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

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

The 4 Keys to Business Success as a Coach or Therapist

The 4 Key areas you MUST be working on in your business are:

1) Private Clients

This is probably the first thing you thought of when setting up your business, if you are a one to one therapist or coach it is the most common way of making money for your business. Although it can be the largest income stream, it shouldn’t be the only income stream.

If you are a teacher (such as Yoga for example) you still need to consider doing one to one sessions for people who want them. Just teaching classes is only part of the mix of being a successful coach, therapist or teacher.

2) Products

Products are an essential stream of income for your business. They are low cost to produce and once you have made them you will be able to “make money in your sleep”. Not only are they an excellent way of making residual income, they are useful to use as promotional aids, free gifts and “bonuses”.

It is easier than you think to create and sell products, and can be done at home on most modern PC’s or (especially) Mac’s, I will talk you through the process in a later entry.

3) Seminars or Workshops

Maybe you are already a teacher or trainer (such as a Yoga or martial arts instructor, business or personal development trainer), if not you should still consider running short talks and workshops on the subject that you do.

The bare minimum you should be doing in this area is offering free introductory talks to groups or organisation you think would be a good potential client base.

Unhappy with your teaching or training ability? You can invest in “presentation skills training” to help you brush up and build your confidence. They are worth every penny.

Learn more about the presentation skills training here.

4) The Corporate Market

The corporate market is not just for executive coaches or business trainers. More and more companies are employing the services of alternative therapists and coaches to work with their staff.

I know of several therapists who make the majority of their income through corporate clients.

They may employ you directly through the company or offer your services at an “employee benefit scheme” where they pay a percentage of the cost for the staff member.

It is very easy to contact local businesses and offer your services, you can collect information and do a mail-shot yourself (using things like the Yellow Pages) or use the services of a professional mailing company (you can find one with a quick internet search).

The secret to succeeding in the corporate market is to show the benefits to the company (such as higher productivity, less sick days, etc) as well as benefits to the staff members. It is a good idea to be able to quote some studies showing the benefits of what you do to business (again, a very simple internet search will reveal a wealth of information.
In my next few posts I will break down what you must be doing in each of the areas to make sure your therapy or coaching business succeeds.

Matt