiliate might have. I recommend a dedicated email account (or help desk) that supports only affiliate response.

Furthermore, to really skyrocket your success you should create an email list that you dedicate to your affiliate program. In this list, you could create a series of autoresponders that detail the best way to promote your site. Or if you have a new promotion coming up, you easily contact a group of people who will be ready to market whatever you create.

Now I’ll be honest here…

Creating an affiliate program deserves more than the quick blurb I did here. The important point I want to make is you should spend a lot of time helping your affiliates. Sure it’ll require more effort at first, but this is the kind of effort that will pay dividends for years to come.

#10- Building a Brand

Here’s the part where I give you another caveat…

My only traffic strategy has been my affiliate program. In hindsight, I would have used a dual-attack with promoting my information product. One that utilizes that method that I’m currently using with this blog.

The 2^nd web traffic method I recommend is to build a “brand” around your product. Now I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about branding. Instead I’ll simply say that you want to be known as an authority in your niche.

And when I mean authority, I don’t necessarily mean that you have to known as a complete expert in your particular area. As long as you’re passionate about your subject, people will look to you as somebody to follow.

How do you build authority? Well, your authority is created when you combine a series of individual website traffic methods. I feel it’s important to integrate all your marketing into a very cohesive, “look and feel.”

For instance if you’re writing articles, then refer readers to your opt-in page. And once people are on your opt-in page, send them to your blog. Or if someone’s reading your blog, refer them to an article or a video that you want to promote.

Again, this is one of those concepts which require a lot more detail.

My point is simple…. You want to cycle all your traffic through the different “brand channels” that you’ve created. Through the sheer process of repetition you can build a lot of trust in your individual brand. And once you form a trusting relationship, it becomes a lot easier to make a sale on your info product.

#11- Testing and Tracking

I can’t under-emphasize the importance of tracking the results of your information product. To really skyrocket your income, it’s important to consistently split-test the different aspects of your selling. The idea here is you’ll often see a dramatic increase in your profit by making one small change to your sales process.

For instance, here are different things you could test:

• Your price
• Your headline
• Lead magnet page vs. Direct salespage
• Your sales copy
• The order of autoresponders

To be honest, I could make this list a mile long. The point I want to make here is you should always be split-testing and tracking the results. Doing this on a regular basis is one of the best ways that I know for increasing your profits, while not having to increase the amount of “work” you have to do.

I use the AdTrackz Program to split-test different aspects of my information product. This isn’t one of those fancy Taguchi programs that cost thousands of dollars. Instead it’s simple to use and helps me quickly measure the results from every split test I’ve run.

What Now?

Like I said in the introduction to this article series, this “how to” guide kind of got away from me. I originally intended it to be a quick overview of information products. And 5,000 words later, I’ve come to realize that I could have easily added twice that amount.

So here’s what I’m going to do…

Right now, I’m in the process of creating my first report. This is a free info product about an aspect of personal growth and development. Unfortunately I have to make this my #1 priority because I’m using it to build my email list.

But after that, I plan on adding a bunch of content to this article series and turning it into my 2^nd free report. The good news is I’m thinking about making it 100% free. No opt-in list, no email hassles, and no “buy my stuff” pitch-fests. Instead, one day you’ll come to my site and I’ll give you a link to where you can download this report.

Anyway, I want to thank you for reading all four of these posts. Hopefully you gained a little value from this process and maybe it gave you some ideas about either creating your 1^st or 100^th information product.

Finally, I want to ask a slight favor…

In order to improve upon this tutorial, I need to know what areas I missed. So could you please comment below and ask specific questions about anything that you feel needs more clarification or explanation. Or if I completely missed a topic, feel free to point that out as a well.

Take Action. Get Results.