4 Methods To Master The #1 Success Secret Of Infopreneuring (3 of 3)

If you don't have good fresh content to use for new products, your momentum comes to a crashing halt and so does your business.
So the question begs itself, how do you consistently create new content?
Here are your four basic options:

1)  You can continually write your own materials...and you should.

2) You can record your thoughts and get them transcribed... and you should.

3) You can hire a ghostwriter to write materials for you... and you should.

or

4) You can purchase the rights to content that you can resell... and you should do this as well.

Each option has its own positives and negatives but in my opinion you should be doing a little bit of each.

Let me explain...

4)  You can purchase the rights to content that you can resell
Purchasing the rights to content that has already been created can be a double edged sword, but, if you do it right, it can be VERY profitable for a number of reasons.

First and foremost you want to review the “legal mumble jumble” to the materials that you have purchased.  There are different “rights” and you need to be aware of the differences.  I’ll give you a quick break down of the basic ones that I commonly come across for these types of products.

A.  Recording Rights:  These usually grant you the rights to record the written material in your voice and sell the audio for whatever price you want.  They do not give you the right to reprint the materials or transcribe your audio (yes that is the same thing!!) and resell that.

B.  Reprint Rights:  Reprint rights give you permission to resell the written content.  You can’t modify the content at all but you can resell it.  Sometimes there are clauses that do not permit you to resell the product beyond a certain price point.  Make sure you read all the details carefully

C.  Master Resell Rights:  With master reprint rights you basically have permission to sell the content AND you have the right to sell the reprint rights.  However, you do not have permission to change the content at all.  Once again make sure you read all the conditions yourself because every contract can be different.

D.  Private Label Reprint Rights:  These are basically the grand daddy of them all.  These rights allow you to change the content, rebrand them with your own logos, name, graphics, and turn around and resell the finished product.  The only thing you don’t have permission to do is resell the private label reprint rights.

So that’s a basic breakdown of the major categories of what you would get if you purchased the rights to any content.  I do want to emphasize that I am not a lawyer and every agreement is unique and different.  Therefore you need to read over all the legal stuff before you agree to purchase anything and then start reselling it.

So what are the advantages of doing this?

Well you can get access to good quality content that you can sell right away.  Obviously if you purchase any of the rights we just talked about you will want to read the content and make sure that it is a good quality product.  You don t want to be reselling crappy products.

Another advantage to this approach, specifically the private label resell rights, is you can use the content for a variety of different purposes.  This is where the creative imagination really comes into play. 

Here are some examples of what you could use THE SAME content for:

1)   Break up the written course into 5-10 different special reports
2)   Rework the content into a mini-course
3)   Chunk up the content up into a whole bunch of articles
4)   Break the content up and plug it into an autoresponder series
5)   Use the content for teaching material on a teleseminar
6)   Use the ebook as a special bonus for an existing package that you have developed.
7)   Break the content up into a “tips” series
8)   Use the content for teaching material in a seminar
9)   Record the written material into an audio product
10)  Use the content for a monthly newsletter

These are just 10 quick tips for different ways that you can use this content once you have it. 

Are there more?  Absolutely! 

There really are all kinds of possibilities once you learn what you can do.  So purchasing these types of rights can be VERY beneficial in a variety ways.

So how much do these types of rights normally cost?

Typically they are a one time cost ranging anywhere from 12-15 times the retail value all the way up to 40-60 times the retail value (that’s normally for a master resell license).  That means if the retail price of the product is $200 an average reprint license would be between $2,500-$3,000. 

For a master resell license of the same $200 product the cost would be somewhere between $8,000 - $12,000. 

Now that is a lot of money but remember you get to keep all the profits of any sales that you make from that point onwards.  So if you sold this $200 product at a seminar you could potentially make you money back very quickly.

If you enjoyed this article make sure to look up the other two articles in the series dealing with the other 3 methods of creating content:  Part 1 - Writing your own materials and Recording Your Thoughts and Part 2 - Hiring a ghostwriter!

Article Database - When A Good Thing Is Copied

Article Database is the name of my article directory and I think the name I have chosen for it says it all.

I may be wrong in feeling the need to write this article. It is possible the names similar to that of my website were developed first or completely without having seen mine; however, I am correct I believe that I have good reason to write this article.

Have you ever seen how people copycat the success of others? This is a very common practice on the Internet. A case in point may be my article directory Article Database.

