What types of information products are there? What is information business and information product? Seminars and master classes

Today I will begin to consider one of the currently very popular areas, which is called information business. In this introductory article, you will learn what is information business and information product, what are the characteristic features of this method of earning money, its pros and cons. I think that this material will be useful not only to potential information businessmen, but also to buyers of information products, because in it I will consider their quality criteria, which are worth paying attention to.

What is information business?

Probably everyone has noticed that the very concept of “information business” has recently become very popular. You can see it on numerous occasions, surrounded by such epithets as “the most profitable business on the Internet”, ““, “”, etc. What does this attractive term mean?

As you can see, the concept of “info business” consists of two parts: “info” (information) and business. That is, in simple terms, infobusiness is a business of selling information.

Moreover, this information can be sold in a variety of forms: in text format, in audio/video format, in graphic format, in presentation format, in application format, webinar format, or in some mixed format that includes something from the above.

The information itself disseminated in the process of conducting information business is called information product(i.e., information product).

The information business can be compared to selling useful books: when buying a book, a person also pays for receiving information. The only difference is that the information product is provided in electronic format and almost 100% of the information business today is conducted on the Internet.

We can say that information products, to some extent, are replacing books, but not fiction, but useful, educational literature in specialized areas.

Let's look at the main advantages and disadvantages of information business as a way to make money.

Information business, advantages:

• You can engage in information business without leaving your home, at any convenient time, planning your day independently;
• Even one high-quality information product can bring its creator a lot of money, that is, by creating an information product once and carrying out its competent promotion, you can provide yourself with a long-term, good source;
• An information businessman has a huge platform for promoting an information product – the entire Internet;
• Information business is a good opportunity to make money on your own in almost any field;
• In the information business there is always room for development, and the amount of earnings is not limited by anything.

Information business, cons:

• Competition in this area is very high; in order to make money from selling information products, you need not only to create them with high quality, but also to promote them competently;
• Promoting information products on the Internet may require certain financial costs, but there is no guarantee that they will pay off;
• People are distrustful of information products, thanks to the huge amount of frankly low-quality and useless information sold on the Internet, and negative reviews;
• An unscrupulous buyer can make your paid information product publicly available, and it will lose its value. Of course, you can sue him on this issue, but time and money will still be lost;
• You can invest a lot of work, time and money into the creation and promotion of an information product, but as a result you will still earn nothing or earn very little.

How to start an information business and make money from information products?

Let's briefly consider the process of creating and promoting information products (in future publications I plan to go into this in more detail.

I am often asked about information products, my attitude towards them and whether I tried to make money selling information products. I also often receive offers from the authors of information products to “collaborate” and “get rich.” Well, I generally come across conversations about information products regularly.

All of the above led me to the idea that I need to clearly state my position on this matter somewhere and, if necessary, provide a link to it. The text below is my official position regarding information products and making money from their sale.

So, let's get started.

To begin with, it is very important to clearly define what I actually mean by the word “information product.”

§ 1. Definition

Information product- This is most often a collection of information on a particular topic, which was collected from open and free sources and compiled in one place. Less often, this information is processed by the author of the information product and presented as his own experience or developments. A distinctive feature of information products is the clear desire of its author to make money, and not to teach the buyer.

I understand that this definition of an information product is unique and can be easily interpreted. But, as I said above, this article is not intended for a scientific dispute or to convince anyone of anything, but has the goal of indicating my personal position on information products and from this point of view it is fully consistent with the stated goal.

Now let's return to the hero of the article.

§ 2. Essence

For example, mimicry. Information products are trying their best to disguise themselves as guides, etc. But they, unlike information products, are written from scratch by people who understand the topic (they are “written”, not “rewritten”) and their main goal is to “teach the reader.” Those. The point of creating a textbook is education, but an information product is always just money.

Yes, there are different textbooks: good and bad, for centuries or for the existing system. But the premise for their creation is always the desire to convey some knowledge, and not to receive income from their sale. Information products, I repeat, are always created with the goal of making money.

Also, most information products are characterized by “peculiar” characteristics. As a rule, this is a one-page footcloth site on the advice of Western “experts”, to which visitors are attracted by hook or by crook. The task of such a site is one - to sell. It is “to sell”, and not to “sell” or, even more so, to “offer”. The mere appearance of such a site will only cause rejection in any sane person. Normal people don't buy from clowns!

Also, a distinctive feature of almost all information products is an affiliate program. Very often multi-level. And almost every time its presence is described along with the main content of the information product. And this, as we have already said in, is one of the signs of a scam.

In general, information products are always just an attempt. And the methods of “selling” information products clearly demonstrate this. In all the years that I have been on the Internet, I have never come across a useful information product. Although they sent me quite a few of them to try. And I even bought a few pieces personally.

