You are in a very fortunate position if you are thinking about starting your own information products business online. Things were much more difficult when I started this business more than ten years ago. Granted, things were easier in 2010 than in the early 2000s. However, today it is truly possible to live the ‘laptop lifestyle’ that was so ubiquitously marketed around the time I started.
Firstly, the barrier to entry in terms of cost has plummeted. It no longer costs thousands of dollars to create a website or membership site. You no longer need to hire teams of technical or graphic design specialists. More of your money can now go towards advertising and growing your business.
Secondly, the software has improved rapidly. The reason you don’t need to spend thousands on teams of people to build websites and membership sites is that the software on the market is now so user-friendly that you can do it yourself. Probably in an afternoon. You no longer need to manage teams of people, and you no longer need a degree in quantum mechanics.
Thirdly, more people are using the internet than ever before. The amount on the internet has more than doubled since 2010. This means that your potential market is bigger than ever. Don’t fall into the negative trap that this means there is now is more competition. The Unch@ined Mindset celebrates competition rather than fears it. In the first instance, you are not looking to get a million customers; just 1,000 paying you $10 a month would do. It is easier to find these 1,000 people, and you are MORE than capable of achieving that.
Though it has never been easier, the question still remains, how does one actually go about making money online? I started Unch@ined Mindset to help answer that question.
Technology may have changed, but human psychology is broadly unchanged. Customers must trust you before they part with their hard-earned cash. That is why brands like BMW spend over $100 million annually on advertising. I guess if you have that kind of money to spend, you are unlikely to be reading this post.
The way the ‘gurus’ in my day taught it was that to get people to trust you, you needed to play the content inundation game. By that, I mean you had to be seen everywhere. Posting multiple times a day to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Trawling user groups and answering questions. Getting on as many guest blogs, interview podcasts or event panels as possible. And while all that still works today, it is much harder and takes longer to achieve any success.
The Unch@ined Mindset uses a different, more effective approach.
Firstly, you will not spend months building a product and then trying to launch it on an unsuspecting audience. You are going to spend a few days building a small product that solves one of the top problems that your audience has. The product only needs to be a 10-20 page ebook or a 30-minute video but needs to solve a problem your potential customer cares about.
You are not going to give this product away in exchange for an email address as in the past. You are going to sell this product for between $1-30.
Buyers won’t care about who you are and they won’t need to have seen your posts on Instagram before they buy. It will be a no-brainer for them to spend a few dollars on solving one of their problems.
The aim is to build an email list of buyers who are interested in hearing more about how this issue can be solved. The money you get from the sale of this product will offset some or most of the advertising costs it will take to build this list.
And this is where the trust-building comes in. Start communicating with these buyers regularly. Help them solve their problems. Build more products that solve these problems, and put them in front of them. That is how you start from scratch and turn this into a long-term sustainable business.
You can go from complete zero to having your first customers in a few weeks, and you can start selling higher-end products and making profits in a few months. No more are you having to hustle 12 hours a day, hoping it will pay off in 12 months.
I don’t know of many businesses that are this easy to get started.
As always, if you are stuck at any point or need a little bit of help, feel free to reach out to me on my Facebook page, or you can email me at ross (@) rosshargreaves (.) com – brackets to fool those pesky email spammers.