I started my article directory Article Database at http://www.article-database.com in mid to late January of 2006 and by late March received a Google PR rank of 3 for www.article-database.com and PR4 for www.article-database.com/news/. I have since done searches and I can easily find my site when searching Google for article-database. However, to find Article Database seems to be a bit more difficult.

It appears to me that when people want to increase their SEO they go looking for website names that have already received a PR from Google and then try to capitalize on that websites success. I am not positive about this but I do believe that articledatabase.org came after article-database.com as it is also copyrighted with 2006. They may have more articles than I do.  Did they actually get these solicited and published to the site directly by the authors? I am not saying that they didn't but they may have added the articles themselves. That could explain why as of June 14, 2006 they do not show a Google PR of their own.

Such is also the case with articles-database.com. I am not sure when they launched and maybe they were before me but I am wondering why they have no Google PR? The only difference in the URL of their site and mine is that they used the word articles rather than article.

I attribute my PR ranking to many things. The first of these is that I ran a publicity release using a popular publicity release software. Secondly I found some authors and contacted them and started receiving authors contributing directly to my site. After this there were several articles on the site, so I submitted the rss feeds of the categories with the most articles to some of the most popular rss feeds such as MyYahoo, Newsgator, Google, and many others. I then created a WordPress blog about writing and article marketing, and submitted it to several blog directories and rss feed directories. Then I started making posts to the blog on a semi-regular basis. The authors who contribute to Article Database are also notified when new articles are posted. In addition I use the same software to send a newsletter to everyone who has signed up as an author or user of my system.  I also posted an article to several article directories that I titled Article Directories - Ten Great Reasons To Submit Articles To Them.

Am I complaining about other article directories having the same name as mine? I don't believe that I am complaining; rather I am just pointing out the strange fact that when someone sees something working that they often try to copy it, and that is more than true on the Internet. Often a website name or URL is made to be similar in order to get some type of search engine advantage or the benefits of potential misspellings of the original website.

I believe that in my own way, I am saying that if these and other websites saw the Google PR of my blog and decided to name their article directory after mine, I take it as the sincerest form of flattery. I am sure that some one in cyberland will grab up other domains based around the terms article database. I am glad that I am one of the first.

Advantages of Buying Promotional Products Online

Buying your promotional products and corporate identity apparel online provides five major advantages: a greater selection, better pricing, convenience, customer service, and faster ordering time.

Factories often display their entire line of products on the web, providing you with a greater selection of products. With all of these factories on the web, you gain the opportunity to compare quality and pricing in a simple and easy online format, instead of wasting time browsing through endless catalogs that crowd your work center.

Better pricing is readily available on the web, but you have to dig and probe for it. Type in any promotional product related keywords into your favorite search engine and sift through the results until you find a promotional products company with discount pricing. A great trick is to choose an item and have several promotional product companies give you a quote, ALWAYS including any set up charges and freight. This will get you a true number to compare an exact total cost.

How do these online web companies afford to sell the exact same product for less than other distributors? Traditionally, promotional items are sold by a distributor who has a whole staff of outside sales people that will go to your business, show you tons samples, and baby sit you through the process of placing an order. These outside sales people are number one primary expense of an off-line distributor. Believe me this expense is then factored into the price of the promotional item you are purchasing, thus raising your total cost. By purchasing discount promotional products on the web, you can eliminate lining some salespersons pockets and reduce your purchase price by a considerable amount of money.

The Convenience comes with the ability of placing your entire order online. All successful web companies offer this service with encrypted order forms to secure your purchasing information. You may send your artwork via email. This is made easy with the online form. With online ordering you gain the convenience of placing your order anytime, twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.

A few of these online web companies also provide customer service departments with extended hours. They are set up to take your calls, handle your rush orders, and to answer your questions promptly. If you prefer to communicate through e-mail, this is a great way to document your order from start to finish. You can e-mail a question to your distributor, leave for a break, and have it answered by the time you return.

A much faster ordering time is the fifth major result of the online purchase. I have personally visited hundreds of clients. This obviously requires an appointment, which naturally must fit into both parties' schedules. An off-line salesperson is forced to interpret your needs prior to your meeting. Then bring what samples and catalogs they have on hand, but these may not meet your needs and thus your ordering time will be extended for a second meeting. If you have any questions about product availability, turn around time, or any other factory sensitive inquiries, the salesperson will have to return to his office in order to contact the factory, to get you your answers. When you order from an online web company, the customer service team is already in their office, so they can contact the factory with your questions and call you back immediately.

