Creating and Launching Your First Information Product
As many of you know I recently launched my own product. This post is about that experience, what I learned from it what you can learn from it also.
I have been asked for quite sometime when I would release my first ‘product’ and frankly up until very recently I had been having so much fun and doing very nicely promoting other peoples products that I really did not see any need to have my ‘own product’.
This video and enhanced transcript tells you how I did it — but first I’d like to make a confession. PopUp Domination is not my first product idea – indeed previous to PopUp Domination I had been working on two other Make Money From Blogging Information Products – but somehow never got around to finishing them / releasing them. I confess this because as much as I am about taking ACTION, I certainly have dragged my feet about launching my own products.
So what was different this time?
I suppose the main difference this time was ‘speed of implementation‘. My development team, James and myself had already created PopUp Domination for use on IncomeDiary so launching a product in a matter of days was a real possibility.
This is critical – Speed of Implementation.
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The longer you give yourself to do something the more likely it will not get done in my experience.
There was also one other strategy that we used that I have become more familiar with over last 7 days. It is the ‘READY, FIRE, AIM’ approach. (Rather than Ready…aim…fire)
I did not consciously consider that I was doing that – but having now launched a software product that is I think perhaps the best way to describe it:
Steve Pavlina explains READY FIRE AIM perfectly in this article:
As Steve explains – the ready-fire-aim approach, rather surprisingly works a lot better than the more common ready-aim-fire approach.
“The reason is that after you’ve “fired” once, you have some actual data with which to adjust your aim. Too many people get bogged down in planning and thinking and never get to the point of action. How many potentially great ideas have you passed up because you got stuck in the state of analysis paralysis (i.e. ready-aim-aim-aim-aim-aim…)?”
Of course Ready Fire Aim does not always work — just look at the trouble Apple has got into with ‘reception issues’ on the new iPhone 4 – but hopefully you get the picture.
Really when it comes down to it, taking action and getting something done and out the door now – even if it is not your best product is better than never launching at all. Dangerous talk I know and of course you can’t release a totally rubbish product but especially with software the only way to find out all the BUGS is to release it. That is why just about every decent piece of software I know has regular updates – to cope with those Bugs! I have to admit PopUp Domination is no different and we already have a number of tweaks and updates planned – as well as increasing the price as we continue to improve the product.
Enjoy the video (and enhanced transcript) – as always I look forward very much to your feedback and comments.
best wishes
Michael
PS: Enhanced Transcription is really worth a read – I have included some extra information and links there.
How To Launch Your First Information Product
Enhanced Transcription – with additional resources.
Today, I want to show you these some very exciting. It is exactly how I launched my first product – a WordPress Plugin called: PopUp Domination . A Plugin that allows you to easily add a Lightbox Opt-in to your blog which can get you 4, 4 or even 10 times more Opt-ins.
This is how I did it.
First, I found a problem which was that people wanted to create lightboxes and get more opt-ins but they were struggling to create Lightbox Forms that had compelling offers, nice graphics etc.
All the best Product Creators go with this premise – create a product that solves a problem. No matter what your industry people have problems that need solving. Can you solve their problems?
In my case I personally needed a way to even better monetize my blog and get more opt-ins. I had been looking at using Lightbox opt-ins from AWeber and while I liked the idea, most of them did not really inspire me so I set about creating my own easy way to add a AWeber Lightbox to my blog. In the end I can up with 4 distinct designs that are easy to edit from the admin area along with a multitude of color options. (Not only that we adapted PopUp Domination to also work with: iContact, GetRESPONSE and Mailchimp plus more to follow.)
This became the basis for me launching: PopUp Domination
To solve problems is pretty much why you need to create a product.
The product could be a resource or it can be a software. It could be a WordPress Plugin like PopUp Domination
Or, it could be an ebook or a membership site or an ecourse or an interview of the month or a Daily Industry Alert (or Tip) to name but a few.
Find a problem, create a solution and bill your customers!
Once you’ve decided what YOUR PRODUCT is you need to work out how you will deliver it to your paying customer. This could for example be via email, a membership website or a Download link on a Thank you page
Decide what’s going to work for you and then we can start building this sales page, and the thank you page, and doing everything else.
