What is information marketing?
Marketing any kind of information whether it is in the form of an e-book, news letter, website, special report, or white paper is occurring at break neck speed. Information marketing also includes printed books, CDs, news papers, printed media and broadcast media like radio and television.
We live in an information age rather than a manufacturing age.
Information can be used in many different ways and purposes. Some are:
a. Making money is the number one reason websites are created. Almost every business today has a website. On most of them a person can buy a businesses’ products.
b. Providing information is another main reason websites are created. An example is www.webmd.com. Its main function is to provide information about a host of health and wellness information.
c. Some websites are created to support a busineses’ image. For example, a fashion product like Armini.
d. Supporting a business is another use of information and websites. Many businesses are able to take orders on line. In addition businesses can post catalogs of their products online to show a wider selection of products.
c. Many individuals are creating websites to create an ecommerce business. There is an explosion of these new business persons. Everyone thinks creating an e-commerce business is an easy way to make a fortune.
On the Internet there are basically three things that can be sold; products, information, and services. Most people think only products are sold on line but there is much more to sell including information and services. Since this is a graduate call about information marketing, I will focus on e-books and other forms of information.
Choosing a product
Whether one tries to sell an e-book, news letter, or a special report, the product chosen is paramount. If the customers don’t want it, nothing else matters. Generally there are two basic ways to pick a product.
What are you passionate about? Do you have hobbies, skills, experience or just a huge desire about some subject? After all, you will be spending thousands of hours working and building it. Some times the topic a person is passionate about is saturated, in other words, there are already too many other websites selling it.
If that is the case, you do some research to find out what products or topics are not saturated but have a large demand. There is a three step process I will teach next Wednesday evening during my graduate call about e-books.
What do you do if your topic is saturated? You approach it like the big guys do. When Robert Allen or Ken Blanchard decide to write a book they first look at the social landscape. They pay attention to what people want. What are people concerned about? What are they afraid of? What gets them excited? What social, political, or demographic changes or trends are occurring?
That is the way Robert Allen decided to write his best seller Multiple Streams of Income. He could see the economic environment moving. He could see that there are going to be 70,000,000 baby boomers reach retirement soon and they will need a way to maintain their life style.
That is the way I arrived at the subject of my e-book. I am passionate about music. I play sax, flute and clarinet and have traveled all over north, central and South America performing. Unfortunately the category of music is saturated with people selling everything related to music. So what did I do? I did what Robert Allen did. I look at what was going on in our country. It happened to be right at the time when gasoline hit $4 a gallon. The media and the population went crazy. “We have to get off foreign oil. We must develop solar, wind, geothermal and other forms of energy.” Hmm. I thought. Maybe there is something here.
As I looked at what was going on I decided that there would be a rush by the population to get in on the new types of energy. I decided if there will be a wave of people getting into the solar business, they might want information about solar business opportunities.
That is when I decided to write my e-book, How to Start a Solar Energy Business.
Maybe you have information that you can disseminate over time. Perhaps a paid news letter is the right vehicle for you. I remember back in 1979 when Robert Allen published a news letter about how to buy real estate with no money. He charged $99 a year.
If you have expertise people will pay for you can consider creating paid conference calls or webinars. Interested people pay a fee to dial in and be taught by you. And of course there is always recording your presentation on audio CDs or DVD and selling them.
Summary:
There are many ways to create and sell information and we see it every day. It happens so often we don’t even notice it. Selling information is a great idea. You can create the product yourself, market it yourself, and collect the money yourself. It is the true way to make money from nothing. What a country.
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