Online Marketing Today

A couple of months ago I thought I’d use a product development technique that was *a big thing* back in around 2004 (being touted by a few names in the industry at the time), to see if we couldn’t double the income from one of our niche websites.

Sure enough, we did.

The average weekly income is now double what it used to be and our expenses (advertising and so forth) haven’t increased at all.

That niche website is called Worm Farming Secrets.

I started this website purely as a case study in search engine optimization for Online Marketing Today readers back in about 2006/07 I think. It was well received at the time. Many of you will remember it.

This website is what I refer to as my “beer fridge” website because ultimately it was left sitting there after the case study and we haven’t really worked it since. In case you’re wondering, the SEO case study went as expected – very well – it’s what I do.

To this day the site receives around 600 unique visitors each and every day from organic search engine positions.

It has a weekly newsletter that just recently past the 21,000 readership mark – the content of which is outsourced.

It is also the best selling product in the Home & Garden > General category on ClickBank.com (affiliate marketers take note if you’re looking for something unique to promote via article marketing, micro blogging, adwords etc).

In fact, it’s become without question, the largest most popular site related to vermiculture online. Vermiculture being the technical name for “composting with worms”.

Not too bad really.

The sites primary revenue is generated via our Worm Composting Guide and has been for a couple of years now with several thousand copies sold.

It also does a small amount of live composting worm sales and we recently started offering a worm composting system (both product types drop shipped). However the primary focus was always on the information side of things.

That’s the general background.

What we wanted to do was to introduce a new information product that could be used as an upsell / backend / secondary product. A higher ticket item, above and beyond the standard guide to composting with worms, to better serve the needs of our audience.

After running the newsletter for several years it become obvious that many people in this hobby look to, or actually do, take it to that next level and turn it into a small (or large) income for themselves.

There is quite a big offline market for live bait fishing worms, composting products in the gardening / horticulture sectors, organic fertilizers, pest control and so forth.

There was also a lack of information related to the business side of things, so it made sense to fulfill that need.

So we did that by getting out there, interviewing experts in that area and compiling a unique and very exclusive product which we called “Worm Composting Professionals”.

This is a collection of several in-depth interviews with people in “the worm business” that covers the “how and what” they do in relation to that. Each expert was asked 42 questions on several key aspects of their business.

In terms of product development, it’s one of the easiest ways for anyone to create a unique product of their own. Particularly if they don’t like writing, simply aren’t writers themselves, have trouble outsourcing, simply can’t afford to, or whatever the reason.

The whole process took about 6 weeks from start to finish (and that was VERY part time I can assure you), and the largest chunk of the actual “work” is completed by the experts you decide to interview – the “core of the content”.

Now haven’t said all of that – don’t get me wrong.

When I say it’s “easy” what I mean is that it can be easy in comparison to many other product development options depending on your skill set and resources.

There are still some things you need to be aware of, and YOU WILL certainly run into “challenges” along the way. Such is business.

However, it can prove to be very profitable.

Without getting too specific about things…

When we launched the interview collection we generated about 25% of the previous year’s total annual income from the website within just 2 weeks. We’ve also doubled the average weekly income from the website pretty much every week since then.

I should also mention that this is far from streamlined.

There is no immediate upsell after ordering the first product or a down sell for those that don’t buy. There’s no one time offer etc. All of those *professionally streamlined* sales processes.

Ultimately all we did was to offer it to the newsletter readers (2 mailings exclusively related to the new book), have it permanently listed and available for purchase on the website, and a brief ad is also included in each newsletter.

I mention that because it just goes to show that sometimes you just need to kick things off and get started “doing” instead of sitting their trying to get everything perfect.

If you’re interested in pursuing something like this yourself, here’s what we did from start to finish…

1) Product Research & Interview Preparation

Obviously you’ll need to figure out the “position” of the new product. What is it going to be about? Who it’s going to appeal and who’s your target market? etc.

In this case you can see we took the approach of supplying a unique demand from a proportion of our existing audience. Many people expressed an interest in this.

I find that interview type products should also be reasonably specific.

The end result is more specific answers and detailed information provided by your interviewees. So rather than interviewing a bunch of “golfers” about “how to play golf” – you would want to interview them about their specific “swinging techniques”.

This gives a more thorough end result with more detail – rather than a “general overview” which might not be that useful for people who purchase your product. It’s got to be all about customer satisfaction at the end of the day.

You should also actively get out there and research exactly what your audience / potential customers require help with.

In our case we simply surveyed our newsletter readers. We asked them to send in the top 3 questions they would like answers to in relation to turning their hobby into a small side income.

We received several hundred questions and compiled the most commonly asked into a draft document, working it down into a logical order of progression.

We also split the interview up into 4 very specific sections – 3 different worm composting related product types and general worm business operations.

Ultimately we ended up with 42 very unique questions.

If you don’t have an existing audience to survey then you can quite easily take some time to go through Yahoo Answers (and/or any other answer type website) to see what people are having trouble with in your niche.

The more time you spend doing this the better.

In fact, this is where the majority of your time should be spent. If you formulate thorough questions, you’re going to get better responses, and customer satisfaction is going to remain high.

