However, this often presents a challenge. Why? Because you’re highly skilled at the service you provide, but probably not as skilled at marketing and selling those services. When you trained in your industry, it’s unlikely you took any classes in sales and marketing, and if you did, a lot of it probably went over your head.

That is, until you hung out your shingle and got out there in the world to open your doors to business. And found out getting the clients in the door to offer your services was a little tricky. You may have applied some of what you learned or had to learn on the fly. You may have discovered what didn’t work and maybe some of what did work. You can continue to throw tofu against the wall and see what sticks or you can get a plan!

One piece of advice I give to my marketing students at UCSD is that to be effective more times than not, it pays to have a marketing strategy or plan. And when they focus on their target market and the best methods to reach them, they find that most of the strategies require writing marketing copy—another skill usually not taught when you learned the skill you provide in your services.

Once you’ve clarified your ideal clients—by gender, age, income bracket, location, problem, and whatever else identifies them—you get a clearer picture of how to reach them. And in order to reach them effectively to generate leads and convert them to clients, you have to have a clear message about what you do. Your message must be written in compelling copy to capture readers’ attention and propel them to say YES!

Now you may be doing most of your marketing online; you may be doing some of it offline; or you may be doing a combination. This depends on how you serve the client and if online methods make sense. Even if you’re a hands-on healer who needs to treat clients locally, you can still use online methods to let people know about your services.

If you use online methods, you might have a website or blog, write articles and press releases, and use social media like Facebook and LinkedIn. If you use offline methods, you may use direct mail newsletters and postcards, attend networking events, or give talks and workshops. Yet, what all these methods have in common is that you need to write compelling marketing copy.

There are 5 common factors you need to have in every piece of marketing copy, whether you’re marketing your service or you have an infoproduct to market like a book or ebook:

1. speak to your target market
2. identify problems and solutions
3. clarify your differentiation/niche
4. use keywords
5. include a call to action and contact information

For example, if you have a website, you need to have your message about who you serve and what problem you solve immediately available to visitors to your site. You need to tell visitors what to do—sign up for your newsletter or call you for a complimentary consultation.

Or if you’re sending out a flyer for a workshop, you need to have a great workshop title that taps into your market’s primary problem, have a bulleted list of benefits they will get by attending, and tell them to send you a check for the workshop fee by a certain date because you can only take a limited number of students.

All these components make for compelling marketing copy that will attract a lot of leads for you that you can convert into paying clients. When you learn some of these skills, you’ll be able to achieve your goals of helping as many people as possible and making a profit in your business—a win for everyone!

Happy Infoproduct Profits,

Andrea

Andrea Susan Glass
www.WritersWay.com

You may already be questioning how all this works and what is needed to manage a list effectively. Great question! One of the main things that you need is a way to maintain the list. A valuable tool to use would be something like WAHMCart.com a shopping cart, autoresponder, mailing list manager and affiliate program all in one.

You will need many of these things in order to maintain a proper list. The autoresponder is the first thing you will definitely need. Once you create an item of value that you are going to give away for free, you offer it on your website, blog or even on your Facebook Business page in exchange for the  person’s name and email address. Once the person inputs their information into an autoresponder will allow you to instantly email them the free item without your having to manually do so.

The mailing list feature of WAHMCart will also allow you to continue to communicate with your list. This is after all what you want the ability to do by building a list, that is have an audience or “list” of people ready and willing to hear from you since they have opted-in to receive information from you.

This truly is a win-win and a great way to build and promote your business. I bet you are now wondering “how to get traffic to my website”?

How about a press release and an article? Start by promoting your new website design with a press release. It gives visitors a reason to come check you out and see what you are about. Or talk about your mission in an article. Of course have it aimed on your target market. Once you have your press release ready and your article ready, do you know what needs to be done next? You need to get your press release and articles listed in the proper directories. I have just the thing for you: FREE Promotional Marketing guide! Get instant access after you enter your name and email address and the report can be instantly downloaded for easy access. And you can begin spreading the word to gain traffic within hours. Get your FREE Report!

- Staci Jansma, Guest blogger
WAHMCart Certified Virtual Assistant

And how do you do that? With info-products—ebooks, ecourses, teleclasses, membership sites, and more. All of these options can be selling your expertise without you having to put in the time. And everyone has expertise to sell. Just package it up and sell it to thousands more people than you can sell one on one.

What you want to do is to build a product funnel. I recommend starting out with a 5-page free report or white paper to give away so people can see what you’re about. Then expand that into a 30 to 50-page ebook that you can sell for around $17 to $27. After that you can offer higher end products like a paid teleseminar series, a video training, and eventually a home study course.

A lot of Internet marketing success stories started this way. Now these marketers are making significant passive incomes; many report having doubled their income in six months to a year working fewer hours than before. And many of them recommend creating a membership site for continuity income. That means you get $27 or $57 or $97/month from members. That can really add up.

