Before you start creating your information product, you will need to be honest with yourself: are you creating the product for your customer or yourself?  In all of the gigabytes of products I’ve accumulated over the last 7-8 years, I can easily tell what was created for “me.”  And there weren’t that many.

When a product is created with customers in mind you can tell they were well thought out and planned.  The quality is better, the organization of the information is better. They are usually a fair price (often a pretty low price)  and full of information.  The product creator will have gone above and beyond showing the value. The product is also accompanied by great customer service.  As a customer, you feel good about having purchased this product because you know it was made for you.

Other times products are created for the creator. Maybe they wanted to make some quick cash from their list or had a goal of adding to their product funnel.  You can tell these are rushed to be created. There are mistakes made. There isn’t much content.  In some case you can tell that the content writing has been outsourced. It’s often priced way more than it’s worth.  Sometimes it’s accompanied by 100s of old bonus products. On the other hand, you may run into a fairly high-quality product, but the information is way over your head. You start off reading about the creator and all of his accomplishments and all of his wealth – for the first 1/2 of the ebook. Then you learn about his system, his method and his way – and then he tries to sell even more stuff.  So it may seem like some type of self-glorifying product or just a way to sell more stuff.

Before you create your product, decide who it’s going to be for.  The obvious answer is to create it for your customers, but there may be times when having a self-serving product is appropriate.

I’m sure you know about the digital voice recorders. They’ve been around for sooo many years.  They are a good way to capture ideas while you are on the go.  Many mobile phones will allow you to record your voice and video as well.

But here is a  free cool online voice recorder called ListenVoice. You simply call the phone number and record  a 5-minute message. It’s also a quick way to record a phone call, if you happen to need to do it on the spur of the moment.  You can make ListenVoice a contact in your mobile phone and conference it in whenever you need to record a conversation.

Once you dialed the number and recorded your 5 minute note, it will be saved in your account where you can download the MP3.  In addition to that you can share your notes with others on Facebook or Twitter. If you visit the site, you can see (hear) some of the shared notes that others have left.

If you really like the service you can go premium for a whopping $20 a year, which gives you the ability to make 2-hour recordings.

When you’re a product creator, it’s always a good idea to have a number of tools in your toolbox.  So now you can add another audio recording tool.

I was just thinking about how long I’ve been on the web. At least since 1993 when I first discovered America Online (no, it wasn’t officially called AOL back then).  I still remember signing into America Online with my dial-up modem on my Apple Macintosh SE/30 – if you don’t remember those, they were the tiny all-in-one computers with black-and-white screens.

When I was ready to “surf the web”, I downloaded a program offered by America Online called WebCrawler.  It took over EIGHT HOURS to download that.  I remember asking “how do I see the internet with the pictures on it?” I had heard you could see pictures on the internet, but I was using a text-based browser called Lynx, mostly for checking something called “email”. I dont even remember who was emailing me.  I would actually dial-in to the university, for free, to get my email. But I quickly learned that to see “pictures” on the internet, I needed an ISP – and I had to pay for that.

At that time, I’d use WebCrawler to access Yahoo. Yahoo was grey at the time and it only did one thing (provide links to sites) and it was free!  My favorite search engine was InfoSeek – there was no Google. And guess what, even in a Google-less world we were able to survive!

When I asked “what’s the web for?” Someone told me “To make web pages – you can say what you had for lunch on it” (I think that was his only example at the time).  But now we can talk about our lunch on our WordPress blogs…but even without WordPress, we did quite well.

Back to America Online. I spent hours and hours in the chat rooms! Now, I can just go to Facebook and basically accomplish the same thing. But even without Facebook – we were OK.

People were selling stuff online too.  I was moving to NYC and needed some information to find an apartment. That is no small task in NYC, trust me.  I “infoseeked” apartments in NYC. And guess what? Some guy in Brooklyn had created a product chock full of information and tips on finding an apartment in NYC.  I sent him a money order and he mailed it out to me very quickly.  There was no digital download, but I was very happy. I was thrilled.

Oh, and shopping was still available as well. I “infoseeked” some kind of electronic toy. I can’t remember, it had to do with music, maybe it was a drum machine.  But I found a guy who owned a store selling it. Guess what I had to do?  Call him and give him my credit card information (including the 800 number on the back and my zip code so he could verify that I indeed had the money to pay for it).   Very basic ecommerce, but it worked for us!

All this to say, none of the stuff you’re learning or experiencing online is really new.  It’s all been around in some form or another for many years. And in 10 years from now it’s going to be in some other form. Search engines, product creation, ecommerce, blogging.  Been there, done that – only the technologies that have changed – its made things easier, faster and given it a new shiny face.

Creating your own products is definitely the way to go if you are looking for a solid way to build a home or online business – it’s lasted 16 years so far and I can vouch for it (wow, I’ve been buying information products online for over 16 years!)

Let’s look at what’s been happening recently, and possibly a good reason for you to back up your blog NOW:

1.  You’ve been writing way more posts than usual.  Great content, everyone is enjoying blog.  Would be a sad day if you lost it all because of a server hiccup, wouldn’t it?

2. You’ve got a lot of new people visiting your blog and leaving great comments. They’re singing praises to your insight, humor, information and wit.  Do you want to risk losing all those praises to a network glitch?