You also want to ensure that you phrase your questions so they require more detailed answers / explanations. Yes or no answers aren’t very useful to anyone. You want to make sure you also get the “how and why” in as much detail as possible.

2) Finding The Experts

The possibilities here are endless.

Once again we simply emailed our newsletter readers letting them know we were looking to conduct interviews of people “in the business”. We also reached out to a few contacts and associates we had already meet as a natural result of running the website.

This is where the majority of the participants came from.

If you don’t already have a decent sized network, you can approach experts already established in your industry directly – the worst they can say is no.

It does help to look for people in the industry that already like writing (i.e. looking for experts in the article directories, prominent bloggers and so forth) or people that like presenting information (and are good at it) via other multimedia (YouTube.com etc).

Ultimately it’s just a matter of getting out there and networking. It’s also a numbers game. You might have to approach 10 people before you secure 2 etc. Funny, that actually reminds me of a dating tip an old mate gave me a long time ago ;-0

ANYWAY…

…one thing you’re going to have to do is to sell them on participation. This can be the make or break factor in securing experts.

You might not have to do this for some people. Some might just be keen to talk about themselves some more, however if you can highlight the advantages of participation it’s going to increase your success rate on those key people that you’re really gunning for.

Key selling points for us included…

• Branding The Participants As Experts In The Industry – With the largest reach in the global vermiculture industry, essentially any participants we included in the project would gain instant recognition globally. We included full website statistics and analytics to back this up of course.
• Increased Business – Each expert was given a full page biography and introduction including complete contact details. Any customer that went on to purchase the collection could therefore become a potential customer – in one form or another – for the participants own business.
• Revenue Sharing – Each expert was given the chance to promote the final product at 75% commission to their own audience – ultimately getting paid for their time on top of the other benefits (and driving more customers our way at the same time).

…the more benefits you can include the better. Heck, you can even pay these people up front for their time if that’s what’s required to get their participation and it works in with your overall product development plan.

3) Conducting The Interviews

As we had no intention to “get all multi media on it” we simply passed a word document containing the question set onto the participants. It included an introduction thanking them for their time, another brief explanation of what we were looking for (detailed answers) and a page where they could fill out their biography.

The participants were then given a deadline to write their responses and send them back. Things can get a bit backwards and forwards at this point chasing people up and it can get a little frustrating. It’s normal however, especially if you’re dealing with quite a few people, so you just have to deal with it.

Obviously if you’re going to be conducting audio or video interviews then you’re going to approach this differently. If you’re wondering why we didn’t, it’s simply because we took the easy option. The downside to not doing this however is that including audio interviews (and/or video interviews) could have increased the perceived (and actual) value of the product itself.

I’m not going to talk anymore about doing audio or video interviews as it’s a bit beyond the scope of this special report. However, if you want to increase the value of your own product, it’s certainly worth more serious consideration.

4) Dealing With The Interviewees

Again this really only applies if you’re going to go down the “written” responses route rather than multi media. If you’re conducting audio interviews and you’re not getting the desired response to your question, you can continue to push for further information with additional questions and lead the interview response where you want it to go.

However, with written responses, often times some of them aren’t going to be all that detailed. Sometimes, even if you’ve asked for the “how AND why”, you might only get a very simple answer that could definitely be expanded upon. Here you might have to be a bit diplomatic in telling interviewees that their answer, well, sucked ;-0

Basically what you want to do is go through the entire interview response and see where things could be explained further or improved upon.

You need to make detailed notes about exactly how, any questions that require it, could be expanded. Then fire that back to the interviewee and let them know they could really improve those specific questions to add further depth with very clear instructions on how to do it.

If you make it easy for them then they’re going to be more inclined to do it. Of course don’t forget to reinforce that you appreciate what they’ve done so far.

It should also be said that you shouldn’t include an interview response in your final product if you think it’s below par. You should mention this up front before the interview – that participating doesn’t guarantee that it will be included.

Obviously the final product has to meet a quality standard, and if a response comes back that doesn’t meet that, and the participant doesn’t want to further expand, you’ll have to cull it. You don’t want to fluff out a product simply to make it look big because you’re just going to end up with a big bunch of fluff ;-0

We ended up culling several for this project.

5) Compiling & Launching The Product

Again what you do here is going to depend on whether you’re doing written response interviews or multi media. In our case after compiling all of the responses into one final document, and doing a very thorough edit, we simply created a PDF document.

We also plugged it into our ClickBank.com account already associated with our first product and were good to go. We could then give participants instructions on getting setup with an affiliate account at ClickBank.com to promote the product in our revenue sharing arrangement.

…and there we have it (the basic summary anyway).

The end result is a totally unique product of your own. One which you have total control over to setup your own affiliate program, conduct revenue sharing arrangements with, use to build your mailing lists and so forth.

I’m sure there are a few markets in which you couldn’t use this approach, but I think those a few and far between.

At the end of the day however, I do need to reiterate that you shouldn’t approach this half assed. It is something that you’ll need to put some dedicated focus and time into seeing it through to completion.

I guess that’s just business as usual though right.

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