Transcript continued from the Episode 003 Show notes
Let’s say that someone needs information about buying carpet. All of a sudden they find a sales page for a report on the 17 Tips that You Must Know to Successfully Buy Carpet and Save Money Doing It, and that report costs 19.95. Rather than spending the next 17 hours surfing around, reading articles that are disconnected on the internet about buying carpet, the person decides to buy that information product, download it, read it, and in 30 minutes they’re a carpet buying expert and they’re all done.
People are willing to pay for your work and your expertise in collecting together information that you can then turn around and sell on the internet over and over again. There’s lots of advantages to selling information products on the internet.
The first advantage, obviously, is that the overhead is tiny. You create a report, or do an audio interview, or do a collection of interviews, or whatever it is that you are doing to collect information. Videos, any kind of information product on a topic that you know something about, you bundle those together into something that’s actually useful to someone. You put it a price on it, and then you can have it be available for download whenever someone pays for it.
This thing can be for sale 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, any country in the world. You can put that product out there, and if people can find it, they can buy it. You can go to sleep one night, and wake up the next day and have money in your bank account, quite literally.
So, selling information products online is one of the best ways you can make money on the internet, It goes hand and hand with the affiliate marketing model that we talked about last week, because if you can get affiliates to promote your information product, again, these are people that are selling your product for you, you can just sit back and get the sales while affiliates do all the work. That’s kind of the dream of information marketing and information products.
This is covered in the first chapter of Yanik Silver’s book. Yanik is an information marketer, and he’s an incredibly successful seven figure version of an information marketer. He covers what he considers to be the seven most important reasons for why digital information products are the best way to build a fortune.
You can setup a situation where you have no competition. That’s reason one, because everything you create will be copy protected. So, if you have a report, no one can just copy that report and sell exactly the same thing that you’ve got. If you can differentiate it, you can eliminate competition.
Reason two, I already mentioned, the profit margins are incredibly huge, because you’re just delivering a digital download. You’re not printing anything. You’re not shipping anything physically if you don’t want to. So, the overhead is very low.
Reason number three that information products are great is that you can work from anywhere you want to. You can work in your pajamas from your home if you like to do that. Or you can have a big fancy office. Either way you can do it the way you want to.
Reason four is that you can setup your business on complete autopilot. Like I was describing before, you can make the thing run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without intervention. Everything is automatic.
That leads to number five, you don’t need any employees to do an information marketing business on the internet. There’s nothing to ship, there’s no envelopes to stuff, and so forth. So, you really don’t need employees.
Number six is an important one for people that are trying to get started online. That is that there are incredibly low start up costs on the internet. When you start a business like this on the internet, and information marketing business, literally all you need is a PC and some time to type.
Reason seven, which is my personal favorite reason is it scales well. You can do something once and get paid over and over again. You write an ebook once, but you sell it a thousand times, or 10,000 times. You can just keep getting paid for that year after year, without any problem.
Now, there are lots of different kinds of information marketing. We won’t cover all of them. Ebooks, obviously, are one, you can have membership sites, and so forth. But, one of the interesting things about internet marketing and information marketing is the broad range of niches that you can cover when you’re selling information is only limited by your imagination.
I’ve seen ebooks on buying carpet, I’ve seen on the topics of self help, fitness, and natural medicine. I’ve seen ebooks about learning how to sing, believe it or not. The way you can find these ebooks and get some ideas of what’s going on, the best source to see what people are selling is at Clickbank.com. Clickbank.com is an amazing resource for people to buy and sell ebooks.
If you’re interested, as I mentioned last time, in affiliate marketing, you can find things to promote there. But, if you’re interested in being promoted by affiliates, you can create material and have it for sale on Clickbank.com.
That gives you kind of an idea for information marketing. Really, Yanik describes what he says are the top seven information topics that you can consider. So, if you’re thinking about information marketing, here are seven things you can think about as a place to start.
Any kind of how to guide that someone would be willing to buy is a great idea. Any kind of self help or relationship information that people are willing to buy is a great idea. Recently there’s been a big buzz on the internet about an ebook that teaches you how to get your ex back. If you’ve lost your girlfriend or your spouse, you can buy this ebook to learn techniques for getting your ex back.
Lots of financial ebooks. Of course, people are willing to spend a little money if they think it’s going to make them money. Lots of ebooks about business and making money, particularly making money on the internet. That would be the fourth area that he points out.
The fitness, diet, and health niche is a really obvious one. People are always trying to figure out how to lose weight. Anything that people need to read to improve themselves, some kind of skills, improvement, or training.
One of my friends has a very successful information product about how to pass particular tests for project management certification. He’s very successful with that. I have another friend who has a successful ebook teaching people how to program on the iPhone. I’ll show you links to both of those products. They’re very exciting.
Then finally, there’s a successful niche that Yanik points out in the entertainment, travel, and lifestyle area. That’s another niche that he’s real big in and had some success in.
I hope that gives you an idea about our second topic in the area of how to make money on the internet. The first one was affiliate marketing. The second one that we’ve talked about today is information marketing.
