Here is a quick guideline on how to get set up with selling your own information products and making money online with them.

Of course the step that precedes this is knowing what your market wants – doing your research. There’s no point spending a fortune and/or a huge amount of time creating a product no one wants. If you want to be guaranteed successful with your information product make sure there’s a market just waiting to gobble it up!

Step 1 – Create the Product:

You can create an ebook, special report, physical book, mp3, video or any combination of these products. There’s nothing to say that you can’t hire a Ghostwriter to do the writing and proof reading for you.
This product can be as long or as short as you like but just make sure it’s information that people are really in need of and it delivers high value to their lives/problem.

Have someone go through your finished product to do a proof reading (or view/listen).

Step 2 – Set up The Salespage

Of course you’ll need a place to sell your new product from. Though you don’t technically need a new domain for this it’s always a good idea to have a domain specific to the product because it looks more professional and can make it easier to find.

If you don’t have experience setting with creating websites or writing content that makes sales then this would be another great place to outsource these tasks to get it done.

Note: In some cases you may want to reverse steps 1 and 2. Some people will create their sales page first in order to gauge interest in a project and put up an opt-in or survey form to get feedback. If you do put up your sales page first make sure that what you promise in your sales page is what you deliver – always.

Step 3 – Set Up an Affiliate Program

Though an affiliate program isn’t an absolute necessity, it’s a great idea to set it up from the start to really leverage your new product and create more sales.
There are so many strategies you can get into for finding great affiliates and I’ll have to leave that for another post. Getting a few key players helping you promote a new product can make a big impact on it’s release.

Decide on a commission to pay your affiliates. For many of my products, I decided to offer 50% commission to my affiliates. You’ll want to offer an attractive commission to your potential affiliates so they see it’s worth their time to promote your product.

Step 4 – Get Testimonials

No information product salespage is complete without a few testimonials. Since your product is brand new you won’t have any customers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have testimonials!

What I did to get some testimonials was go to a forum where my target market hangs out and offer them a free copy of my report in exchange for a review. Notice I said review, and not testimonial. I didn’t want them just sending me a few kind words because I asked.

As a result I got great feedback AND a couple of great testimonials to add to my salespage.

Step 5 – Get a Graphic

Having a graphical representation of your product really does make it look more professional. If you can’t afford to spend the money right away to get a great graphic done, don’t try to do one yourself unless you know what you are doing. It’s better to have no graphic at all then a poorly designed one.

Step 6 – Start Promoting Your Product

The ways to promote your information product are pretty-much endless. Here are a few ideas to get started:
• Add a short ad in your email signatures.
• Change your forum signatures to draw people to your new product.
• Make a special offer on a forum in your niche that allows such a thing.
• Make an announcement to you list that you have a new product available.
• Post about your product on your blog.
• Search out and contact people who are authorities in the topic your product addresses and ask them if they would be interested in becoming an affiliate.
• Do teleseminars or online conferences on your topic.