Passive Income Blog: Create Passive Income Online

Okay, here is another 4-letter .com giveaway.  (Congratulations to draggar of DNforum for winning the last domain giveway)

ZBXV.COM

Registered with Godaddy - free push!

Only one luckly blog reader will be the new owner of this domain name.

To win, simply blog about this giveaway and be the 20th trackback.

Additional Rules:

• Your blog must be "active" (you've made a post in the past year)
• Your blog must be legitimate (ie. no splogs or spam blogs - yes, you know who you are)

I will publish all trackbacks when the 20th trackback is received as soon as I am able to, or in 48 hours, whichever comes first.

Don't have a blog, here is a guide to starting your own blog.

Okay, I'd like to make an official announcement that I will be closing down commenting on my blog.

The decision was made because I've been receiving more spam comments than legitmate ones and it's taken too much of my time to filter them out.

However, this does not mean that you can not leave a "comment" really.  This just means that the only way to "comment" on my blog is through trackbacks.

Let me explain what a trackback is.

Imagine 2 bloggers, Ben and Jerry.

Now, let's say Ben posts something interest his blog, and Jerry wants to leave a comment on Ben's blog post, but also wants Jerry's readers to know that he has left a comment on Ben's blog.

Jerry can achieve this by making a post on his blog and trackback to Ben's blog.

If both Ben and Jerry are using WordPress blog platform, Jerry can simply insert a link back to Ben's blog post and Ben will be notified of a trackback.

Now, Jerry's readers can follow the link to Ben's blog post, and Ben's blog post will show a trackback in the comments section of the post.  Essentially this becomes a reciprocal link.

If you would like the official definition of a trackback, click here.

Having that said, please use trackbacks to leave a comment on my blog!

As you know, all 4-letter .COM domain names are all registered.

I'm giving away YJQM.COM to one luckly blog reader.

Here is what you will need to do to be selected:

Be the first to blog about this giveaway from your blog.

Yep, that's it!  I will follow your trackback and contact you for the transfer.

Don't have a blog, here is a guide to starting your own blog.

I had the pleasure of talking with my geeky brother today about business - where it stands, where it is going.

"Yeah, what do you know... you are just a techie!" I thought to myself.

But one thing that he mentioned that struck me silent was the idea of creating value.

You see, most people are so caught up in trying to make money they forgot the very essence of why customers buy from you - because your product or service has value!

So, take a step back and let's ask ourselves, how do we create value?

I came to this conclusion and the following actionable items.

Create value by doing what others are not doing or willing to do

I don't care what profession or business you are in - if you start doing something today that other people in your profession or business are not willing to do, you therefore create value.

For example:

Those in the software business:  Instead of selling a piece of software we give it away for free.  This poses a tremendous value to people and we gain their trust and loyalty for future product releases or recommendations.

Realtors:  Write a "10 things you must know before you buy your home" and "10 things you must know before you sell your home" and give them away for free to your clients or prospects.  Offer you clients a helping hand in moving when you have helped them buy/sell a house, etc.

Info Product Developers:  Give away your best content.  Double refund as your guarantee.

Individuals:  Extend a helping hand.  Volunteer.  Share information.

I want to hear what things you are doing or have done in the past that has helped create value.

This blog post is a part of  “How to start your own info product internet business” series.

Step 1:  Choose a market & 5-minute market Litmus Test

Step 2:  Identify a desire or problem

Step 3:  Develop the product

Step 4:  Get testimonials

Step 5:  Write up your sales message

Step 6:  Drive traffic to your sales message

Now that you have your product ready and sales message written up - you'll need to show your sales message to people in your market!

There are serveral ways to drive traffic to your sales message.

List your product on Clickbank

Clickbank.com is the marketplace for digital products - they bring product owners and affiliate marketers (people who will sell your product in exchange for commission) together.

Getting your product listed on Clickbank is easy.  Although not free ($50 fee), getting your product listed with them will pretty much bring immediate traffic and promotion to your product.  Not only is Clickbank a marketplace, you can also use their service to process payments (and you can set it up so that your product is automatically delivered to client once paid for).

Search engine traffic

This comes in two forms:  Paid and organic.  Organic search traffic can be achieved by ranking your webpage high in the search engines for certain keywords that your prospects would search for when looking for your product.

Paid traffic is also called "pay-per-click" because you pay the search engine when someone clicks on your ad to go to your webpage.

Getting traffic from the search engines is both an art and science is a study by itself.   There is one course out there that will teach you how to master search engine marketing that I highly recommend:

Stompernet's Stomp The Search Engine

Classifieds Traffic

You can get tons of "free" traffic from sites like Craigslist.  Now, one thing you have to keep in mind is that Craigslist is not very marketer-friendly, and their community "flag" system may kill your ads as soon as they are posted.

