Creating Your First Information Product

Your First Information Product

I’ve reconnected with a friend with whom I haven’t been in touch since 1985. We spoke on the phone this weekend and he asked me if I remembered selling his aunt’s recipe for rugelach (a popular Jewish pastry found in delicatessens and bakeries) way back then. This was my first information product.

I didn’t remember until he reminded me. It was a delicious family recipe with nuts and a fruit flavored cream cheese filling, and she said that we could sell it and give her a small percentage of the profits. I do not believe “a small percentage” was ever defined because I was not thinking like a business person at that time in my life.

So my friend and I took a class by the late Melvin Powers – in person, as there was no online anything at that time – and we learned how to place a small classified ad in some print publications. I was an avid learner back then, and still am to this day. The publication we chose was called “The National Enquirer” and it is still going string today with a circulation of about seven hundred thousand readers. It’s popularity has somewhat declined over the years, but it remains a grocery store checkout line favorite and is only available in print.

I’d love to tell you that we earned a fortune, but in those days I would only try something once or twice and then give up. After two times of paying for the ad and making only three sales, we decided to quit our efforts for good. If only I had persevered! But this was my first information product.

Think about this model…

We found a product – the recipe – to sell and made an arrangement to sell it to others in return for a small fee. We didn’t have to create anything on our own, as she had been perfecting her recipe for decades. I never did prepare the recipe myself because I had eaten her rugelach many times and trusted her recipe implicitly.

We couldn’t deliver it digitally at that time, so we printed the recipes at our local office supply store and mailed them in envelopes. Our hard costs were five cents for the copy and twenty-two cents for the postage stamp. We were paid $3 for each one, and people sent cash or a postal money order. The potential profit was two dollars and seventy-three cents per unit, less the amount we would pay to my friend’s aunt for licensing her recipe. Most likely a dollar each would have been a good negotiation for each of us.

The point I am making here is that you must start wherever you are and move forward with confidence and persistence. It will pay off, I promise. If you still do not have your first information product I would highly recommend that you make it happen.

In today’s world of digital marketing you are able to earn much more than this. For example, I purchase the resale rights to a training course on how to write short reports several years ago. Every year I spend a couple of hours going through it and then promote it again to my list, on social media, and elsewhere. I paid three hundred dollars for this package originally and have now earned more than twenty thousand dollars. This is all profit at this point because everything is delivered digitally. You are selling electrons that move magically from one person to the next with ease. [Please let me know if you’d like a copy of this training at a significant discount by leaving a comment here.]

You may be interested in my popular course on creating and selling information products…

Connie Ragen Green is a bestselling author, marketing mentor, and online marketing strategist, working with people and corporations on six continents to help them increase their credibility, expand their visibility, and explode their profitability. If you’re interested in getting started with the journey to online entrepreneurship and taking your life to the next level, find out more by downloading your Online Entrepreneur Blueprint and get started today.