If you’ve ever wondered what goes on behind-the-scenes of an info-product business, here’s a list of 7 activities you’ll be doing (if you’re a one-person show) or that you’ll be delegating to a team-member if you’re working with employees or contractors.
Activity #1 – Make strategic decisions.
This involves deciding where you’re going to play and how you’re going to win.
I.e. Which problems you are going to solve, for whom you’re going to solve them, how you’re going to solve them, what you are going to do differently than your competitors, what strengths of yours you’re going to leverage to gain an advantage in the marketplace, among other things.
Some businesses do this once a year to give themselves a focus for the year. Others do it once a quarter so they can make adjustments more quickly as they get feedback from the decisions they made in the previous quarter.
How often you do it is up to you, but it has to be done.
Activity #2 – Plan your work.
Once you’ve developed a strategy, you’ll want to turn your decisions into objectives, projects, and tasks.
This is what allows you to turn a “dream” into a “reality”.
Your objectives are the different goals you have for that particular time-period whether it be a year, a quarter, or however often you are setting your strategy.
Your projects would be the different groups of actions that need to happen in order to reach your objectives.
And, your tasks are the individual actions that make up your projects.
It’s a good idea to put these into your calendar and into your daily, weekly, monthly schedule so that you know exactly what to do and when.
Activity #3 – Create content for your info-products.
In order to bring in revenue, you are going to need something to sell.
This means a portion of your time will be spent in creating content for your info-products.
In most cases it’s not enough to just have one info-product.
In order to be profitable, you’ll want multiple info-products. At least two!
One info-product to cover the cost of acquiring a customer and at least another that makes you profits.
Also, once you’ve acquired a customer for one of your products, they will have several other problems along the same topic that they will be looking to solve.
And if they don’t get it from you, they will very likely be getting it from somewhere else.
They might as well get it from you!
Activity #4 – Create & optimize marketing campaigns to sell your products.
It doesn’t matter how great your products are, if you don’t get the word out about them, you won’t make any sales.
Yes, word-of-mouth is a thing.
And some info-products happen to go viral, but this is the exception not the norm.
For most, you’ll need to actively market your product in order to make daily sales.
This will involve figuring out how to best communicate the value of your info-products, where to advertise, writing ads for your chosen platform, investing money to send traffic to your website, writing sales pages to convert your traffic into customers, and making sure every step of the process is working as effectively & efficiently as possible.
Activity #5 – Customer service.
Once you’re getting customers, you’ll inevitably start to get customer service emails.
Customers who didn’t receive the email with instructions for how to access or download the product they purchased.
Customers who have questions about the content itself.
Customers who are unhappy and are requesting a refund or dealing with a customer who filed a chargeback because they didn’t recognize the charge on their statement.
And also future customers who have questions about the content, about the specifics of the product, or perhaps with online ordering issues preventing them from making the purchase.
At least a small portion of every day (some take the weekends off) will be dedicated to answering these questions and making sure your customers are taken care of.
Activity #6 – Tech work.
Occasionally, you’ll need to set up a website.
Connect your shopping cart to your email autoresponder.
Make sure that your product access pages are working and loading properly.
Upload your video & pdf files online.
And fixing general technical issues that pop up from time to time.
Most people delegate this part but it doesn’t hurt to know a little about this yourself so that if you ever need to do it yourself, you know how.
Activity #7 – Managing yourself.
Even if you’ve got all your objectives, projects, and tasks lined up and well organized into your planner, it doesn’t mean they’re actually going to get done!
When you are in business for yourself, you are your own boss. Which means, you are responsible for making sure your team produces results (in this case, that team is YOU).
You’ll need to make sure you’re getting enough sleep, food, and exercise so that you are rested, energized, thinking clearly, and ready to perform during your working time.
You’ll also need to make sure you keep yourself focused and distraction free. Otherwise, the time you had allotted to complete a particular task may disappear to a long session of scrolling through social media and before you know it you’re behind on your plan and will need to put in additional hours to get back on track (ask me how I know that! Lol)
Do these activities sound like fun to you?
Have you considered starting your own info-product business?
Or perhaps you’d like to add an info-product to your existing business?
I’m working on a new info-product “Name TBD” that will cover…
1 – How to decide which info-product to create.
2 – How to plan an info-product that is “good enough” to test.
3 – How to create the info-product.
4 – How to make that info-product deliverable to the customer.
5 – How to market & sell that info-product.
6 – And how to learn from the process of launching your info-product so that you can make more money.
It’s not ready yet, but if you want to be one of the first to be notified as soon as it’s available…
Click here to join my email newsletter.
In the meantime, you’ll get weekly tips on how to plan your business, build an audience, create info-products, and get customers.
See you next week!
-Eddys Velasquez
P.S. Any feedback or questions are welcome. Just leave a comment below this post.