I believe that all these information products, magic wallets, clicks, sponsors and other representatives of this company will become a thing of the past with the increasing literacy of Internet users. At the moment, they are a necessary evil that finds its heroes and followers. But these are the problems of the heroes themselves with their followers.

§ 3. How to make money on information products

To give you an approximate idea of ​​what information products are, now let’s talk about making money from them.

There are two ways to make money on information products:

• 1. Creation of your own information product and its subsequent sale.


• 2. Reselling other people's information products.

Let's look at them in more detail.

• § 3.1 Selling your information products

  It’s all simple: you create your own information product and then sell it. There are two significant difficulties:

  • ~ in order to create an information product, you must understand some area. After all, even in order to stupidly rewrite someone else’s material in your own words, you need to have knowledge about the subject of rewriting. Otherwise, the first buyer will laugh at you.
  
  
  • ~ creating an information product is not enough, you also need to be able to sell it. And this also requires knowledge.
  
  

  This method also has two main advantages:

  • ~ you depend only on yourself;
  
  
  • ~ all income goes only to you.
  
  

  How to get rid of the disadvantages and preserve the advantages of this method?

  Despite all the apparent complexity, in fact, the solution is simple: study the experience of those who are already successfully selling information products. Moreover, almost every more or less successful information businessman necessarily has in his assortment an information product on how to create and sell his information product :) Of the most famous and popular, here is an example:

  Buy, study and earn.




• § 3.2 Resale of other people's information products

  This method of making money on information products has three options:

  • A). Steal someone else's information product;
  
  
  • b). Order the creation of an information product from an expert;
  
  
  • V). Sell ​​someone else's information product through their affiliate program.
  
  

  The first option is the most stupid and ineffective. Firstly, in order for an information product to sell, you need to make significant efforts: a one-page website, visitors to it and persuade them to buy your information product. Secondly, the fact that you are trading in stolen goods will become known very quickly and the trade will have to be curtailed. This is the best case scenario. That is, you simply will not have time to sell any significant number of copies of the stolen information product before the moment they hit you in the head. And all your efforts and expenses for promotion will be in vain.

  The second option is much preferable: the expert will create you a truly high-quality information product. But! The expert will charge decent money for his services. And in the absence of experience, you are unlikely to recoup them. This option is good when you have already launched a couple of successful information products and they provide you with a stable stream of income. In this case, you can spend part of the profit on expanding the range.

  T third option - best for a beginner.

  Selling goods on the Internet is a widespread practice. Information products in this sense are no exception.

  In addition, from a technical point of view, this option is very simple and does not require any specific knowledge. For beginners, I’ll tell you a little more about it.

§ 4. Affiliate programs of information products and earnings with their help

What are affiliate programs anyway?

From the beginning, an abstruse definition.

Affiliate program(another name is a referral program) is a type of cooperation between an advertiser and a webmaster, in which the webmaster sells the advertiser’s goods or services using special links (affiliate links, sometimes called referral links or simply referral links), and the advertiser pays the webmaster a portion for this his income received by him (the advertiser) from clients (webmaster referrals) who came through these special links.

Now I’ll explain it in layman’s terms.

Suppose I have an information product. I want to increase its sales. One of the ways is an affiliate (referral) program. I'm creating it.

You are registering in the affiliate program of my information product. After registration, you will have access to an affiliate (referral) link to my information product. You place this referral link on your website (if you have one), on forums, etc. Follow this link interested visitors buy my information product and I pay you a certain percentage of my profit from the sale.

That is, in essence, working with an affiliate program is working as a sales manager: you sell someone else’s product and receive a percentage of sales for it.

The specificity of making money on affiliate programs of information products is that these are affiliate programs of information products. I already said above what information products essentially are. Their target audience is very specific, and therefore the ways of selling information products to them are specific.

I think you understand that the methods of selling your information product and someone else’s information product are no different. Therefore, I can only again advise studying the experience of well-known information businessmen.

Buy their video courses, study and earn:

P affiliate programs of a couple of information businessmen you.

§ 5. On the road

In the end I want to give one piece of advice.

In the era of consumerism, a product sells well when it is not the product itself that is sold, but the opportunities it provides.

If you apply this to information products, then you need to sell not the information they contain (let me remind you, this information is almost always available on the Internet absolutely free), but the time savings that the buyer will receive. Phrase

“Do you want to create your own website? Our information product will teach you how to create websites!”

maybe your information product will sell, but here’s the phrase

“Do you want to create your own website? In this information product we have collected for you the most extensive knowledge base about website creation!”

will sell your information product much better. I think you get the point.

That's all.

I would be very grateful to you if you share the link to this article with your friends and acquaintances on social networks.

