What Are Info Products
Information marketing is aimed at delivering useful information, ready-to-use schemes, practical tips, educational materials or any other logarithm for action that is able to help people develop their business, build a career or facilitate a certain array of challenges.
Bear in mind, that this article doesn’t deal with such informational products as printed books/magazines or DVDs/CDs. We’re talking about digital products that reach their audience through the internet or via download: PDF files, dedicated websites, audio recordings, video tutorials, etc.
Relatively speaking, it’s possible to identify seven types of digital products for website monetization.
- Educational ebooks
- Mobile apps
- Workbook/Master page/Templates
- Virtual classes and conferences
- Online courses
- Webinars
- Membership sites
Now, let’s see their benefits and the reasons for popularity among businesses and individuals.
Why Are Info Products Popular?
Before, we had to attend classes, courses and various educational establishments to learn something new, launch a startup, change profession or upgrade the skills. It took a lot of time and additional money. Now, you can learn everything without leaving your home
You can now find specific directions on how to grow in every niche of business or even in personal life. For example, if you want to know how websites make money, there are various step-by-step guides that can walk you through this process and help to monetize your blog.
From the seller’s point of view, digital products are a very lucrative prospect:
- They don’t demand shipping and other types of physical activity
- There’s no need to invest in production or pay for storage
- You can grow your business with one product
How to Create an Info Product
How can you make money with a website and info products? Such projects usually consist of two stages: Creation and promotion. Let’s see how to create a top-notch digital product that will bring you the highest sales.
Find Your Niche
It’s crucial to make sure that your product will be able to bring a stable passive income for a long period. To that end, it’s necessary to research and dive deeper into the affiliate niches, market trends and patterns. For example, travel is one of the most popular niche markets, but it’s too wide a field, so it will be better to narrow down the niche and find a win-win solution for your business.
First of all, base your decision on your personal interest, but don’t forget to look around and find your direct competitors. Pay attention to their strengths and weaknesses in order to develop a unique concept and become competitive.
Besides, it will be great to monitor relevant blogs, forums, social media communities, news and other sources of information to make sure that your niche popularity grows. It’s a good way of determining people’s needs and outlining your target audience.
Find Your Target Audience
How much money does a website make? If your blog attracts people regularly, you can make a fortune! Pay attention to your current customer base and keep an eye on your competitors’ customers.
Make a list of your product’s benefits and a list of people who might need your product. Consider both demographic and psychological factors such as fears, values, behavior – all of these influence their choices greatly.
You should evaluate whether your product will be affordable for the audience. In addition, it will be important to know how easy it is to reach people with your message.
Research the Market
When thinking of how to make money with websites, it’s necessary to create a unique value proposition that will make people buy your product. Make an order attractive by explaining its value to potential customers and how it can solve their issues.
Then, it’s important to build a marketing strategy to determine effective online channels of selling and affiliate programs for the website, for example. Product testing is also a part of marketing research since no calculations can be absolutely accurate without putting it into practice.
Advertising and public relations are also important for “heating” the interest of the audience to your product. It helps monitor the results of your campaign and improve the strategy.
Choose a Type of Digital Product
In the travel niche, you can build a membership site and offer readers to buy a subscription in order to receive your advice on traveling, lists of must-visit places, ideas on how to save money and more. Alternatively, you can tell the audience how to create a travel blog and how much it costs.
Another idea is to write an ebook with travel advice, like where to order flowers, which restaurant to go on a honeymoon and more. It’s better to narrow down your topic, for example, write about how to plan a party in a certain location or develop a guide on nightlife.
Speaking of travel guides, they come in handy for many people who prefer to learn about the destination in advance and make the best of their holidays.
How to Launch Info Products
There are numerous ways of selling info products, so below we’ve compiled a list of the best techniques to start, develop and increase sales.
Paid Advertising
Paid traffic ensures that you have a large number of potential customers. When using the Google Display Network, you increase brand awareness by strategically showing your message to potential customers.
You can also resort to AdWords before your product hits the market and after its launch. Start a campaign in advance and incentivize leads to sign up so that when a product is launched, you already have a list of subscribers. Alternatively, AdWords will be able to drive traffic once the sales start.
SEO
SEO optimization is a great way to get on the first page of Google search results for your keywords and reach out to more people. How can you make a website well-positioned within search engines? The idea is to fill the content with relevant keywords, in particular, headings, images’ captions, tags and meta descriptions.
When using keywords, you correspond to the users’ queries on search engines and help them find your website faster. An effective meta description motivates people to click on your link when they look through the search results on Google. Also, try to make the first paragraph as informative and catchy as possible to inspire visitors to read the article till the end. What else can you do to optimize the blog?
- Create a “coming soon” page
- Start building your social media community
- Prepare a dozen dedicated posts before launching your product
- Optimize all pages within your website
- Use guest blogging opportunities to build links to your resource
- Give away your product to bloggers in exchange for their reviews
If you want to study SEO deeper, check out this great article on the best resources to learn SEO.
Social Media Promotion
Consider using social media to leverage the campaign. For example, you can create a dedicated page on Facebook and offer your product for free in exchange for “likes” and subscriptions.
Social media is also a good base to grab influencers and make the campaign successful. Techniques such as Twitter parties are in demand when you want to celebrate the launch of the digital product and let the community know about it.
On top of that, social media can help with things like crowdfunding, setting up a contest and promoting your pre-launch webinar, to name a few.
Free Content
When working on a product launch campaign, don’t forget about content marketing. Today, there are many resources providing free articles, visuals and audio to help you fill the blog at first and also save the budget. You can get free high-quality images from StockSnap, blog posts from Free Article Spinner and topic ideas from HubSpot, to give a few examples. Blog content directories and PLR articles are also free sources of content.
Webinars
A webinar can work as a digital product itself, but can also serve as a tool to promote your info product. Make a webinar to connect with a large audience and motivate people to buy your product. On the other hand, participants have a chance to learn about a new brand and maybe receive a sample of a free trial. Usually, webinars include presentations followed by a Q&A session.
Email Marketing
Send out a newsletter to your subscribers informing them about the new product. You can create a release detailing the upcoming features. It can also be a pre-order or event-webinar email. The type of notification determines the deployment timing. For example, addressees should get an email like this two weeks before the launch of your product. One week is optimal when sending an announcement.
Don’t have an email list yet? It’s time to build one!
How to Sell Info Products Online and Generate Passive Income
The value of any digital product is the main key to its success. But however useful your solution is, make sure to get some buzz about it with appropriate marketing techniques to generate heat and provide sales.
Try to identify your target audience and show what value your product brings and how it can solve customers’ issues. Don’t forget to provide social proof and stay flexible during the campaign to be able to adjust it along the way.
