This is an important consultation for you to listen to. Although Bal and I discuss types of niche markets that may not be the same as what you would choose, this recording is a little gem in that it outlines the major aspects of creating successful information products and will most likely help you in your own planning.

You will also learn the details of how I will personally assist you with planning your own business through consultations with me and the valuable Jay Abraham marketing seminar materials you will receive as part of my consultation.

I have learned from the best marketing experts and have seen these techniques work first hand. I want to share these tips and secrets with you so that, you too, can realize your own dreams of business success!

Michael: People are not going to shell out money for philosophy. People will shell out money to look good, to get skinny, to be rich – those type things. You may like philosophy. That’s fine, but don’t get caught up in your ego of what you like because if you want to make money, find a market and then fill it.

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Michael: You’re a technical writer right now?

Bal: Not a direct hire, but a contractor.

Michael: How long have you been doing that?

Bal: About five years here, and about eleven years as a tech writer generally.

Michael: Do you like it or do you want to get out of that or you want to try to transition to something on your own, working for yourself? What’s the ultimate goal here?

Bal: Be out on my own. You and I have communicated before. I have a website. I’m also a copywriter, but that’s a time consuming thing to do after eight hours a day. So, I’m looking for something that involves some leverage and not just waiver.

Michael: You also have a sales letter and copywriting services. How long have you been doing this?

Bal: For about two years.

Michael: And, how has this gone for you?

Bal: Mild success. I have a few clients.

Michael: Do you feel that you have the skills to write a good letter and to write copy?

Bal: Definitely.

Michael: And, you put up your own website. Do you have Internet skills?

Bal: Yes.

Michael: Who have you studied copywriting wise?

Bal: Mainly just on my own. I get books, and I’ve worked a few clients to get the experience.

Michael: So, you’ve got writing experience, right?

Bal: Oh, yeah.

Michael: But, you don’t like it because it takes a lot of time and it’s not a good way to leverage your time.

Bal: Right, it’s not that I dislike it. It’s time consuming, and I get home from work after eight hours.

Michael: Time consuming working for clients, right?

Bal: That’s right.

Michael: Because by the time you add up all your hours in time you’ve worked, and you figured out what you get paid if you get paid, it doesn’t amount to too much, right?

Bal: That’s correct, and so far I’ve been lucky. I’ve had clients who pay me. I’m an experienced tech writer, but I’m a beginner copywriter. And, as a beginner copywriter, you can’t ask for a lot of dollars yet.

Michael: I can’t understand why these expert copywriters are even working for clients because you’ve got skills as a tech writer. I’m sure that it benefits you somehow as a copywriter, but if you’ve got the copywriting skills and you can write a good sales letter, what about using marketing in direct mail and leveraging that sales letter, that selling piece to sell something of your own? There’s a leverage right there. You’ve got the hardest skill there is. You have to be able to write a halfway decent sales letter.

Bal: Yes, so, I’m actually in the process of developing a product.

Michael: What are you developing?

Bal: Something called a Doutaching.

Michael: What is that?

Bal: It’s an 81 chapter book. You can find it in the Guttenberg Library, and it’s essentially Eastern Philosophy.

Michael: Is it public domain?

Bal: Yes.

Michael: And, you want to sell that.

Bal: Yes, but not as is. There’d be no point to sell it as is. I’m embellishing it with connotations and illustrations.

Michael: So, it’s a book on philosophy.

Bal: Yes.

Michael: Who’d you want to sell that to?

Bal: Well, I know that by looking at bookstores, there’s a lot of people who buy into the Eastern Mysticism, Eastern Philosophy. It would be a consumer interest.

Michael: Are you into that Eastern Philosophy type thing?

Bal: I used to be, and I’d like to get back into it, but business has been siphoning my time.

Michael: You’ve heard of Gary Halbert, right?

Bal: Sure.

Michael: You’ve listened to a bunch of the recordings on my site?

Bal: Yes, I’ve listened to some of them.

Michael: Did you ever listen to the Gary Halbert one?

