a) You need to have you own product. (As mentioned in Lesson #7)

b) An information product can be created for low cost or zero cost.

- Easy to create.
- Low or zero cost to create= low risk, high profit margin.
- Higher perceived value.
- Easy to fulfill and manage.
- It’s scalable.

-Ebooks are not the easiest to make.
-Ebooks may have lower perceived value than audio/video.

-Audio recording
-Screen capture video
-Web cam or Flip video (with no editing)

1) The type that your target market prefers to consume.

2) What format makes sense for your product?

3) How does it fit into your overall business plan?

(See video for several examples)

Recommended resource:

“How to Have Your Own Information Product in 30 Days“.

Click here to get more details and download this ebook

(Resale Rights also available)

Action step:

1) Decide what kind of information product you’re going to create, keeping in mind the three points above.

You may have noticed that I didn’t talk about how to choose a topic for your info product, and that’s because we already covered niche selection in Lessons #19 and 20. But I will remind you that your product needs to answer a major question or problem concerning your niche.

In the next lesson we’ll be looking at how to put together your information product.

As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below.

Have a great day!

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1) Civil Lawsuits
2) Legal compliance (FTC, FDA, State Attorney General, etc)

1) Choose an appropriate business entity

-Consult with an attorney or tax advisor about this.

Potential benefits of corporations over sole proprietorships:

-They protect you personally from certain legal liabilities
-They may reduce your tax liability

Resource: LegalZoom

2) Avoid risky niches

For example…

-Gambling
-Adult content
-Medical
-Illegal/unethical things
-How to make money

But don’t let FEAR stop you from going into a niche you’re truly passionate about.

(See video for horror stories, etc.)

Do NOT assume that you can fly under the radar of the FTC. Instead, assume you are on their radar, and make sure you’re in compliance.

3) Educate yourself

Look to the governing lawmakers for your country.

In the USA, the most important for Internet marketers is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Information for businesses: http://ftc.gov/bcp/business.shtm

Ecommerce: http://ftc.gov/bcp/menus/business/ecommerce.shtm

Other helpful sites:

FDA: www.fda.gov
Copyright: www.copyright.gov
Small Business Administration: www.sba.gov
US Patent and Trademark office: www.uspto.gov

-Do a TESS search before registering a domain or naming a product.

-Consider hiring a lawyer.

4) Use appropriate legal documents

How to get the documents:

1) Hire a lawyer who UNDERSTANDS Internet business law (Best option)

Probably $500 to $5000

2) Buy some documents (2nd best option)

The key here is to get some that are:

A) up to date
B) written by a real lawyer

Resources:

Attorney Bob Silber: www.websitelawforms.com (Approx. $2800 to license his docs)

Attorney Mike Young: Website Legal Forms Generator (Approx $97)

Discount legal form provider: Find Legal Forms (Approx. $15 per document)

Beware of WebLawGenerator or anything that looks like it is a resale rights product. Do not buy it.

3) Find some free documents (worst option)

Why you might not want to use free documents:
http://blog.ebusinesslawgroup.com/2008/08/why-shouldnt-you-use-free-terms-of.html

Idea: You can take some free docs, customize them yourself to meet the needs of your website, and then pay a lawyer or paralegal to review and revise it as necessary.

Free Terms of Service:
http://www.webmasters-cavern.com/tools/tosgen/
http://www.website-law.co.uk/termsandconditions.html (UK)

Free site disclaimer:
http://ericstips.com/legaldocs.zip
http://prioritydigital.com/free_disclaimer.htm
http://www.website-law.co.uk/disclaimer.html (UK)

Free privacy policy:
http://ericstips.com/legaldocs.zip
http://www.dmaresponsibility.org/PPG/
http://www.website-law.co.uk/privacypolicy.html (UK)
http://www.easyriver.com/myprivacy.htm
http://www.freeprivacypolicy.org

Free copyright notice:
http://ericstips.com/legaldocs.zip

Action steps:

1) Continue to educate yourself about the legal aspects of your business.

2) Put the appropriate legal documents on your website.

In the next lesson we’re going to begin learning how to create an information product.

As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below.

Have a great day!

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1) Interviews, podcasts, etc.

Podcasting is syndicating your audio recordings using an RSS feed, such as feedburner.

For info about putting your podcast on Itunes, see:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/whatson/podcasts/specs.html

2) Welcome to website

Consider split-testing an intro audio on your website to see if it keeps visitors longer.

3) Testimonials

Boosts the power of the testimonial by giving it more credibility and adding that extra dimension. See video for example.

