Before I get into the “meat” of this guide, I want to make something 100% clear. The Internet offers many fantastic opportunities to make money and develop amazing businesses with minimal investment – something that wasn’t possible even 10 years ago.

Despite this, and whatever you’ve read on sales letters or heard on forums, there are no “get rich quick” schemes that really work – they are mostly a mix of hype and false promises, or unethical systems which will work for a short time and then die – leaving your income back at zero.

I don’t want to sound negative, but I want to reset the reality of those people who have been drawn in by these promises of making a million dollars overnight. In fact, I’ll come out and just say it straight:

If you’re looking for a get rich quick scheme based around the latest “fad” and you don’t want to build a REAL business, this site is NOT for you…

However, if you’re looking to build a REAL business which grows over time and can potentially provide a stable passive income for you for years to come, I think I can help.

In my time I’ve spent online, and particularly the last 4 years I’ve spent in the Internet Marketing space, I’ve probably spent over $50,000 on my own education, and tried many of the “systems” you see for sale by so called “gurus”. Through this testing, and working with people who are developing 6, 7 and 8-figure online businesses, I’ve found business models that really do work, and developed my own formulas to maximise the profitablity of these business models.

One of the most profitable and stable business models I have found, is publishing and selling information products online. And while I will touch on the other models I have tried and tested, selling information products will the main focus of this guide.

So What Are Information Products and How Can I Make Money With Them Online?

As the name suggests an Information Product, or Info Product, is the name given to any kind of publication which presents information on a particular subject or niche. Info products tend to focus on how-to information, but can be created about anything that people have a demand for in a particular marketplace or niche.

The most common and well known type of info product is an ebook, which is essentially a digital version of a book, but info products can come in many different formats, including:

• Ebooks
• Videos
• Audios
• Membership Sites
• Software and Web Applications

Although info products have traditionally been thought of as “digital products”, it is now easier than ever to publish and sell information content in physical format such as printed books, guides, dvds and cds, so I now also include these under the umbrella of information products.

Creating information products is a great way to make money online as you can create them on almost any topic where you can show people how do to something, or help them solve their problems.

You might be thinking that most of the information someone wants on a topic is available for free on the Internet – and you’d probably be right. But most people don’t have hours to sort through pages of information (some of which might be wrong or lacking credibility) – people want the best information, packaged in an easy to consume format – and are willing to pay for it!

Examples of Information Product Businesses

Just to give you an idea of the possibilities when it comes to information products, I want to give you some examples of the kind of products and markets that people are creating info products for:

Name: Double Your Dating (David Deangello)

Niche: Dating & Relationships

Info: This business sells dating advice products for men. Starting off with just one ebook, the business has now grown to include a wide range of multimedia products, as well as offline events.

Name: Fat Burning Furnace (Rob Poulos)

Niche: Weight Loss & Fitness

Info: Rob is a previous client of mine. He has build a business around his own experience of weight loss, and developed his own unique system.

Name: Jamorama

Niche: Learn to Play Guitar

Info: One of the most well known info product brands for learning guitar, Jamorama sell info products in the form of video training.

Name: Simple Golf Swing

Niche: Learn to Play Golf

Info: This long-standing golf swing guide helps people improve their swing and lengthen their drive through an ebook guide.

Name: James Dean 3 Red Light Fix

Niche: Xbox 360 Repairs

Info: The Xbox 360 repair niche formed out of demand for help after many Xboxes developed the dreaded “3 light problem” which stops the console working. There are now a range of guides helping solve this problem.

I hope you’re starting to get an idea of how huge the potential of this business is, and how varied the markets are that you can build a business in. *Remember those niches mentioned above are just a tiny fraction of the different markets available to you.

So How Do You Make Money With Info Products?

There are three main ways you make money with an information product business:

1) Direct Sales – this is the income generated when you sell an ebook or info product to your prospect.

