If you’re in a competitive market and want a leg up, this site can help you.

If you aren’t happy with your ads and want better results, this site can help you.

If you’re trying to angle your product launch to reach the most people, this site can help you.

But what if you’re just starting out?  What if you don’t have anything to sell?

This site can help you help yourself.

Why You Should Create Your Own Information Products to Jump Start Your Business

If you’re new to business, one of the easiest ways you can get in the game is by creating your own information products (or “info products”) and taking those products to your target market.

Information products are different forms of… you guessed it… information!  You can package up the information into ebooks, audio courses, or even video series.  And they’re a good call for beginners because:

• They cost next to nothing to create;
• Digital info is free to reproduce, so your profit margins are incredibly high;
• Companies like E-Junkie and Paypal make fulfilling orders and processing payments painless

Sounds good, right?  And the coolest thing about creating your own product is you get to have all the control.  You don’t have to worry about commissions, offers being pulled, and all that other stuff affiliate marketers have to deal with.

When you make a great product, affiliates will flock to you and find ways to connect your product with hungry prospects.  You don’t have to worry about fads or techniques because product creation taps you into the core of good marketing: connecting hungry markets with solutions that work!

But what if you have an “inspiration dilemma”?  You can’t create good products if you don’t have ideas.

Don’t fret.  This brings me to…

Gary Halbert’s 5-Step Plan for Creating Information Products When You Don’t Have Any Ideas!

I wish I could claim this for myself.  I really do.  But this method for creating kick-ass information products “out of thin air” belongs to none other than copywriting legend Gary Halbert.  It’s responsible for countless good ideas and successful product launches.

It can make you successful too… if you’re willing to do the work and follow his step-by-step instructions to the letter.

You say you are?

O.K.  I’m glad you’re on board.  Here’s what you do first:

Step 1: Make a Thorough List of All the Things You Enjoy Doing

Here’s the first step in Gary’s words:

Let’s get started.  Step Numero Uno is to make a rather comprehensive list of all the stuff you already enjoy…

What do you like to do in your free time?  Write down everything you can think of… and don’t hold anything back!  It doesn’t matter if you like rock climbing, knitting, or underwater basket weaving: just get them all down on a piece of paper or your word processor.

This step is critical, so don’t go any further until you have your list in hand.

After you have your list of passions in front of you, you need to:

Step 2: Check to See Which Passions Align With Commercially Viable Markets

Now you need to find the “sweet spots” where your passions line up with hungry markets.

Here’s what Gary says:

O.K., now assuming you’ve made your list and reviewed it a couple of times, the next step is to take a trip down to your local library. I want you to ask at the reference desk for the following publications: The Standard Periodical Directory published by Oxbridge Communications, Inc., in New York City; the SRDS List Book and the SRDS Business Publications which comes in three volumes: Part I (trade magazines), Part II (classified) and Part III (International Direct Response – mostly postcard decks); and the SRDS Consumer Magazine Book.

Now, compare your list of stuff you love with the classifications and indexes in all these books. What we’re trying to find out here is a rough idea of how many other people share one or more of your passions.

This is just a “low-tech” way of telling you to research each of your passions and find out how many other people share your interest.

You don’t need the library to do this anymore.  Instead, you can use the Google Keywords Tool (to find out how many people search for your term each month), browse the top selling products on Amazon, or check out Clickbank to see if any other products are being sold successfully in the niche.

After this research, you’ll discover that some of your passions are just NOT popular enough to be commercially viable.  That’s O.K.  Just cross those off.  Then settle on ONE passion from your narrowed-down list.  You’re well on your way at this point.

We have now done two very important things: (1) we have identified an area for which you have passion, and (2) we have verified you have access to millions of other people who share your enthusiasm.

Ready to move on?

Step 3: Immerse Yourself in Your Niche by Reading as Much About It as You Can

Now that you’ve settled on a niche, you need to go on an information binge.  Surround yourself with books, magazines, videos, and online articles related to your niche.

The idea is you want to “blitz” your brain with as much information about your topic as you can in as short a time as you can do it.  Here’s Gary:

Now listen: What you do after this overview of all this material is you take possession of a bunch of it. You check out some of the books from the library, buy some of the books from the bookstore, locate and Xerox some of the articles mentioned in the Reader’s Guide to Periodic Literature, you clip out articles from the ski magazines you learned about from the SRDS book and the Standard Periodical Directory and so forth.

Now, lock yourself in a room and start reading…

Gary chose the skiing niche for his example info product.  He brings up some older “print” resources again that you may or may not find helpful.  If you’re having a tough time finding information online, they’re definitely worth looking into.

Now that your brain is full:

Step 4: Alternate Between Reading About Your Niche and Going Over Your Collection of Headlines Until You Come up With a Unique Idea for an Info Product

Going over headlines that worked in the past puts your mind in the position to start thinking about how to “monetize” all of the information you’ve been absorbing.  If you don’t have a list of favorite headlines, you can find my favorite 101 headlines here.

Just read through them with your niche in mind.  Don’t try to force any good ideas.  If nothing sticks, just read to the end of the list and go back to reading about your niche a little more.

Keep repeating this process.  Don’t worry, your subsconscious is churning and it’s about to spit out something good.

And then, go back to the ski stuff. And later, back to the headlines. And then, back to the ski stuff. And later, back to the headlines. And… and… and…

                                                    Bingo!

Yeah! Somewhere in here you’re going to have an “aha experience.” That’s where you say, “Aha! I’ve got a great idea.”

And then you develop that idea into a written report that tells skiers something that would be really valuable for them to know.

You know a ton about your niche.  You’ve studied classic headlines and combined what you know to come up with a unique, valuable angle to package as a product in your niche.

There’s only one thing left for you to do:

Step 5: Create Your Information Product and Market it to Your Niche

You have to take the unique sales angle in your head and actually turn it into reality!  If you just let the idea simmer, you haven’t really done anything at all.  Except deprive yourself of financial success…

Start by breaking down your idea into its smallest possible components.  Then organize these pieces in a logical way.  They’ll eventually become the chapters to your ebook, the different sections to your audio program, etc.

If you aren’t a writer, you can go the audio route and have your audio sessions transcribed for next to nothing on fiverr.  That way you can offer the written version of your info product in addition to your original audio product.

If you haven’t done so already, head on over to Smart Passive Income and sign up for Pat’s email list.  He’ll hook you up with an awesome guide to creating your first ebook from scratch.

There’s one more resource I’ll leave you with.  This is an awesome introduction to creating information products from Eben Pagan, one of the most successful internet marketers around.  Check it out:

One more thing: remember your idea doesn’t matter unless you act to turn that idea into a product.

Don’t worry about it being perfect.  Just get it out there, see what works and what doesn’t, and tweak it as you go along.  Good luck.

P.S. Here’s the link to the full issue of the Gary Halbert Newsletter I talked about in this article.