Here’s another excerpt from our Info Product Mastery Q&A session where we teach you how to create and sell your information product.
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Now, here’s our next question…
Question: I Have No List. How Can I Sell My Book or Info Product?
Alice: Well, the first step is…get a list.
Ron: Nobody wants to build a list, like, “Oh my, I’ve got to build a list, and I’ve got…”
Alice: You can start without one.
Ron: Okay, if I build this list, and then I’ve got to communicate with these people.
Alice: [laughs] You can start without one, but part of the product launch is building your list, and last time, we talked about how we grew a list through the affiliates and stuff, right?
We gave out a bunch of free things prior to our launch, created the buzz that way, and grew a list of quite a few thousand, just from having our affiliates send us traffic.
Ron: Right, use other people’s lists to grow your own. You’ve just got to make win-win offers.
Alice: Yeah, or if you’re doing the interviews, because we’ve talked about interviews, so if you interview somebody and you ask them to tell their people that they’re being interviewed, and they have to opt-in to get the interview or whatever it is, then you’re growing it that way, too. So they’re not an affiliate really.
Ron: I’ll tell you what, I have a friend, he’s a professional body builder and owns a couple of fitness centers and was an all-American wrestler.
He came to me asking for different product ideas he could do online, so somebody like that, I’m thinking, “Okay, first thing is fitness,” right?
I said, “Okay, teach people body building. Come up with your own angle on body building or weight loss or six-pack abs or something like that.”
“Nah, I don’t want to do that, ” he says.
I’m like, [laughs] “You don’t want to do that? That’s your low-hanging fruit. Why don’t you want to do that?”
“Everybody’s doing that. I don’t want to teach that.”
So I’m like, “Okay, well, come up with something maybe motivational, like how you overcome anything, how you struggled early on with your handicap, and achieved so many things, and you can motivate people. Be a motivational coach, that type of thing.”
“Nah, I don’t want to do that.”
So he comes back to me a few weeks later, and what he wanted to do was he said that many of the women he works out with are in menopause, so he wants to help women who are in menopause.”
I’m like, “But you don’t know anything about menopause. You’re a man, first of all.” [laughs] But that’s what his niche was, so he created a website and reached out to all these experts in the menopause market, and he created this pen name, so if someone asks, “Can you do a pen name?”, absolutely.
So he went out and he interviewed all the top experts in the menopause space, people that are best-selling authors, people like doctors and medical professionals, and all this stuff, and he had this series of webinars. He called it “Menopause Week,” or “Menopause Weekend,” or something like that, and he got them all on these webinars to interview them and teach what they know at the same time.
He recorded all of their webinars, and turned it into a product. Now all of the sudden, he has this product with all of these experts in it, and he had all of these experts referring their people to his Menopause Awareness Weekend event, or whatever he called it, and now he’s an expert at menopause, because he put his name alongside all of these experts.
I just thought that was the craziest thing, somebody that jumps into a niche that’s completely out of nowhere, and becomes an expert at that particular topic, with every disadvantage you could think of for that topic. He’s not a medical professional. He hasn’t penned a book on that thing. He’s a dude, first of all. He’s a body builder. He just jumped in. Now he’s a menopause expert.
Alice: Very good. I’ll check it out in ten years. [laughter]
Ron: Yeah. And he made a good amount of money from that product, too. He had all those experts promoting it. Once you get one expert on board, you can leverage that and say, “Okay, we’ve got this person in, are you interested?”
Alice: Yep.
Ron: Or you can ask that expert, “Who else do you know might be interested?”, and they’ll refer you to some people.
The real message is, you don’t have to be known to do a joint venture (JV), you’ve just got to create win-win offers and have a good product. You don’t have to be well-known to do JVs.
Here’s one thing you can do. Create a product, right? And just completely sacrifice that product. I know it sounds crazy, but listen and think about it. You want to build a customer list, right? So you create a product. Maybe it would be a light version of your product, or maybe it would be not your main product, but any product that you’re willing to sacrifice.
And then approach somebody that’s in your niche, and say, “Listen, I have this really good product.” You could do one of two things. You could approach them and say, “Listen, I’ll give you a hundred percent commission if you promote this product to your folks. I’m just looking to get my name out there and looking to build my audience.”
You’re pretty much giving them a product and telling them, “Send them to this page. Here’s your affiliate link. I’ll give you a hundred percent commission.” Then you get the customer list. You get the audience, and then from there, you can create more products.
You can do it that way, or you can approach somebody and say, “I have this really good product I spent a lot of time on. Would you be interested in partnering on it? I’ll give you the product. We’ll split it 50-50.” If they’re willing to do that, then fine, too. You can do that as well.
There’s a whole lot of different ways you can do it, but the main thing is you want to build the list.
Alice: Yes.
Ron: Build the list, get people to take your offer.
Alice: If you don’t have a list, get a list. [laughs]
Ron: Yeah, if you don’t have a list, get a list.
Create a Facebook Group, and start inviting people into that group, and sharing what you know. Friend everybody that’s in that industry, and start producing videos, sharing what you know.
Imagine if we did this, right? And we probably should do this. Take all these questions, make a short video answering each question. Put each of those videos up on YouTube with a link back to my blog or back to my site, saying, “Want more information like this? Get our free guide on how to do this and this and that.”
And then you start building a list. Tap into that YouTube traffic. That’s the way to do it, right there
Action Steps:
You can start without a list, but your ultimate goal is to create a list, so set up your product launch to incorporate list building techniques. Here are a few ways to do that.
- Create a free offer that will be of interest to the audience for your info product that you’ll make for sale. Use this to create buzz for your launch and have your affiliates spread the word about it.
- Leverage the expertise and lists of other people.
- Consider interviewing them, so you borrow their clout and they’ll likely promote you too.
- Offer 100% commissions and do what you need to get the ball rolling. Even if you make $0 on the initial sale, you grow your customer list and someone who has already given you money is much more likely than a free subscriber to buy again.
- Grow your connections. Create a Facebook Group, make connections on social media and get to know people. When you’ve got friends, friends will spread the word about you.
- Share great content. When you help others, you build a loyal audience and they spread the word about you.
How to Complete These Steps:
If you need a blueprint to help you with those steps, we cover these topics at Info Product Mastery. It’s your chance for step-by-step guidance and all the templates and checklists you need to get started. Click here to get started.