The Easiest and Hottest Products to Sell Online - Part 1
by: Corey Rudl

Although there’s a lot of diversity in each, it’s easy to summarize these two products:

1.  Information products

2.  Software products

There is so much information to share on this subject that I could write a book.  I’m going to break these down into two parts.

Both are easy to sell on the net when your customer is "pre-qualified" (we will talk about this later).  Both have a high mark-up, so it doesn’t take a lot of sales to pay for any advertising cost or overhead, meaning it’s easier to turn a profit (a large profit!).

Choosing a Format

Let's talk about information products first, which are the easiest to develop.  Software usually means having to "joint venture" or becoming a reseller for a programmer/software company, because most people do not have the required skills to create software themselves. It’s in your best interest to market information products like books, manuals, special reports, audio videotapes, and software. They are the easiest to sell and generate quick profits, having tremendous markup potential and are easily delivered (it can even be done electronically via email, with no product or fulfillment cost).  For example, Car Secrets Revealed costs a whopping $1.55 per book from the printer, and I sell it for $27.00. What other product can generate this kind of profit margin? Software and audio/video information is similar. A CD-ROM or floppy disk costs less than a $1.00 to produce, but sells hundreds of dollars. Audio and videotapes sell for up to $50 and can cost less than $3.00 to produce.  Customers are not paying for "value" of the material in the book/videotape, etc.  They’re paying for the value of the information you provide.

Regulation

Information products are also very easy to produce when compared with virtually anything else, with essentially no regulations that apply to them. If you were to produce a weight loss pill you would need to go through the drug administration, safety and labeling regulations. If you were to produce an electrical product, you would need to get it approved by the Standards Associations before you could release it to the market. However, if you were to sell a product such as a weight loss manual or a book on how to build your own radio receiver, you wouldn't have to do anything but write and print it. You are protected under the first amendment of the Constitution.

Market Demand

The last reason why an information product is the hottest to sell is that our society is so "information hungry". This is especially true on the Internet, where the entire medium is based on the concept of "information", hence the term "The Information Super Highway". It is easy to charge larger sums of money for knowledge that will make life easier or more comfortable. It can be as simple as how to make your garden flourish, or as complex as how to make a fortune in the stock market. What makes the Internet perfect for this is the people who use it are "information junkies", and they are usually searching the net for information... a perfect client for you!

You’ll also find that when you produce an information product, you’ll start to receive offers to write articles for magazines, be invited to interviews (TV and radio), to speak at different functions, etc. You’ll be quickly regarded as an "expert" in the field if your information is valuable and accurate.

Note: I commonly write for automotive magazines because of the name I have made from my book. Magazines pay upwards of $400/page for this kind of editorial. If you just write a three-page article every couple of months, it’s an easy extra $10,000 in income per year.  And better yet, I just take a couple of pages out of my book and alter them into article format. It takes me less than 30 minutes to make a three-page article and I get $1200 from each magazine that runs it.

Now, if you are saying "I don't know how to write" or "I don't want to write a book, manual, or information product", no problem.  Later, I’ll discuss how to get a hot information product and get other people to write it for you for free.

Market Share

Pick a market that can afford what you’re selling. Many people come up with a great product, but they market to a clientele that cannot afford what they are selling. Take a moment and think about it. Don't make this mistake. Not only do they have to be able to afford it, but they must have a passion for the subject (a hobby or interest they love), or a problem that they badly need solved. And, of course, they need to have a credit card.

Developing a Product

I recommend that your first product be a book or manual about 100 pages in length. This is very easy to produce, and publishing a book can be done very inexpensively. You can publish special reports or booklets in small quantities like 10 or more. And, if you are going to publish a book like you would see in a bookstore, it can be done for under $3,000. A book can cost you as little as $1.00 a copy to produce if you invest wisely.

