Have you seen the television commercial with the couple of guys who are just starting out in their information products business? As orders begin to flow in, they are overjoyed and give each other high-fives to celebrate their success.
Now let’s revisit the scene a couple of weeks later: the entrepreneurs’ office is a complete disaster, papers and order forms for their information products are everywhere and the owners are discouraged. As orders continue to steam in, they throw their hands up in despair.
If you are planning to offer physical information products, such as printed newsletters or CDs in your online business, there are seven essential points to keep in mind to insure your success:
1. Completing product fulfillment yourself can be a good plan initially, as you can keep your expenses down and preserve your cash flow. But don’t forget to plan for success so you can easily transfer your information product production to a third party as soon as your sales volume becomes high enough.
2. While you can print your own information products, such as your newsletter, on your office printer, it’s usually more cost efficient to obtain a quote from your local printer and email them the file. Be certain to get multiple quotes to make sure you are getting the very best price.
3. Also, inspect an electronic and/or printed proof to be certain there are no corrections that are needed prior to running the job. Once your job is complete, you can do your own collating, labeling and mailing of your information product.
4. Your can produce CDs and DVDs in-house very economically. Blank discs can be bulk ordered and you can burn your audio files as well as print labels directly on the disc, thus bypassing problems with glue-on labels, by using an easily obtainable and inexpensive CD burners and disc printers.
5. Keep a log of your information product production costs and include the price of all materials, such as CD covers, discs, ink an so forth, as knowing what the actual information product production cost is essential in assisting you in setting a product price that will make a profit for your business.
6. Also log how much of your time is used to produce and mail out your information product. These production activities are very time intensive, even though they are probably saving you money up front. As cash flow permits, transfer production of your information product to a fulfillment house so that you can spend your valuable time in profit generating activities.
7. Obtain price quotes from multiple product fulfillment companies before you need them and also make sure you understand the exact steps you must take to have a fulfillment center produce your information product.
As your marketing efforts pay off, you will no longer be able to afford to do this work yourself and you will want to be able to effortlessly transfer product production and fulfillment outside your business without your customers ever noticing. On that day you, and your customers, will be doing the happy dance around your information products!