Re:Developers, Designers: Make an Infoproduct
by rudenoise on Thursday October 07, 2010 @06:41AM
(#1767412)
It's a pretty straight forward concept (certainly nothing new): charge for teaching/sharing info in a format you can distribute and charge for. This article does make a good description of what these products can be.
I'm sure we all have info products in us, but the barrier to entry (or at least making a living) will be finding the balance of desiredIncome / numberOfCustomers = salePrice
Factoring in the effort to find the number of customers required is at least as much work as creating a product in the first place.
Re:Developers, Designers: Make an Infoproduct
by ahoyhere on Thursday October 07, 2010 @07:01AM
(#1767441)
If I included all that too, it would be TL;DR. You know I'm right. Follow my blog, though, because I'm going to be writing a lot more about infoproducts over the next few months, and I will be creating that infoproduct course that inspired the article.
But, I will say, you're making a critical mistake if you create a product and THEN try to find customers for it.
Re:Developers, Designers: Make an Infoproduct
by ahoyhere on Thursday October 07, 2010 @07:06AM
(#1767450)
Hi, I'm the author.
I've written 3 full-length books, and half of one. Two of the completed ones were for actual publishers, and ended up canceled or not published or I quit in disgust. The last completed one was obviously http://jsrocks.com.
But, I've written maybe 950 pages of book in my life so far.
Writing a book is easy. Giving birth is also easy. Both may hurt like hell, but they're not difficult. You pretty much have to show up and push.
Now, writing a book for the wrong reasons is impossible. If you're doing it for fame or exposure, or the cred, or the money (without finding an ongoing motivating force), yes, you will have to fight yourself every step of the way. But that's because you don't really want to write a book, you want the goodies that you think you'll get.
But, more importantly, an ebook doesn't have a page count requirement. It doesn't have to look at-least-this-thick on the bookshelf. It doesn't have to meet some stupid editorial rule.
It just has to do the job.
An ebook isn't a book.
But, like the rest of my article pointed out, _you don't have to even do an ebook_.
EDIT: Actually, make that 4 full-length books, since the text for my 30x500 Launch Class is nearly 300 pages. http://unicornfree.com/prelaunch.
EDIT: Oh, and it's not because I'm not afflicted with distractability or procrastination. Just trust me on that.
The problem this article makes no attempt to address is, once you have an "infoproduct" ready to ship how do you find customers? As a post last week (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1759052) referenced , you may need 1000 true fans to make a living selling direct (http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fan...)
I'm sure we all have info products in us, but the barrier to entry (or at least making a living) will be finding the balance of desiredIncome / numberOfCustomers = salePrice
Factoring in the effort to find the number of customers required is at least as much work as creating a product in the first place.
But, I will say, you're making a critical mistake if you create a product and THEN try to find customers for it.
Okay, writing a -bad- book is easy. Writing a book that's worthwhile isn't.
I've written 3 full-length books, and half of one. Two of the completed ones were for actual publishers, and ended up canceled or not published or I quit in disgust. The last completed one was obviously http://jsrocks.com.
But, I've written maybe 950 pages of book in my life so far.
Writing a book is easy. Giving birth is also easy. Both may hurt like hell, but they're not difficult. You pretty much have to show up and push.
Now, writing a book for the wrong reasons is impossible. If you're doing it for fame or exposure, or the cred, or the money (without finding an ongoing motivating force), yes, you will have to fight yourself every step of the way. But that's because you don't really want to write a book, you want the goodies that you think you'll get.
But, more importantly, an ebook doesn't have a page count requirement. It doesn't have to look at-least-this-thick on the bookshelf. It doesn't have to meet some stupid editorial rule.
It just has to do the job.
An ebook isn't a book.
But, like the rest of my article pointed out, _you don't have to even do an ebook_.
EDIT: Actually, make that 4 full-length books, since the text for my 30x500 Launch Class is nearly 300 pages. http://unicornfree.com/prelaunch.
EDIT: Oh, and it's not because I'm not afflicted with distractability or procrastination. Just trust me on that.
Hmm. So how does that add to $45,823?
For an example see how Aaron Wall turned his SEO Book into a platform (forum, tools).