2) Affiliate Sales from your list – This is where you can make a long-term income with only a little extra effort. Once you have a customer on your mailing list, you can send out offers to them whenever you want. This means you can promote other peoples products as an affiliate (you basically share the profits with the product owner).

3) Backend Sales from your list – As well as promoting affiliate products, you can also promote new products you have developed for your niche market. This gives you the ability to generate income almost on demand, as you can send your list to new offers which should be tailored to their needs (I go into this more in the Creating & Selling Info Products guide)

How To Start Your Info Product Business

I’m sure by now you’re rearing to go and ready to start your own info product business. So I now want to give you the outline or overview of the formula I use for my own and my clients businesses….Please note that this is an overview, and I’ve created more in-depth training on each step you can refer to when you’re ready:

Step 1: Choose a niche: You need to identify the niche market you are going to build your business in (I have detailed how to do this in the section below).

Step 2: Create a blog in this niche: You should start building a blog as soon as possible to start building your own authority in the niche.

Step 3: Start building a list: You need to build a list in your market, this will be who you sell your info products to.

Step 4: Develop your own info product: As soon as you can, you should start developing your own information product for your niche market

Step 5: Promote Affiliate Offers & Create Higher Value Products: Creating high value products to sell to your existing customers on the backend is one of the fastest ways to grow your income.

Step 6: Build a continuity program: Building a continuity program (or membership program) is one of the best ways to create long-term wealth, as you can sell them once and then benefit from the reoccuring revenue while your customer says a member of your site

I know this is a very general overview of the formula, but I wanted to simplify the steps as much as possible to show you how it all fits together. If you want more specifics of each step, I’ve covered a lot more detail in my Info Business Accelerator course which you can access free.

Getting Started Online Infographic

So now to give you an overview of my getting started formula I’ve created this infographic/checklist which you can download to your computer if you want to print it out to follow the steps…

How To Find Your Niche

I think before I get into my strategies for finding a niche, I want to clarify something…

My business model (and the one I focus on teaching on this site) is based around building up an information product business and becoming a trusted advisor in your niche. Unlike finding a niche for affiliate purposes, (where you might try and find niches without much competition), I see competition as a good thing when considering a niche for your info product business.

There are a few main reasons for this:

• Other people in a market shows that there is a demand for products and services in this market
• These other businesses could become potential partners in the future – there are more opportunities for you to tap into their customer bases
• I’m confident that with my marketing strategies you will be able to carve out your own part of this niche

So with that being said, here is my list of qualifying criteria that I would advise you to consider when thinking about your niche:

1) Do you have passion for this niche market? This is not critical, but being passionate about your niche will make it much easier to create content and products and will make you more likely to drive the business forward.

2) Does your niche market have a deep pain, problem or desire that you can fix with information products?

3) Is There Money Being Spent In This Niche? If there are other products and services being sold in this niche, this shows the market is willing to spend money to solve their problems

4) Does the niche market have enough depth? Can you continue to provide solutions to your market at different price points and in different formats. If you niche’s problem will be solved with one product, this does not make a good niche for a longterm business

Where To Find Niche Ideas

If you’re really struggling for niche ideas, I want to share a few places you can go to get ideas and get inspired. Finding niches on these sites is also a good indicator that they would make a fairly good niche for your business, although you should always remember the qualifying criteria I mentioned above.

Amazon – this is a goldmine of niche ideas. The books section of Amazon is already broken down into sub-categories which you can drill down through to find areas that interest you. If there are books written on your niche, it’s usually a good indicator that people are paying for information which is good news for us!

Dummies.com – the popular book series website is also a great resource for finding interesting niches to explore. It is unlikely that the owners of the Dummies book franchise would take the time to research and launch a new book for a niche if there wasn’t a market for it, so this is another place you can look for proven niches.

43 things.com – this site is a little different to the other resources. On 43things.com, people post short messages about their goals. But this can be a great resource too, as you can see what people want to learn to do, and many of the ideas posted reveal interesting niches you can dig into further.

