After all this discussion about info product creation we arrive at a commonly asked question.

What if I do not want to create a product or do not want to get it created? Are there any options available? Can I still do online business?

Yes! The answer is affiliate products.

Affiliate products allow you to do online business without rolling out your own products. In fact there is an army of affiliates over the internet doing business day and night.

And affiliates do make handsome money.

Let us understand the concept of affiliate products in detail.

When a company or person launches its product, it aims at getting maximum number of customers. To achieve this product must reach the maximum number of people. In offline business this is done through agents, franchises and partnerships.

In online business this can be easily achieved by affiliate programs. When you join an affiliate product you get your affiliate ID which can be inserted in the hyperlink of the product.

When a customer clicks on the hyperlink (with your ID included inside) the customer is taken to the sales page of the product. If a sale is made then you get your commission from that sale. Seller is happy and you are happy.

It is a win-win arrangement.

You do not have to create a product, the company did not do efforts for selling but both are benefited.

Affiliate products are a great way to make money. But a keep this in mind before you join an affiliate program-

An affiliate program should be free to join. Do not join a program that will charge you a fee to become affiliate. Sometimes you buy a product and get affiliate status as bonus. That is acceptable.

There are some programs which charge you a monthly fee for becoming a member and you are expected to recruit more for getting a commission. These are not affiliate programs but MLM programs. Such programs eat up a lot of your money before you realize. In such programs you sell a membership and your recruit is expected to sell the same in return. This kind of sale is hard and associated with high attrition.
You should get a good commission. Check the percentage offered. Good programs offer 30-60% commissions.

Choose an affiliate program that you would like to sell. If you are not convinced about usability of the product, you will not able to sell it convincingly.

Select your product carefully. High priced products seem quite lucrative due to higher commission but the market for those may not be that large.

One very important factor that is often ignored is your aptitude for the particular product. Select a product that you can associate your interests with. For example if you like fishing then a product that caters the fishing needs will be easier to sell than a selling a real estate product.

Again I must emphasize to study the market and demand for that product. Though the company would have done that already but there is n harm in little exercise.

Plan your market strategies beforehand.

It is better if you make your own website instead of promoting the copy of the original page laced with your link. Having your own website gives you a unique identification and professional look. The other advantage is that you can promote multiple products on the same page rather than promoting different pages separately.

Try and give your full efforts into promoting what you have got. Affiliate programs are good way to learn the market tactics. Learn and try them best to your abilities.

Stick with the product you have chosen instead of jumping to the new offer of some other product. New products are being released everyday but being new does not mean that it is better and easier to sell.

Here are few affiliate product centers that offer you a number of products to sell

Internet Marketing Center
Clickbank.com
Commission Junction

With this we end our discussion on product creation. From now onwards we would discuss setting up of your own website.

Till then.

Popularity: 13% [?]

[tag-tec]Resell rights products[/tag-tec] offer an instant and ready made solution to product creation. Somebody has done all the research and taken out a product. Moreover, the product is available with resell rights and you can sell the products within constraints of the available rights.

There are many a places you can buy resell rights from. Resell rights products worth considering for your business are of three types.

Resell Rights
Master Resell Rights
Private Label rights

We have discussed in detail in previous posts about differences in various types of products. Here We would stress upon how to acquire resell rights products worth selling.

Before you buy a product you must choose a niche as you would when you create your own product. There are a lot of products available with different kinds of resell rights almost in every niche. It is important that you choose a niche that you would like to do business in before you jump upon buying a product.

You should choose the niche upon same principles and guidelines as we have discussed before for your own product. After you have chosen your niche, the next step is to acquire the products with resell rights.

There is a unique angle associated with resell rights products. Because they are available with rights that enable others to sell them, the same products are sold by many people. That means your product is same as many others. That is not a big problem with though but you would have to be selective and careful.

Next question is to decide where to buy resell rights products. Because everybody is selling the products and there are many kinds of products on the same topic, you should only buy from reliable sources.

Resell rights products are many a times packaged and rebundled to offer you more value. You can do a search and find what is the best bargain available for the product you are interested.

However, there is better value for money option available. That option is joining a [tag-tec]membership site[/tag-tec] that offers download of resell rights products against a membership price.

