Month: January 2011

What You Need To Start Publishing Information

Getting started in info publishing is a pretty straight forward process. You need:

  • A niche
  • Home office with computer
  • A business plan
  • Business operation software
  • Marketing strategy

Let’s take a look at each of these items a little more closely.

Niche

Your niche is your specialized topic. It’s important to choose a niche because it’ll be easier to be competitive. It’ll be easier to be profitable. For example, there are many books on home organization. However, there may not be a book on how to organize your garage for maximum efficiency. Or garage organization for single women. That’s even more specialized.

Choosing a niche may be the most important step you take. You’ll want to make sure you’re choosing a topic that you’re passionate about. What’s your passion? Make a list. Choose ten to fifteen topics you love. The more enthusiasm you have for your topic the easier it’ll be to make money. Now research demand. How many people are looking for your information? Finally, you’ll want to see how much competition there is. Keyword research tools can help you find a profitable niche.

Home Office

It’s nice if you can have a quiet and organized place to work. It’ll help you get and stay productive. However, if you don’t have room for a home office you at least need a computer. Your computer will be ground zero for your business operations so make sure it supports you r needs and consider investing in a backup system.

Business Operation Software

In adding to software to create your information product, like Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF maker you’ll want to consider:

  • Auto-responder
  • Shopping cart software
  • Website analytics
  • Bookkeeping software

Business Plan

Once you have a niche it’s also time to begin planning your business. What type of information products are you going to publish? There are a number of products you can create. The most common is the ebook. You can also create:

  • Home study courses
  • Workbooks
  • Online courses
  • Video series.
  • Informative interview series (recorded and delivered via audio download)
  • Workshops and seminars (recorded and delivered via audio or video download)
  • Reports
  • Checklists, templates, blueprints, mind maps and other smaller downloads.

You can also decide to create one book on one niche topic or a series of products on one niche topic. Your business plan is where you set out your vision and goals for your business. Research your competition. Document your target audience. Plan how you’re going to market and sell to them.

Sales and Marketing Strategy

Your sales and marketing strategy will be part of your business plan. However, they’re important enough to isolate as an independent step in the business creation process. You’ll want to take a look at various marketing strategies and tools. For example, do you want a website or blog? What’s your domain name going to be? What tactics will you use to promote your information product?

You’ve chosen a niche. You’ve set up your home office and created a comprehensive business plan. It’s time to get busy creating that product that’s going to line your pockets with money.

7 Reasons to Become an Info Publisher

Becoming an information publisher offers a number of benefits. In fact, it’s one of the few business models that you can essentially set and forget and still make money. You can publish a book, put your marketing into place and earn profits for decades. It’s a fantastic stand alone business model. It works well as a supplementary business model too.

Profit from your Passion

Choose a topic you love. As an info publisher you’re able to create an information product like a book or a home study course. Your information helps people live better lives. It solves their problems. It provides value and benefit. You’re helping people. You’re sharing your passion and making a profit.

Credibility and Authority

Boost your image. Many people venture into information publishing because they want to enhance their careers. Publication helps establish you as an authority. For example, if you’re a sales consultant your business might receive a great boost in clients if you publish a book on how to be a better sales person. It can also lead the way to a future career. That same sales consultant who published a book may become a sought after public speaker.

24/7 Profits

One of the most compelling reasons to become an information publisher are the round the clock profits. Once your marketing system is in place you can essentially set it and forget it. Of course you can also continue to create more information products and increase your profits.

It’s not unheard of for an information publisher to make money from a book they wrote five years ago. With a sales page, strategically placed advertisements, good SEO and an automated sales process it’s easy to sit back and relax. Of course, you can add more products and grow your business too.

Automated Sales and Fulfillment Process

If you create digital products then the sales and fulfillment process is 100% automatic. With the use of shopping cart software and an autoresponder you don’t have to lift a finger. Your customer buys the product. They pay for it and they automatically receive a download link in their email in box. You can even automate or outsource customer service to manage any technical difficulties or returns.

Freedom

Want complete control over your life? Information publishers can live a very relaxed life. You can spend a few months setting up your business. Then you can take a few months off. You can work three weeks a month and then take a week off. You’re able to choose your work schedule. You’re also able to choose when to work. If you’re a morning person you might choose to work in the mornings. That leaves the afternoons open for playing. As an info publisher, you control your life, your career and your business.

Great Income Potential

Want unlimited income potential? If you write a book and publish via traditional means you make only a small percentage of the total sales. If you write a book and have it printed via a print on demand fulfillment system you make about fifty percent of the cost of the book.

If you become an information publisher and create digital products then you earn 100% of the profits. And you get to choose the price of the book. If you want to sell the book for twenty dollars you can. If you want to sell it for a hundred dollars. You can. Yes, people have priced their books at a hundred dollars and sold them effectively. People will pay a lot of highly specialized information.

