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"Here's
My 'Look Under The Hood'
Profile Of
However, before I get into the meat of today's newsletter, I want to give you something to think about as you battle through the day-to-day marketing messages that come before you… "Do what I say, not what I do!" That is the general attitude of most marketers. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that is a bad attitude for a marketer to have. On the contrary, it is a marketer's job to influence and manipulate their prospective customers into taking the action that the marketer desires. What I'm getting at, is it's often a very good idea to pay more attention to what a marketer is actually DOING, then what they are saying in their sales pitch to you. If you keep analyzing things this way, you start to see opportunities that are just sitting their right in front of you 'hiding in plain sight!' A Successful Website Business Model... Right then, I'm going to give you a couple of examples of two very similar Internet businesses. The first one has been around since May this year. The second one has only recently launched within the last week or so. Now, before I reveal the actual website addresses, remember, we are going to be looking at them from a different perspective. We are going to be analyzing them by looking at what the marketer is actually DOING, instead of just reading the sales letter and listening to what the marketer is SAYING. Both websites do a very good job of trying to 'hook' you with their sales letters. They both paint a very similar picture, as they describe the enormous potential of selling information products to niche markets. The first site may already be very familiar with you: http://www.nicheology.com - Launched in May 2004 Jimmy Brown and Ryan Deiss are the expert marketers behind this one. To give you a rough overview of the opportunity they are offering you: Membership costs $29.97 a month You get two pre-written ebooks that cover different and very diverse niche topics every month. This could be anything from 'How To Cure Acne', 'Natural Sleep Remedies' to 'How to Buy a Car Without being Ripped Off'. They provide you with the actual source code for the written material, as well as a sales letter. You are free to cut out, chop, change and repackage the material in any way you see fit. Nicheology made niche marketing much more accessible to entry-level marketers, who wanted to try and make money outside of the saturated Internet marketing niche. Just to recap, stay cool, we are looking at this from a different perspective; remember! At first glance, it's very easy to just go along with the sales letter, and get 'hooked' on all the money making opportunities, that that these niche information products can offer you. For example:
There are many possibilities. However, I would imagine that most Nicheology members would just opt for the first option, as it seems like the easiest thing to do. Problem is, as most people will be doing this, it will be much harder to make a decent profit that way. Now, hopefully, as a reader of this newsletter, you will at least be savvy enough to think a little bit 'out of-the-box'. Don't always go for the easy option, as that is what everyone else will be doing. Do what the crowd does, and you will get what the crowd gets - nothing! Stop! You are not supposed to get 'hooked', I was just looking at the opportunity with you from a 'normal' website visitor perspective. Now, let's do a… << Fast Rewind …And take a look at the whole Nicheology thing through the eyes of a 'Savvy 'Business Brainwaves' Newsletter Subscriber'. Yes, that's your eyes! Remember, I said you should try and look at what a marketer is actually DOING, as well as what they are saying. First off, there's a big sign at the top of their sales page, saying that membership is full! Membership is in such high demand; there is actually a waiting list, BLIMEY! Should we stand in line and queue to join, or should we look at this from a 'Business Brainwaves' perspective? There is obviously a big demand from Internet entrepreneurs wanting to sell this sort of information product. Do you 'GET IT' yet? Jimmy and Ryan have put a cap on membership at 1500 members, and they reached the 1500 threshold in June, a month after launching! 1500 x $29.97 per month in membership fees = $44,955 per month! Now, they have a very good affiliate program and probably pay out a huge chunk of that money in commission every month. I'm only guessing, but let's say $24,955 is given to affiliates. They have to produce two new ebooks every month. This can easily be outsourced to ghostwriters who can do all the hard work and produce the ebooks for them each month. They probably have a number of ghostwriters that they work with, as the topics are so diverse, one ghostwriter would probably struggle to write everything for them. From the material I've seen, my rough estimate is that it probably costs them in the region of $500 per ebook in ghostwriter fees. They may write the sales letters themselves, but they probably also farm that out to a copywriter as well. Rough estimate of $300 per sales letter. All in all, it's pretty much a hands free website business model. There are obviously customer service issues to deal