In my view, joining membership sites is a very good option if you are looking for a business in resell rights products. Not only you get the product you want but also many other products that you can sell alone, repackage or offer as bonus. You get more products which if used would result more customers being pulled to your site with better offers.

Because of competition, membership sites have become quite affordable to anyone and everyone. Gone are the days of $49 per month membership. At homeforprofits.com, our site which offers downloadable ebooks, softwares, audios and videos, we have kept membershiip prices very low and affordable. You can know more about it here.

Whatever mode you choose for acquiring resell rights products, it should be done after careful selection and research.

Popularity: 14% [?]

An ebook is the easiest method to create an info product. Ebook can be created in PDF and HTML form. The most common file format for an e-book is Adobe Acrobat PDF but few writers prefer other format.
Creating PDF Ebooks:
You would write and design your ebook first in MS Word. If you have many illustrations, you can use Pagemaker or Quark. We would be discussing MS Word as it is the most commonly used word processing program. You would also require a software that would convert Word files into PDF format. Ideal choice is adobe Acrobat Professional but that is quite costly. There are free options available fortunately.
At http://www.pdf995.com you can create PDF files for free.
Creating An HTML Ebook:
For HTML ebooks an ebook pages are created like pages of a web site. For HTML ebooks you would have to make sure that you select a good software package that allows you to include hyperlinks, graphics, search, and forms. Two of good softwares that I would recommend are Ebook Pro and Ebook Compiler. HTML ebooks are fancier than pdf ebooks and you can add many effects which may be liked by the reader.
HTML ebooks do not work in Mac computers.
Whatever format you use for ebook creation, you would need to keep these tips into mind.
Page size: E-book pages are typically between 5×7 and 6×9 inch. You can set the page size in Word’s “Page Setup” menu.
Margins: You should set margins to a minimum of 0.75 inch on all sides. It is also customary to place a header and footer at each page. Title of the book and the page number are most commonly used headers.
Font: You should use standard fonts such as Times, Times New Roman, Century/New Century Schoolbook, or Palatino. You should use a minimum of 11 points for text, and 12 to 14 points for subheadings.

Graphics: For graphics use .gif or .jpg files. Use images of appropriate size and of good resolution. Check your image resolution by enlarging your Word document to 150%. Your image should look good and undistorted at this magnification.
Front Matter: These are the pages that come before your first chapter. These would include
* A title page
* A copyright page
* Acknowledgments, if you want
* Table of contents

Back matter: This comes after the last chapter. You can put an index, your own bio, contact information and advertisements for any other books that you are selling.
You should be able to create a good and presentable ebook with these tips.

Popularity: 13% [?]

If you understand how to perform sophisticated searches of online information, you will greatly increase your chances of finding what you want. If you know the right commands and usage, you will not only find the information but also save plenty of time.

Here are a few good tips that you can use to enhance your search

Using Phrase Searching

Enclosing the words in quotation marks makes the search engine return only webpages containing the exact phrase. Here is an example: If you search information using “make money” as your search query, the search engine will not show you the webpages which do contain make and money but are not in that order. This will also eliminate pages containing make and money in entirely different paragraphs, a major problem when you search without quotes.

Using Truncation

If you are looking for information on designing, you could use it as your keyword. However, if your results are limited in number and you want to broaden your search, you can use a root part of the word and abbreviate it with an asterisk (design*). The engine will return links to pages containing design, designs, designer, designers, and so on.

Using Capital Sensitivity

If a search keyword is capitalized, the search engine will return only documents containing the capitalized word.

Using Boolean Logic

These are perhaps the most useful feature in defining search criteria. Boolean operators provide us with powerful control. AND, OR, NOT, NEAR and parentheses are various Boolean operators that we can use to define our search better.

Note:All Boolean operators are to be written in capital letters otherwise search engine would treat them as keywords

AND

AND is used when you want a webpage that should contain all of your keywords. The search engine will display only those pages that have both keywords. For example: Using the search keywords internet AND business would return all pages that have both the words.

OR

OR is used if you want to broaden your search to find webpages that contain either of the keywords. This is very useful tool when searching for terms that have synonyms. An example is money OR wealth, which would return any webpage that had either of the keywords.

NEAR

This operator is similar to but more specific form of the AND operator. Not only it ensures that the document contains both terms but also that they are located near each other. I find this a better operator as AND can return in pages which have two keywords far away and not relevant enough.

