You probably know that many people are making a good income working from home and selling their products online. You read about ?Internet millionaires? all the time. You probably think ?wow, they're lucky?, or ?I'd love to do that, but I'm not clever enough/don't have the IT skills/it would cost too much to start up/it's too risky?.
And to a certain extent, you would probably be correct. Some people are lucky in how they hit the jackpot and sell something on line that really takes off. Some people are clever, and they would probably do well at whatever business they choose. Some people have brilliant IT skills which helps them take a short cut to success. And yes, it may need some investment to start up, and like all businesses, there is an element of risk.
But sometimes in life you have to open your mind to new ideas, to ignore negative reactions and just give it a go!
Let's deal with that first response ? that people who make money online are lucky. Dig deeper and you will find that in most cases luck is not really involved in their success. They would have made their own luck by careful research and access to relevant information, thereby also eliminating risk. In many cases they don't have brilliant IT skills, but they know where to hire freelancers who have those skills they need. Yes, they invest their own money to start with, but only after they have thoroughly researched the market for the product they want to sell. The main point to remember is that EVERYTHING these entrepreneurs do can be copied by you! There is no limit on the number of people who can publish online ? everyone is allowed to have a go!
The one thing these ?lucky? entrepreneurs are prepared to spend is their time. They will spend many hours, unpaid, studying the market, researching the requirements of consumers, checking out what people are looking to buy online. Once they have that information, they simply supply the products that are in demand.
You may be surprised to learn that many of the products that are in demand are not tangible. They will cost you no overheads, no money tied up in stock, and no wasted, unsold products. Because many people are looking for information. And this can be supplied digitally, in the form of ebooks, downloadable from the wonderful website you are going to set up. And however many information products you sell, you only have the one original cost to cover, the cost of writing your ebook in the first place. And you can sell it all over the world, without the hassle of export documentation and costs and all the associated bureaucracy.
So what kind of information product could you write, have written for you, or put together from copyright free information? Well, the answer is: ANYTHING. From subscription newsletters for football fans, to ebooks on caring for your parrot, to guides telling you how to set up a coffee shop - people will pay for information that they need and which is well packaged, so that they don't have to hunt around in lots of different places for it.
This is still a relatively new market, the general public is just beginning to wake up to the possibilities of ebooks and internet publishing. Don't waste time, jump in now and join the club!
Tracey Beaney produced her first information product with Don Clarke, in the form of a guide How to set up a coffee shop.
She is now marketing a guide to information publishing on the internet. This guide contains the information which showed her how to write her first product.
