

Developers, Designers: Make an Infoproduct - lfittl
http://unicornfree.com/2010/make-an-infoproduct/

======
rudenoise
It's a pretty straight forward concept (certainly nothing new): charge for
teaching/sharing info in a format you can distribute and charge for. This
article does make a good description of what these products can be.

The problem this article makes no attempt to address is, once you have an
"infoproduct" ready to ship how do you find customers? As a post last week
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1759052>) referenced , you may need 1000
true fans to make a living selling direct
([http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fan...](http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php))

I'm sure we all have info products in us, but the barrier to entry (or at
least making a living) will be finding the balance of desiredIncome /
numberOfCustomers = salePrice

Factoring in the effort to find the number of customers required is at least
as much work as creating a product in the first place.

~~~
ahoyhere
If I included all that too, it would be TL;DR. You know I'm right. Follow my
blog, though, because I'm going to be writing a lot more about infoproducts
over the next few months, and I will be creating that infoproduct course that
inspired the article.

But, I will say, you're making a critical mistake if you create a product and
THEN try to find customers for it.

~~~
RainerBlessing
Will you also write about how to find a topic for the infoproduct? That to me
is the most difficult part.

~~~
ahoyhere
Yep. :)

------
wccrawford
Anybody that thinks writing a book is easy is -crazy-.

Okay, writing a -bad- book is easy. Writing a book that's worthwhile isn't.

~~~
ahoyhere
Hi, I'm the author.

I've written 3 full-length books, and half of one. Two of the completed ones
were for actual publishers, and ended up canceled or not published or I quit
in disgust. The last completed one was obviously <http://jsrocks.com>.

But, I've written maybe 950 pages of book in my life so far.

Writing a book is easy. Giving birth is also easy. Both may hurt like hell,
but they're not difficult. You pretty much have to show up and push.

Now, writing a book for the wrong reasons is impossible. If you're doing it
for fame or exposure, or the cred, or the money (without finding an ongoing
motivating force), yes, you will have to fight yourself every step of the way.
But that's because you don't really want to write a book, you want the goodies
that you think you'll get.

But, more importantly, an ebook doesn't have a page count requirement. It
doesn't have to look at-least-this-thick on the bookshelf. It doesn't have to
meet some stupid editorial rule.

It just has to do the job.

An ebook isn't a book.

But, like the rest of my article pointed out, _you don't have to even do an
ebook_.

EDIT: Actually, make that 4 full-length books, since the text for my 30x500
Launch Class is nearly 300 pages. <http://unicornfree.com/prelaunch>.

EDIT: Oh, and it's not because I'm not afflicted with distractability or
procrastination. Just trust me on that.

~~~
QuantumGood
Simple to conceptualize and easy to do are not the same things.

~~~
ahoyhere
If you sit down at your desk every day at a certain time, what part of writing
is "hard"?

------
newsisan
_But hurry! This special price is only for the first 500 copies. At number
501, the price will be $49!_

Hmm. So how does that add to $45,823?

~~~
ahoyhere
Perhaps that was unclear, but that only refers to 500 copies of the final book
(most sales were made when the book was in beta.)

------
Revisor
Instead of creating easily warezable infoproducts, create scalable services.

For an example see how Aaron Wall turned his SEO Book into a platform (forum,
tools).

