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Profit from Giving Free Speeches

December 26, 2008 by Cathy Stucker

speakerGiving free speeches to professional and community organizations is an easy way to improve your credibility and build your reputation as an expert. More than that, it is also a way to make money—directly and indirectly.

First, create or obtain products you can sell after your talk. The fastest way to do this is to buy products from someone else. For example, if you are a expert on personal security, you could offer a few security devices (such as hand-held alarms or pepper spray).

You can also develop information products. Put together booklets of personal security tips for women, security for travelers, keeping your home secure, etc. They don’t take long to write, and can be produced in small quantities for less than $1 each. Additional information products would include books, posters, audio CDs, DVDs, t-shirts, etc. An audio program can be created simply by recording one of your talks.

Always provide a handout when you speak. One page is fine. Include some of the important points from your talk, or some tips related to your topic. Make sure you include information about how you can be contacted. On the back, put a brief bio and/or information about your products and services. Include a special offer or coupon, with an expiration date, to encourage the audience to contact you.

Customers often need to see you more than once before they make a buy decision, so keep yourself in front of the audience. Collect names and addresses of the audience members, and mail to them after the talk. Remind them when and where they heard you talk. The organization may give you a list of attendees if you ask. Or, you can collect the information. Offer a drawing for a prize (such as one of your booklets or other products) and collect business cards for the drawing. Or offer to send additional information to those who provide a business card.

Encourage audience members to sign up for your email list. Do not just add people to your email list because you have their email addresses. Make sure you also have their permission to email them. Doing otherwise makes you a spammer.

After you have been speaking for free for a while, you will get asked about your fee to speak. This opens the door to a whole new set of opportunities. If you are asked about your fee for speaking, it means you are ready to become a professional speaker—a professional expert on your topic.

Learn more about creating information products and making your speaking more profitable here.

Filed Under: Creating Information Products, Public Speaking Tagged With: information products, professional speaker, Public Speaking, speeches

Useful Fluff

December 11, 2008 by Cathy Stucker

fluffy1.jpgAre you holding back a product because you think it doesn’t have enough content? Although there is no set length for a book, ebook, audio program, home study course or other content, people do make judgments about the value based in part on the amount of content provided. Size matters.

Some people deal with this by adding fluff: They make the margins extra wide, double-space everything, use a large font and make what they have written take up more space. Others add pages of useless garbage, such as one product I bought that had page after page of photocopied junk that added nothing of value. Or they bonus the offer with a collection of ebooks that have nothing to offer. People see through these stupid content tricks.

Several years ago, I coined the phrase “useful fluff,” meaning stuff you can add to fill out a product and make it larger, but only if it is useful and of value to your customers. One client who used this advice doubled the price of her manual, and doubled the number of sales, too.

The idea of useful fluff is to add more volume without adding a ton of extra work. Here are some examples of useful fluff: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Creating Information Products Tagged With: content, E-book, Internet Marketing, Product, Public domain, Resell rights

Do It Once – Profit Forever With Passive Income

November 27, 2008 by Cathy Stucker

passive_income.jpgWe all have a limited amount of time available to grow and run our businesses. So how can you decide where your time is best invested?

I have been giving this a lot of thought lately. My conclusion: Investing time in tasks that create long-term value is the way to go.

That might seem obvious to you, but is that how you operate? Or do you spend your time on “right now” tasks–going from doing repetitive jobs, such as filling orders and paying bills, to putting out “fires”? When you do productive work, is a large portion of it work for which you will only be paid once? If so, you need to make some changes. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Creating Information Products, Passive Income Tagged With: AdSense, Affiliate Programs, content, Ebooks, fulfillment services, Google AdSense, Passive income

Building Your Expert Platform

November 19, 2008 by Cathy Stucker

crowd.jpgIf you want to market yourself as an expert–author, coach, consultant or information product producer–you need a platform. “Platform” is simply the current buzzword for being visible and having an audience.

In fact, most major publishers will not consider a book from an author who does not have an established platform. Even if you do not plan to seek a traditional publishing contract, however, having a platform will make it easier to profit from the content you create.

So how can you create a platform for yourself? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Creating Information Products, Reputation Management Tagged With: expert, platform, Publishing, reputation, Social Media

Profit with Checklists

October 24, 2008 by Cathy Stucker

checkmark.jpgWho doesn’t love lists? Checklists help you to get organized, buy equipment and supplies, plan an event, get your finances in order and lots more. You can create lots of checklists for your market, no matter what that market is.

I live near the Texas coast, and every hurricane season we get checklists of hurricane supplies  and preparations from local media, grocery and hardware stores and elsewhere. To see some examples of checklists, look at the free lists available at http://www.PrintableChecklists.com/.

Although checklists may be given away as promotional items, you can also sell checklists. What ideas for checklists can you come up with? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Creating Information Products Tagged With: Checklist, content, information products

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