NOT or AND NOT

If you use capitalized AND NOT preceding a search term, it would eliminate webpages that contain that term. If you want to find information on info products and do not want documents that include information relating to audio-books could use “info products” AND NOT audio-books.

Note:The usage depends on the engine. Both NOT and AND NOT have same role

Parentheses

AND, NEAR, OR and AND NOT, when used in conjunction with parentheses offer substantial control over the search logic used by the engine. We would understand use of parentheses by an example.

If you want to find a business tutorial you may use the search term as business AND (tutorial OR lesson). This would tell the search engine that webpages returned must contain both of the words business and tutorial or business and lesson. The parentheses distribute the keyword business to either of the two “OR” words inside the symbols.

Similarly if you were looking for information on cyberlaw you might want to use “cyberlaw” OR (legislation AND internet), which would return documents with the words cyberlaw or documents containing the word internet and the word legislation.

You can even nest one set of parentheses inside another to further refine the search. Since the word law/laws is a synonym of legislation we can truncate law and do this.

“cyberlaw” OR (interent AND (law* OR legislation))

This would tell engine to search for cyberlaw or pages containing internet and law(s) or internet and legislation.

Note: Some engines use + or - sign instead of AND and NOT. For example for searching home business you can use home+business [ No space between word and +]. and search will bring the pages containing both terms.

Using Specific Searches

If search engine offers you can limit searches to specific areas, the most common being the document title and URL.

Title search: If you are looking for information on search engine optimization and think that there are entire web pages devoted to your subject having the keywords in the titles, you can use:

title: search engine optimization.

Similarly you can do a URL search. If you are looking for all pages from Microsoft, you could use: url: Microsoft, which would return web pages created by Microsoft and others having Microsoft in URl.

Using Restricted Searches

Some engines allow you to limit your searches to “country” or “newsgroups” or blogs. Some search engines also allow you to search specific media such as audio, video, images etc.

I hope these tips will help you to make searching a better experience.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Search is an important part of creation of info products. When you write on a topic you would like to gather maximum information before you start writing. Collected information also comes handy whenever you are in doubt or want to make a reference.You can search for the information both offline and online. Offline you can search the local libraries, magazines, newspapers and bookstores.

Online search is an easier and quicker way to search. I find it a better method to find and locate offline help material.

We all are familiar with online search. It could be smooth honeydew smooth or could result in frustration and headaches. We need to use search methods more effectively and efficiently for our business than we do for our normal daily queries. So we need to know every possible resource and every possible tricks that can be used for enhanced searching.

Search Engines: Online search activity is done mainly through search engines. Google, Yahoo and MSN are leading search engines. As a matter of habit we tend to restrict ourselves to one search engine. But it is important to know that search engines are not absolute. Neither they are similar. There differences in algorithms and the way they index the web results in slightly different search results. So if one search engine is not serving your query to the extent you want, you may wish to try other one.

Web Directories: Web directories classify and list the site according to the subject they cater. There are general subject directories and directories on specific subjects. For example I am listing few general subject directories you can check out.
Librarians’ Index - http://lii.org

Infomine- http://infomine.ucr.edu

Academic Info - http://academicinfo.us

About.com - http://about.com

Google Directory - http://directory.google.com

Yahoo Directory! - http://dir.yahoo.com

Wikipedia: Wikipedia ( http://wikipedia.org) is a community built online free encyclopedia where you can find information on almost any topic.

Metasearch Engines: when you submit a keyword to meta-search engine, it transmits your search simultaneously to several individual search engines and their databases of web pages. So you can query your search to all serch engines simultaneously. But the results may not be deep dug. So if you can, use search engines directly. A few common meta search engines are
Dogpile – http://dogpile.com
Surfwax – http://surfwax.com
Copernic – http://copernic.com

Info Products from Other Authors : If you come across an ebook/audio book/video which possesses the information you are looking for and the author is credible enough, you can go for it. You would get most of the information you require without much search.

You also get to know your potential competitor. But if you do not want to buy, there is plenty of information available that is free and is waiting to be dug out.

Public Domain Books : All this stuff is free and most of them without copyrights. You can use the information and bring your own products out.Project Gutenberg is a great place to start.

