Information Products: The Second Key to Business Success as a Coach or Therapist (Part 2: Selling the Product)

In the last post we discussed how to easily create a simple information product. Once you have produced it, you need to get it online, so that you can sell it.

In this blog I am going to talk about how to sell it as a download rather than physical product, as it is my belief that a downloadable product is cheaper (and therefore more profitable) and easier to do as a first time product.

By all means get a physical product made if you want (do some research, see what your clients would prefer), but it will be more expensive and higher risk (I have loads of old CD’s and DVD’s etc kicking around that I wasted money producing, just to never sell!).

Getting a product online can be a bit complex if you are a total technophobe. So, if this is the case you will most probably need to employ the services of a web designer to help you. This can be expensive, but it will be worth it in the long run.

The good news is, if you want to give this a go yourself, there are plenty of ways to do it, easily and straightforwardly (gone are the bad old days of having to code everything!).

Lets look at the basic steps:

1) Get the product online
2) Promote the product
2) Receive Payment
3) Deliver the product

That sounds very straightforward doesn’t it? And it is. I am not going to take the time in this blog entry to go through each step for you. Why? Well, it is not a cop out I promise, it is that the people you choose to deliver your products will be able to explain the process in much more detail than I can, and it is a different process for each provider your choose.

So, what I am going to do is point you in the direction of some of, in my experience, the best people to provide you with a solution.

Please note, before we begin, that you will need your own website to sell the product/s on. I will assume you already have a website (if not, why not?!)

1) www.1shoppingcart.com

1shoppingcart.com do everything for you (other than the website) they will host your product, collect payment, and also gather email address for your mailing list. They are a great “one stop shop”, however, they are expensive ($59 a month for a basic package and $99 a month for the professional package), so if you don’t expect to sell many products to begin with they may be a bit pricey for you. I know a lot of people who use them and are very happy with their service, so I would check here first.

2) www.clickbank.com

Clickbank are one of the oldest providers on the web. They have a fantastic network of affiliates (who will promote your product on their site for a cut of the profits), and are very easy to use. However, they only provide a payment process and their setup is a bit fiddly (you need to be a bit technologically minded), they won’t host your product (you need to do that) and they can take a very long time to pay you. But, they only charge a one time $59.95 set up fee for your account and then a small commission on each sale, so, if you are going to sell a small number of products they may be worth it.

I use clickbank to sell “The Professional Practice Builders Handbook“, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to everyone.

3) Do It Yourself

You can also “do it yourself” using a something like PayPal (www.paypal.com) or Google Checkout (checkout.google.com) to collect payment and another provider to deliver your products, such as www.payloadz.com, who will link easily with your PayPal or Google account and securely host and deliver your product.

Some webhosts offer an eCommerce “bolt on” as part of their hosting services, which will integrate directly into your site, so it is worth seeing what they offer.

I hope I have pointed you in the right direction to get started selling your products online. Have a look around the three options and see which one feels right for you. You can always experiment with one and see if you get on with it, if not switch to another option.

I wish you all the very best of luck producing and selling your products!

Matt

SEO Part 1: Web Optimisation or Reputation?

One of the biggest questions I am asked by people starting out is “How do I optimise my website (ie, improve it’s rankings on search engines)”, or “Should I pay to optimise my site”.

Which is understandable, the self-help field is incredibly competitive and everyone is fighting to be found. And you need to be found to be successful.

But to be found do you need to be on the front page of Google (Google is still the number search engine, with over 85% of the searches being done through Google) for you to be found?

The first page of Google seems to have become the holy grail of small businesses. If you are on the first page of Google you are guaranteed business, right?

Wrong.

I have met people who are obsessed with getting on the front page of Google, who don’t even have a website yet! Often they haven’t even decided what they want to do, and they are already stressing about getting a good Google rank.

This strange belief has created a whole industry of people promising to get your website to the hallowed ground of the first page of Google (for the right price of course). Some are more reputable than others, but more on that in a little while…

The first question is…

…is investing in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) worth it?

Well, yes it is.

But not yet, you need to do some pre-work first.

Firstly, lets just talk very briefly about what the search engines do (I am sure you know this already, but it is worth reiterating). When someone searches for something, say “Life Coaching, UK”, the search engines use a (very complex) algorithm to decide which of the websites it has listed are most RELEVANT to this search. It them ranks them in the order it decides is most appropriate, with the most relevant at the top.

This relevance is decided on a series of (ever changing – and becoming constantly more refined) criteria, but to even be in with a chance you need have the right keywords to begin with. So if you are a life coaching living in the UK, you need to at least mention on your site the terms “life coach” and “UK” (obvious really!).

However, I am sure you can imagine there are lot of life coaches in the UK all trying to be found and fighting for the hallowed front page.

This is where the importance of niches and specialty comes in. You need to decide on your niche, your “unique selling point” and research it. It will be much easier to appear on the first page of Google for “smoking cessation, Leicester”, for example (not that I have checked that search term. I have no idea if smoking cessation in Leicester is a viable niche or not!).

Once you have found your niche, you need to find relevant and related keywords or terms.

I use a mixture of Google Keyword tool:
https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

and Good Keywords:
http://www.goodkeywords.com/

to find relevant terms (including common misspellings, which can be very useful).

If you don’t want to do this yourself, this is part of what your SEO company will do (if you decide to employ one).

But, I don’t want to jump too far ahead in this blog entry about how to do SEO, I wanted to discuss what else you need to do to be successful.

Say you have managed to get on the front page of Google for the keywords that you have chosen and therefore are well placed to take the most advantage and pick up the most business in your niche. Right?

Wrong.

Before you even need to consider going about getting yourself on the front page of Google (either by taking the time and effort to do it yourself or employ an SEO company), you need to consider some key points, otherwise your arrival at the hallowed first page will be wasted (and most probably short lived).

Landing on the front page of Google means you are more likely to found, it does not make it more likely that you will get work.

Think about that for a moment.

Then consider the 2 following points:

1) You need to spend a long time planning and designing your website.

Which should be obvious really, but needs reiterating (so many people I work with who moan about lack of clients have the most appallingly bad websites). If your website is unclear, untidy, messy, badly designed, badly written, and cheap looking, you will immediately lose any advantage you have from your placement on Google.

But  most importantly (the crux of this post in fact, it has just taken awhile to get here):

2) You need to build your reputation.

In fact, I would argue that a good reputation is easier, cheaper and more powerful (and more reliable) than a good Google rank, and if you are starting out, it is better to spend your time money and effort building your reputation than improving your Google rank.

I know some very, very, very (you get the idea) successful coaches, consultants and therapists who never turn up on Google for the keywords you would think they would (and a lot of them have rubbish websites too!).

Because, they have decided to take the time and effort to build a reputation, rather than build an online presence.

In the next few posts I intend to cover a mini-theme. Firstly I am going to go into a little more detail on how to do SEO or how to choose an SEO company (if you still want to go down that route) and how to build an excellent reputation (I would suggest, if you have time, to do both, obviously!).

Matt