I don't know about you, but I get a little annoyed by the big-name pundits who declare "I refuse to participate in the bad economy." Sure, it's a great philosophy, but for the small business owner who sees his income shriveling away, who has to lay off long-time staff members, who downsizes his office because he can no longer afford the rent, it can be a hard attitude to adopt.

When you run a multi-million dollar business, it's easy to tell other business owners to "think positive and don't participate." But when you run a "typical" small business, you don't need philosophy, you need additional income.

And, since you're probably already working overtime just to stay afloat, what you really need is automatic income.

One of the quickest, easiest and most profitable sources of automatic income is information. You already have tons and tons of information that can be turned into info-products, such as e-books, special reports, audio programs, checklists, how-to programs, tutorials, etc. All you need to do is compile it and package it.

E-books and special reports are the easiest to create, and a great way to "get your feet wet" with info-products. The basic steps to creating your first e-book are:

Choose an evergreen topic that is of particular interest to your niche.

Organize your work by creating an outline.

Research your topic. Yes, I know you're already an expert in your field, but your e-book will be more credible and valuable when you include outside resources.

Go back to your outline and fill it up with the information you've collected on research. Believe it or not, your sixth grade teachers weren't lying when they said that outlines are important.

Don't plagiarize! This will ruin your credibility. Everything you create and sell should be original.

Ask someone to proofread your draft and make corrections. As with plagiarizing, a poorly written document will ruin your credibility.

After all the information is compiled and properly written, come up with an attractive cover. Sadly, the age-old adage "don't judge a book by its cover" doesn't apply here. Testing has proven that many of your customers will make their buying decisions based on the appearance of your cover alone.

Make sure your info-product is in .pdf format to ensure compatibility with most of your customers' computer configurations.

Once all of these steps have been completed, you're ready to sell!

And if you think you can't write, or don't have time to do the research, or don't know how to create an appropriate cover, you can always outsource either of those processes.

Once your info-product is created, you can easily sell it on your website. The best thing about web sales is that once the system is set up, you really don't need to do much more to it. The income will start coming in automatically.

How's that for an easy way to "not participate" in the down economy?!