I’ve wanted to do this for a while and have had difficulty getting started or finding the time. Until recently that is. I just found a great program by successful small business strategy coach, Janis Pettit, called the Home Study Income System Workshop. It runs for 60 days via teleclasses beginning June 9, and has a tremendous amount of support materials.

I can’t wait to get started and turn my stress into success! How about you? You can sign up here. It will be great to share our successes!

Happy Info-Products,

Andrea
www.WritersWay.com

For example, if you like to write, are disciplined with your time, and are a good editor, that’s great! But, most of us aren’t good at all of these things, so we need to find a good ghostwriter, copyeditor, and/or writing coach. Even though I’m a great editor, I still have one of my associates edit my work!

Now, if you’re a graphic artist or techno whiz, you’ll be able to add graphics, format your e-book, and upload it to your website. But if you don’t know uploading from downloading, you’ll need to find some good people to fill these needs.

Do you have the promotional skills to write a press release, submit articles, and Tweet? If not, you could use a promo person, social media expert, and/or virtual assistant (VA).

I didn’t mean to overwhelm you with everything you need to do, but it’s got to be done and a team of experts and valuable resources will help. Just about everyone of us needs the time and talent of others to achieve our goals. And once we find the best people and resources, we can use them over and over with each info-product we produce!

If you’re wondering how to find the best team members and resources, it takes some education and experience. I’ve taken loads of teleclasses, webinars, live seminars, etc. for years and had experience both doing it all myself or hiring the wrong people. But that’s what it took to get to where I now have a great team of people and resources.

Shortly, I’ll be releasing a new e-book on Producing Info-Products and I go into this in full detail. But for now, here are a few tips to get you started:

• Make a list of all the tasks you need to accomplish in producing and promoting your info-product
• Check off the ones you know you can do
• Make a list of the tasks you’ll need to outsource
• Start a list of potential team members and resources

Some examples are: virtual assistant, copyeditor, graphic designer, PDF software, autoresponder program, and a source for images. Start a Word doc called “Resources” and add names and URLs as you do your research, take classes, and ask for referrals.

I’m invested in your success as an infopreneur, so let me know what else I can do to help you reach your goals!

Happy Info-Product Profits,

Andrea Susan Glass
www.WritersWay.com

Now, in following up my previous blog post, I want to walk you through the steps necessary to create a winning info-product. The next step involves several critical decisions: the subject of your product; the specific niche; the ideal target market or buyer; and the type of product you’re going to create. This is an example of what these choices might look like:

1. Subject matter: General topic – Personal growth
2. Niche area of subject: Solve a problem – How to listen to inner guidance
3. Target market: Specific segment of market – Small business owners
4. Type of product: First product – E-book

Subject: Choose one that has the highest potential for profit—if that’s your top motive. If your motive is to establish yourself as an expert or attract more clients, your subject matter will be in the area of your expertise. If your goal is to attract media attention, you’ll want to choose a subject that’s hot, topical, and popular.

Niche: This is a specific segment of a subject or market. For example, if your market is small business owners, a niche would be home based business owners.

Target market: Those people most likely to purchase your info-products are your ideal customers. Small business owners is a broad target market, and home based business owners is a smaller niche within the broader market.

Product: Whether you start with an e-book or audio file will depend on what you think your ideal buyer will prefer and what you’re willing and able to create. Ultimately you’ll probably want to create a product line including several formats, but it’s important to start with the one you’re most likely to complete so you get a sense of success!

Getting clear on your subject, niche, market, and product are critical to your success as an infopreneur (one who sells info-products). Do you see how all these choices are interconnected? Take the time to work through this process before you proceed to creating your info-product. You’ll be glad you did when you see the results of your efforts in successful sales and satisfied customers.

Keep me posted on your progress and I’ll keep you posted on mine.

Happy Info-Product Profits,

Andrea Susan Glass
www.WritersWay.com

The benefit of info-products is that they’re a commodity you can create one time and sell many times, as opposed to your services, if you’re a service provider, which you deliver one-on-one such as coaching or bodywork. In some cases you can leverage your time by offering group coaching, classes, or seminars, yet, most service professionals such as speakers, trainers, consultants, health care providers, lawyers, realtors, financial planners, hair stylists, and others work with one client or customer at a time, thereby trading their time for money.

As an entrepreneur, small business owner, or service provider, you have an area of expertise to share with others. Maybe some people can’t afford your services, or you’re not in a geographically accessible area, or they’re the “do-it-yourself” type. When you transform your ideas into info-products, you can reach and help more people than one at a time. You can be generating cash 24/7 while you sleep, work, play, or take a vacation.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you charge $100/hour for your service, so 40 hours of your time would be $4,000. Let’s say you write an e-book and sell it for $40 and it took you 40 hours to write. You would only have to sell 100 e-books to make the same $4,000. And after that everything else is profit.

