Even if you don’t make any sales right off the bat, creating your own products has some important benefits.

If you’re like me, you started out as an affiliate. Somebody else did the hard work and all you have to do is point people in the right direction, right?

What they don’t tell you is that everyone is already promoting that product through PPC and going broke. What you figure out is that the few who are consistently making any money are writing a report or giving away a video to anyone who buys through their affiliate link.

Writing their own report?

That means they have their own product. Besides that it’s the only way to make money, what create your own product?

For one, it builds credibility. When you’re always talking about other people’s stuff and other people’s proof, what good are you? They may as well get the proof directly from, well, those other people.

Another reason to create your own info product is that it helps you build YOUR list. Lists are pretty useless and unresponsive as long as you are pushing stuff you’ve only used, but didn’t create yourself.

Once you have your own product, you stand out from the masses of wannabes. I felt good after I created Lightning Languages, even if it wasn’t an instant hit. The concept that I could sit down and create a digital product in a couple hours and get even a few sales from it was awe inspiring.

The third reason to create your own product is that you can build a relationship with your list. After I bought an initial low ticket item from one marketer who proved he knew what he was talking about, I purchased several more – including a course which I paid over $1200 for — and was happy I did.

I have a long way to go before I’m satisfied with my product marketing skills, but I’m already convinced that having your own product is the only way to long term growth and success.

Leave me a comment below with your experiences.

I learned three things about  info product creation this morning from my five year old daughter.

My daughter was lying on my bed watching me prepare to go to my day job. As I laid a shirt on the bed and began to button it up so I could steam the wrinkles out of it, she asked me what I was doing.

When I told her, she explained to me how a steamer works.

Shortly after that, I carried her to the loft so she could watch a video, since she had tripped over her huge butterfly pillow yesterday and injured her right big toe. Nothing serious, but she isn’t supposed to walk on it for a few days.

The recorded Tarzan series she was watching starts out with a couple minutes of episode which is interrupted by the introduction scene from the series. There are a bunch of episodes, and she has watched them a number of times.

When the episode was interrupted by the intro scene, she explained to me that there is an intro scene in every episode.

It struck me that she thinks in terms of explaining how things work based on her own observations, rather than asking a question and waiting for someone else to give the explanation.

What does that have to do with Internet marketing and info product creation?

1)      Learn to develop and offer your own observations. My daughter wasn’t afraid to explain what she saw. In order to rapidly create your own products and to continue to find new products to offer, you need to develop a habit of articulating explanations for topics that interest people.

2)      Become interested in how things work. My daughter loves to figure out what makes things tick and she loves to explain it to others. If you are interested in understanding how something works, you will find it easy to dig for the answers to questions people will be asking. It will be easy to convey that knowledge to them, since you have a genuine curiosity about the topic yourself. Also, the broader the range of interests you have, the easier it will be to find topics for more info products.

3)      Be assertive. My daughter considered herself an authority. What makes you an authority on a subject has more to do with the general acceptance of your observations than the validity of the facts you present. The power of your observations grows significantly when you show that you believe in what you say. (After all people accepted the observation that the Earth was flat despite some major inaccuracies in that theory.  It was accepted because of the authority with which it was told.) It’s a myth that you have to know all the facts about a subject to be an authority. You don’t. You just need to understand what works for you.

Take a minute right now – ok, 5 minutes max — to write down three topics that interest you and that you could create an info product about.

Does competition matter?

Give me your opinion in the comments below whether you think it makes a difference whether there is competition for the market you would be targeting.  Does it matter if there already is an info product (e-book, videos, etc)?