By Jeff Smith, Author of "The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package"

Finding products to sell online that you enjoy working at and that attract an ongoing stream of "hungry" buyers is THE most important success factor to doing business - period!

For those of you that want to create their own infoproducts, it's even more important since you will be investing time, energy and your emotions into your products.

Thousands of experts and aspiring infoproduct creators struggle with the same 6 questions...

Do these questions keep you awake at night?
 

1. What do I like doing enough that I would spend a few weeks developing a product, and years marketing and supporting them?
2. How do I know if ENOUGH people will purchase my product to achieve my goals?
3. Will people pay for my knowledge - even if I'm not an expert?
4. How do I test for demand BEFORE I spend weeks or months developing my products?
5. Do I have to write a 150-page book to make money?
6. What topics sell - it seems like only "Making Money" type products are selling.

Listen - you are NOT the first to wonder about these questions.

In fact, your success depends on getting PAST these doubts - so let's take each one and work through them - OK?
 

1. Do I Have to Really Love My Topic?

Two answers to this question - you CAN develop a winning product about a subject that you are not completely passionate about. 

Professional writers do it all the time. 

Here's the catch. 

A great deal of your success marketing infoproducts online will depend on MORE than just selling 1 product.  It will depend on...
 

• a) Your ability to market additional products - yours and others. 
• b) Your ability to create great publicity campaigns, partnerships, follow up sales campaigns, loyalty with your readers
• c) Your ability to support and ADD-VALUE to your prospective and existing customers 
• d) Your ability to gain MOMENTUM in your business by tapping into your customer base and continuing to provide them high-value, back-end products

Are you seeing it?

Yes, you can develop an article, book, booklet, eBook or whatever infoproduct you favor about a topic you are less than thrilled  about - BUT...

You MUST be willing to live with that market for years to come!

For that reason alone, it's worth finding a market and subject that both interests you AND has great potential. 

Here's a real-world example.

Just over 1.5 years ago I developed my own eBook aimed at empowering product developers with proven ways to tap into a flood of market demand, test their ideas and quickly generate products that sell like wildfire.

The original ebook - The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package took me 4 weeks to develop - start to finish. Not bad. 

It's because I knew my topic so well that I was able to produce a 110 page eBook and accompanying interviews within weeks. 

Since that time I have written well over 60 articles, published a regular ezine, updated my product 3 times, written several special reports, created hard-hitting websites, press releases, ads and added hundreds of pages of content to my websites.

All of that is not including more than 40 interviews, reviews, publicity events and other projects I've been involved in - ALL ON THE SAME TOPIC.

Add to that hundreds of hours of email and phone conversations with joint venture and affiliate partners who sell my product for me each and every week.

Now - all of this activity has put tens of thousands into my hands, from this one single book, not to mention other products I sell.

Point is: marketing the product you create will mean living with your product each and every day as you build your business.  you can make a fortune, but it takes some effort each and every day. you must be passionate enough about your topic to stay motivated and focused - that's the secret to building your own infoproduct empire online.
 

2. How Do You Estimate Demand for Your Infoproduct Idea

Now we're into the details that will skyrocket you into the top 5% of infoproduct developers online - that will set you aside from 95% of others who do NOT consider demand for their topic.

Just for sake of argument - I'm going to use an example of a hobby that some of you may have, model airplanes.  You know, those little scale airplanes that get so many hobbyists out of bed at ungodly times of the morning - addicting to the smell of Naptha gas.

Here's a few ways you can can estimate demand for your proposed market.  Use online tools to seek out demand.  The three best tools (and they are completely free) to use are:

a) Overture keyword search tool

A search for model airplanes brings up some interesting information - 

• Over 55,000 searches on this topic in less than 1-month  (Not Bad!) 
• Second most searched topic RELATED to model airplanes is Model Airplane News - OK, so people want information.
• Several search categories include searches done on various products, evidence that this market is willing to spend money.

b) Now if you had a tool such as Adword Analyzer...

Then you would see that the supply of websites that come up when searching for model airplanes is quite small - relative to other keyword searches. 

In addition, with this incredible tool, you would see that there are very few current Google Adwords or Overture.com campaigns being purchased.  What's that mean?

It means that you can use one or both of these tools to generate almost INSTANT high-quality traffic to your site for a fraction of what most other high-demand keywords would cost.

