Here’s an interesting article I ran across by Fred Gleek on selling information products online.
If all this makes sense to you so far, you are ready to understand something that I call the FUNNEL YSTEM. The funnel system is my model for selling your information products. First, you need to create a skeletal line (initially) of information products. Second, you have to fill the funnel with quality leads at the least possible cost. Then you have to get those people to buy something from you - usually a relatively low cost product. Finally, you have to sequentially (and automatically) trade customers up to higher and higher priced products and services.When people don’t know who you are, your chances of selling them a high-priced product is relatively slim. The more often you have contact with people and the more personal that contact, the better your chances are of selling them more expensive items. After they buy the first product, your goal is to trade them up to more and more expensive products and services. In a nutshell, you need to produce products using different modalities of learning at different price points ranging from a low of $10 to a high of $1,000.
For a moment, forget about how you’re going to get people into the funnel. Let’s concentrate on the products and the price points in that funnel. What can you produce for under $10? Preferably a report delivered in PDF format. Next will be a book. Your book will run between $10 to $30. Most books cost around that much.
At the $50 level, one option might be a two audiocassette (or CDrom) program together. (Although audiocassettes are becoming more out of date because of the advent of CD ROMs, they still are used extensively and selling in the information products industry.)
A $100 item might be a digitally delivered monthly newsletter or an introductory 1/2 hour consultation. Again, these are only suggestions. You can come up with your own product at this or any of the price points. Just be careful not to UNDERPRICE your intellectual property. This is the single biggest mistake I see most info product marketers make.
At the $200 level, your product may be a seminar. What length? It depends on the price sensitivity of your niche.
By the way, you don’t necessarily have to have just one product at each price point. You may have different products at each point. You may also create a product at a price between these price points. For example, although off-the-shelf videos at a Costco or other discount warehouse goes for $29 or $39, you may price your videos at $79 or $99, or in some cases, $195. The price points here are sort of arbitrary to get you thinking along a price continuum.
A $300 product might be some sort of a home study course and include an audio, a video and perhaps a workbook.
From this point upward (in price, but downward in the funnel), you will create a line of products that go anywhere from $400 to $1,000. Make sure they include different modalities of learning. Examples of things other than books, audios and videos might be: personal coaching, consulting, telseminars or bootcamps.
Coaching is a one-on- one consultation that you provide to a single individual. Consulting is when you work with an organization or institution to give them ideas that they can use to improve their businesses. Bootcamps are an extended multi-day seminar). These might run $1,000, $2,000, or even $10,000.
Many people want to know if an economic slowdown makes you need to adjust your price points downward. Through the ups and downs of the economy over the last 20 years, I have never seen any relationship between a downward turning economy and people NOT buying good information products. In fact, during the last economic hiccup I actually raised MY prices. Think price points, not products, to begin with.
You can get Fred Gleek’s free ezine at http://www.fredgleeck.com/
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