I have given you five great reasons to buy Imprinted products from an online discount promotional products company, but I must also remind you that there is always a trade off. Online promotional products companies work very hard to cut all possible costs and to pass this savings on to you. You will find that this results in a charge for samples and pre-payment requirements. The charge for promotional samples insures that the company will not give away products to non-customers, as this would considerably raise the real customers' costs. Paying in advance is very common among internet purchasing in general, and necessary for almost every online company to insure payment. Pre-payment is nothing to worry about. You still have the right to a quality product, and you gain an enormous savings.

Another Tip: When purchasing imprinted corporate apparel, select an online company that has in-house embroidery and screen printing facilities. It has been my experience that these companies will have much better control of expediting your orders, a better knowledge of branding, experience which allows them to better monitor quality control, and a much better capabilities to complete rush orders quicker.

Today you will find that many more successful businesses are now placing their promotional product and corporate apparel orders in the hands of these qualified discount online distributors. The advantages are numerous; convenience, speed, selection, accountability, service, and above all, savings.

4 Methods To Master The #1 Success Secret Of Infopreneuring (2 of 3)

If you don't have good fresh content to use for new products, your momentum comes to a crashing halt and so does your business.
So the question begs itself, how do you consistently create new content?
Here are your four basic options:

1)  You can continually write your own materials...and you should.

2) You can record your thoughts and get them transcribed... and you should.

3) You can hire a ghostwriter to write materials for you... and you should.

or

4) You can purchase the rights to content that you can resell... and you should do this as well.

Each option has its own positives and negatives but in my opinion you should be doing a little bit of each.

Let me explain...

3) You can hire a ghostwriter to write materials for you

Hiring a ghost writer has some major advantages and disadvantages.  First and foremost it takes a HUGE burden off your shoulders to create original content.  Secondly it frees up a lot of your time.  Third, it feels great when you get an email from your ghostwriter and the ebook/book/manual/article(s) are all complete and ready to go - it truly is the magic pill.

There are some downsides however.  The first one is the cost.

Depending on your project, it can cost anywhere between $400-$3,000 to get an ebook, book or manual created. 

This is relatively cheap when you think about the fact that you can now sell that content and profit from it as long as you sell it, but it still costs quite a bit.

The second major downside is the time it takes to communicate with the ghostwriter.  If you are anything like me, you don't want to be sending out crappy information.  So that means YOU DO have to involve yourself in the process.

Forget what all the "gurus" try to tell you about how easy it is to just hire a ghostwriter and wake up with a finished product.

You tell me if this process is as easy as slapping down a check and receiving a perfect book a few days later:

First you send your initial thoughts and plans for what you want.  Then they send back their outline, you make adjustments to the outline, and a few days later they send back the proof for the outline. 

Once the outline is completed you give the go-ahead and they write the rough draft.  Obviously this takes some time (usually between 1 week and 2 months depending on your project) but once they have completed the rough draft its up to you to read the rough draft and suggest any changes. 

You’ll want to go over the rough draft with a fine tooth comb to prevent the writer from going in a direction you didn’t want.  This isn’t any small task but its well worth the effort because you are ensuring that the product you are creating is of a high standard. 

When you finish the edit of the rough draft the ghostwriter makes the adjustments and then sends you a final draft.  You read the final draft and give the final ok.
Phew!!  That’s a lot more than just placing a bid on eLance and having a book show up on your doorstep ready to sell.

Now, if you care about the quality of the products you create please pay close attention to this next sentence. 

You need to actually READ what the ghostwriter has created for you.

It will almost always require you to make some final changes.  Make sure you get EXACTLY what you are looking for otherwise it's a product that you yourself haven't even completely read. 

Would that make you comfortable selling something with your name on it and you don't know everything contained inside?

I can't tell you how many products I have purchased only to find it was the same old stuff just rehashed.  Read what they write for you.  Create quality content!!

So although a ghostwriter does save you a TREMENDOUS amount of time, please don't be fooled into thinking that once you hand over the assignment your work is done.  It's not... unless you want to create a crappy product.

It still takes work but it's A LOT easier and takes WAY less time once you have the raw materials to work with.  Your job is to polish that collection of raw ideas into the high quality product that would make even your Mom proud :)

If you enjoyed this article make sure to look up the other two articles in the series dealing with the other 3 methods of creating content:  Part 1 - Writing your own materials and Recording Your Thoughts and coming soon, Part 3 - Purchasing The Rights Of Content You Can Resell!