For best results, use a combination of the tools above, as well as using Google to do some more research so you can find out what is being sold in your potential niche.

Niche Your Niche

Before I finish on the topic of finding your niche, I just wanted to mention the importance of digging into your niche, and not trying to build a business on what I call a “top level niche”.

To be able to make your business unique, and to be able to tailor your products and services effectively to your prospects, you should focus on a particular area of a niche market.

Let me give you an example:

Let’s say I was going to enter the Health and Fitness market, and I wanted to build a business around Weight Loss. Starting a business where my sole focus was “weight loss” would be extremely general, and I would not be able to tailor my products very effectively. Now if I narrowed down this to “Pregnancy Weight Loss”, I now have a much more specific and targetted market, where I can develop products for that specific area of the market.

This works two ways. Firstly it enables you to become more focused and if you’re new to the niche, you can educate yourself more effectively on that particular area of the market or niche (you will also be able to find experts more easily if you’re looking to partner with someone). Secondly, it makes your products (when you develop them) far more appealing to your prospects. A woman who has just had a baby and is looking for weight loss information is much more likely to purchase something on “pregnancy weight loss” than just “weight loss” as it is a much better fit for her situation – meaning you have more qualified buyers.

What Do I Need To Get Started?

It’s never been more affordable to start your own online business. Here are the essentials you need for now:

A Computer with an Internet Connection – I know this is an obvious one, and I’m assuming as you’re reading this you already have a computer. You don’t even need anything too fancy to start, as long as it can run web browsers and basic desktop publishing software you should be fine. However I would recommend that as soon as you can afford it, you upgrade to a modern PC or Mac system (Mac is my preference) as you will find using a faster system boosts your productivity.

Hosting – This is where your website and files are stored online. You’ll also need hosting to put up your blog and any other pages or files you want the world to see online. I recommend Hostgator and use them for all my businesses.

Domain – Your domain (e.g. www.BusinessJolt.com) is how people find your business online. You may not be ready to register your domain yet, but if you do know the name you want to register, I recommend Namecheap for registering your domains.

Autoresponder Service – Your email autoresponder is the system that manages all your email lists that you will build in your business. This is a key part of your system, and you need to use a reliable provider to ensure that your emails get to your clients, and a system that offers advanced automation and functionality. I use Aweber for all my email lists and they have been fantastic – they also have a great support team if you have any problems.

Of course, you also need to have a passion to succeed and to make this business work. You will need to invest time in building your business, especially at first while you start building up momentum. You can do it part time – just ensure that you are making a focused effort during the hours you do work on your business. The important thing to remember is that once you build “the machine” you can keep it growing.

Do I Need Any Special Skills or Training?

The skills needed to start an information product business are minimal. If you can use a computer and web browser, and you’re open to learning a few simple programs, you’ll do absolutely fine.

When you come to doing things that are a little more advanced like video creation, there may be a little bit more learning involved, but support for software is better than ever – and remember Google is your friend – If you’re having trouble with something, post your problem into Google search and you’ll probably find a forum or blog post where someone has also had the same problem and found the solution.

There is also now Twitter where you can always post your problem and you’ll find your followers all too willing to help you.

For anything you’re really struggling with, or just don’t want to learn, you can always outsource. It’s now easier and cheaper than ever to outsource tasks, using sites like odesk.com. Just post your project there and you’ll get lots of responses and quotes for your projects.

You’ll also find lots of basic step by step training on this blog to help you!

The Next Steps – What To Do Next

Once you have identified the niche you want to build your business in, you need to start by building your blog. Check out my guide on how to build your first blog, or signup for my free Info Business Accelerator video course which will take you through the exact steps to build your info business from scratch (recommended).

It’s totally free and you’ll get 9 high quality videos, plus cool extras like mindmaps and flowcharts to help you understand the system better.

Tags: getting started making money, how to start making money, how to start making money on the internet, how to start online, sell information products, selling info products