with, and the organizing and planning of the ebook creation process. They have to make sure they are producing niche ebooks that there is a consumer demand for. So they will also have to carry out detailed research to identify suitable topics for each ebook. As a rough estimate then, lets say that after hefty affiliate commission payments ($24,995), credit card processing fees (4% $1800), ghostwriter fees ($1000) and copywriter fees ($600), they are left with $16,600 clear profit each month. That's $199,200 a year! Not bad ay? Do you think you could make that sort of money from selling the niche ebooks you get as a member? I very much doubt it, don't you? Do you see the different angle now? Sometimes, it does pay to look at what a marketer is actually DOING, instead of just what they are SAYING. Now let's fast forward to November 2004 >> Another savvy marketer called Bryan Winters has launched a new niche information product website that's very similar to Nicheology at: http://www.PushButtonHealth.com As the name suggests, the products you get the 'reprint rights' to sell, are all related to the health niche market. This is a vast and very profitable niche, with thousands of sub niches, mini niches and micro niches to target. You might at first glance wonder why he has concentrated on one particular niche, I.E. 'health', when Nicheology covers many subjects. I think it's a great idea, as many of the products will be able to be sold to the same customers. For example, December's ebooks are: "The Sunless Tanning Guide!" & "How to 'Spot Tone' Your Way to a Beautiful Body" Now, if you sell someone either of those ebooks, there's a chance that they may also be interested in buying the other one. So, any member of 'PushButtonHealth' will also have products that they can sell to their customer base on the back end. With Nicheology, I think this is a weakness, which comes with the diversity of the products they produce for their members. On one hand, it's great that you can target a number of different markets. That said, if you've just sold someone 'How To Become a Chef', you might find it hard to sell them 'How to Break Into the Interior Design Industry' on the backend. I know that's an extreme, from two example Nicheology ebooks, but it does highlight the strength of concentrating around one particular niche as PushButtonHealth is doing. Can you see what has happened here? Brian Winters has obviously looked at the success of the Nicheology website business model, and thought 'Hey, I'll have a piece of that pie!' Looking at PushButtonHealth I fully expect it to do just as well as Nicheology, if not better. Brian has obviously been able to learn from the good and bad points of Nicheology when putting together his own membership site. How can you get in on the action, and take advantage of this big tidal wave trend that is hitting the niche information product business? Would you like to have hundreds of members paying you every month, for products that you have paid someone else to write at minimal cost? There is obviously a certain amount of 'start-up' costs associated with setting up a membership site like this. If you are an absolute beginner without a clue how to design a web page, and no money to spend, then this is probably not something you should jump into at your first attempt. The key to this whole website business model is in finding good quality, low cost ghostwriters and copywriters to create the products and sales letters. Personally, if I were looking at setting up a site like this, I would probably get a bit of experience in hiring and using ghostwriters for smaller projects beforehand. Getting them to write a few articles, maybe a one-off ebook that I could try selling myself as a stand-alone product. If you are going to start looking for ghostwriters for any type of project, there's obviously going to be quite a bit of trial end error whilst you get used to how things work and what to expect. A Useful Resource For Finding Ghostwriters... I recently came across a very comprehensive resource that will help you enormously, if you are considering the possibility of hiring a ghostwriter. It's very appropriately named 'Ghostwriting Goldmine'. Having your own information product to sell is one of the best ways to make money online. The Ghostwriting Goldmine also contains a very good section (including video) on how to find great topics for information products that are in demand. The real meat though, is the information about finding the right ghostwriter, how to post projects so that quality ghostwriters will be interested, what you should expect to pay for an article or a whole ebook, how to get the best deal, managing the project, how to prevent getting ripped off, plus much, much more! Whether you are considering starting up your own niche information product membership site, or maybe just getting someone to write an ebook for you, I highly recommend you get a copy of 'Ghostwriting Goldmine' first. Click here ==> Ghostwriting Goldmine You will certainly save yourself a lot of time and money, and be in much better position to pick a winner first time out. Well, that pretty much wraps things up for today. Until next time, Jason Jason Lewis |
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