Popularity: 16% [?]

As we noted, planning the right business is very important aspect of business development. An ideal business is the one that you have an interest in, have the skills to manage, is financially feasible, and is unique.

Most individuals initially choose a business that they have a direct interest in or is related to a hobby of theirs.But it is very important to study the financial viability and the market for your business. We did this exercise before. But I would like to highlight few points again.

It is very tempting to rush with a product that is related to your area of interest, without proper study of the market. But it is the research and analysis that either confirms or discards the feasibility of the chosen business.

Your interest and skills may fit the business, but the demand, competition or financial requirements may make that choice unfeasible.

Do not be discouraged. There are many business opportunities and you should find an idea that would result in feasible business though it is loosely related to your original concept.

If your business is to be successful, economic viability takes priority over a personal hobby or interest.

If you can find economic viability in your business idea, it is wonderful. But if you cannot find viability in your own business idea(s), you should drop that idea and find out something that is feasible and profitable.

If you need to study a profitable topic/skill then do it but pursue an idea only when it is profitable.

Popularity: 11% [?]

There is lot of information being searched on the internet. Now a days people want everything cooked, packaged and ready to use. Internet is no more a new fancy thing now. It has become well known and house hold medium to look for information. People are getting used to it and as a result expectations are also rising. They want everything in few clicks and at one place. No body has time to go first to one site , gather few pieces of information and then visit other sites to find whether they have other pieces of information on the topic they are looking for.

[tag-tec]Info products[/tag-tec] provide a quick ready made solution. That is why info products are so hot and happening. There are a lot of topics you can write on and then sell.

Recently I got few mails where people said they can hardly think of any topic to write on.

Well! It is not so. Just search deeper.

Each of us is doing something everyday. Has a lot of experience and possess many different skills. You just have to become conscious of yourself. That requires some thinking.

Do it.

To help you with ideas I have listed few topics ( Thanks Eric for the inspiration). This list is just to let your imagination work. Ponder over and list your own ideas as you read this. Soon you would create a huge list of your own for info product creation.

• How to make money without a job
• How to travel ( any place you have traveled)
• How to avoid traffic challans
• How to grow the perfect lush lawn
• How to advertise without spending a dime
• How to write the perfect yellow page advertisement
• How to start a music store/ any store
• How to buy books at a discount price
• How to avoid fleas from entering your home
• How To get rid of rats
• How to plug in your leaking roof effectively
• How to start a Chinese restaurant when you are not Chinese
• How to stop your cat from urinating on your carpet
• How to build your own house for less than you think
• How to buy a car for a penny
• How to dream big
• How to catch a thief
• How to add on an extra room to your house
• How to build your own fence
• How to win at everything
• How to stay relaxed while you drive
• How to lose weight while you work at the computer
• How to get your wife to cook more
• How to train your bird to talk
• 101 home business ideas
• How to loose weight without dieting
• how to manage your finances on your own
• Electronic gadgets you can make at home
• How to travel and rent condos for 60% less than normal rates
• How to be a perfect dad/ mom/ grandmother/ grandfather
• How to be a perfect son/ daughter
• How to increase your productivity while working less
• How to get your boss raving about you
• How to plan your 25 year anniversary gathering
• How to use Photoshop to create websites
• How to speed read/write
• How to win a child custody battle
• How not to get a divorce
• How to manage your time better
• How to get the most out of your new car
• How to get out of your lease
• How to maintain your aquarium
• How to increase your batting average 50 points overnight
• How to hire a lawyer without spending a fortune
• How to write a book in 100 days
• How to get your teenage daughter to stop talking back
• How to lose weight eating cereal
• How to get rid of caffeine addiction
• How to stop my teeth from grinding when I sleep
• How to be more romantic
• How to pop the question
• How to be a better listener
• How to start a conversation

I hope your imagination is enough triggered now.

Ride your wild imagination.

Popularity: 15% [?]

After you have narrowed down the topic and type of info product, you need to plan your business moves. Planning is crucial to your home business on the internet. In fact market research and product creation products are also part of your planning.

