compassOften when I meet with groups of my 50+ peers to talk about the next steps in their lives, they mention that they’d love to try running their own business…but they aren’t confident that they have a good grasp of a business idea that can make money.

I’m pleased to tell them that virtually everyone walking around has the potential for at least one good business idea locked away in the knowledge they’ve stored in their brains.

It may not surprise you to find out that one of the five most popular categories purchased on the Web is “information products”.

These range from 5-page printed reports, to CD collections of information, to transcripts of live and telephone workshops, to digital books and guides, popularly known as “ebooks”.

Americans love to improve their current circumstances. The multi-billion dollar “self improvement” industry is built around the yearning to take ourselves to a better place in our lives via the acquisition of new knowledge and skills.

THE PROCESS OF TURNING KNOWLEDGE INTO DOLLARS

Here are the key steps in turning your knowledge into a profit stream of revenue.

1. Define in writing a single, identifiable group of knowledge, such as to landscaping your yard.

2. Create a step-by-step outline of the topics you wish to present. Each major topic will become a chapter or section in your finished product.

3. Consider and record every group of people you can think of who may wish to obtain this knowledge, for example: new homeowners who need landscaping but who are on tight budgets; retired homeowners with time now to re-landscape their yards; neighborhood groups who want to beautify public parks, etc.

4. Go to your local bookstore and visit online book-selling sites, such as Amazon.com, and locate every book you can find on your knowledge topic. Make a chart of the books’ titles, their length, their physical size and any other features they offer, such as pullout charts. Record the retail-selling price (or discounted online price) of each competitive book title you find.

5. Make a decision on which format you will use to bring your knowledge to market, such as: short guidebook (under 50 pages); extensive “picture book”; information CD; workbook and CD combination, etc.

6. Once you decide on your production format, return to your competitors chart and see which of their products are the most similar to your chosen publishing style. Next, review the selling prices of each item to arrive at what you feel will be an attractive selling price for your knowledge product.

Remember, in this new Web-powered generation, it is very possible to offer both a printed product and pay-to-view access to additional related information on your website. This way, you can get two or more revenue sources from one set of knowledge!

7. Work on a title. It is critical to the success of your knowledge product that it has a “hook” in its title. Commonly used title “hooks” include: “Ten Tips…”, “How To…”, “The Proven Way To…”, and “Low Cost…”.

8. Now for the hard part: Sitting down on a regular schedule and writing the content for your product. I’ve written eleven books and workbooks and I spent on average 50 hours on each to write them. And then, of course, there is additional time to edit them (I use an outside editor).

9. Develop a design for the cover of your product.

This can range from simply placing your title in large letters on the cover, to more elaborate designs utilizing one or more photo graphics. The cover of the workbook for my training course: “Starting A Business In Your Fifties And Beyond” (www.bizstaters.com/products_services.html) is an example of a professionally-designed cover, where the graphic artist help locate the photos, suggested the background and accent colors and picked the type font for the title.

10. Combine your finished manuscript and cover art into the finished product. At this point, you need to return to your selection of your desired publishing format. This determines how you physically will need to assemble the finished product, such as: three-ring binder; plastic spiral binding; electronic file on a CD; etc.

11. Research and select a way to reproduce your finished product. With ebooks, you only need to create a computer file once, convert it into PDF file format and then store it on a computer for access by your customers. If you choose to print and ship your product, you need to talk to a couple of speedy printers to get quotations for printing your product’s cover and inside pages and for binding it all together.

I use an outside vendor to reproduce the workbook and CD for my “Starting A Business In Your Fifties And Beyond” course. The cover and inside text are stored on a special high-speed reproduction machine known as an “Image Runner”, ready to run as many copies as I wish at anytime.

EACH TIME YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW, YOU CREATE A NEW PRODUCT

The true financial beauty of selling information products is that as the “expert” your customers look to you for new and updated information.

Each time you learn something new in your field, you can turn it into a new information product…and sell to your eagerly waiting customers!

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