Information Products: The Second Key to Business Success as a Coach or Therapist (Part 1: Creating the Product)

Once you have all the clients you want or can fit in your time scale and have a waiting list as long as your arm, how can you expand your business? Well, you could put your prices up, that may work, but put them too high and you run the risk of losing clients (of course, this is a good strategy to cut the number of clients and keep revenues high).

And relying on private clients to earn your money means if you decide to go away, or take a week off, or (even worse) get ill or injure yourself and can’t work, you income stream dries up immediately.

So what can you do to continue to generate additional income or make some money whilst you take some time off?

The answer is to produce a series of information products. You can produce CD’s (or mp3 downloads), DVD’s (or video downloads) or books (or ebooks).

You could even get all carried away with yourself and design an online eCourse or other multimedia products (although, I would argue, that, this may be a bit complicated – and expensive – as a first time product, no matter what some other “guru’s” out there may try and sell, sorry, tell you. Start with something simple before doing a full-blown multimedia products).

To begin with I would suggest you start with either ebooks or audio downloads. These are simple, easy and low cost to produce and sell. As you get the hang of it you can create more complex products. Video products and DVD’s are a little more complex, as you have a lot more production to do and it is very easy to create a DVD that looks cheap and amateurish (and will do your reputation no good at all).

Creating Your Product/s

As long as you do the following three simple steps in the order listed, you should easily produce your first information product in a week or so.

1) Brainstorm and Research Ideas
There really is very little point in producing your own version of a product that is already out there and made by someone more well known than you. The amount of people I have seen who have produced some sort of “weight loss” product similar to Paul McKenna’s is almost unbelievable.

Brainstorm some products you think would be a good idea; that you know about; and most importantly, that you are interested in (if you are not interested or excited about it, you will soon run out interest and probably end up with half a dozen unfinished product ideas).

Then do your research and see what is out there already. What can you do that is a different to them? Add to? Offer an alternative to? If you can afford it, buy a couple of the similar products, see what they are doing and see what is missing. You need to find the need that is not being fulfilled.

2) Script It Out
Once you have decided on an idea (or idea’s – you can develop a few simultaneously). Do you want to do an ebook, audio product (CD or mp3 download) or video product (you could film a seminar, or produce a specific video programme)? What will suit your idea best?

Unless you know what you are doing I wouldn’t recommend a video product on a first outing, it can be expensive and easy to mess up.

If you are writing an ebook, then scripting it out will be part of the writing process and really just involves figuring out what content you are going to put into the book and in what order. When it comes to producing audio or video products you need to script it out in detail. Don’t think you can “wing it” during the recording process, unless you are an accomplished commentator, presenter or actor you won’t manage it (as an idea of length, I found that 4 A4 sheets of paper with Arial 12 type on it will take around 15 minutes to read).

3) Produce It
Now you have an outline and/or detailed script you can get on with creating the product.

Ebooks are most probably the easiest of all to produce, you can write it in a word processing software such as Microsoft Word or Apple’s Pages.

Once you have written it, I highly recommend that you convert it into “pdf” format, this is the “standard format” for ebooks online. If you are using a Mac, you can easily convert the document to a pdf by “printing it” into pdf format. If you are using a PC, you can either purchase a copy of Adobe Acrobat (although this can be expensive) or use a free online conversion tool such as www.pdfonline.com or www.freepdfconvert.com.

If you are producing an audio programme, you will need audio recording software. If you use a Mac, you will have the built in recording software Garage Band, which is a versatile and easy to use recording programme. If you are not using a Mac (and if not, why not? Mac’s really are much, much better than PC’s when it comes to running a creative business), you can purchase all sorts of recording software, from the simple to the professional (and expensive), I suggest, to begin with, to use Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net), it is free and simple to use.

You will need to buy a good quality USB microphone (such as the Samson C01U microphone, which is around £60), don’t try and use the built in microphone on your computer, the quality will not be good enough.

You will then need to save the file in an mp3 format, if it is spoken word, I would recommend a low quality version of around 92kbps. Don’t worry if you don’t understand that, it just means it is slightly lower quality and therefore a smaller file size, which is important if you are offering the product as a download.

If the audio product is quite long, break it into tracks to download separately, this, again will make the audio programme easier and quicker to download.

And there we are, you have just created your first information product! Easy wasn’t it?

In the next post I will talk you through how to get your product/s online and get selling.

Matt

Do Something New In 2010!

I was watching the news on New Years day and, as with every year at this time, they were talking about New Years Resolutions.

One of the guests they had on the show was a “personal development expert” who had written a new book about, yes, you guessed it, getting what you want!

Yes! Another one. Just like all the rest.

I may be sounding sarcastic and cynical at this point. And that is because I am.

I hate to sound blunt, but that is just another self-help book to clutter the shelves in your local bookshop.

I was listening to the guy being interviewed and he had nothing original or new to say he was just regurgitating all the usual self-help clichés and truisms.

Not that what he was saying wasn’t good. It was all useful stuff. It’s just that is was the same stuff that every other self-styled “personal development expert” is saying.

I see it time and time again, people setting themselves up as coaches or therapists or trainers (or “motivational speakers”) and doing, saying and acting the same way as everyone else who are doing exactly the same thing!

You will be very, very lucky to be successful if that is your business strategy. You will throw good money after bad and probably end up out of business in 18 months and there is a good chance you may even take someone else’s business with you when you go bust (by stealing clients from them whilst your were in business).

The self-help field is crowded and competitive and entering into the marketplace without an effective business and marketing strategy is just commercial suicide.

But I am not trying to put you off. Honestly. I am just giving a stark warning. It is still possible to be very successful in this field. You just have to start out with the right strategy.

The starting point of a successful strategy.

If you boil down all my advice to one word, it would be “NICHE”.

You need to specialise, do something unique and original or something no one else is doing. It doesn’t have to be amazing, but it has to be different. Sometimes something as simple as aiming at a specific geographical location, gender or social group can be enough to differentiate you from everyone else. But you need to do define you niche and (this is essential) stick to it.

How do you develp a successful niche??

There are 3 simple steps to getting a successful niche:

1. Gather Ideas
Firstly, brainstorm things you are interested in or know a lot about (there is no point developing a niche you hate just because it is a niche, you will end up not enjoying what you are doing and there is nothing worse that being self employed doing something you can’t stand!).

Now see which of those ideas yo can turn into a viable business. The best way to think about it is what problems are not being fulfilled in that niche?

2. Research
Then research, research, research (you get a set of research questionares as a bonuses with the “Professional Practice Builder Handbook“), is there anyone else doing it? Is there a real and tangible need for it (you could have the best niche in the world, but if no one needs or wants it, you will fail. I have seen this many, many times…).

3. Set Up and Test
Once you have done your research set up what you think will be the most successful niche for you, you don’t just blindly stumble in. You set up the niche and continue to test. Is it as good a niche as you thought? Do you need to tweet and alter your approach?

Was there more than one niche you thought would be successful. Set up both and test, see which one is best and drop the other one.

You get the idea?

Learn a step by step approach on how to do this and much, much more in the “Professional Practice Builder Handbook”. Click here for more details.

Matt

PS, I apologise for not posting as regularly as I would have liked towards the end of 2009, a few things ran away with me. My New Years Resolution is to start posting at least once a week, to get my head round twitter and get some more  web classes recorded (I can’t believe the first – and so far only – one was way back in March last year!).