This is part one of a series on how to create an information product, written from guest writer Leevi. If you’re thinking selling a digital product online is a good choice for you, settle in and enjoy this series. — Yaro

This series on creating your own information product will start with addressing a vital starting point with product creation: creating a product that will sell.

In other words, creating a product that has a hungry audience.

You can have the best quality information product in the world, but if you are the only one interested in “Advanced Cardio Training for Mexican Walking Fish” then your product won’t sell.

Therefore, we will kick off this series with niche identification.

“Spend 10% of time on product creation and 90% of time on marketing the product” – Dan Kennedy marketing legend.

Part of marketing is market research or niche identification. If you do the hard work now and find that audience ready and willing to buy, then when it actually comes to marketing the product it will be so much easier.

Your job is to get in front and lead a crowd of people who are already marching, not to get a crowd of people to start marching.

So how do I find a hungry market?

You can start first by understanding the psychology of why people buy.

Here are things you can sell in order of effectiveness.

  • PAIN (or relief of pain)
  • PROBLEM (solution to a problem)
  • PLEASURE (delivery of pleasure)
  • PREVENTION

Prevention is the hardest one of those to promote. Hardly anyone wants to hand over money to present something. It has been said people will not pay a dime for prevention, but when something is broken they will pay the world to fix it. If I was you I would stay away from creating a prevention product and just concentrate on the first two.

The Thing About Niches

I think, unfortunately, the term niche is sometimes mistaken as some obscure small sect of people and a market that has no competition. If you can find that, that is great, but remember competition is healthy and validates a market. If there is no competition you have to ask yourself, “Have I really found a gold mine or is there a reason no one has tapped into this market?”. Usually there is a reason and it is because no one is buying.

Wikepedia defines a niche market as:

“A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs.”

That last part is crucial. The market defines the product features. This is key and where a lot of people drop the ball. This applies to affiliate marketing as well. You see it’s not so much about the product as finding the hungry market.

We could take a normal fitness product aimed at using body exercises to get in shape and split the demographic into male and female. For examples sake we choose males. Males interested in getting in shape. Who are busy and don’t have time for a gym membership (new parent, busy with work, work shift work) or don’t want to pay for a gym membership.

The product hasn’t changed but the audience I am targeting and speaking to has. Now I become the expert on helping new male parents who are busy with work and parenting, but want to get in shape or maintain their fitness. All my marketing and prospect material is aimed at establishing solid relationships by delivering awesome value to this niche. I build trust and credibility by helping them along their journey to get fit without a gym membership while having a busy schedule. And along the way it just so happens that I highly recommend “product xyz” to do so. It could be my own fitness product or somebody else’s.

See how this reverse engineering works?

The Fatal Flaw I Work With

Commonly people seek my marketing consulting one step too late – they already have their product. So many people are product focused when they don’t even have a market to sell to or know who they are selling to.

When I ask why they are selling this product or how they came up with the idea, these are the common responses I get

“I had a great idea”, “I think it would be really good” or “I am really interested in this topic”.

See a pattern here?

Selling an information product is not about what YOU want, like or need. It is about providing a solution to a market with a want, like or need. I have spoken previously about removing your ego from the marketing process. It is not about you – it is about your market and prospects and satisfying what they want.

The Top 3 Mega Niches

I spoke previously about finding a crowd that is already marching and just get in front of them. Here are the three mega niches that are already marching:

  1. Health and fitness
  2. Make money or business
  3. Relationships and personal development

Now these are the larger niches, I strongly recommend you dig down deeper within these niches to find the “who” that you will be targeting with your product.

Next week I will talk more about picking a niche and I will address the most common question that faces information product creators.

Click here to read part two of this series.

Leevi