Running an Information Product Business

A digital product is essentially any product that you don’t hold in your hands and that can be saved on a computer, smartphone or tablet. An information product meanwhile is a product that revolves around providing information. That means something like a book, a podcast or a course. So a digital informational product is something that ticks both of these boxes much like this very eBook!

This eBook is informational because you’re learning from it and it’s digital because it only exists on a file on your hard drive. Creating and selling a digital product just so happens to be one of the most popular and most effective business models available. The reason for this is that it offers incredible ROI and is highly versatile.

When you create and sell a digital product, you are providing value in the form of the information contained therein. This is what allows you to charge money for your product and it’s what makes it desirable for your audience. At the same time though, a digital product has very little overhead.

There may be some initial investment involved in the creation of your product as you’ll need to outsource the process or pay someone to create it for you but after that, you’ll be able to sell as many copies as you like without it costing you a single thing. There’s no cost associated with storage, there’s no delivery costs and there are no material costs. In business, this is known as ‘COGS’ or ‘Cost Of Goods Sold’.

With a high value and no overhead then, a digital product can provide almost 100% profit on each sale. What’s more, it’s incredibly versatile and simple to create and sell. You don’t need to get in touch with a manufacturing contractor, or find seed money, or learn to code. As long as you understand how to operate a word processor, this option is available to everyone.

How People Are Making Money From Information Products

So how do you turn this into a money making business model? One good example we can turn to is ‘Double Your Dating’ (www.doubleyourdating.com).

This is a website that sells a wide variety of different informational products, all relating to how to attract and meet women. The owners of this business therefore, invest a little time and money into running the site and promoting it and then generate income from people who decide they would like more information and thus buy the books. This works because the products being sold have a very strong ‘value proposition’ which is to say that they solve a clear and specific problem and promise to make the buyers’ lives better in a measurable way.

This makes promotion much easier. In this case, ‘dating’ is the niche (meaning the subject) and this is one of the most popular niches out there. Other popular choices include ‘making money online’, ‘fashion/style’, ‘weight loss’, ‘muscle building’. Remember though, eBooks are just one option. You can also sell a video series, an online course, a shorter ‘report’ or a range of other information products.

In terms of how the business model works, it will largely be posting to a blog that will help you to bring more traffic to your website. The more you add content to your website in the form of a blog, the more people will be able to find your website via Google and the more people are likely to share your content on social media. Adding content to a blog also allows you to build trust with your audience. The people who enjoy your content on the website will find themselves wanting more and trusting what you have to say.

Basically, this means they’ll be far more likely to want to buy your products when they see that you provide even more information behind a small pay wall. That right there, is the basis for ‘content marketing’ which we’ll look at more when we come onto this article on blogging. Actually though, there are also other methods you can use to sell a digital product.

For instance, you can sell a digital product via social media, on forums or even through Amazon (for Kindle). Another option is to let other people promote your product for you and to simply take a cut of the profits.