3. WordPress 3.0 arrived about a week ago. Now you either want to take the plunge immediately, or you’ve already done it. But who’s to say something nasty won’t corrupt your precious database in the process?

4. Now that your blog is so popular, you probably want to tidy it up, freshen up the look with a new theme. And maybe even add that snazzy Networked Blogs widget to show off all your cool followers or a neato plugin you saw on someone else’s blog. But deleting the wrong plugin or theme files (especially ones you’ve customized) could mean your blog will never be the same again.

So, go now and backup your blog!  Simply do a search for “backup” on your plugin home page and pick one.  I have mine emailed to me nightly. And guess what, I needed to use it just last night.  So you never know if your backup will come in handy.

Keep in mind that some plugins will back up your WordPress installation and database – other will back up your database only (this is most important).  Have your backup emailed to you, then save it on your hard drive for safe keeping.

We hear a lot about having a USP – your unique selling proposition, what you can offer a potential customer that your competition can’t.  In product creation this could be more videos than your competitor, a membership site with more resources than you competitor, better customer service than your competitor, and so on and so forth.

But what about your product?  How can you make it stand out from all the others in your niche.  For the most part, with very few exceptions, most of the videos and ebooks I see look alike on the inside. Sometimes folks will get a snazzy ebook cover made or a graphic of 100 DVDs to make me think I’m getting a whole library – but on the inside it usually looks the same as any other one.

Here are some ideas you may think about to give your product it’s own USP:

• The “tone” of your product: wacky, eccentric, “green”, girly, manly, fun
• A beautiful design, professionally done
• Your writing / speaking style (e.g., sparky vs. academic)
• The price
• The delivery method (e.g., instead of a downloadable PDF workbook, mail a physical wirebound workbook)
• The approach you take (e.g., have them watch a video, then fill out a questionnaire, then you send an email follow-up)
• Special features (interactive games, exercises, toolkits)

This is why it’s so important to check out your competition and see what they are doing, so you will know how to position yourself and your product for the best results.

What are some ways you can think of to make your product unique?

Most sellers of information products know it’s important to determine the market for their product. They do a lot of research to find out what people want to know more about and whether their product can be profitable.  Hours spent on keyword research, scrolling through forums and Yahoo Answers, reading current chatter on blogs – a big chunk of time is spent understanding their target market.  But once that’s determined, I’m not so sure a lot of time is spent understand the needs of the people in that market.

In each market, people are going to have different ranges and experiences with your topic. So while you might find that Pets > Dogs > Dog Training   is a profitable market to get into and you might have focused your product down to the topic “How to Potty Train Your Precious Puppy Without Ripping Your Hair Out in Frustration!” there is still more to think about.

Each market will have people with different skill levels. In the puppy potty training example, some will have never tried it, some will have tried it without success, some may have been successful with one puppy but now have a very resistant puppy (advanced techniques needed!).

You don’t want to teach it all to everyone because it can be overwhelming for both a novice and an expert.  A novice won’t have the experience to understand the more advanced stuff; an expert won’t have the patience to review all the basic stuff.  Here’s how you might want to divvy up your content into separate products:

• Novice, newbie, beginner (they needs the basic skills, they want to understand “how to get started”)
• Advanced beginner, intermediate (they’ve had a exposure and have tried a few things, they know the basics, but now its time to expand their skill set. At this point they’re competent and confident, but they know there is more to gain … from experience)
• Expert (they know all they need to know, they are intuitive with the knowledge, they no longer need rules or guidelines to follow. What they want is an opportunity to evaluate and make recommendations and be challenged, they want to know “what else” can be expected and “where do I go from here?”)

I hope that makes sense.  But what I’m getting at in terms of product creation is you potentially have three products from the same topic. If you play your cards right, you can have a newbie buy your basics product and follow up with each of the remaining levels as well. Imagine the satisfaction of having a customer grow their knowledge with you!

As a product creator, you are probably mostly focused on your own stuff, quite naturally. You don’t really have time to worry about other people’s stuff unless it somehow affects your stuff.  But sometimes, it’s fun to take a look at what other people are working on. I very often ask people “What are you working on?”  about 75% of the time they ask me “Why are you asking?”  They’re just paranoid I guess, but I really do have a genuine interest in other people’s projects.

Online we really can’t just verbally ask someone that. We have to email them and they may not respond. Or we DM them on Twitter and they never get the message.  So, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way to just see what people are doing? Maybe if they just shared what their current projects are? Guess what, there is!  It’s called Dribbble and this is going to be one of my new cool toys. Before I explain what it is, just know that my first thought was – oh now, I can see the spammers using this service for no good. But luckily this site accepts new members only by “drafts” – that means you must be invited (drafted) by another member!  So, we can enjoy Dribbble for a while, until they decide to change their business model.

Now, Dribbble is a site where people share screenshots of stuff they are working on.  What I felt was most relevant to product creation are those screenshots tagged with the word “book“. As I looked through those screenshots, I saw a lot of interesting new books being written and developed. It was nice seeing a collection of interesting products outside of the online business niche!

Someone’s creating a coloring book; another is launchin a book called HTML5 for Web Designers (he’s taking pre-orders now); another has her magic book in production; one guy is creating a sales page for his creative thinking book (I’m very interested in this one); and another is sketching out her children’s book project.

Other people’s projects are a great source of inspiration and motivation!