Can We Talk Frankly About Resale Rights?

In the last 2 issues we looked at creating your own products
and services. If you missed those, you can read then on-line
at http://williecrawford.com/archives.html Today, let's look
at a shortcut to getting your own product. Let's examine
buying reprint rights.

I've been in business on-line since 1997 and I have only
purchased 1 set of reprint rights that I marketed. I have
gotten rights to lots of products as a bonus or had them
given to me. Get reprint rights to the right product and you're
set to generate a steady income stream for a long time. Buy
the wrong reprint rights and you're just out of your time and
money.

When considering buying reprint rights to a product, the
most important factor is the demand for the product. If
nobody wants the product, everything else is irrelevant.
So I personally will only consider reprint rights for a
product I would consider buying in the first place.

A little acknowledged FACT is the reason reprint rights are
often offered for products is because the owner isn't making
any money on the product itself. Offering reprint rights for
many products actually decrease their value in the mind of
potential buyers. Therefore, if a product is selling briskly at
retail, it would usually be unwise to offer reprint rights.
Consider this when looking for products to buy reprint rights
to.

Another reason reprint rights are often offered for a product
is because the product's creator wants to benefit from the viral
effect. He is willing to forgo a large upfront profit to benefit
from backend sales or publicity. These are generally products
that contain links back to the person selling them embedded
within the product. If the product is nothing more than a bunch
of affiliate links then these links need to be brandable to
make reprint rights to that product a potentially worthwhile
investment.

What does make a great product to buy reprint rights to?
I recently conducted a tele-seminar on using pay-per-click
search engines. The tele-seminar was very profitable and
generated a product I could resell. Shortly after that
experience I confirmed that there were a lot of people who
would buy an info product on how to conduct tele-seminars
and regular seminars. So I considered writing such a product
based upon my experiences.

With perfect timing, reprint rights to a product that teaches
how to conduct seminars and tele-seminars was offered to
me. It was by my friend Fred Gleeck who has conducted over
1350 one-day seminars. I met Fred at a recent workshop and
knew that he really knew his stuff. They were offering a very
limited number of reprint rights (they are no longer available)
so I knew the market wouldn't be saturated. It was perfect.
The rights were for a product I was actually considering buying
anyway. I am planning on organizing my own small seminar or
workshop in mid-2003 and am in the early stages of planning
things.

This is the only product I've ever considered worth buying
reprint rights to. Do yourself a favor and check it out at:
http://williecrawford.com/your-own-seminar.html
It a great product. Reprint rights sold for $197, so I needed
to sell 10 copies to recoup my costs. I did that the first day.

Always ask yourself why reprint rights are being offered for a
product. Really examine the product and know that there is a
market for it. An excellent example of a product with tremendous
potential for example, is my very own pay-per-clicks tele-seminar.
I sell reprint rights to the digitally downloadable audio files, the
PDF transcripts, and both the CD and audio cassette versions.
Purchasers of the reprint rights are free to copy and resell
the product in all of it's forms for any price that they want. They
do not get the right to resell the reprint rights! I think that would
destroy the market for all potential buyers. It would be offered
on Ebay at cut-rates within a week and all purchasers of the
reprint licenses would have wasted their money.

As you can see, not all reprint rights are the same. Some are
totally worthless. I recommend only buying reprint rights where
your market is somewhat protected. I have seen a lot of people
buy reprint rights to products and do very heavy promotion with
dismal results. I've seen solo mailings to thousand produce zero
orders. The reason was because there was no demand for the
product and other resellers behavior destroyed the potential for
anyone to make any real money from the reprint rights.

To check out my reprint right, go to:
http://williecrawford.com/pay-per-clicks.html Before wasting your
money on any reprint rights, do a very thorough market analysis and
KNOW that people already want the product. Convincing people that
they need a product that you have reprint rights for is the hard way
to do things. Find a product already in demand if you're going to buy
reprint rights and you will find yourself with a very successful info
product empire.