MMM: "Marlon's 21-Point Product Creation In A Flash Cheat Sheet"
Published: Sat, 05/16/09
Marlon here.
I'm JUST out of the hospital after QUADRUPLE hernia surgery.
I had no idea there WAS such a thing. Fortunately, I had a world
class doc. My article today probably has typos and stuff. Cut
me a little slack here. I JUST got out of the hospital....
This week's ARTICLE:
"Marlon's 21-Point Product Creation In A Flash Cheat Sheet"
Subtitle: How To Get Your Product Out The Door And Avoid
Common Traps and Pitfalls
By Marlon Sanders
-- My favorite way to create products fast
-- How to record conference calls or interviews
-- How to fulfill cd's and dvd's "on demand"
-- Why you should timebox product creation
-- Why dead ducks don't quack
-- Why webinars rock for product creation
-- The secret of perceived value vs. actual value
-- Should you write a book?
-- What if you just can't "do an audio"?
Pass this cheat sheet along to a friend who needs it.
Five weeks ago I challenged you to create your own product and a
sales letter all in one week. I HOPE you're still acting on that.
Are you doin' or are you talkin?
Take the article, change the URL in the resource box at the
end to a reseller ID and stick it on your web site, blog,
Facebook blog, Myspace blog, Hub Page, Squidoo lens, or Google
Pages.
Put it up and announce it on Facebook, Twitter, your blog,
email, or whatever else you have.
This IS an article people will want to read. You WILL make
sales from the link in the resource box.
If you don't have a reseller ID, just go to:
http://www.getyourprofits.com and sign up. It only takes
2 minutes.
There are 4 ADS at the end of this ezine. You can replace
all THOSE with reseller links if you want.
Marlon
P.S. After you read today's article, please pass it along
on your blog, email or just to a few close friends.
Then hit me back on my blog.
I personally comment back. Let me hear from YOU!
http://www.marlonsnews.com/
PPS: Other marketers ONLY send you good content during their
product launch. I'm with you every week, motivating, inspiring,
educating. Where are THEY when a product launch isn't going
down?
I'm here every week delivering rock solid content based on years
of experience.
******************************************
Marlon's Marketing Minute
Electronic Newsletter
http://www.promotemarlon.com
Vol. 4, #17, May 16, 2009
******************************************
This issue contains:
A. Sponsor Advertisement: Step-By-Step Screen Caps and
Videos Guide You To Creating Your Own Product
B. Announcements from Marlon (Important)
C. Main Article: "Marlon's 21-Point Product Creation In A Flash
Cheat Sheet"
D. Services You Can Use
Brought to you by: Marlon Sanders - Publisher
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A. Sponsor Advertisement
At last! Step-by-step screen caps and videos in bite sized chunks
guide you all the way through creating, packaging, selling and
delivering your info product:
http://www.productdashboard.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
B. Announcements from Marlon
==> Give Away "The Best Of Marlon Sanders" to your friends
or list and snag spending cash and prizes!
I've just released "The Best Of Marlon Sanders"
Give it away to your friends or list and snag affiliate
commissions as well as prizes.
http://www.getyourprofits.com
==> Download your FREEBIE ebook now.
"The Best of Marlon Sanders"
http://www.bestofmarlonsanders.com
There is a squeeze page. The idea is for you to enter
the email address you actually READ! I'll send out a version
later where you can bypass the squeeze if it bugs you.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
C. MAIN ARTICLE
Marlon's 21-Point Product Creation In A Flash Cheat Sheet
Subtitle: How To Get Your Product Out The Door And Avoid
Common Traps and Pitfalls
By Marlon Sanders
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Let's say that you've decided to take the plunge and do a
big product launch.
You realize that you need a PRODUCT in order to do a
product launch. So how are you gonna create your product?
Here's my product creation in a flash cheat sheet:
1. My favorite way to create products fast is using audio
interviews. Interview someone else over the phone or have
them interview you. Record and transcribe. Just write out
a list of 10-15 questions in advance, and you're good to
go.
2. You can record your calls using freeconferencecall.com.
But my favorite way is to use Skype and one of the
applications that will record skype calls. There's one for
the PC called "pamela." The one I use on my Mac is called
"instant call recorder."
==>> http://www.pamcorder.com
I believe this is the one I have on my Mac:
==>> http://ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder/req.html
3. For transcription services, try elance.com,
rentacoder.com, getafreelancer.com and odesk.com.
4. Your first job in marketing is to find out if your
product concept or idea will sell. That's why you want to
get a beta version of your product out into the market to
see if anyone will buy it. You can always go back and
tweak it later.
5. Another great way to create info products fast is via
screen capture video. You can use Camtasia or Camstudio
and record slides you create with Microsoft Power Point or
Open Office. Camstudio.org is a freebie.
6. Another twist I've used is to get 3 or 4 of your
buddies, friends or jv partners together and do a product
jointly. Typically, you all own rights to use the product
as you desire.
7. If you hate the sound of your voice, then you have
several options. You can write your products or hire
someone else to do the audio. I've seen people write out
scripts that go with Power Point slides and then have
someone else record the presentation. This is more trouble
but it does work. Alternatively, you can record your
product then have it transcribed. And give the transcript
to a writer who can turn it into a polished report. You
can find writers on getafreelancer.com.
