December 5, 2009
Information Product Success, Measuring Results
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I am really pleased to report how well the HARO ad for Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide is delivering so far. I got to break even on my advertising investment within 12 hours of the ad going “live.” Blog visits have escalated dramatically. Opt-ins for the Authentic Visibility ezine have escalated, too. And three prospects have already booked meetings to explore engaging my Extreme Bio Makeover and other publicity services. I have high hopes that more orders will flow to www.byebyeboringbio.com as people catch up on their emails and decide that now is the time to upgrade their boring bios at long last. This advertising investment is delivering quality, targeted exposure to the right potential clients and offering me the opportunity to earn new fans and followers. That is just what I was hoping for.
If you have a product, service or idea that would serve the subscribers of HARO, check out the advertising opportunities available for 2010. You can visit HARO to learn more. I am sure Peter Shankman will be happy to hear from you.
By the way, anyone who mentions HARO in the “comments” section of their online order form for their very own copy of the popular and well-reviewed Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide will also enjoy two Authentic Visibility Publicity Tips eBooklets that offer 147 powerful tips to boost business and profit from free publicity as a high value gift, provided they buy by 12-31-09.
I’d be honored to earn your business and guide you to create a bio that makes you sound like the rock star you are. It’s holiday time. Treat yourself to a gift that will return results to you and your business every day of the New Year.
Authentic Visibility Question of the Day: If you have advertised on HARO, what has been your experience and what results did your company enjoy? I know the readers of this blog would love to hear from you so they can have even more support to guide their 2010 decision making. Please share!
September 19, 2009
Information Product Success
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On July 12, 1996, I started down my path to become an infopreneur with the debut of my Authentic Visibility publicity tips booklets. Today, I’m just preparing for my third printing. Thousands of printed and electronic versions of my 147 Powerful Ways to Boost Business and Profit From Free Publicity booklets are in use all over the world. This has led to speaking engagements, radio interviews, and purchases of additional information products that I have created since the first tips booklets came on the scene. These products have given me more control over my earning opportunities as the economy has changed. It’s a beautiful thing.
If you have been curious about how and why to create your own tips booklets, tune in to the Booklet Author Success series hosted by Tips Booklet Queen Paulette Ensign. She’ll be interviewing me on Tuesday, 9-22 at 11 a.m. PST.
Nine booklet authors – people just like you – reveal how they have grown their business and made lots of money by selling and giving away their booklets so can you match and surpass their results. They remember what it was like when they started their booklet journey. No matter where you are on yours, they will give you ideas you never considered.
Here’s how they’ve used their tips booklets:
- New and greater income streams
- Increased profit margins
- Marketing tools to sell their other products and services
- Cornerstones to create or expand a product line
- Choices, companions, or triggers to sales of their services
- Re-purposed into other formats in hard copy and downloadable
- Guide for delivering and expanding services
- Collaborative tools for cross marketing with other business owner
This success series is timed in celebrating of the release of the fourth edition of Paulette’s comprehensive manual “Promote Your Business with Booklets.” You can check it out and learn more by following this link. Then, click on the box in the upper left corner to learn more and register for the Booklet Author Success Series. There is so much value packed in this that you’ll be fast on YOUR way to booklet success in record time. “See” you on the call.
February 3, 2009
Information Product Success
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Yesterday’s post offered some additional details from my 2 1/2 year journey to become a profitable infopreneur. Today’s post fills in a few more missing pieces.
The road to information product sales is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s a time consuming journey filled with bends and twists in the road, lots to learn about technology and other things, and the potential for overwhelm. Patience, tenacity, and resolve are required.This is a long distance run and not a sprint.
In the beginning, it’s easier and definitely more profitable to trade time for dollars than to develop and learn the systems for sustaining and promoting a line of information products. My revenues actually dropped the second year of this transition as I dealt with a pretty steep learning curve.
Create products in printed and digital versions to appeal to customers with either preference. Bring the content alive for buyers with accompanying workshops or telephone coaching sessions that are priced right so customers can connect personally and get the guiding help they need to be successful.
Be prepared to learn a new vocabulary of terms and tools to grow the information product division of your company. Affiliate program, joint venture, blog, online shopping cart, merchant account, auto-responder, and broadcast email are just a few of the new ideas to learn about, apply, and sustain to lend fuel to a successful effort.
Just because you post the letter to your website or blog doesn’t mean people will buy. You have to build traffic so people will read it. Growing your list of customers and potential customers is essential. You have to experiment to find the right price point that invites people to buy, and offer extraordinary guarantees to remove the risk associated with any purchase. And, you have to remember that people take their time to get to know your expertise over time. They buy when they are good and ready — or they don’t.
Products that appeal to sight, sound, and experience sell better than those that appeal to one sense alone. Creating a “best value” toolkit that involved audio files and printed materials in brief, mid-length, and longer length elements made a big difference in generating ongoing and consistent sales results. Offering Seattle Chocolate Company truffles, Biscot-Tea™, and freshly brewed tea helps to transform workshops into “mind, body, spirit” events that are delicious and inspiring.
Don’t underestimate the appeal of a sassy event name. When I created the Publici-Tea™ Workshop to bring alive the content within the Authentic Visibility Publicity Toolkit, sales escalated immediately. The magic of this name and the “comfort and joy” approach to delivering the information has proven to be very inviting for event guests who appreciate receiving a guiding hand to ensure their DIY publicity success. Special thanks to my friend and colleague Michele Lisenbury Christensen, co-founder of Working with Power, LLC , for suggesting this memorable and well branded event name.
