How Do The Gurus Make Money In Their Sleep - While The Rest Of Us Struggle To Make That First Sale? In my time, I've been to many information marketing bootcamps, workshops, seminars, courses and other events.
And one of the things that always strikes me is the number of people who attend compared with the few who actually manage to make things happen.
My take on this is that, although a lot of good information is broadcast, much of the focus is on "what" rather than "how".
Although most people come away filled with information, energy and enthusiasm, they very soon run into the wall that most "gurus" vaulted over a long while ago.
The Main Info Marketing Processes But before we go into that, let's just look quickly at the four main processes involved in information marketing - Research, Product, Marketing and Delivery.
#1.
Research This is where it kicks off with some initial brainstorming, followed by detailed investigation into the likely demand for the topics you have in mind.
Some say that competition is a good thing - if there's a lot of competition, then there's a hungry market for your product.
But, it can also mean that you'll have a hard time getting any visibility in amongst the crowd of people selling their own products.
As well as assessing the likelihood that you'll find enough buyers for your future product, you'll also need to find out whether there's enough material available to build into your offering.
If not, then you'll have to go back to the brainstorming step.
#2.
Product Assuming that your research has shown favourable results, then this process involves the gathering of enough material to make a worthwhile product.
This material can come from external sources (such as public domain and non-copyright stuff on the internet) or (ideally) from your own knowledge.
This process can take up quite a chunk of the overall time.
Even if you've opted to create an e-book, you'll still need to create or source some graphics to make it more than just a boring chunk of text.
Then you'll need someone to proof read your text as well as determine whether what you've written is understandable from the layman's point of view.
#3.
Marketing Once you've got your finished product, there's still a way to go.
You need to get your offer in front of prospective customers and you've got to make it an attractive offer.
There are two principal sub-processes here.
Placing sales material where people can see your offer And getting visitors to actually look at it.
The first sub-process involves writing effective sales copy, then constructing and uploading your sales page.
The second requires you to notify as many people as possible that your sales page exists and persuading them that they should take a look - in other words, driving traffic.
#4.
Delivery This can also be referred to as fulfillment, but essentially, it means the processing of customers' payments and the delivery to them of what they've paid for.
If your product is in physical form, then you'll need to package and mail it.
If the product is electronic, then delivery can be via download (if it's small enough) or by mail on disk.
To Summarise...
That's a very, very simple view of what's involved  - and I'll cover ways you can overcome much of the time and effort in my next article "Info Marketing Processes for Newbies - Part 2".