High Return on Investment

Want a small investment and a high return? There’s a generally low startup cost to get started as an information publisher. In the next chapter we’ll take a look at what you need to get started. However, before we move on consider that:

  • You can write or create your info products yourself.
  • You can create your own sales copy and marketing messages.
  • Your shopping cart software and autoresponder only cost a few hundred dollars a year maximum and you can pay by the month.
  • You can create your own website or blog. Customized graphics or a template will help you brand your business and you can hire someone to create them for less than a few hundred dollars.

In short, you can get started as an information marketer for less than $1000. And many people start for less than $200. You’ll earn back your investment and start profiting in no time.

Free Niche Research: Lawn Mowers

It’s been a while since my last free niche research. Life throws us unpleasant things to deal with: my father fell off a ladder right after Thanksgiving, and sustained major brain injury. Thankfully, he is recovering very well and we are expecting an almost full recovery.

Now, on to today’s niche research. Even though we are in the middle of winter, now is the time to prepare our spring niche sites, so let’s do some lawn mowers niche research.

Top 10 Highest Paying Keywords (from the Google keyword tool)

husqvarna lawn mower parts $2.36

riding lawn mower attachments $2.27

lawn mower cheap $1.97

kohler lawn mower engines $1.65

cheap lawn mower $1.65

toro lawn mower parts $1.64

dr lawn mower $1.62

lawn mower lift $1.60

used riding lawn mower $1.57

lawn mower spares $1.51

Top 10 Most Searched Keywords (all phrases are exact matches in Google)

lawn mower 18,100

Murray lawn mower parts 6,600

lawn mower parts 14,800

Toro lawn mower parts 3,600

lawn mower repair 9,900

lawn mower reviews 6,600

riding lawn mower 2,900

lawn mower tires 2,900

lawn mower blades 2,900

electric lawn mower 2,400

Resources
Black & Decker CM1836 18-Inch 36-Volt Cordless Electric Lawn MowerBlack & Decker CM1836 18-Inch 36-Volt Cordless Electric Lawn MowerBest places to find information about lawn mowers is in lawn/landscaping forums.  Of course, you can always use the manufacturers information, as well as home, gardening, landscaping magazines.

Possible Affiliate Programs For Lawn Mowers

Amazon.com has lots of lawn mowers and lawn mower accessories for sale.

CJ.com & Shareasale.com have several offers as well.

Monetization Suggestions

If you decide to create an informational site, AdSense has good payouts.  But, don’t ignore specific pages with affiliate offers.

Here are some .com domains available for this niche now:

weedeaterridinglawnmower.com

Here are some .net domains available:

weedeaterridinglawnmower.net

ridinglawnmowersclearance.net

lawnmowertroubleshooting.net

usedridinglawnmowersforsale.net

Here are some .org domains available:

weedeaterridinglawnmower.org

usedridinglawnmowersforsale.org

Do you have questions? Feel free to ask in the comments below, and I’ll do my best to help you.

And if you need research done for your own niche, don’t hesitate to look at my keyword research offer!

Article Marketing Initiation

When it comes to marketing your website, article marketing still holds a prominent and powerful place in the grand scheme of drawing online traffic. It is a valuable tool and here are some first steps you can take to get it working for you.

What is it about writing that makes some people cringe? First of all, it can seem like writing term papers in school. Relax. Writing articles is not as stressful as all that. Learn here how you can write an article in 7 minutes.

Here are some tips for writing those articles.

Write what you know – The articles need to be relevant to your online business. You wouldn’t write about gardening to promote a chocolate gift basket website, for example. Since you are creating a business that you know something about, the articles are merely an extension of that.

Do keyword research – People use certain keywords when they are looking for information on the Web. You can use free or paid keyword tools to find out the most searchable words in your niche. Use those words as the topics for your articles. Search engines do crawl website content so keep your keyword density (the number of times it appears in the article) at about 1% to 4%. Keyword stuffing is not going to net you any extra traffic.

Get to writing – An appropriate article for a website needs to be around 400 words in length. You want to give your readers valuable information without droning on and boring them. Depending on what you are writing about, it may be a couple hundred words longer to explain complicated procedures or recipes.

Create relevant content – To determine that, ask yourself a question: What do your readers want to hear about? Use that as your guide to choose topics that will be read.

Submit articles to article directories – These sites post your articles. There are free and paid sites. Both will review your submissions to see if they are relevant and comply with their guidelines. Most will give you a bio box to place a link to your site and information about you, the writer. If you are not sure what is out there, take a look at some articles on your subject in article directories. You don’t want to repeat the same old stale content.

People love to read articles. It contains information that they need. As long as you are providing it, you will have an audience. If readers know that certain sites can be relied upon to provide quality content, they will go there and search through their articles. You want them to find you there.

One click on your link in the bio box and they can be at your website reading more helpful content. These are just a few steps to get you going in the right direction with your article marketing efforts.

Resources for Article Marketing

Article Marketing 365

7 Minute Article Secrets

Article Marketing Mistakes

Article Profit Formula

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