[Show Transcript]
I’m Randy Charach from RandyReport.com and THIS is the show that takes you from internet zero to business hero!
I gotta tell you — product creation is something very near and dear to my heart. I have developed a number of products that are quietly putting money into my business on autopilot. In fact, some of my products even bring in sales everyday! Now, you might hear what I just said and think ol’ Randy’s fallen into a big pool of bragging, but I’m telling you this because it’s completely possible to do the same thing!
It’s like being on the beach admiring a tall, shiny sandcastle — and then realizing that you can do the same thing with just sand, water and a bucket and shovel.
You have that power in product creation as well. The real point to note here is that the keys to a great product aren’t in sparkly graphics or encyclopedia-length products.
Today we’re going to go over the three major steps to a great product. If you think about product creation like building a sandcastle, then you need the sand, the bucket and shovel, and the water.
Let’s start at the beginning here. You gotta start with sand. The “sand” is a subject with a hungry crowd. The hungry crowd is what will keep your product selling for months, even years to come!
The reason why an in-demand subject is like the sand on the beach is because it’s everywhere. Forget any guide that tells you that profitable topics aren’t plentiful. Think about a time in your own life that you had to overcome an obstacle. I bet if you really think about it, there were some steps that you took to get to the end results you were looking for. The solution — and the steps to get there of course — is what drives audiences wild.
One of the products I created comes directly from my 20 years of experience as a professional magician. The product sells quite well because it’s based on the personal problems and experiences I had while being in that field – direct experience and knowledge makes product creation a lot easier than having to research.
My customers could tell that I had first hand experience with what I was talking about, and I’ve inspired a lot of other magicians to step up their game and become even more successful. Who said helping people couldn’t be profitable?
If you can’t think of a personal struggle, don’t worry. That’s not the only source of sand for your product creation efforts. Friends, family, and even past co-workers can be sources as well. What are they always worrying or complaining about? Is there a problem that’s constantly keeping them up at night? Perhaps they’re even spending a lot of money to solve this problem. Now, if you’ve been watching Randy Report for any length of time, you know how much I enjoy helping you raise the bar in how you build and maintain your online business. Product creation is the fastest way to raise the bar in the eyes of your audience.
Where are we so far? The sand — the in-demand, profitable subjects you’ll need to create the income stream you deserve. Next comes the bucket and shovel, otherwise known as the building stage. You see, a product can be anything as long as your audience gets what they’re looking for.
Newcomers often believe that it has to be a book, but this isn’t the case. When you really think about it, the world would be kind of boring if all of our learning had to come from books! So in the bucket and shovel phase, you get to shape the product creation “sandcastle” anyway you want!
If you want to create audio recordings for your product, that’s fine. Many people like purchasing pure audio products because they can listen to them anywhere — in the car on their way to work, at home while doing the dishes, or even on their morning jog. Sure beats sweatin’ to the oldies, right? You’ll need a good microphone, but prices on microphones are lower than they’ve ever been before.
What’s that? You want to put your face out there too? Got a secret desire to be up there with Barbara Walters or Ryan Seacrest? Well, I can’t tell you that building your own video product will bring you closer to Hollywood, but it can bring you a great income stream over time.
People like video products because they can watch you demonstrate things and listen to you talk at the same time.
Like producing audio, video doesn’t take that much to start out with. You could pick up an old camcorder from a pawn shop, or even use your webcam. There’s no need to be a perfectionist about it — you could start with just a webcam and scale up as you produce more income from the product line you create.
Whatever format you decide on, the point here is to focus on delivering the solution in a step by step manner. Oh, and by the way…the easiest way to avoid a high amount of refunds for your products is to provide complete information at all times. If the solutions you offer has seven steps – don’t try to save time and leave out a step. This only frustrates buyers into taking action against you – and you don’t want that!
Right now, we’re going over the very basics of sand castle building — I mean product creation. Looks like I’m dreaming about the beach again!
Anyway, we’re down to that last key piece of your product creation plan. If you’re following our little sandcastle building example, the last piece is water. Water is pretty important. In the wide world of product creation, this is the traffic and promoting stage.
You can’t build a great sandcastle without water, and it’s also difficult to have a successful product without people finding your product and purchasing. Building traffic is an ongoing process. For best results, you want to build a plan of getting traffic. You can mix free and paid traffic methods to meet this goal, or start out with just free methods to get the ball rolling.
Free methods range from writing guest posts for blogs in your specific subject that include a link back to your site, up to commenting and building a following on forums in your specific category. People buy from product creators they know, like and trust, so the more information you put out there, the more they’ll feel comfortable purchasing from you.
Paid methods revolve around pay-per-click services like Google Adwords or placing banners on websites. This can get expensive, so I recommend getting good at free methods first.
Remember — these are just the basics of product creation – as you get better with the method, you can add in more complex features to your products. The key is to get started – the faster you create a product, the more likely it is for you to make sales from it! You can’t win if you don’t play, so get out there and play!
Our question this week comes from Jessica T. from Sacramento, CA who wrote:
Hi Randy, thanks for spending another week with us on your show! Quick question for you: I’m really excited about all of this product creation stuff, but I was wondering how long you recommend creating for each type. It just seems like a good product would need to be long.
Hi, Jessica, so glad you’re getting a lot out of the show. To answer your question, there’s really no set length your product has to be. If you can explain your topic in 30 pages, there’s no need to put pressure on yourself to build a 300 page course.
In fact, if you can pack a great solution in a small package, that’s even better. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes for a moment. If you’re turning to the Internet for a problem that’s keeping you awake at night and stressing you out, do you really want a 3000 page gorilla of a course, or a 10 hour set of audio CD’s? I don’t really think you would want that – I know I wouldn’t!
You’re naturally going to go for the solution that’s as short as possible without skipping over anything essential. So instead of focusing on a set “rule” of product length, create a product that covers the solution your crowd is looking for – without leaving out the essentials!
Well, that wraps up this episode of Randy Report. Since company’s websites, prices and quality of service on the Internet change rapidly, for my up-to-date recommendations on resources and for free tools and training, visit me today at RandyReport.com.
Today you learned
how to unleash the power of product creation for your online business. The system of product creation is just that: a system you can follow each and every time no matter what subject you want to build your product around. To remember the steps, you can use the sandcastle building analogy: sand, a bucket & shovel, and water.
In plain speak, this means choosing a topic, deciding what type of product it needs to be, creating it, and building traffic to the site with a mixture of free and paid methods. Are these the only action steps you’ll need to take? In a general sense, YES!
Obviously, we couldn’t cover all the specific nuts and bolts today but this show should be enough for you to get up and running with creating your own products – try it out! That’s the only real way you’ll keep moving forward! The more you experiment, the more you will create your own “spin” on the product creation system that’s right for you.
[End of Show Transcript]