All good signs that point to a strong market demand for your hobby and area of product interest.

c) A third method you can use is to seek out what is already selling.  A great way to do that is to look at Amazon and ZDNet top movers/top sellers in various market niches.

This will tell you ALLOT about what people are spending money on right now!
 

3. What Will People Pay Me For?

Now that you have picked a niche market and an area of focus, you need to find out what people want BADLY within that niche.

Here are a few ways to find out...

a) Search Google.com for discussion forums.  You are looking for active and reasonably good quality forums to TAP INTO ongoig discussions - this will offer you a goldmine of information on what people are looking for.

In a 5-minute search for "model airplane discussion forums", I found 3 popular message boards where model airplanes are discussed.

You will find TONS of active discussions that will lead to product ideas, allowing you to tap into what this market wants.

b) Get involved in Chat's - many of the sites above also run live chat sessions periodically, another great way to find out pockets of demand

c) Check offline - read relevant magazines and books, find out consistent topics, gaps in information or ideas that you could expand into a different medium.

For example, a common topic is flying techniques or flight patterns.

Why not travel to your local model flying club and video tape both flight paths and techniques used by flyers, converting them into digital files and selling them on CD-ROM?

You get the idea.

d) Listen to your fellowbuffs - find out what their frustrations are, what their spending patterns are and what else they are looking for, but can't find.
 

4. Testing for Demand

Here are 3 quick methods of testing for demand - BEFORE you spend days, weeks or months on creating your infoproduct.

a) Surveys - using surveys you can find out whether your target market seems as passionate about your idea as you are.  NOTE: Be sure to ask them IF and HOW MUCH they would be willing to cough up to get answers to their questions.  [You can use AssessmentGenerator to create survey and collect responses.]

b) Special Report - Use this often overlooked technique to put together a few pages (from 5-20 pages) that you can either give away or sell for a low price to test the popularity of your idea.  You WILL need to market this report, so it will take some time BUT, it's a great way to setup your marketing channels ahead of time, preparing them for your full product which comes later.

The best resource I've come across on writing income generating special reports is The Special Report Bible - you will be amazed at what you can put together in a matter of hours or days.

ANOTHER IDEA is to run an interview or teleseminar on your topic with a topic expert.  Judge the popularity of the call can mean you will roll out new products later. 

An example of this strategy is Yanik Silver's recent Public Domain Riches teleseminar which turned out to be such a hit that he quickly put together a $1,000+ personal coaching course on the same topic.

c) Articles - Write articles on your topic directly addressing the same desire you hope to fill with your full product.  Submit your article to the various article directories on Yahoo and many others out there.  Request a courtesy notification from publishers who publish your article so that you get a feel for how popular the article proves to be.  Of course, you should also have a link to either a website or autoresponder email address at the end of your article.  Clicks on your link following the article will also give you a sense of how popular the topic is. 

What should you expect?

You don't need to have HUGE numbers, a few publications and approx a 1% clickthrough on any published articles tells you there is enough response to continue - or at least do additional testing.
 

5. E-Books and What Else?

If you haven't asked the question - WHAT ELSE and you are considering writing a typical book or eBook then you may be missing out on product opportunities that will both make you more money AND take far less time to create.

Here are just a few formats that many successful infoproduct developers use today...

• Audio files (telseminars, interviews, commentary) 
• Special Reports (5-20 page treatments) 
• Videos (It's easier than you think) 
• Software (Software applications or scripts can be developed by programmers on Elance.com or Scriptlance.com for far less than you might imagine.
• Physical booklets or courses/binders
• Bundled products

6. The Internet Marketing Market Fallacy

It has to be the biggest un-truth floating around the internet.

Contrary to what most people say, developing products targeted only at the internet marketing crowd is NOT the only OR the most lucrative market out there.

It IS the most competitive - so that's why you tend to see products everywhere, leading most people to believe those are the only products selling.

In fact, there are products selling in many niches including...

• health and wellness
• hobbies (models, crafts, collectors, music, sports, etc...) 
• relationships 
• parenting
• career and business
• business opportunities (ie. home business) 
• technology
• pets
• and many, many others

Each week I continue to be AMAZED at the incredible opportunities out there in niche markets - our society is more information hungry than ever. 

Don't make the common mistake of ignoring a market you are interested in because you don't THINK products will sell.  Instead, test and find out what products will sell to a given market.

With those obstacles out of your way - NOTHING stands in the way of you creating that lifestyle you've always wanted by creating and marketing information products.