It’s simple really.
Find a problem that needs to be solved in your niche and solve it for your readers in a simple and easy to understand format – then sell your product through a medium that adds the most value to the information (ex… ebook, DVD, Membership site)
The formula for making your own products isn’t complicated – like I said, find a problem and solve it… BUT for some reason there’s a whole herd of bloggers trying to sell products they think their customers wantinstead of selling them what they actually want.
Let me give you an example…
I sell an ebook in the fitness/weight loss niche. Our workout manual, is based on exactly what our customers want…
- Short workouts so they don’t have to spend 2 hours in the gym
- Quick results
- Nice abs (most people who buy the manual have belly fat they want to get rid of)
Most of our product’s appeal is based around these main benefits. When we started brainstorming product ideas, our appeal looked more like this…
- 1 year worth of workouts
- 5 day per week workout program
- Workouts were designed to make you strong (close, but not exactly what they want)
- Different workouts that covered all aspects of fitness (fat loss, muscle building, strength)
Looking back now, I realize the original product benefits would have been a disaster if we tried to sell that. They didn’t appeal to a specific crowd, and we would have had a very hard time selling those benefits.
No one wants 365 days worth of workouts – they want a 4 week or 8 week program. By selling a year long program, in essence all you’re saying is “this is gonna take a long time”. Nobody wants that.
People want a specific solution for their specific problem, and they want it now. In our niche, they’re either skinny and want to put on muscle, or they’re overweight and want to lose fat (usually stomach fat).
Appealing to your reader’s specific problem is the key to selling a profitable product on your blog. You can find out their specific problems by using a survey, or by making a blog post and asking a few questions about their needs.
Shoe used this same method in a different way to come up with the idea of the Shoemoney System. People that canceled from Shoemoney Tools weren’t canceling because they didn’t like the program – They were canceling because they didn’t know enough about internet marketing for the tools to be useful. So he took that info and developed the Shoemoney System, which fills that void for the readers of this blog.
Once you have a product your reader’s want, there’s a few other crucial tips you need to know. I’ll explain those…
A Good Product Name Is Everything
Most bloggers when they name a product use a boring and “logical” product name that doesn’t really hit any emotional buttons. Your product name needs to provoke some emotion, and promise a benefit to your readers. Just look at some of these book names that are at the bottom of the barrel on Amazon…
- Weight Loss Techniques And Tips For Smart People
- Transformational Weight Loss
Do either of those sound appealing to you? They don’t to me! They’re boring, vague and they don’t provoke any curiosity for the reader. Now take a look at some of these ebook titles I’ve seen for the exact same market…
- Cheat Your Way Thin
- The Truth About Abs
Both of these titles are money and make you curious to learn more about the product. Who wouldn’t want to be able to cheat their way thin? The product name specifically capitalizes on the buyers tendency to cheat when they’re on a diet.
Both of these product names also promise benefits, and hit you with POWER words… These power words are crucial to having a good product title.
Words like “Cheat”, “Cure”, “Miracle”, “Danger” and “The Truth About” are very, very powerful words and grab the reader by the throat. They draw you in and make you want to learn more.
So when you’re coming up with a product name, focus on the following…
- provoke curiosity
- grab the reader with power words
- be specific, not vague (lose 17 lbs in 90 days is specific)
- promise a benefit
Another trick is to use words that start with the same letter and sound similar. Such as Coca Cola or ShoeMoney System. This has always worked well for product names.
Once you have your product name & concept you should focus on the format you want to use to deliver it.
Ebook, DVD or Membership Site?
Along with ebooks which most people are familiar with, there’s a bunch of other formats you can deliver your products through.
Some of the main ones would be…
- Video/Audio – The benefit of using audio and video for your product is that you can charge a higher amount. Both of these mediums have a higher perceived value than an ebook. But in reality they don’t cost you any more to make. You can do audios for free on your computer, and you can shoot your own videos with a $100 flip cam or by using Camtasia.
- Membership Site – On our fitness site we have a membership portion that we charge $27 a month for. Over the long haul it’s much, much easier to sell to someone one time, and put them in a membership site than it is to sell new products each and everyday. Not only can you turn information products into a membership site, but you can do other things like sell services and tools (ex.. ShoeMoney Tools or Click Tale)
- Hard Copy Products – Hard copy products allow you to sell for a much higher price point than a digital product. I’ve seen instructional golf dvd’s go for $197 for a 2 disc DVD! You’ll never get that kind of money out of someone selling them an ebook. The only downside to hard copy products is you have to either ship them yourself or outsource the shipping to a company like Disk.com.
Once you find the right format to deliver your product, the next step is prepping your product for the sale.
The Secrets Of Selling
This is where most bloggers stumble.