8. There's a balance between getting a product out the
door and meeting a minimum level of professionalism.
You'll know if your product is subpar because your refunds
will go through the roof. If you ummmm and ahhhhhh every
other word, that's probably below the line of
professionalism. If you're editing out every single ummmmm
or ahhhhhhh, you're going overboard the other direction.
Remember, no one at all may by the product. You may not
sell one. So before you try to create the world's greatest
product, first find out if anyone will even buy a beta
version of it.
9. Webinars are a good way to create info products because
they have high perceived value and you can turn them into
DVD products. A lot of people use
http://www.gotowebinar.com for this purpose. My friend Lee
Mcintyre from lee-mcintyre.com is a MASTER at turning
webinars into dvd's.
10. You can sell DVD's online using http://www.kunaki.com.
This is print-on-demand fulfillment. You do NOT need to
print multiple copies using Kunaki.
11. Timebox your product creation. If you're spending
longer than 2-4 weeks to create your first product, you're
likely making a mistake. While my Product Dashboard is a
6-week program, the actual product creation part lasts
only a day or two. The rest of the Dashboard helps you set
up the product delivery, shopping cart and all the other
elements of selling and delivering the product.
http://www.productdashboard.com.
12. The disadvantage of Kunaki is that to my knowledge
they don't print and ship workbooks along with cd's or
dvd's. This means that if you're looking to create a
full-blown home study course, you'll need to find a
product fulfillment company. Your expenses go up because
you'll have to maintain at least a small inventory with
them. If you type "fulfillment" into Google, you'll see a
number of options. I dealt with the issues of creating
bigger ticket info products in ActionGrid.com. If you're
just starting out, I recommend, you stick to Kunaki.com
and work within their parameters.
13. People live under the illusion that all you have to do
is create this incredibly valuable product and customers
will beat your door down. What you find out later is that
it's the PERCEPTION of value more than ACTUAL value that
determines purchases. And what customers perceive as
having value is subject to change. This is what in the
early stages of your business it's advisable to keep your
product creation cycles SHORT. Why? Because you simply
don't know what will or won't sell.
14. Dead ducks don't quack. What this means is that if you
have a product that no one wants to buy, it doesn't matter
how perfect the product is, how flawless the proofreading
is, how beautiful the cover is. You can put make up on it,
dress it up, make it look pretty. But dead ducks don't
quack.
15. I'm a huge advocate of taking your 12 best product
ideas and doing a 12-product survey before you create your
first product. Having said that, it seems everyone gets
stuck at this point. And it's 100X better to get a product
out and marketed than it is to delay things 2 years while
you're trying to find 30 people to take a survey! To me,
if you can't get 30-50 people in your target audience to
take a survey, then you probably can't get them to BUY a
product from you. Still, it's better to get a product out
the door and test marketed than it is to do nothing
because you can't figure out how to get anyone to take
your survey.
16. Beware of writing books. It takes most people six
months to write a book. In that amount of time, you
could've created and marketed 3 teleseminars, 3 webinars,
and 2 to 4 short reports. You could've turned the
teleseminars into CD's, the webinars into DVD's and had
significant sales coming in. You could have test marketed
your ideas to see if people would actually spend money for
them. Books are great publicity vehicles but not good
money vehicles.
17. Your biggest enemy in product creation is the
paralysis of analysis. You'll find out that execution
trumps great ideas. Someone with mediocre ideas and great
execution will make 100X more than the person with world
class ideas and no execution. You can't sell air .... for
long anyway.
18. Worry less about whether or not you have a great idea
and more about whether or not you're going to execute your
idea swiftly and efficiently.
19. Product creation gets easier. The hardest product
you'll ever create is your first. I advocate that you look
at your first few products as practice. This takes the
pressure off coming up with "the perfect product" and
removes the pressure to make it a huge hit.
20. Monitor the questions people ask in their customer
service support tickets. You'll find good product ideas in
the questions that come up over and over.
21. If you can't think of any good product ideas on your
topic, go search Amazon.com. You'll likely find a number
of great ideas there. I often see books with great ideas
but an author with no clue how to sell or market the book.
You can either work out a deal with the author, or simply
use the ideas to stimulate your thinking.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Marlon Sanders is the author of "The Amazing Formula That
Sells Products Like Crazy."
To get on his killer ezine list, to get cheat sheets and all kinds
of other goodies every Saturday and during the week, to get simple,
to-the-point Internet marketing know that works real world without
all the hype, go to: http://www.marlonsnews.com and subscribe
Check out all my products here:
http://www.getyourprofits.com
(SIGN UP AS A RESELLER, put YOUR reseller URL and ID where
the above link is, post this on your web site and make some
dough for spreading a killer guide everyone will want to
read.)
//////////////////////
REPRINT RIGHTS: You have permission to use the above
article without omission and including the resource box.
You have the right to insert your reseller URL for any
products I mention
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
D. "Services You Can Use
(If you want to post this ENTIRE ezine, you can replace the
following links with your RESELLER links)
Stop trading time for dollars and start trading products for
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