At the heart of the question, what is information marketing, is the need to understand what information products are.
The simplest definition of an information product is anything where the information contained within the product is the primary value. They tend to be ‘how-to’ type products, but can also be lists of resources or directories. A phone book is an information product, a knitting tutorial is too – and so is a seminar.
Information products come in a wide variety for forms and formats. They include, but are not limit to:
- Books
- E-Books
- Audio Programs
- Video Programs
- Seminars
- Tele-Seminars and Webinars
- Consulting Services
- Etc…
The beauty of selling information products is that the cost of producing the product has no relationship to the value of the product. If you have a recipe for a baldness cure you could scribble it on the back of a napkin and thousands of people would get in a bidding war to buy it for top dollar.
Bottom line… the profit margins can be phenomenal.
I have an information product called Cheap Easy Video Lighting. It is short step-by-step tutorial designed to show people how to achieve professional video lighting using a few simple tools that can be purchased for less than $50. I used my digital camera to take pictures of all of the different items required and then used Photoshop to create a diagram showing how to set everything up.
Using OpenOffice software to create an e-book, I was able to take my years of experience as a professional film and video producer and turn it into a valuable resource for others (and make a few dollars in income along the way.)
Before the Internet, marketing products like these involved buying ads in magazines and newspapers to locate prospective customers. It was a cash intensive process. Now, for just a few dollars, you can produce a digital product, setup a website, link together an order processing system, and set the whole thing to run on auto-pilot and start pumping dollars into your bank account.
The technology for connecting with prospective customers has changed over the years, but the psychology behind persuading them to hand over their hard earned income to buy your products has not changed in decades.
If you are searching for the perfect business to start on the side that has the potential to earn tens of thousands of dollars, Information market might be exactly what you are looking for.