How To Create Your Own Product Or Service (Part 2)

In the first installment to this series, we looked at creating
and marketing your own info product. I gave several concrete
examples of info products I created with very little investment
of time or money which sell with tremendous success. If you
missed that article, it's posted online at:
http://williecrawford.com/limitless22november02.html In this
installment let's look at creating and marketing your own
services.

When looking at marketing your own services you should
thoroughly examine, brainstorm, and tear apart several
critical issues. These issues are:

- What services are you qualified to offer
- Will offering this service provide a good return on your
investment of time and money
- Is this service suitable for leveraging by offering through
an affiliate program
- Is there sufficient market for this service to offer a steady
stream of customers long term
- Can you develop a line of back-end products to increase the
revenue stream from offering this service

Let's briefly look at these issues.

Most of us possess some unique talent that we can use to
create a service and earn an income from sharing this talent
with others. Talents that come to mind immediately are web
design, graphic design, copywriting, programming, data entry,
script writing or installation, legal research, website
optimization, website promotion, diet counseling, fitness
coaching, personal coaching and counseling, proofreading
services, ghost writing services, and too many other
possibilities to list here.

All of these services can be and are marketed successfully over
the internet. Develop a reputation for delivering quality in
any of these areas and you will get a steady stream of customers.

When looking at what service you might offer as your own
"product" also consider services that allow you to leverage
yourself more. To do this I generally think of services that
can be provided semi-automatically and delivered in an almost
endless quantity. The distinction between product and service
may get a little blurred here but that's ok. What are
"services" that might fall within this category:

- Pay for subscriber/lead services
- Pay for website traffic/visitor services
- Website submission or promotion services
- Website monitoring services
- Website translation services
- Website hosting services (very competitive)
- Remote script hosting services
- Custom content provider services
- Article writing or distribution services
- List management services
- Providing custom diet plans
- Providing custom fitness plans
- Personal financial management services

... you get the idea. Think of services that you can generate
and provide with the aid of software so that you really do have
an unlimited supply. Look at how you can improve on existing
services or come up with totally new services. Realize that if
you don't design your service properly you severely limit its
growth potential and the potential to offer back-end or add-on
products or services.

I recommend services where there is less competition due to
difficulty in delivering the service. Difficulty in product
delivery as a barrier-to-entry is a good thing. It means it will
be longer before someone encroaches on your market. This allows
you to perhaps price differently at first and harvest "monopoly
profits." Sorry - my economics training is slipping through :-)

Many services are so generic that it's difficult to distinguish
your service in the mind of your potential customers. This makes
your service a commodity and many customers will buy largely
based on price. Web hosting is a commodity service that
immediately comes to mind. To many customers, one web host is
just the same as all others. If you can distinguish your generic
product in the mind of your potential customer by becoming known
for superior quality or customer service then you no longer offer
a commodity. However, that takes a lot of very hard work and time.
If you can offer a service FIRST or where there are fewer
competitors then your task is easier.

When thinking of your service (or product) think in terms of
income stream. If you are forced to constantly search for
new customers so that you can make a one-time sale, you
severely limit your growth potential. If your system brings
in customers who use your services over and over again, then
you build in repeat business and a revenue "stream." Lead
generation and traffic generation services are examples that
come to mind. If you deliver quality traffic or leads then
your customers will buy from you again and again.

Along the same lines... if you can offer a range of different
levels of service you increase your revenue stream and
back-end sales. An example of this is Lead Factory (a service
offered by my friend Marty Foley). You pay for subscribers
to your list. His system generates subscribers by presenting
your ezine or list subscribe boxes displayed on high traffic
websites. Lead Factory offers a product line in that you
can specify the quality and demographics of the leads. You
can specify that you only want leads from certain countries,
or certain other demographics. You can get single opt-in
leads, or for a little more, you can get double opt-in leads.
Just by giving customers a few choices, this service comprises
a range of products and thus a product line. Satisfied customers,
such as myself, use the service over and over generating a nice
residual income for the provider. Check out this excellent
example: http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin k.cgi?subs

A service that can be offered in unlimited supply can generally
be priced and scaled so that you can also market it through
an affiliate program. A service where you manually do most of
the work can't generally be marketed successfully through an
affiliate program. If you are just selling your time and effort
then you generally don't want to share the revenue. Offering
a finders' fee or commission is possible with a personalized
service but it needs to be "high-end" enough to allow you to
charge a premium price. The limiting factor will be the
number of hours that you can spend delivering the service.

My personal experience with marketing services is that I
offered website and ezine promotion services. I also offered
website optimization services. I found all of the above too
labor intensive for my personal preference. I also noticed that
many relative newbies entered the market and offered cut-rate
fees. I priced my services based upon the value I placed upon
my time and expertise. I noticed many people enter and leave
the website promotion and optimization business - I suspect
for the same reasons. Don't get trapped offering a service
that under-values your time, effort and expertise.

A service which really can't be duplicated because you are
offering "you" is consulting or coaching. If you have, or
if you can develop expertise in an area, then this may be the
perfect service for you to market. It can be marketed in many
different ways depending upon how you define the service.
For example, you can market your expert knowledge through
telephone consultations, audio and video tapes, and even
tele-seminars. As you go from personal consultation to recorded
presentations, you go from service back to product but they
all tie together. Marketed properly, one will set you up to
offer the other as a backend product. For example, short
telephone consultations will often show the customer that they
need your longer videotaped or audiotaped presentations.
Sometimes listening to an audiotape or tele-seminar will show
a customer that he need to set up a personal consultation to
discuss to his specific situation more in-depth. Your expertise
in effect becomes an entire product line.

Creating your own product or service is how you earn the big
incomes online... especially if you use the leverage of an
affiliate program. Hopefully, this short series gave you the
basics of creating your own product or service. You now have a
good start for launching your own informational product or
service. If you find that you do need one-on-one consultations,
I do offer telephone consultations. Details are available at:
http://williecrawford.com/consultations.html
You can see that I'm not offering you a lot of theory. I'm
showing you exactly how I generate and market both products
and services :-) Use these examples to examine the feasibility
of your own ideas

To your success.
Willie Crawford