Bal: No, I haven’t gotten to that one.

Michael: Well, you know how it opens up? It’s ironic. He says, “People are not going to shell out money for philosophy. People will shell out money to look good, to get skinny, to be rich – those type things.” And, he advises against it because he’s answering a question from a guy in his seminar with this idea of selling a book on philosophy. I would say, no, no, no. Think of something different.

You may like philosophy. That’s fine, but don’t get caught up in your ego of what you like because if you want to make money, find a market and then fill it. Find a market that is rabid for something and it could be any market. You’ve got to find a marketplace that is spending money like crazy on something like the weight loss market is an example, like the golf market. There’s high passion indexes. Golfers are nuts. Collectors – people who collect horse figurines. There’s probably a million people who collect things with horses on them, and they’ll buy anything and everything.

These are types of markets that are just nuts about different items, and then you go look at a market and research that market, and find out what else would they like. Find someone who’s selling something to that market, but you know they’re copywriting stinks. You look at their letter and you say, “I could make this letter ten times better.” The hungry, raved market is the most important thing.

You being a good copywriter is important when you’re selling to a hungry raved market, but you could be the greatest copywriter in the world. If you’re market isn’t hungry, it doesn’t matter how good or great your letter is. You see?

You could be a horrid copywriter, and put something in front of a hungry market and make a ton of money. Does that make sense?

Bal: Yes.

Michael: I’m saying you’ve got some great skills as a copywriter. If you’ve studied and you’ve got your technical writing, but if you really master in it – and you don’t even have master it. Just take your skills and sell something to a very hungry market, and you really shouldn’t have any problems in my opinion, but you’ve got to sell something that you create and control. You don’t have to, but I would advise you to.

You’re on the right track with creating your own product. I wouldn’t advise a book on philosophy. Another reason why – what does a book sell for in a bookstore?

Bal: $25 - $30.

Michael: $25-$30? It takes you the same amount of energy to write a sales letter that sells a book on philosophy than it does to write a sales letter that sells a course for three or four hundred, right?

Bal: Right.

Michael: So, why not leverage and sell something where the market is already paying you three or four hundred, or five hundred, or six hundred or a thousand or three thousand or five thousand? There’s people spending money on $25,000, $30,000, $40,000 cars everyday. It’s just a different market with more money. So, why not sell to market where the money is where you already know they’re spending money on something, and approach those people with your copywriting skills. Does that make sense?

Bal: Yep, sounds pretty good.

Michael: All right. So, use your skills that you have already. That’s a huge asset, and now what you’ve got to decide on a hungry market, what can you sell? So, you’ve got to start looking at markets. I would suggest a market that you’re interested in. Is there anything else that turns you on, that you’re interested in, that you like? Are you fanatical about anything?

Bal: No, I’m a pretty low-key guy.

Michael: Okay. So, do you have any other ideas of something you can sell that you’ve thought of in the past?

Bal: I’m drawing a blank. Do you remember I said one of the things I’m looking for is something to help me focus? I’ve been scattered.

Michael: Okay. So, forget the product. If we can come up with a hungry market that you feel like you’d like to do some research in, that you’d be willing to put some time in to write a sales letter or to revamp an existing sales letter that has done very poorly and that has a product with some great margins that can sell something for you anywhere between $300 and $500 or $1,000, would that be something you’d be willing to put some energy into?

Bal: Absolutely.

Michael: Okay. So, that’s number one. We know you’ve got the copywriting skills. We know you’re willing to do the work. Now, let’s come up with a market, and we don’t have to do it on this phone call. We can do this at another time. Let’s find a ravid market and once we decide on that, let’s research the market. Let’s see what’s selling. Let’s see who’s selling. Let’s go look at some websites of these people selling to this market, and let’s look for some very poor websites – someone doing it all wrong, and I’m sure we can come up with multiple ideas of something we can sell to this market.

All we’re going to do is help sell to other people, you see? So, we’re going to find something that’s already selling great. We’re just going to do it better. We’re going to take what they’re doing and most people are pretty lazy, and they’re probably doing a poor job, but we’re just going to do it better, or you’re going to do it better. Does that sound like a good plan?