Now, information marketing is a huge topic, and obviously, we’re not going to be able to teach you how to do that in a podcast of this length. But, I can tell you that if you want to get a good idea of how to get started, there are two resources that I can recommend. One is the Yanik Silver book. The other thing that I can recommend to you is an ebook that’s about to come out by Josh Spaulding.
He talks about his success in the information marketing area. You can find a link to that in the show notes. I just got finished reading the final draft of that ebook. It’s not even released to the public yet. When it is released, you’ll be able to find it at MasonWorld.com/joshinfo.
Okay, that wraps up our brief introduction to information marketing. That means it’s time for what’s becoming my favorite part of the show. That is the specialty interviews with successful internet marketers that are really kicking it up and making a lot of money online.
This week I’ve got for you one of my all time favorites. I was so excited that he agreed to do the interview. Jonathan Leger. Jon has a ton of products out there, and they’re all fantastic. He’s very famous for his products 3-Way-Links and 1-Way-Links.
In addition to that, he’s had many successful information products. He’s currently got some huge things that are going viral. Including TipDrop.com. If you haven’t seen TipDrop.com, I definitely recommend that you hop over there and check that out.
What I asked Jonathan in this interview was to tell me the three things that he thought a new internet marketer should know. He was kind enough to do that. So, without further ado, here’s incredibly successful internet marketing guru, Jon Leger.
And now, the feature interview.
Mark Mason: Today in our continuing series on trying to understand how we can boil this internet marketing and making money online activity down into something that normal people can understand, we turn again to another expert in the field.
A lot of you have heard of him. His name is Jon Leger. A lot of you have mispronounced it for years, as I have, but it’s correctly pronounced Jon Lejay. Jon has any array of fantastic internet marketing products out on the market.
He’s a self made internet business man, incredibly successful. I’m a happy customer of Jon’s and thrilled to have him on the podcast. Jon, how are you doing today?
Jon Leger: Doing just fine, Mark. Great to be here.
Mark Mason: Thank you, very much. I really appreciate you taking the call. We talked a little bit before the call, Jon, and I let you know that what I’m trying to help people understand is sort of the most important things that they need to know to get started.
As you know, there’s a lot of clutter out there. The noise on the internet about how to make money online is so massive, it’s hard to get a grip on the things that are really important if you’re trying to start a viable internet business.
So, what I wanted to ask you today, Jon, is if you could boil it down to three things. If a new potential internet marketer came to you and asked you for the three things that they really needed to know to get started, or the most important three things, what would those three things be?
I was hoping maybe you could go through three of those with us today and let us know if you had it to do all over again, what are the three things you think are most important?
Jon Leger: Sure, absolutely. First of all, the first thing relates to the noise that you’re talking about, because there is a lot of noise out there. There are no free rides, but everyone is going to promise you one if you’re looking for internet marketing online.
You’ll read headlines promising the world with almost no effort at all from guys who have made a fortune online. But, you know they made that fortune? Selling info products to people that claim to show you how to make a fortune online. So, you could probably see the problem there.
Almost none of the guys you see, the so called gurus out there, have run real businesses selling real products. Look for the ones that have real legitimate offline businesses too, because really an online business is no different from an offline business in this respect. It takes a lot of work to get going and to build a solid business.
So, any time you read a headline or a sales copy that says, “It’s easy. There’s nothing to it. Anyone can do it.” That’s true, but there’s lots of work involved to get there. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. It is true that once it’s moving, it’s a lot less of a headache than a brick and mortar business. That’s one of the appeals of running a business online.
It’s true that you can make really good money running your business from home, and that it’s got a flexible schedule, and all that. But, it takes a lot of work to get there and anyone who tells you different is a shark. It’s a shame that has to be the number one thing that I bring up, but there’s just so much out there that there’s so many sharks, so many false claims, that I really have to make that the number one thing.
Mark Mason: Well, it’s a good thing. Basically, you’re telling me something that my father has told me all my life, so it must be true. That is you can’t get something for nothing. Doesn’t that pretty much boil it down?
Jon Leger: Yes, absolutely. Now, it does get easier in time, but you have to expect a lot of hard work up front. There’s just not getting around that, whatever kind of business you plan on running.
Mark Mason: Okay. So, that’s an excellent first item. What’s the second item you would want to tell a new prospective internet marketer?
Jon Leger: Second, I’d tell them that you have to find a great product that sells well. You might be a huge fan of classic French poetry anthologies, I’m sorry, you’re just not going to make any money trying to sell that online.
You might be the most knowledgeable person about it, others who care about it might praise your name, but make a living at it you will not. I’m not saying just abandon your passions. You certainly have side projects doing the things that you love, ones that you can use to get away from the hum-drum day to day stuff that you’re not as passionate about.
It does help if you happen to be very interested in something that’s very popular. If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. Right? That’s what they say.
I’m fortunate that my products center around search engine optimization and content creation, since those are my passions. But, what’s most likely for most new people starting out, is that you’re going to have a general field of interest that does contain a great product inside of it, but you have to find what that is.
Let me give you an example. My brother sells porch swings 100 percent online. He sells a lot of porch swings. In May of this year, he sold over 42,000 dollars in porch swings. He chose to sell that, because he loves woodworking.