A lot of bloggers think there is something “sleazy” or wrong with selling so they sort of half-ass their promotions and under charge for their services. In boxing lingo, they pull their punches.
I can definitely relate to this as I used to have a very negative image of selling – but once I realized it was totally biased, my income started to go up pretty quickly.
I always had the thought in my head that I was ripping people off by selling them a product because they could find similar information somewhere online for free. If you’re good at selling, and your story connects with your readers and the product fills a need in their life, then they’ll be very willing to pay good money for the information you’re selling whether it’s available somewhere else for free or not.
One thing to keep in mind when you’re selling a quality product, is that both you and the buyer benefit from the transaction. Once you get the internal friction out of your head that selling is sleazy or you’re ripping someone off, then it becomes much easier to make a sale because you truly believe in your product.
Shopping Carts
Once you’re ready to sell your product, you’ll need some type of shopping cart. We use 1shoppingcart for our ebook, but we’ll soon be heading over to Clickbank.com. If you’re planning on selling a physical product, then 1shoppingcart is the way to go.
These are both pretty easy to setup, and if you have minimal tech skills you can set them up yourself.
Why You Should Sell Your Own Product
If you have a blog, selling a product on your blog is a great way to diversify and add more money to your income. The main reason I started, was to spread out my risk and get involved in another aspect of Internet marketing . I already had my MMA Odds site profiting off of advertising commissions, but the gambling niche is always shaky with the government rules, so I decided to get involved in a totally different niche which had a non gambling and non-advertising income stream.
Once you have your product selling pretty well and your sales page dialed in you can target bloggers and affiliates in your niche and see if they’ll promote your product. This is probably the easiest way to increase your profits without risking any money.
Wrap Up
So if you want to get started right away, follow these steps…
- Find out what your readers want through a survey or blog post
- Check out other successful products in your niche via Clickbank and other affiliate networks
- Develop a product and come up with a good name using the guidelines above
- Set up your shopping cart and start selling to your readers! After you’ve had some success ask bloggers and affiliates in your niche if they’ll promote your product.
If you have any questions on creating a product for your blog, leave me a comment below and I’ll swing by to answer it.
About the author...
Justin Goff – who has written 20 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Justin sells the highest paying fat loss product on Clickbank called the 31 Day Fat Loss Cure. Get more info on being an affiliate here or check out the best damn podcast about the crazy world of Internet Marketing
Images provided by ShutterStock
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{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article. Would love to see you do a followup on this article by going more in depth with setting up a merchant account, transacting orders, how to execute membership programs vs transact a sell for a physical good and how to provide an ebook for purchase with download after the sell.
In my opinion, that’s the part that scares people – the lack of knowledge to implement those tools to transact the business.
Thanks,
Justin
Yes Justin …
With theoretical lesson we would love to see your practical lesson as well.
In fact I was also going to start this kind of program where people will be able to learn about making money online in positive and concrete manner.
Excellent post, Justin. “Pulling punches” is one thing I’m still dealing with, even after years online. I need to change that for 2010!
Once you recognize that youre doing it, its much easier to take control of it and stop
I’ve been going back and forth with an ebook for my site. I keep wanting to test it out more and more, but the results have been really positive and I think I need to get serious and start working on it finally. I’ve talked to several bloggers who say it’s the first step to making real money.
very encouraging post. Weight loss articles are saturating the web, yet you can sell the ebook with a catchy title!
Let me tell you one thing ,,,
In internet world good and attractive title work like as trailer of movie.
Add spice to your title and bring more visitors at your door step.
But you should have good content as well to retain them.
[quote]Words like “Cheat”, “Cure”, “Miracle”, “Danger” and “The Truth About” are very, very powerful words and grab the reader by the throat. They draw you in and make you want to learn more.[/quote]
Well, don’t know about you, but when I see these words I know immediately that the product is either a scam or a low quality crappy summary/aggregation of information freely available on the net.
When I stumble upon these words, I also imagine a long idiot-oriented sales pitch with a big red title and a bunch of fake testimonials …
You know, I kind of agree with that. But only kind of. These “magic words” and hypey sales-pages are also off-putting to me, but you have to remember one thing: The reason overhyped sales-copy is all over the place is because it WORKS.
People actually go for that kind of stuff and promising a life-changing, incredible, secret quick-fix will simply net more sales than if you “keep it real”. (in most cases, anyway)
So, while I personally dislike the hypey stuff, it doesn’t mean the product behind the hype is bad. It just means that whoever is selling it has probably done their homework.
Just a comment about the power of naming the product correctly.
I’ve been doing inet marketing for a decade. I think, in all that time I’ve not really NAILED a name like I did recently. I started getting sales like crazy – and what people were telling me – is, the name did it for them. It was brilliant. It matched the niche and the audience. It gave them what they needed. Of course the product (an ebook) was laser targeted too… I think the right name in this case made it instantly sales ready and so much easier to sell. It’s worth doing nothing but thinking of names for 2-3 days to get it right. And, or, test multiple names and get it right.