Section: News of information products / Date: May 5, 2017 at 10:05 / Views: 78

Any information product- is a kind of collection of information - a textbook, instructions in the form of video, audio or text. Its author shares knowledge and skills acquired independently and accumulated from various sources.

What is an information product?

It can be easier to explain the point starting with examples rather than with a theoretical preamble. Probably everyone knows what an information product is in practice. A cookbook with step-by-step photos of preparing a dish, the viewing of which will make you want to quickly run to the stove and start cooking - an information product. A video course on modular origami, the complexity of which decreases with each diagram when viewed, is also an information product.

Types of information products

Information materials vary by method of presentation and principle of presentation. It is difficult to single out one type of information product, because all people are different and everyone perceives information better in one way or another. It is more convenient for some to read, for others to listen, and for others they are able to delve into the material by studying a video sequence, a visual aid with step-by-step audio instructions. This primarily depends on the psychotypes of potential clients; there are three types of them: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. What type do you consider yourself to be? How is it more convenient and effective for you to learn new things? As a visual person, I often choose video material and in some cases text material, very rarely audio. And you?

Types of information products:

• article;
• eBook;
• CD;
• dvd-box;
• seminar or webinar.

Information product

Information product- an information product derived from the words, that is, a product containing information (a book, including an electronic one, a video file, an audio recording). This is well-structured educational information on a specific topic, created by a person who is a professional in this field, where the author shares his experience in simple human language in an easy-to-learn form, and step by step teaches useful skills that can be immediately applied in life!

Information products are created by people who are known for their knowledge of a particular issue. Therefore, the information product is not a collection of general theoretical information, but a summary of the author’s personal practical experience. The theory is given clearly and concisely only to the extent necessary to solve a specific applied problem. The entire learning process is structured in such a way as to convey the maximum amount of useful knowledge in a minimum period of time. This technique gives very good results. Therefore, this method of learning is becoming increasingly popular.

When studying information products, you have the opportunity to study on a free schedule in the comfort of your own home. You can take certain lessons without fear of missing something, because you can always return to any lesson.

The range of topics for training is quite wide. You can find an information product on almost any topic. The authors present the material in simple human language, in the form of step-by-step instructions and provide the necessary theory in a concise, accessible form. An information product can be implemented in the form of a book, podcast (file), video or multimedia collection.

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what “Infoproduct” is in other dictionaries:

Noun, number of synonyms: 1 product (75) ASIS Dictionary of Synonyms. V.N. Trishin. 2013… Synonym dictionary

This article is proposed for deletion. An explanation of the reasons and the corresponding discussion can be found on the Wikipedia page: To be deleted / June 19, 2012. While the discussion is in progress ... Wikipedia

See work... Dictionary of Russian synonyms and similar expressions. under. ed. N. Abramova, M.: Russian Dictionaries, 1999. product, product, work; production, products; brainchild, creation, fabrication, result, generation, concentrate, result,... ... Synonym dictionary

Today, few people consider the information business to be “trading air,” because “he who owns the information owns everything.” What kind of information should there be for your information business to be successful? What do information businessmen sell and what information products should be like in order for people to line up for them? Read this article about the main characteristics of the information product.

Definition of an information product

An information product is valuable knowledge, skills and abilities, information in demand among a specific target audience, packaged in a form convenient for the buyer (lecture, video course, webinar, master class, etc.) and helping to solve one or more problems of the buyer. This is a new term, and its definition cannot be found in Wikipedia and other dictionaries. However, it has become an integral part of the information business, which is the “information trade.”

Examples of an information product are a training or seminar, book or video course sold by an information businessman who positions himself as an expert in any field, for example, website building or organizing a profitable online school from scratch. People who would also like to understand this topic pay him for knowledge and answers to questions that are important to them. It is in the answers to these questions that the essence of the information product lies. However, in order for it to be in demand and sell well, the information product must have other important characteristics.

Characteristics of an effective information product

By “effective information product” we mean well-packaged information that sells well, including through word of mouth, and increases your reputation, and most importantly, really allows the buyer to solve problems that are important to him. To create such an information product, it is important:

1. Expertise of the author-practitioner

Today anyone can simply take information from the Internet, but only those who understand the topic in detail and have significant practical experience can be considered an expert and give others truly working tools.

Let's say you teach people how to start their own online school. If you have not done this yourself, have not created your own successfully operating school, and do not understand the legal and organizational intricacies, you cannot be considered an expert practitioner in this matter. If you haven’t tested the theory in practice and haven’t gotten your head around it, you can’t be sure that your advice works.