He did some research, he found out that porch swings were popular, and he started to sell them on eBay. This year he’s going to do almost half a million dollars in porch swings. So, he’s doing something he loves, woodworking, with a product that’s popular and sells really well, porch swings.
Whatever you do love, try to find a way to adapt that into a sellable product if at all possible. But, if your passions just don’t have a market, then get into a market that’s popular. Keep side projects going so that you’ve got somewhere to go to get your creativity moving when you lose interest in your main product.
Mark Mason: That’s a really good point. Let me ask you, if I’m remembering right, you wrote a little bit on your blog about some of your experiences with keyword optimization on there for the porch swing activity that you were working on with your brother. Can you just take this opportunity to tell people how to find you online? Where is the best place to hook up with Jon Leger online?
Jon Leger: Well, my blog at JonathanLeger.com, and the spelling, of course, Jonathan L-E-G-E-R dot com. I post a lot of information there, especially on the topic of search engine optimization.
Mark Mason: Excellent. So, that’s a good resource for people. Just so you know, and my listeners know, I think you know this, because I comment on your blog and I read your blog, so it comes highly recommended from me.
Jon Leger: Thank you.
Mark Mason: Okay. So, that’s an excellent second item. What’s the third and final item that you think is most important for people to know?
Jon Leger: Really, running a business online is a simple formula. You have a great product, you get targeted traffic, and you can earn a good living. We covered the great product part. But, no matter how great your product, no visitors means no money. So, you need to get traffic.
The third point I would say is that not all traffic is created equal. It is very possible to get millions of visitors to your site, and make no sales. Just ask the owners of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. They get tons of traffic, they’re great sites with cool “products,” but nobody has figured out how to make any money from those yet.
That’s because their traffic isn’t targeted. By targeted, I mean it’s not people looking to buy something in a particular market. Before you start getting traffic to your site, you have to make sure that traffic is targeted. Again, this accomplished by researching your market first.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say you sell a product that teaches people the basics of dog training. So, you buy some ads on Google that show up when people search for the phrase, dog training basics. Or you work to get your site ranked in the top ten of Google for that phrase. That sounds logical, right? Dog training basics, that’s what people type in, they find my product, I make sales.
Guess what? You won’t sell hardly anything to people searching for dog training basics. That’s because that phrase is being typed into the search engines by people who are looking for free information, not people who are looking to buy.
A much better set of keywords to buy ads for, or to get ranked for, would be dog behavior training. Because people typing that into search engines are looking to buy. I happen to know that, because MSN has a free tool available that tells you how likely it is that somebody searching for a given set of keywords is in the market to buy, and how likely it is that they’re just looking for free information.
So, just like you need to research your product in advance, once you have a product, you need to research who is looking for that product and what they’re typing into the search engines when they want to buy it. If you can get those two things right, you’ve got a recipe for a successful online business.
Mark Mason: Outstanding. Yes, that OCI index is an often overlooked thing. That’s an excellent tip. That’s another thing people can learn about reading your blog, because I know that you’ve covered that in the past too. It’s really a treasure trove of information over there.
I’m suspecting, having known you for as long as I have, that you have way more than three items that would be helpful for somebody who is trying to get started. But, of course, we’ve got a finite amount of time on this podcast. So, let me ask you, have you got another resource? Your blog is an enormous resource, but that’s kind of hard to digest in one sitting. Do you have a nice compact place for someone to start who is trying to get started online?
Jon Leger: Absolutely. In fact, I recently released a product with my brother, who like I said, sells enormous amounts of porch swings 100 percent online. We got together, and he actually hammered out everything he does. The details about how he did the product research, what pay per click sites he uses, to get him up to selling 40,000 something dollars a month in porch swings.
I put that together with the details of how I research keywords to rank for. Something we didn’t have time to get into, how to optimize your site so that it shows up in the top results of Google. You can get all of that information at GeekFreeProfits.com. Geek, G-E-E-K, Free Profits dot com. You will find all of the information, including the three points that we talked about on the podcast in much more detail.
Mark Mason: Very good. Well, hey, I really appreciate your time. I appreciate the excellent tips. What I really appreciate more than anything is all of the great products that you’ve contributed to the internet marketing community.
Not just information products, but actually really my favorite are your software products. I know I speak on behalf of a lot of your customers and just say thanks a lot for all your great contributions. Thanks for appearing on this podcast. I really appreciate it.
Jon Leger: Thank you, Mark. It was a good one.
Mark Mason: Thanks. Have a fantastic day.
All right. That really does it for this week. I appreciate your continued attendance here at the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. I’d really appreciate it if you’d stumble on over to iTunes, just go to MasonWorld.com/itunes, subscribe to the podcast and leave me a review there. That would really help me out.
I hope you have a fantastically successful week. I’ll talk to you again in about a week or ten days with Episode 4. Have a great one.
Thanks for listening to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. For more information about this program, and to get the show notes, be sure to visit our website at MasonWorld.com/podcast. Follow @MasonWorld on Twitter.
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Thanks again for listening to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, building internet businesses one night at a time. Have a great day.