Buy a digital recorder, and learn how to use it. Every speech, workshop, and presentation becomes potential content for audio products to serve customers beyond your own backyard. My digital recorder of choice is the SONY PCM-D50 Linear PCM Recorder. Purchase affordable audio conversion software like Blaze Media Pro so you can conveniently convert your files to MP3 format.
Learn how to sell your products from the back of the room to make every speaking engagement – paid or not – pay back to your business for your investment of time, passion, and effort. One big idea I came upon was to ask professional groups to pay for my speaking services with quantity booklet purchases. Now, everyone who listens to my presentations gets a valuable gift from the sponsoring organization. I am compensated for my speaking efforts, And, everyone in the room leaves with useful tips and inspiration that will lead them back to my door at some point in the future.
Articulating your unique selling proposition in an inviting, emotionally connecting, and visual way is well worth the time and effort you apply to getting the message right. And it’s not easy. My ideal customers most definitely want to “Get seen, heard, and celebrated in their own backyards … and beyond” through the power and impact of free publicity. This message resonates, reflects favorably on how my company serves, and invites the right customers to my care.
Quality packaging contributes to a favorable, high-value customer experience. Big box office supply stores are rich with fabulous packaging options that can make your offering look polished, professional, and inviting for potential customers. The right information products well presented sell better than those that show up in a generic folder every day of the week.
Promote products in a wide variety of ways consistently. Press releases, pitch letters, blog posts, long sales letters, newspaper columns and articles, teleseminars, webinars, speaking engagements, panel discussions, meeting notices, networking events, joint ventures, radio interviews, videos, and ezines represent a sampling of tactics that need to be consistently and tenaciously applied to deliver the message on an ongoing way to invite consumer purchases. Not every offer delivers the same response. Be prepared to test a variety of terms and offer details to find the perfect blend that works for your customers.
The time it takes to do all of this is not “passive income” by any definition. This is a lot of hard work. And it is well worth it if you stick with it and keep learning every step of the way. Finding ways to diversify income streams, serve new customers, and leverage expertise over larger groups of potential customers is a good thing in the best and the worst of times, especially for a solo practitioner such as myself.
By the way, the 8-year anniversary sale of my newest audio file and best-selling information products is in 
progress. Now you can enjoy fabulous deals on the new Publici-Tea™ Workshop audio file, the Authentic Visibility Publicity Toolkit, and the Authentic Visibility Publicity Tips Booklets. These are well reviewed and well-used tools to empower your DIY publicity success. Whether you have $8 or $88 to invest, there is something at the DIY Publicity Store to suit you needs and budget. I’d be honored to earn your business and your referrals.
You can even join my affiliate program and be one step closer to earning income for product sales that flow from your recommendations. How cool is that?
If you have gained value from the information shared in this and yesterday’s post, feel free to track back to it and forward it to others so more people can benefit and accelerate their journey to information product prosperity. Thank you.
February 2, 2009
Information Product Success
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It’s been a long and winding journey along my 2-1/2 year road to becoming a profitable inforpreneur. Today, an article I wrote offering the most humbling and useful lessons I’ve learned along the way debuted at BizNik. I invite you to read it if you have been pondering taking a similar road to potential prosperity.
Articles on BizNik, by definition, have to be under 1,500 words. That is just enough “real estate” to hit the high points without a lot of elaboration. Here are a few anecdotes to add more meat to the matter.
Engage experts to accelerate your journey. Tips Booklet Queen Paulette Ensign and Get Known Now Branding Expert Suzanne Falter-Barns delivered extraordinary value for my investment in their coaching to create tips booklets and craft a unique selling proposition that would deliver an emotional connection for my ideal customers. Michelle Price convinced me to launch and sustain my DIY publicity blog and share DIY publicity videos over the internet. These have been powerful tools to build online buzz for my expertise and invite new ways to be of service.
Create a starter product, and add to the family as inspiration and opportunity strike to serve a distinct market need. I started by writing a 130-page workbook draft. My gut told me it wasn’t the right format or length. Paulette Ensign offered a free teleseminar about tips booklets and why they make sense in today’s information overloaded marketplace. That caused me to revisit my content and create two tips booklets that offered 147 powerful ways to build business and profit from free publicity. Then, I revisited the workbook and reduced the length by more than half.
When the Authentic Visibility Tips Booklets came off the press, I sent samples to Publicity Hound Joan Stewart. Her tips, ezine, and other resources had been great inspiration to me, and one of the ways I thanked her was by mentioning her website within the booklets. She called me upon receipt and said, “Darn good booklets. Wish I had written them myself.” Then, she asked, “Do you have an affiliate program?” I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was talking about. I asked, “What’s an affiliate program?” Joan was generous to explain. As soon as I hung up the phone, I called my webmaster and asked him to set one up. It turned out that my online shopping cart was already enabled with such a program. It was just a matter of activating it. A few weeks later, I let Joan know my affiliate program was “live.” She subsequently endorsed the Authentic Visibility Publicity Tips Booklets to her entire ezine list, bringing awareness and sales from customers across the nation to both of us.
Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. I learned that Susan Harrow, CEO of PR Secrets, was creating a mega joint venture with internet marketing and PR gurus from all across America. I took a risk and sent an email, asking her consideration to include the Authentic Visibility Publicity Toolkit in the product bundle she was creating. She reviewed my materials and invited me to participate. The end result was dramatically better buzz for my products and expertise, meaningful sales results for us both, and a winning business relationship and friendship that continues.
I’ll share a few more details tomorrow. In the meantime, consider posting articles of your own to BizNik. This site serves independent business owners and offers a welcome exchange of information to empower success. There are three levels of membership, and you can experience the bounty of benefits for free. With nothing to lose and much to gain, again it is a matter of getting in action. Action is always the key.
