In the previous post from The Product Creation Guru we discussed Why Sell Information Products Online.  In this article post I will discuss how to pick your information product…

Pick Your Information Product

One of the biggest hurdles new internet marketers face is choosing what type of information product to create.

Since you most likely want to make a profit off of this, you need to create an information product that solves a problem or tells people how to do something.  Solving problems is profitable.

Also, you want to make sure that there’s a decent sized audience for this product, and you want to make sure that they have money to spend.

So you wouldn’t want to create an information product that solves a really obscure problem that is only faced by a tiny group of people. And you wouldn’t want to create an information product that appeals to a crowd that has no money to spend, such as young teenagers or children.

Here is a list of evergreen product ideas where you will always find a hungry crowd. Provide these people with a genuinely helpful solution to their problem and you will have a grateful crowd that will come back again and again:

• Weight Loss
• Dog training
• Pet health
• Acne cures
• Curing romantic woes
• Saving money
• Debt Consolidation
• Avoiding foreclosure
• Fitness
• Parenting
• Fertility
• Making money online
• Driving targeted traffic to websites

This doesn’t mean that you should only stick to that list, by any means. If you have a skill and you can teach other people – for in-stance, as we mentioned earlier, applying makeup or painting a por-trait or arts and crafts or home repairs – by all means create an information product around it.

You need to make your information product stand out, so you would want to develop a method that lets people learn how to do something quickly and easily, and emphasize that when promoting your product.

“Learn How to Paint Portraits Quickly And Easily!”
“Take Pictures Like A Pro – Learn How in Just Five Lessons!”

You get the idea.

If you’re searching for ideas, try to identify what potential customers need. You can do this by doing some basic Google searches and by visiting internet forums or blogs that are targeted to the area that you want to create a product for – dog training, weight loss, dating forums, etc.

Here’s one way to find out what people need – go to Google and type in the phrase “How To” in quotes.

Some product ideas there would be a weight loss product, or a quit smoking through hypnosis product, or, if you are religious, a product that helps people reconnect with their spirituality.  Or, a manual that gives people tips on creating a Google friendly site, if you know anything about SEO.

Don’t ever be put off by the fact that the product may al-ready exist.

In fact, if there are NO other versions of the product – you should worry. That possibly means there is no market.  There is nothing new under the sun – but people who have an interest in an area tend to buy a LOT of products that address that interest.

If someone is a fanatic about dog training, they are likely going to buy more than one book on it. If someone is desperate for romance, they will snap up any product that looks like they offer a solution.

You need to create an excellent product that solves the problem, emphasize how good your product is when you are promoting it, high-light some common flaws that competing products have and how your product is better than the other products…and it won’t matter how many other competing products are out there. Really.

Another way to find out what people need is to go to Yahoo! Answers and see what people are asking for help with.  When you go to www.answers.yahoo.com, you will see a list of categories on the left hand side of the page. If you have an idea of what general type of information product that you want to create, you can click on the category that you are interested in and see what types of questions people are asking.

Below is the list of categories:

So, if you wanted to create a pet product, you would click on pets  and you would see what kinds of questions people are asking about their pets.

If you wanted to narrow it down to horses or dogs or cats or some other type of animal, there is a list on the left of the page of different categories of pets, which you can also click on:

Just by seeing the common questions that crop up, you will be able to identify a need for information – and fill that need by creating an in-formation product.

You can also find forums by going to a search engine such as Google or Yahoo or Altavista and typing in, for example, “dog forum” or “chi-huahua forum” or “DIY decorating forum” or “web design forum” or whatever your chosen topic is.

It’s important to make sure that there is actually a market out there that is seeking a product like yours.

And once you have done that, you can go on to the next step…product creation.

I hope you enjoyed this post.  Please leave a comment with your opinion:  The next post on this subject will be:  Product Creation and Branding

To your success!