Using info-products leverages your time, shares your expertise, creates passive profits, and attracts more people to your service business. When you start moving from selling your services to selling info-products, you transform from an entrepreneur into an infopreneur.

Happy Info-Product Profits,

Andrea Susan Glass
www.WritersWay.com

Would you like 2010 to be different? What would you like to accomplish this year that you didn’t in 2009? How can you do it differently this year—to make lifelong changes, rather than those that last for only a few months? What are you committed to this year?

I find that motivation is what enables me to stick with that resolution until I achieve it. Motivation carries me through the challenges, obstacles, and distractions that will inevitably arise.

Systems are what carry me from my initial motivation to my ultimate goal. See if this system makes sense to you:

1. Tap into the desire and motivation

2. Write out the goal with clarity and set a date for completion

3. Write out the action steps and enter into daily calendar

4. Set up support systems to stay on track and overcome obstacles

5. Plan a celebration

When it comes to writing that info-product you’ve said you were going to write throughout 2009, the system might look like this:

1. I’m excited to share my expertise and experience to help as many people as possible.

2. I will write a 50-page e-book detailing how to adapt a healthier lifestyle by March 30, 2010.

3. I will set aside 3 blocks of 3 hours every week to write; I will research the market to check competitors; I will research online printers.

4. I will hire Andrea to edit my e-book.

5. On April 15, 2010 I will launch my e-book and website.

You can use this process for any New Year’s resolution or goal expanding it as necessary to suit your style. I encourage you to use it and see if your 2010 commitments will become 2010 completions.

I’m here to support you in any way I can. Let me know how I can help. I wish you a Healthy, Productive, and Successful New Year!

Happy Info-Product Profits,

Andrea

Andrea Susan Glass
www.WritersWay.com

Happy Holidays and Happy Info-Product Profits,

Andrea

Andrea Susan Glass
www.WritersWay.com

I find writing one of the most liberating feelings I know. To sit down at my computer and let my ideas spill out of my head, through my fingers, and onto the screen is exhilarating. If you follow some simple tips, and schedule the time to do this, your book or ebook could be done in less time than you imagine. You could put your ideas into an audio or video format, talk into a recording device and then have it transcribed, or put your expertise into a tips booklet, anywhere from 12 to 24 pages with your tips two sentences long. These are some of the quickest ways to get your ebook or book done.

The traditional route is to get your idea clear in your head as to why you want to write, what you want to write about, and who your ideal target is. Then create an outline/table of contents which takes the reader from where they are at the start of your book, to where you want them to be at the end. Once you have your outline, it’s just a matter of filling in the blanks with existing content you already have, or sitting down and pouring your knowledge onto the pages. Take your website content and past ezines, articles, and blogs and use that to get started. If you set aside two-hour blocks of time as often as you can, you’ll see your book quickly taking shape.

Just be sure to stay focused and overcome your distractions or challenges. Plan ahead whatever you need—whether it’s an accountability partner or a ghostwriter/editor/coach like myself. I encourage you to create your book or ebook as an info-product for passive profits!

Happy Info-Product Profits,

Andrea

Andrea Susan Glass
www.WritersWay.com

I use this daily because it’s the antidote for complaints and excuses. If I’m complaining that I don’t have enough work, I turn that around to say I’m grateful for the work I do have. If I’m complaining that I don’t want to go for a walk because the weather is cool and cloudy, I just remember to be grateful that it never gets much below 50 degrees in Southern California. If I make an excuse that I don’t have time to exercise, I remind myself to be grateful that I work for myself and my time is my own.

If you’re complaining about the economy, be grateful you have a job. If you’ve lost your job, be grateful you have your health. If your health is suffering, be grateful for your supportive family. There’s ALWAYS someone or something you can find in your life to be grateful for.

Do you see how this works? Gratitude can turn the negative into a positive. And from all my years of reading and study, I’ve learned that a positive grateful attitude is more likely to receive more good things in life than a complaining and blaming one!

You can say your gratitudes every morning when you arise or just before going to bed. You can write them in a gratitude journal and read them every day. Or you can share them with a good friend over the phone or email.

So what do you have to be grateful about? How about your great family members who you don’t often take the time to tell them how much you appreciate them? Or your special friends, colleagues, or employees? What about being grateful for your car, your cat or dog, your house, and your healthy body? Sure you may be 20 lbs overweight, but everything is working.

Gratitude forces you to turn away from what you don’t really want to spend time focusing on and to realize that you really don’t have it all that bad. If you can spare a few minutes, I’d love for you to leave a comment and let everyone know what you’re grateful for this year.

HAVE A HAPPY AND HEALTHY THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY!

Happy info-products profits,
Andrea

Andrea Susan Glass
www.WritersWay.com