Web 3.0 – The Rise Of The Information Product
A few weeks back I posted an article about Top 5 Forms Of Website and Blog Monetization for 2008. In at number 2, I mentioned how Information Products next year would become a mainstream bread and butter source for online income. It turns out that my prediction was a bit far off. Yup, information products have bombarded their way into 2007 and it looks like entrepreneurs across the globe are gonna get a large slice of this monetary pie.
So what are information products and why have they become so popular? That’s a good question and one which webpreneurs have been capitalizing on for the past few months. An information product does exactly what it says on the tin. It gives information about a specific niche or topic. In general, these products can be packaged up in different ways, for example in a PDF file, a downloadable eBook, a podcast or a video.
The ease of selling and buying them is really one of its best features. As a content producer, all you need is a Word Processing Program (like Microsoft Word), Adobe Reader, a Paypal account and a brain. Then write to your heart’s content and upload the files. You can make the whole process more complicated with the addition of an affiliate program and membership area, but it can be so simple if you don’t want any strings attached.
For buyers, all you need is some spare change (or a loan). These information products can range from Free to $7 to $99 to $1000 and more. You’ve really got to do the research to find out what you can expect to achieve from such a course, and what it will do for you in the long-run.
So why were my predictions wrong? Simple. In the past day and half I’ve seen the release of 2 information products from 2 very well known bloggers.
The first is Yaro Starak. I’ve always been a fan of his, and Entrepreneurs-Journey was one of my first entrepreneurial blogs that I started to read at the start of my blogging career. It’s taught me so much, and I’ve subscribed to pretty much every newsletter Yaro’s published.
The launch of the BlogMastermind Mentoring Program then was no big surprise as it’s been on the cards since 2006! But in reality, it can show how a normal blogger can use skills that he’s learnt in the past few years to create a whole audience for the picking – hopefully he’s gonna get very wealthy from selling the product. Anyway, as a newbie affiliate, Yaro’s program is the first proper product affiliate program that I’ve signed up to, so I want to give him the biggest amount of exposure as possible:
Tomorrow will be the launch of his Blog Profits Blueprint, so I’ll have another little short post telling you where you can download the FREE report.
Moving onto the second mogul. John Chow has made quite a name for himself since September of 2006, as he constanty shows his many methods of monetization. Without singing too many praises, he also jumped on the Information Product Bandwagon today, by releasing his free Make Money Online PDF book.
Now again, I don’t normally recommend such things (and this has no affiliate link), but the book is actually very good. Whilst there are punctuation and grammatical mistakes, John speaks English as a second language and so can be excused. In general the whole of the eBook is written in a bloggy type of way, and I’m sure he could get a lot more traffic posting the articles on his blog.
Both of the mentioned above have really capitalized on the blogging market. With the amount of newbie bloggers joining everyday, it’s no wonder that these type of niche products are geared towards them. I also tried to write my own ebook on entrepreneurship, but time got the better of me. Now Im thinking that I could give it a shot again.
In conclusion, the web is a neverending torrent of ideas and cashcows. You’ve really gotta jump on them while they’re hot, and in my opinion, Information Products have captured 2007 and make for a colourful and lucrative 2008.