You have to very creative and careful which category you are posting to.

I used to generate tons of real estate and small business loan leads using Craigslist which I have detailed in my Craigslist Slap Report.

Article traffic

I love article traffic because of its passive nature!  You can write articles and submit them to article directories or submit your article to ezine operator (people who publish e-newsletters and already have a subscriber base).

You may use articles as a pre-sell tool to educate your market about your product, to give out free teaser information which leads readers to the product that you are selling - you get the idea.

The great thing about articles is that once it's written and submitted, it will go to to work for you 24/7 around the clock.

Note: Don't limit yourself to just these types of traffic - there are other ways of getting traffic out there for your to explore.

This blog post is a part of  “How to start your own info product internet business” series.

Step 1:  Choose a market & 5-minute market Litmus Test

Step 2:  Identify a desire or problem

Step 3:  Develop the product

Step 4:  Get testimonials

Step 5:  Write up a sales message

Your sales message is probably the most important piece of writing you will ever do in your life - other than your resume.

In fact, I want you to put in 10 times the effort you put in to write your resume (trust me, I've seen some horrible resumes in my life when these people are highly qualified and skilled - but they suck at selling themselves!).

Your sales message has a direct effect on how well you can turn your visitors to customers.

As a rule of thumb, you want to address the benefits, rather than features (unless you are selling a technical product, such as software).

In my New Aquarium Guide product, I have my benefits presented in bullet-point format.  I spell out exactly what people will get when they purchase my report.  I talk about what beginning fish keepers would want!

Your sales message could be long, or short - and you can do some testing to see which format works best for your market.

Here are just some of the things to you can test in your sales message:

• Your headline (font, color, style)
• Your product image(s)
• Your message length (long, short)
• Your message format (video, audio, text)
• Your benefits
• Your bonus (if you have one)
• Your guarantee (if you have one)
• Your price

At the end of our sales message you would want to place a "buy button" - if you are new to this game, just use Paypal.

It is also important that you have a way to capture visitors to your sales message in a mailing list (two lists:  one for people who didn't buy so you can do further followup, and one for customers so you can do further up-sell/down-sell/cross-sell).

Note:  Don't forget to ask for the sale!  Don't be afraid to ask people to buy your product, and don't hesitate to instruct people to click on your "buy button" to proceed.  People have made it this far in your sales message, it's up to you to tell them to click on the "buy button" or they will click back or close your sales message.

Step 6:  Drive traffic to your sales message

Step 1:  Choose a market & 5-minute market Litmus Test

Step 2:  Identify a desire or problem

Step 3:  Develop the product

Step 4:  Get testimonials

This step is optional but highly recommended.  Testimonials can help you sell - it establishes your product's credibility.  You will be using testimonials in your sales message (See Step 5:  Write up your sales message).

Since you have not begun selling your info product, you will need to give out review copies in exchange for testimonials.

Getting reviews/testimonials from actual customers are the best kind to have, but at this point you are going to have to settle for second best - customers to be.

There are several ways to do this - easiest would be to hit up an online forum in your market (in my case an aquarium forum), and offer a number of review copies of your product to some forum members in exchange for testimonials.

Testimonials from none-customers are perfectly legit.  Think about software products - typically developers will have beta testers to test out their software and provide reviews and feedback.  Same with getting reviews and testimonials from your customers to be.  You get testimonials while these reviewers get a free info product.  It's truly a win-win situation.

Another way is just to give a copy of your info product to people you know - your family members, friends, co-workers, etc.

Testimonial Getting Tips:

• In certain markets and for certain products, you may need to sell your review copy as if you are selling the actual product.  In certain markets you will have people line up to give you testimonials just so they can have a free product.  In other words, you may need to pay for reviews, or you may need to make people pay for a review copy.
• Provide review copy to senior members of the forum (you can usually tell by their join date and post count) - they may help you get customers later by recommending your product to other forum members.

Step 5:  Write up your sales message

Step 6:  Drive traffic to your sales message

This blog post is a part of  "How to start your own info product internet business" series.

Step 1:  Choose a market & 5-minute market Litmus Test

Step 2:  Identify a desire or problem

Step 3:  Develop the product

In Step 2:  Identify a desire or problem, you should have a list of things that you should cover (this is the information that people are paying for).  Therefore, when developing your product, be sure you are solving a problem or fulfilling a need or desire, and be sure that your product actually delivers!

Some people seem to get stuck at the product development stage - well, you shouldn't.

Don't over-complicate this process.  If you are comfortable with writing, then open up Microsoft Word and start free writing (A good technique is to just write freely, then organize and edit later).

If you are comfortable with recording an audio, then download Audacity - a free audio recording and editing software.

