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It is a known fact that more than an impressive 90% of all purchases people make are motivated by impulse. People make quick decisions to buy based on the benefits and solutions offered by the particular product or service they're interested in.
This information is vital when you are thinking about creating a killer mini-site. The key factor of selling in today's society is "Instant gratification"... and that is exactly what you should give them. Nothing else will do. The good news is that technology allows you to fulfill that key factor and deliver your products immediately after your customer purchases from you.
I know this is stuff you already know or at least imagined (else you wouldn't be reading this course). However, there are still thousands of 'so-called' marketers who are not taking advantage of this incredible technology... are you one of them? If you are, you are loosing more sales and money than you could ever imagine... and that is a terrible situation to be in.
What kind of products sell the best from mini-sites?
Yes, you guessed it... informational products (or infoproducts) are by far the highest sellers. This kind of product usually delivers a great deal of useful information or how-to knowledge to the user; they can be any of these types:
* E-books
* Digital audio feeds
* Digital video feeds
* Members only websites
Out of all those categories, the one I prefer are e-books. And I'll tell you why:
1) E-books are easy to produce. If you can convert your writing into html files, you can package it into an e-book.
2) Delivering e-books is done instantly and it takes the least amount of web resources and bandwidth. (Most web hosting companies charge you the extra bandwidth you use exceeding their quota). Maybe in the future, when broadband is the standard in every home, digital audio and video feeds turn into the best solution... but for now, keep it on the safe side and save your customers and yourself a lot of headaches in making everything work.
Even when broadband becomes the standard, you can pack your audio and video feeds into an e-book for easier distribution. Some marketers are
already using this kind of technology in their publications.
Unlike "Members only" websites, e-books are considered by most as a one-shot deal. People don't expect you to update your e-book frequently.
This gives you more time to create even more infoproducts and add them to your cashflow... thus, increasing your monthly profits.
Here are the three strategies I use to crank out killer infoproducts every time I need to make money.
Strategy #1.- Imitating Success
Pick up some copies of the New York Times (today's and a couple of past but recent- episodes) and find out what the top ten best-selling books are on each one.
You will notice that there will be a repeating pattern on the subject of some of these books. This tells you what topics are hot. You can also check out the top 100 best selling books at:
http://www.amazon.com
http://www.barnesandnoble.com
http://www.usatoday.com/life/enter/books/leb.htm
Now, go out and buy 5 or 10 of the most popular books on a hot subject. Read them and summarize the findings into your own words in an infoproduct of your own. Don't just copy the information you find... that would be illegal. Instead, write your own findings and complement them with the information you got from the materials you bought.
You can then sell that product as a special report, a course or an e-book. As long as you market it correctly, you are guaranteed to sell a lot of copies, because based on the bestseller list, you know it is a topic in demand.
Strategy #2.- Use your industry
The easiest and more often overlooked ideas for an e-book are right in your current industry or in your favorite hobby or interest. If you are an engineer, a doctor or an attorney or just a plumber or a steelworker, you know your industry inside and out!
You know exactly how your industry works and what it's needs are. There is usually always an information product you can come up with that your industry needs or wants and information product that is in high-demand.
What do you know? What skills do you have? What could you teach others? These are all areas where you could create an information product. Don't dismiss this without giving it some thought. Really, almost everyone overlooks this, you should not.
If your hobby is horseback riding, don't you think you could come up with a product that helps others to learn your personal riding techniques? Could this be a periodical publication? A course? A single book? Find out what's best for you and do it. After all, writing doesn't really cost you anything but time.
Strategy #3.- Computer software
Do you use computers? What software programs do you use? Do you master any of these?
Create a tutorial for a popular software product you use. For example, you might be using a program like Corel Draw. This is a very popular program that many people have problems with, create a couple of tutorials for it and market them to Corel Draw users. Many of them will thank you for coming up with such a great product.
Another way to go is by visiting:
http://www.cnet.com
http://www.pcmag.com
http://www.download.com
http://www.tucows.com
http://www.zdnet.com
Find the top 100 file downloads on each site to see which programs are popular online. This information is very helpful when trying to find a large market for a software product to write a tutorial on.
Are you good at a popular computer game? Well, why not make a few screen captures and write down your secrets to beating this game? it's that easy! Doing a screen capture is as simple as pressing the "shift" and "print screen" keys on your computer keyboard. Then just go to a bitmap painting program and select "paste" from the "Edit" menu (this works on most programs, but it may vary on yours).
Using the same technique above, you could use the screen captures to produce an e-book consisting of the most impressive, important, resourceful websites for a specific topic.
For example, you could produce an e-book called "Top 10 websites every man should visit to know what women like". Capture the screens, make a link to each one of these sites using their own graphic and write down your thoughts on each particular site. Then market this product to male individuals (they are 60% of the total internet users).
People will not be buying the information on those websites but your thoughts and the findings of your research which took only a few days of websurfing to complete.
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