Sales Page
I really encourage you to add video to your sales page – that is what is working right now! People like video. The more authentic the video the better (indeed a professional sounding “radio voice’ can actually be a disadvantage in some instances)
Personally, I’m not great with video. (well, I’m improving) It went all right. We sold a few hundred in the first day. And, we’re still selling more every single day. So, we’re getting ready to have a big launch.
Quick Tip: Don’t show how long the video is on the player controls – in my case I set video so that if some one clicks on it it pauses and then to start playing again the just need to click again. (Less controls, less distractions)
Most important – have a Prominent BUY BUTTON – - or Add To Cart Button.
Lots of little tweaks can make such a difference to conversions. Check out the Belcher Button – from my friend Perry Belcher.
The Thank You Page
Never assume buyers are inside your head and what is obvious to you may well not be obvious to them. So explain everything very carefully and in detail. Including an email address for contact on thank you page is a good idea as people don’t always download straight away.
We all mess us and people creating thank you pages often don’t think like their customer so they miss essentials. Make it real simple with plenty of “Click Here” , Arrows and “Download here” instructions. If you’re going to sell a lot, have a Customer Support area … so you don’t get bombarded personally with emails and all service requests go straight to Support. Later it is also a good idea to add FAQ’s to cover the most frequently asked questions.
The Shopping Cart
For us, we chose Clickbank but there are loads of different places you can go for delivery of digital products such as Nanacast, and E-junkie, and a bunch of other ones. Clickbank works for us because we wanted to get lots of affiliates and Clickbank has TONS OF AFFILIATES!
But if you have your own affiliates in mind then there are other alternatives such as Nanacast. Typically you pay Clickbank 10% of sale for their service but with Nanacast you just pay a monthly fee to use their software.
With ClickBank, it took us just three days to get accepted. Clickbank often ask you to make some changes in order to be accepted as they did with us. I really like Clickbank – they know what they are doing and getting accepted within three days is pretty good considering we hadn’t fully created the product. Indeed, we started creating the product only 11 days before we actually planned to sell it.
As I mentioned in my introduction – Speed Of Implementation is Everything when it comes to launching a product! Also, as I said:
The longer you give yourself to do something the more likely it will not get done in my experience.
You need to learn to just take action. So, many people think, “Oh, I’m going to launch in like six weeks. And, when you know you’re going to launch in six weeks, they often just bum around and come launch date they have only half the work done!
Once I decided that PopUp Domination would be my first product we spent the next 11 days hard at it with programmers working around the clock. Quite insane really – but fun as well!
Conversion Boosters
OK, once you have your sales page up and running you may like to consider some conversion boosters. One that we tried (that you may well have seen on many other Clickbank Product pages) is that of offering a discount if someone does not buy and attempts to close the page.
Personally I have never been super keen on this approach but I was encouraged to give it a try. I will admit it works – but it is not without its disadvantages. For a start you upset all your customers who bought at full price. So what we did in the end is offer a $10 discount but buyers at that price did not receive the Product Presentation or the Photoshop files.
You really need to have a reason to offer the discount in my opinion – it has to be credible so if you go with this approach I suggest you bundle the product slightly differently, leave something out.
This in fact increased our sales by 40% which is an incredible number, so anyone who has got a product or service online, you definitely need to check out the software we used, it’s called Exit Splash!
Of course the other angle to this is to also offer an more expensive option (an Up-sell) — for example offering to install the Plugin for an additional $20. That is not something we have done, but I wanted to give you that angle with Product Offerings as well.
Finding Affiliates
Affiliates is the driving force of your business. The more affiliates you have – the more sales you’re going to make. (I like to think of this as Work Less, Make More money strategy)
We found our affiliates through ClickBank. My product is about Blog Marketing so I went to every person who had a Blog Marketing product on Clickbank and offered them the opportunity to be a Joint Venture Partner (JV / Affiliate) Of course not everyone responds but those that did generated a substantial number of additional sales that I would never have otherwise had.
I really encourage you to go with this approach to finding affiliates for your product offering. Believe it or not most of these other product creators are actually happy to hear from you.
If you would like to promote Popup Domination – Click here!
In Conclusion
Of course this is not everything you need to do — but it is the most essential first steps. So now the QUESTION is:
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