Becoming a strong expert requires patience and time. But today, many information businessmen simply resell other people’s information, not confirmed by their own experience and not burdened with personal observations. Such people in most cases are doomed to failure - as soon as their students begin to test their theory, which is not confirmed by facts, in practice, their reputation will shatter into pieces.
Therefore, it is worth stocking up on time and patience, learning, trying, checking information.

2. New and/or original information

This point follows from the previous one. Competition in the information business today is very high, and providing information only from the Internet means selling poorly and, in fact, cheating, since everyone can find such information on the Internet.

Therefore, it is so important that the information product contains new data that cannot be found in the public domain, or cases personally verified by the author.

It is difficult to find something absolutely new that your predecessors have not yet told you during the two decades of development of the information business in Russia - for this you need to be a scientist or researcher. It is much easier to tell your audience about your unique experience.

The founders of the Accel project, which teaches online business, spent several years studying trends in online entrepreneurship in the field of education and launched online schools in which hundreds of people were trained. An analysis of their activities, as well as successful global online projects, allowed Dmitry Yurchenko and Sergey Kapustin to create an Accelerator of online schools, where they train and support newcomers to the information business.

3. Selectivity of information

Information products, as a rule, are very limited in time and space. And this is how they differ from traditional education with long cycles of lectures and seminars. Information products are usually purchased by busy people with a specific request. Try to carefully select and structure the information for the information product - cut off everything unnecessary, collect bit by bit what is valuable - ideally only what is confirmed by your own experience. Always remember: you are expected to provide clear recipes, algorithms and instructions aimed at solving a specific information problem.

Free Publicity School's Mindful Writing course is extremely popular because in just 10 days, participants not only write and publish three articles in various publications, but also acquire many useful skills that will help them write and publish in the future. There is nothing superfluous on the course. Only what will lead to the goal: 3 articles in 10 days.

4. Focus on audience needs

An effective information product is created not only taking into account what the author knows and considers necessary to tell, but also based on what questions and needs his target audience has. These needs must be identified before creating an information product. And to do this, you need to understand who your potential clients are.


Your listeners want to open an online school. Surely they have read a lot about how to do this, and they do not need general information on the topic “If you want to open a school, start doing it.” You can sell your information product to those who have already had experience in creating a business and to those who have no experience in entrepreneurship, but only have a desire to open an online school. But it should be taken into account that the first group does not need to be told step by step about registering an individual entrepreneur - only about the specifics regarding the legal registration of an online school, and the second group is important to learn all the legal and organizational subtleties.

A striking example of understanding the needs of the target audience is the project of Maxim Chernov, founder of the Networking Academy, which we wrote about. In 2012, Maxim was an ordinary marketer, but then he noted in time that a new niche for Russia, networking, was in demand among entrepreneurs, but there was little information on it. Already in 2015, Maxim was awarded the title “Best Russian Networking Expert 2015” according to the Global Networking Marathon, and today he earns 600 thousand monthly thanks to the fact that he once correctly responded to the needs of the audience.

Decide who is buying or should buy from you, draw a portrait of these people in your mind or on paper (occupation, education, level of knowledge in your field, gender, etc.), think about what questions they want answers to - and include these answers in your information product. If they are not there, your target audience will feel deceived and your reputation will be tarnished.

How to determine the cost of an information product

You have created an information product and are ready to sell it. But how do you know what price to set?
To answer this question, analyze your competitors’ information products.

Answer yourself honestly the following questions:

Your information product is approximately the same as that of your competitors, but with your personal examples or a fundamentally new product

How many potential clients do you have?

An exclusive product costs more, if you are not sure that your product is stronger than your competitors, start by setting a price a little lower than theirs. If the number of your possible clients is in the thousands, you will not have problems with selling your information product with proper promotion. If we are talking about a small group of people (pug owners in Luxembourg), your information product should be unique, very popular and of high quality, and you should be a unique expert. However, it is worth considering changing or expanding the topic.

When determining the cost of an information product, also take into account all the effort and time spent on its creation. Are you ready to sell all this for that price? If yes, this is the right price.

Instead of a conclusion

When you have created an effective (that is, unique, with new information, focused on the needs of the target audience and answering its questions) information product, do not forget that it needs appropriate promotion and packaging.

Packaging usually means an attractive description of the product and a landing page created to sell it. Promotion involves offering your target audience a free information product (or a free part of your unique product) in exchange for contact information, with which you will then build a sales funnel.

All of these are processes on which a beginning information businessman usually spends a lot of time and effort. However, if you have not invested enough time and effort into creating a high-quality, rather than copied, information product, the subsequent steps are much more likely to ensure your success and profit. Take your own information brainchild seriously - and your investment will pay off.

Do you want to create your own online school, produce yourself or your expert? Register now for a free webinar and receive a PDF plan for step-by-step creation of your online school using this