You’re Not an Expert? Five Information Product Formats That Leverage What Other People Know By Marcia Yudkin At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

"But I’m not an expert," protest many people when they’re invited to think about an information product they might create. "No one would pay for what I know."

If you’re unshakably convinced you have no saleable knowledge inside of you, your best option may be to gather information from others. It’s so much easier than you might imagine to leverage other people’s ideas, experiences and know-how. Consider these five information formats for getting started.

1. Survey. Create a small number of questions that a specific set of people would love to have the answers to, and get the appropriate people to fill out the questionnaire. The survey need not be scientifically valid for it to have value. For instance, pricing surveys are very saleable, especially where fees normally aren’t published, as are “what works best” surveys of professionals or “how we choose ___” surveys of customers.

2. Interview(s). Find an expert in your field you admire and ask permission to record a one-hour interview on a topic many people like you want to know about. Someone who doesn’t yet have any products will usually say yes when you offer to give them the recording to do whatever they like with it. Someone who has already loads of products usually understands the value of having one more. You can sell this as a CD, as a downloadable MP3 file and/or as a PDF transcript. If you do a series of interviews, the collection could be a higher-priced boxed set of expert wisdom.

3. Case Studies. If you’re a curious person, you’ll find this information format fun to work on. Find five or ten examples of people who solved a certain category of problem, interview them about what they did, and your compilation of their experiences is a product. The classic structure of a case study has three parts: the problem, what was done to solve the problem, and the results. Examples: Agility Training Case Studies, How Five Families Coped With Alzheimer’s, or Secrets of Ten Antique Recipe Collectors.

4. Documents. People will pay not to have to recreate the wheel, and if you collect sample contracts, processing forms, fee schedules, brochures, plans, itineraries, terms and conditions, scripts, etc. from multiple sources, you have an appealing product. Promise those who contribute a free copy of the compilation as well as full professional credit, and they become motivated to participate in the project.

5. Cheat Sheets. There’s an old saying that if you borrow from one source, it’s plagiarism, but if you borrow from five sources, it’s research (and perfectly legal). Take principles that the experts in your field commonly talk about and boil them down to their essence in your own words. Make them available on pocket-sized, laminated reminder cards or wall posters. It’s the handiness of the information, not your originality, that offers value here.

If you’re thinking that many of my suggestions are too specialized or narrow for a saleable product, you’re wrong. People pay for information when a product promises exactly what they need at that moment – no more and no less. And whether you reach into yourself to create the information or reach out to others to get it, you do not need to wait for 20 years’ more experience before you put it together as a product.

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