Great post – I loved this.
Hey – saw your post and thought you and your readers might be interested in the Amazon Checker.. It basically checks Amazon for hard-to-find products and then alerts you when they become avaliable. It’s called http://www.azchecker.com
Why do you plan to move to ClickBank? Have you consider other vendors such as e-junkie? It seems to me that e-junkie has more affordable pricing and provide similar features as ClickBank.
The major appeal of Clickbank is the built in affiliate network.
A big affiliate who does 10+ sales per day might just start promoting your product after seeing it in Clickbank. You dont really have that luxary with e-junkie.
That was a great post Justin. I have a question about the MMA Odds site that you have. Where do you find the live feeds from the betting sites. Is it automated or do you have to update the odds daily?
Thanks
I hired a programmer who set it all up. Im honestly not very tech savvy, so I couldnt tell you the ins and outs of how it runs.
But we dont update it every day thats for sure!
- J
nice site. I like the way its linked over the betting sites.
Great ideas Justin. Running a close second behind “not wanting to be salesy” in terms of keeping content creators from realizing their earning potential is simply not taking action.
You’ll never have the “perfect” product so just be satisfied with “good enough” and get it out there. You can always improve it, tweak it and refine it as you go along.
You’ll find that taking action alone goes a long way to making money online.
Nice post but How do you get to make your product sell above ur competitors?
Not sure what you’re asking?
You are absolutely right. The internet is vast and you’ll have to diversify to stand out among the crowd.
Cool post, Justin. It’s so true that having your own product makes such a huge difference. I think what people often forget is that it’s not about complete market domination but simply capturing a small part of the market. Really, this is about giving your followers what they want — more of your great info! Also, great tips on how to choose a title. You’re right – the title makes a huge difference.
Just wanted to jump in to say this is a great post Justin. Anyone that has been in the business for a while can backup what you are saying.
I would add that some adwords testing of your concepts (features, headlines, etc.) can save you months of chasing a bad idea.
I also like to slap up a short opt-in page and run some ads. When I skip this step, I ALWAYS get screwed.
That being said, the fewer projects/products I involve myself in at any given time, the more money I seem to make.
I would also caution people not to “opportunity hop” as you dilute yourself and your brand. In the end, you have nothing to parlay into a career. Just a bunch of products no one remembers anymore.
Nice post, i think most people get scared when they think about making their own products. Just take a look at click bank and see what people are calling products and people are actually buying them. You just need to find something in yourself that you know your good and have some knowledge of and go for it.
Great Information.
You are right, I also feel pretty weird whenever I have to sell something to my readers when I first started blogging.
In fact, I started to see income from my blog when I finally overcome this barrier and start recommending great products to them.
I finally realize that I was wrong as my readers thank me for recommending those product to them helping them to overcome their problems.
I guess this is a win win situation as I make money recommending them the product and they in turn benefited from it.
Great information Justin Goff, I totally agree… as a blogger we need to find ways how to monetized our blog. We all know that there are thousand ways how to do it but my question is… are you passionate to do that?
Awesome post. Superb facts covered, specially the ones about getting into a specific niche.
Really awesome article. Thank you for sharing this info. My site is just getting started and the product sales have been very slow. Tweaking my titles is something I need to do asap.
don’t forget e junkie.
i think clickbank and e junkie are the best for selling ebooks, but it depends on your goals.
I think content is the key , if you have something worth selling and you know how to pitch the idea , the template you use will not matter.
great guest posts man. looking forward to a follow up post some time
Good post. I hope more bloggers realize that this is where the real money is at – selling your own stuff.
As for the Clickbank/1SC comment… its funny because I’m doing the opposite. I’m moving TO 1SC. In my view, the value of Clickbank’s affiliate network is a little overrated. I’m sure it depends on the market you’re in, but for me, I found that most of my good affiliates I had to go out and get anyway. The people who came in from Clickbank were of low quality and drove no sales. Or they’d just buy the thing as their own affiliate and cheat the system.
Plus, Clickbank takes like 7-8% of your gross off the top. You have no upsell capabilities (unless you set it all up yourself). Their 1-click upsell capability is reserved for people with long-established sales histories.
My recommendation – don’t discontinue your 1SC account. You might be happy you kept it.
Quality post! The only hard part is finding the right idea for a product to market.
this is a great article about fitness info!
Gracias for the entry, honestly, can you become a author for wikipedia because the current entries in there for our interest is quite frankly dross. I don’t quite agree exactly with it but I agree with it on the most part and I definitely applaud your effort in putting it so succinctly.