In the planning stage you would plan in detail for steps further required

• Actual creation of the product –
  •  Material ( Write or Get Written)
  • Graphics ( Create or Outsource)
• Secure A Domain Name For Your Website
• Select A Domain Hosting Services
• Writing A Sales Letter
• Creation of the Website
• Uploading the Product To The Site
• Selecting a Payment Processor
•  Marketing

From the list it might appear that steps are to be taken successively. Many of these steps can be taken be taken simultaneously. While you are writing your product, you can outsource the creation of graphics. You can start building your traffic by your marketing efforts while your product is yet to be created. This saves a lot of time and provides you quite a leverage.

It is entirely up to you whether you want to spend money and get these steps done for you but barring a few things like domain registration and web hosting, you are not required to spend on anything. But in that case you would need to invest your time and learn these skills so that you can accomplish these steps yourself.

You would have to determine what amount you want to spend. If you ask me you can start your business in less than hundred dollars.

We would discuss all these steps in quite detail in the coming posts. I would also write on how to get your things done for free. We would also discuss the various resources available.

Till Then

Popularity: 9% [?]

Information based products are a great option to start internet home business. Ebooks, audio files and video files in downloadable format are the only available options to create info products for internet based home business.

There are many other methods you can dispense information and generate money. These are ezines, newsletters, blogs, membership sites etc. But these in true sense are info services rather than info products.

If you wish you can go ahead with the option you desire but if you do not have the required technical knowhow then creating something like ebook is a better option to start with.

Ebook is a product that most internet marketers start with. Ebooks are easy to create without much technical requirements. All you have to do is to write. Most popular ebooks are in pdf format. They are popular because they are light, fast, easy to create and can be read on any type of computer ( IBM, Mac). They do not need any special type of ebook reader. The only requirement is the acrobat reader which should be installed in user computer. Acrobat reader is freely available. I personally like and recommend use of pdf books. They are a much better choice when compared to exe ebooks.

All you need is to write your book in Microsoft Word as you normally write and convert that .doc file to .pdf file. It is that simple. For conversion to .pdf file you require a pdf converter. Buying from Adobe is too expensive. Here is one which I personally like. It is cheap and good. They offer trial download also which you can use before you buy this product. It is called PDF Creator and it comes with money back guarantee.

Audio Files are have a great potential market too. For creating good audio files you would require some basic sound hardware, software for editing the sound. You would have to hire somebody with good voice to speak the information. You would also require online audio players to give the online sample hearing to you visitors. All this increase cost and need for technical knowledge.
Video files are a great leap in technology. Everything that is hard to understand in words can be easily understood when put in video form. There are a lot of choices in video making. You can make text and image based videos or you can put live demos. You would require video making softwares , good shooting camera and editing software. Again a costly affair for the beginner.

In my view if you do not have much technical knowledge, you should start with ebooks and then can move on to audio and video files later.

Popularity: 12% [?]

In last few posts of product creation I have talked about intangible products and services. Because these posts are aimed at helping you to start your own online home business, from now on I will restrict myself to creation of [tag-tec]information products[/tag-tec]. Information products are also known as [tag-tec]info products[/tag-tec] or [tag-tec]infoproducts[/tag-tec]. Info Products are loved by all online marketer for economy and ease of creating them.

They are also easy to sell without using much of the sophisticated tools.

For example you can write an ebook in word format, convert it to .pdf file, upload it to your server. In another step you open an account with paypal, get an encrypted paypal button and paste that to your own site.

That is it. You are ready to market and sell.

For creating info products all you need to do is write. If you cannot write yourself, you need to hire somebody who can write. These people are called ghostwriter. They would write for you against the payment and submit their work to you without making any claims on the product rights. Everything now belongs to you as if you have written it. These people are not difficult to find though the quality writers would be expensive.

In my opinion it is best to write yoursel. Gains are too many to ignore. Your writing ( I am not saying Handwriting ) improves, your confidence improves because you have a good knowledge about something. But if constraints are many, choosing a ghostwriter is next best option.

For writing you need to have information on the topic you write. Search and you will find. Online search engines, libraries, book stores, field experts are few of the many sources available.

You can create an ebook, audio files, videofiles in info products. Each one differs in complexity and the technology needed to make it. The cost factor also differs in each. But they all have one thing in common. All are created with a purpose of dispensing information in downloadable format. They all are info products.

Info products are darling of online sellers and have made millions to them. You too can demand your share.

Popularity: 9% [?]