If you are comfortable with recording audio and video, then use Camtasia software (camtasia.com).  If you want a free solution, use Jing (jingproject.com) or screentoaster.com (note:  these free services will cap your screen captures to 5 minutes per clip).

A very common way to develop an audio/video info product is to first come up with a Powerpoint presentation, then use a screen capture program (Camtasia, Jing, or ScreenToaster.com) to capture the slides and you can just talk to it.

I find that it takes a few tries to get it right - but don't dwell on little things.

Product development tips:

• Just be yourself, don't force a way of writing, speaking or acting.
• Start with an outline or a table of content, then fill in the details.
• Don't try to perfect your product at this stage of infancy - your main goal is to make that first sale (Read Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat (Agora Series) by Michael Masterson - I highly recommend it).
• If developing in form of writing (ie. PDF), consider developing also in audio & video format of the same information.  Audio & video could then be added into your offer as bonus to make it more enticing to the buyer.
• Interviews with experts and chat transcripts can also be great info products - be creative!
• If you have been blogging, compile your best blog posts and put them into a report.
• If you are absolutely reluctant or unable to develop your own product, then consider outsourcing your product development.

Step 4:  Get testimonials

Step 5:  Write up your sales message

Step 6:  Drive traffic to your sales message

This blog post is a part of "How to start your own info product internet business" series.

Step 1:  Choose a market & 5-minute market Litmus Test

Step 2:  Identify a desire or problem

Ask yourself:  What does your market want to know?  What are some of the problems that people face everyday in your market?

For my New Aquarium Guide info product, I know killing fish when setting up a new tank is a problem - especially if it's your first time.  I know cleaning the tank is a pain in the neck, so I put in my report some tips on how to clean your tank effortlessly.  I know certain people want to have a fish tank set up to improve Fengshui, so I have a section on that in my report as well.

Here is a tip for you:  Go on Yahoo! Answers and do a search for a keyword that your market would most likely search for.  This will give you some ideas as to what people are asking and what kind of information they are looking for.

Take a look at this person's question - do you think he's doing market research, or perhaps getting content for his product at the same time???

Step 3:  Develop the product

Step 4:  Get testimonials

Step 5:  Write up your sales message

Step 6:  Drive traffic to your sales message

Selling information product as an internet business is great because a typical info product is digital - that means zero reproduction cost, zero delivery cost to your customers (can be delivered via email or web), and no inventory control needed (unless you are selling, say, a piece of licensed software).

Info products have high profit margin - again, zero reproduction and delivery cost - you get to keep almost 100% of what you sell!  Not many businesses can boast that.

As an additional benefit of owning your own info product internet business - freedom!  The entire product creation and selling processes can be systemized... like any other true business should be.

Info products can come in many shapes and forms - simplest to develop would be to a report (ie. PDF), it could be in audio or video (higher perceived value, but information could be the same as in your PDF!)

I've put together a process overview on how your can start your own information product internet business.  This will be a multi-part blog post.

Step 1:  Choose a market & 5-minute market Litmus Test

Perhaps you are in your own marketing?  Then that's great because most likely you can identify who are people in your market, and what kind of problems they (or you) are having.

Take one of my very first info product for example:

New Aquarium Guide

http://www.NewAquariumGuide.com

My market is fish keeping hobby - or people who want to get into that hobby.

Make sure you have a clearly defined market - "people who like animals" is too broad, "people who like dogs" is better.

Something that may help would be to go into a bookstore or online magazine website and see if there would be an actual magazine written for your market.

Now, perform a market research.  Type in your "market" in Google search and note if there are advertisers for your market:

Advertisers are the listings on the right hand sidebar of the search result page.  In this case, there are quite a few advertisers for "fish keeping" keyword which is actually great news!  It means there is a market for it.

Now you'll want to use Google's External Keyword tool and perform a search on your market and see what the search volume is like:

As you can see there are 18,100 approximate searches for keywords related to "fish keeping" (keep in mind this figure is for broad search type, see Google's explanation on match type).  If you would like a count that is more accurately reflective of actual search, then drop down to Phrase or Exact match types.

This is where you would want to gauge whether or not you would like to proceed with this market.  "Fish keeping" has a good number of advertisers (which means there are money to be made), and has "decent" search volume  - Yes, it's a relatively healthy market to get into.

My market selection rule-of-thumb:

• At least one-full page of advertisers on Google's search result page for your "topic" search.
• At least 10,000 searches for your "topic" in Google External Keyword Research Tool (broad search type).

Note:  Come up with your own market selection guidelines as you gain more experience in developing and selling info products.

Step 2:  Identify a desire or problem

Step 3:  Develop the product

Step 4:  Get testimonials

Step 5:  Write up your sales message

Step 6:  Drive traffic to your sales message