Selling Information Products: What Sells, What Doesn't

The internet provides an ideal opportunity to provide our clients and customers with high-value products, at low cost to us. Most products can be delivered over the internet, including ebooks, audio files, and home study courses. The production and delivery cost for these items is low, which allows us to focus on developing superior content, without regard to how much to spend on packaging.

The question you may ask yourself is, “What products should I develop?” But that’s the wrong question. Your goal is to serve, not sell. If your product and information is of sufficiently high quality, and truly serves your target market, the selling will be easier. Why? You can be extraordinarily passionate about a topic, but if there’s no market for it, you’re working in a vacuum.

Why not find out what your market really wants, and then supply it to them?A hot market is golden. Building a product blindly, with little idea of how it will be received, is unnecessary and silly. But building to your customer’s needs and wants makes sense.

So how do you find out what your target market really wants? Below are two methods to find out what is really selling out there. Rather than assume you know what’s best for your target market, be willing to research what they’re currently buying. The market is the best indicator of what people want.

MAGAZINESPaper magazines are much more expensive to produce than ezines, and they require a steady readership and usually some advertising. You’re looking for special interest magazines that cater to a very specific crowd. You’ll have trouble finding these at your local newsstand, so search on the internet for “your target” + “magazines.” Enter different variations, and you’ll find a number of possibilities.

For example, I just found 3 Yo-Yo magazines through an internet search. Not my target market, but clearly there is a market.

The next step is to order copies of a few issues. You’re looking for ads and coupons for products. When you find a specialty magazine that’s been around for a while, and that displays similar ads consistently, you’ve narrowed down what your market is buying.

CLICKBANKA second strategy for finding what’s popular is to search on the internet. Specifically, if you’re interested in developing information products, like ebooks or audios, a great place to look is ClickBank, which sells more ebooks than any other outlet. They identify the hottest categories of ebook sold currently from their site, further identified by title.

A category that sells well on ClickBank should be able to sell well in other markets, and specific key words in the title of popular ebooks should give you an indication of what people are looking for now.

CONCLUSIONTailor your products to what your target market wants. People buy from those they know, like, and trust, and if you can accurately assess specifically what people want, you’ll establish that trust quickly. Don’t assume you know what’s best—do your research.