You’ve created an information product. Good for you! Now how do you turn that into a profit?

Let’s back up a moment here. Are you sure you’ve created a product that has a hungry target market? Let me tell you … I’ve created products that very few people want and it can be heartbreaking. So, before you even create your product, you need to do some research to see if there is a hungry market for what you are thinking about creating. There are a few ways you can do this research:

• Key word research.
  Look for keywords and phrases that suggest the searcher is looking to buy. Words such as “review,” “how-to,” and “tips” can be a good indication. So can longer search phrases.
• Forum and group research.
  Look through forum posts, group posts, and even Q&A sites to see what people are asking questions about. How are their questions phrased? Are there a lot of people asking the same basic questions? Can your product answer (or be tweaked to answer) these questions?
• Surveys.
  If you’ve got a big enough list, you could just do a survey to see what people on your list really want. Just be careful that you get a large enough response for it to be statistically sound. If less than 1% of your list respond, you’ve probably asked the wrong questions or missed the appropriate hot spot.

Once you know what people want, you can develop a product that will be sellable. Then you need to market it to your target market. You did research to find out where your target market hangs out, right?

You see, the key to making money selling information products online is knowing what people want, where these people hang out, and how to communicate the benefits of buying to those people. Once you’ve got those three things down, everything else will flow.