Distribution

1. If you produce an information product, offer it as a WORD or TXT document on diskette, or "downloadable" over the net. There is new software that virtually eliminates pirates or people stealing your e-book. It will only install on one hard drive no matter if the person gives their friend the same password and file (it will only install on one computer). You cannot copy and paste the data out of your e-book. All the files are encrypted so they cannot be copied. You can even de-activate the software from anyone's computer if the customer doesn't pay you or charges back a credit card.  You now have no cost to the product, so the selling price is all profit and the fulfillment procedure is fully automated. I have many friends that make in excess of $150,000 selling electronically deliverable information products online.  You can find more information on the e-book software at http://www.marketingtips.com/multimedia.html that can virtually make your informational product pirate proof.
2. Offer it in print format. You can have this done at any local copy shop, or, if you plan to sell a lot of copies, have it printed and bound professionally at a printer.
3. Don't try to produce an audiocassette, videotape or CD-ROM until you have experience in print media.
4. When you are creating an information product, the name of the book/special report is a critical key to your success. Let me use Ted Nicholas as an example. He wrote a book called “The Entrepreneur's Manual”. It sold only twelve copies. The author renamed the book “Why SOB's Succeed in Business and Nice Guys Fail” and marketed it again.  A "whopping" 600,000 copies were sold. The title was a lot more interesting and controversial, making for great press releases and topics for news and TV, and his sales skyrocketed. With this new title he could market it in an entirely different way and get lots of free press.

On that note, I should mention that some of the most successful books have never made it to the bestseller’s list. These lists only reflect how many books were sold in bookstores. Car Secrets Revealed (the car book I wrote in 1994, for those that have not heard of it) has been among the top ten automotive bestsellers in the United States for over 2 years now, but it has never appeared on a bestseller list. This is because the lists are compiled from information supplied by a few major bookstores. All the copies of Car Secrets Revealed were sold online or through the mail, so the retailers don't even know about it, but did you know that 50% of all books are sold through the mail? That means that half of all the books sold in this country aren't even considered when compiling bestseller lists!

Getting Results and Profits

Many people assume that 90% of the work you will have to do is in the production of the product, but this is far from the truth. You will spend about 10% of your time creating the product and 90% promoting and selling it.

Tip: Widen the scope of your book or manual. The title should not be "How I Got Rich Selling Real Estate in Orange County", but " How to Make a Fortune Through Real Estate with Little or No Capital Investment".  Test your titles - they are key to your success.

Place classified ads in magazines (or online) targeted to what you are selling testing new titles to see which one pulls the best (use the title in your classified ad headline). This is critical. For example, with Car Secrets we tried an ad that read, “Car buying, repairing and maintenance tips - call for free information on how to save thousands when buying a new car. (604) 730-2833.”  We also tried an ad that read, “Car Secrets Revealed - learn the secrets of how to save thousands when buying a new car. Call (604) 730-2833 for free details.”  Or you could say, “New book completed by professional car salesman – ‘How to buy a car $50 under dealer cost’. For free information, call (604) 730-2833.”  These are different examples we used to test titles. Make sure when you test titles that you use the exact same ad design and are just replacing the title of the book. You need a baseline to work from to see which truly pulls better.

Tip: You probably haven’t published your book yet, so you want to offer something to get them to buy once you have completed your printing. You might say, "As a pre-publication offer, I would be happy to autograph your copy of my book and give you a $5.00 discount from the advertised retail price. It will be off the press in 60 days. Would you like to order it now?"

If you need an informational product, there are four ways of creating a great informational product literally overnight. They are super creative and will blow you away. But I will not reveal them here.  It’s something I reveal in my course, "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet".

Go to http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/27819/ for more information on how to pick up a copy of the course for yourself.  The four techniques reveal exactly how to pick a hot-selling topic and have one of the hottest selling information products in less than 4 weeks.  Two of those techniques will allow you to come up with your own informational product literally overnight! Which means that if you don't have a current product, you could be up and rolling by next week with your own hot informational product that has incredible profit margin.

Now you say, "I can't write a book!" Well, I have good news! You don't have to! In the course I will show you how you can get others to write it for you for free. You don't even have to invest any money to develop informational products.  In the course, I also reveal three ideas for informational products that I have wanted to develop and market, but have not been able to start due to my overloaded work schedule. These ideas will give you a good place to start.

The author of this article is Corey Rudl.

Corey gets over 4 million visitors to his websites yearly, does 5.2 million dollars in sales online each year (yes, $5,200,000), and personally makes hundreds of thousands of dollars from his online businesses, all from his one small office. So listen to what he has to say as he knows what he is talking about when it comes to starting and promoting a business on the Internet. Visit his site at Internet Marketing Center where he reveals all his unconventional tips, tricks and techniques with examples so you can learn the most efficient and fastest ways to make money on the Internet.