Welcome back to Self Employed Mum. Thanks for visiting!

Some of you may have caught some of my tweets on Saturday (from @selfemployedmum and @alisonrothwell) and been a bit mystified as to why I was promoting a product for you to buy, as I don’t normally do this.

On Saturday I was a guest speaker at an Internet Marketing seminar, organised by Nick James. Nick is a mentor of mine and an information product guru. For those of you unfamiliar with the phrase “information product” these are literally the products you see for sale on the net solving a problem someone has with the aid of books, audio CDs, software, DVDs etc, on all kinds of subjects from puppy training to crochet. I’ve bought quite a few information products and have always been interested in how they are put together.

On Saturday, in front of a live audience, Nick showed how easy it was to create your own quality information product, and, just like Jack Bauer, did it in “real time.” The product research was done in advance – Nick put together a package for people to learn how to make their own information products (!) The 24 hour Product Formula for a very reasonable price of £15.00. On Saturday he put together the webpage, blog and ran live direct marketing campaigns. The tweets you saw from me, were part of this.

The webpage went up, with minutes to spare, at the planned time of 11.00 a.m. (just as in real life there were a couple of technical glitches!). At 11.17, the first order came through. Every hour after that, the sales were announced and the Paypal account figure shown on the screen. I have to say it was amazing to see that whenever some action was taken (like launching the blog), you were able to see the effect on the sales figures.

My presentation focused on using SEO to promote your product, and I shared some SEO tips for quick returns. Other speakers explained how the graphics were put together for the product, how to use video marketing, set up a blog etc.

And the best thing?

Not only did Nick show how easy it was to create and market a quality information product (to an audience of Newbies), every penny of the money raised from each sale of the 24 Hour Product Formula is being donated to Oxfam, for their Haiti appeal.

By 5pm, Nick had reached his target of 100 online sales. By 2300, just 12 hours after launch, this had doubled to just over 200  orders. Yesterday, the total was 260 online sales and he’s hoping to make $10,000 within 48 hours of the product launch.

What I learnt:

• That putting together an information product is so much easier than you think
• You have to “take action”, make things happen and not dither about
• That creating an information product could work really well for lots of businesses e.g. PR, accountancy, VA services, for both marketing and making money. For example, one delegate at the seminar had created products to help the self employed put together a SA tax return quickly.
• If you create a quality product, for an audience which has a reason to buy, and market it properly, then you will make money.

Could you create an information product to help your customers?

You can check out the sales page here and also the blog.

photo credit: John Griffiths

Have you got an idea for an online business but don’t know where to start? Then, join me as I write about my new bizz “journey” from start up idea to launch…

In an earlier post I talked about getting your big idea.  My idea came to me as a result of another business I run, a seo consultancy, which manages internet marketing for small businesses. I noticed a gap in the market and decided I could fill it.

Of course, it wasn’t quite that simple. Oh no! It’s all very well thinking you have a great business idea, but what happens if noone else (apart from your best friend) agrees? It’s all very well thinking ‘If you build it, he will come” (apologies to Kevin Costner) but I’d rather root my businesses firmly in reality

The answer is to do some research. If your idea fits into a pretty much mainstream area (such as setting up a baby shop) then you’ll be able to access market research through your local business link, or similar. If, however, like me, your idea is outside the box, then you’ll need to do your market research yourself.

Here’s how I did mine:

I identified my customer and found websites and forums where “my customer” hung out. I read their conversations and joined in and asked questions. From this I learnt that my idea was sound but I needed to have a clearer understanding of exactly what the customer wanted so that I could fulfil that need through my initial idea.

Next, I put together some questions for potential customers and used online survey company Survey Monkey to collect, store and analyse the data. I advertised the survey on forums and put together a small “bribe” (a freebie mini-guide) to encourage peeps to answer the questions.

Using this research I was able to plan the next stage of developing my idea….

photo credit: richard winchell