Recommended resource for collecting customer testimonials:

Audio Generator (I’ve used it to collect over 1000 testimonials)

4) Guarantees

It can be effective to put an audio button in your money back guarantee area, so your visitors can hear you giving the guarantee with the sincerity of your own voice.

5) Ordering instructions

Your audio can explain how to order.

6) Opt-in instructions

This can be especially helpful if you’re doing double-opt-in. After they enter their name and email, you can verbally tell them to go check their email and confirm their subscription. (See video for example)

7) In an exit pop

Sometimes it helps stop people in their tracks if a voice says “Stop… I have something for you!”

8] Spoken transcript of your written content

Some of your visitors might prefer to listen rather than read. You could record yourself reading your content, or you could use a computer generated voice such as:

Ispeech (free text to speech tool)

9) Mood music*

Not recommended. See video for example of bad music, and how it can be done tastefully in some situations.

First you need a microphone. I recommend getting a plug-and-play USB mic. I paid about $100 for mine, but you can get a decent one for under $30 at Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon, etc.

Three steps:

1) Record an MP3 file

You’ll need some recording software. Here are some good free programs:

Audacity (my top choice)
Free Hi-Q Recorder

If you’re installing Audacity for the first time, you’ll need to download the LAME MP3 Encoder file:

http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/
or http://lame.sourceforge.net/

If you need help with it, check out: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/

(see video for demo of recording)

2) Generate a flash player

There are plenty of free MP3 flash players available:

Dew Player: http://www.alsacreations.fr/dewplayer-en
Dew Player for WP: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dewplayer-flash-mp3-player/
1-button player: http://www.strangecube.com/audioplay/
WP Plugin: http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin/
Non-WP Player: http://www.macloo.com/examples/audio_player/
Player generators: http://flash-mp3-player.net/
Multi-track player: http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/

3) Embed it on your website

(see video for demo)

Free flash player used in demo: click here to download (unzip it, and then just upload the SWF file along with your MP3)

Upload your files and paste the embed code into your web page.

Embed code from demo:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="player_mp3_maxi.swf" width="200" height="20"><param name="movie" value="player_mp3_maxi.swf" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /><param name="FlashVars" value="mp3=TEST.mp3&showvolume=1" /></object>

*If you’re putting it on a WordPress blog, be sure to fix the URL’s in the embed code to locate your SWF and MP3 files at their absolute location.

Action steps:

1) Think about how you can incorporate audio into your online business.

(Hint: I gave you 9 ideas)

2) Add some audio to your website.

In the next lesson we’ll be talking about privacy policies, disclaimers, and all that fun stuff.

As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below.

Have a great day!

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- Easiest way to put video on your website.
- Hundreds of sources, including niche sites with videos for syndication
- Free video hosts like Youtube, Vimeo, Veoh, blip.tv, Revver, Tangle, Flickr, Facebook, etc.

-See video for demo of embedding a Youtube video on a WordPress blog.

2) Your own “live action” video.

- Most complicated method… you have to shoot it, transfer it, edit it, encode it, etc.

- Can be very expensive (ex. $4,000 HD camera, $1300 Final Cut Studio, $700 Adobe Flash, etc)

- Can be done very cheaply. Try the Flip Video camera ($50 - $200)

-Two ways to embed it:

a) Upload it to a video site like Youtube, and then embed it on your website.

Easy to do, but free video hosts have some downfalls including…
- Looks less professional
- Displays ads (overlay on video, or at the beginning/end)
- Links to the video host

b) Convert it to flash yourself, and then embed it on your website

- Free tool: FLV Producer Lite
- Free flash player included in the above tool, or you could try JW FLV Player

If you’re doing a lot of heavy video streaming (1000’s of viewers), I recommend upgrading to a dedicated server or else try Amazon S3 to host your video files.

3) Your own screen capture video.

- Great for teaching
- Effective for selling

- I use Camtasia Studio from Techsmith (Approx. $300)

- For Camtasia tutorials see: http://www.techsmith.com/learn/camtasia/default.asp

- (See video for walkthrough of my recommended Camtasia settings)

- Cool tool from Techsmith to make casual screen capture videos on the fly: http://www.jingproject.com

- Free screen capture software: http://www.CamStudio.org

- Better than the free version: http://www.CamStudioPro.org (only $29)

Recommended resource:

Click here for more information…

(A four part video series teaching exactly how to create your own screen capture videos for free.)

Action steps:

1) Think about how you can incorporate video into your online business.

Ideas: Blog content, teaching series, intro video, video sales letter, explain checkout process, give your guarantee, explain email opt-in process, testimonials, squeeze page video, exit pop video, etc.

2) Add a video to your website!

In the next lesson we’ll be looking at how to put audio onto your website.

As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below.

Have a great day!

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