Bal: Yeah, it does.

Michael: Then, if you can do that, then you’ve honed in on a market. You’ve honed in on a product whether you create it or you have control over it – say you license it from somebody else, but you have control and you can maintain and keep that control. Now, we can leverage your copywriting. You write the letter, and then we use marketing like the Internet, like email, like direct mail to leverage that. You could be selling to a thousand people a day with your little letter or your email or your audio recording or whatever.

So, you built your own website at wealth.com?

Bal: I did.

Michael: You’re already way ahead of the game. You’ve got the skills to do a website. Do you do it in FrontPage or what?

Bal: Dreamweaver.

Michael: Dreamweaver, that’s a great skill right there. If you could make enough money to supplement what you’re doing, would you quit your job if you felt confident that you could keep it going?

Bal: Yeah, absolutely.

Michael: I don’t want to pry into what you’re making, and you don’t have to share it with me, but what would make you comfortable? How much do you need to make every month?

Bal: Let’s put it this way. If I was making, and this is really inexpensive, but if I was making $3k a month in a way that I could repeat, then I’d be excited. I’d have to have a skill that I could repeat.

Michael: So, three grand a month. So, let’s divide that into four. So, you’re talking $750 a week. Let’s say you’ve got a product that sells for $500. So, you would have to sell two a week to cover your costs and to make over $3,000 in profit because your information product, there’s very little expense to that product. It’s just going to be your efforts.

So, you need to make two sales a week, eight sales a month. How many hours are you putting in right now working at your existing job?

Bal: Forty hours.

Michael: So, you’re forty hours right now. Would you be willing to cut your work time in half and do twenty hours a week?

Bal: Yeah, I’m putting in more than that right now.

Michael: It’s just a matter of making a plan and if you’re willing to do that, I can show some ways to do that, and one very powerful way is let’s say you had your product already created. It’s by approaching and doing joint ventures with people in the marketplace, and you’re totally leveraging off all the years they’ve built up their business, and off their list.

So, let’s say for example, you have just say a course on how to lose weight through Zen exercise or whatever, a seminar, an information product, and it costs $500. So, there’s a lot of effort in the beginning getting it all put together and creating value in it, and then you do your own sales letter. You’ve got the skill for it.

So, you have your product, and it’s ready to ship. All you’ve got to do is go to the printer, print it out and have it shipped when someone buys it. You have your sales letter all ready. So, that one hour a week or two hours a week, if you did nothing but just contact other people who are in that Zen type market, and approach anyone in that Zen market with your offer and do joint ventures. Say, “I’ve got this product. You have a customer list. You sell this product, but you’re not offering your customers anything else. Would you like to do a deal and would you like to endorse my product to your list and we could do a split on it?” Do you see what I’m saying?

Bal: Sure.

Michael: Have you studied any stuff on joint ventures?

Bal: A little bit. I haven’t done one yet, but I’ve studied it.

Michael: So, in a nutshell, in less than fifteen minutes, that’s some of the things I would suggest.

Bal: It sounds really good.

Michael: Anything else that you can think of on your mind?

Bal: No, I think this is very good for me.

Michael: Well, why don’t I do this? I’ll save this recording, and I can email this recording and this is just basically a fifteen minute consultation. If you want a full hour of the recording, if you’re interested, we can do an hour consulting and we can go into some of the details that I’ve talked to you and I’ll work with you in developing an action plan. So, you’re not scatter brained. So, you have it written down on paper. Here’s what you need to do – this, this, this.

If you want me to choose your markets for you, I’ll do that as well. An hour consultation and you also get $700 worth of my pre-owned Jay Abraham materials like audio tapes so you can enhance your education. Have you ever studied or been to a Jay Abraham seminar?

Bal: No, I haven’t.

Michael: This is the stuff that will teach you the way that I’m thinking. So, I can put a package together of $700 worth of Jay Abraham materials, written materials, audio tapes, and that would include an additional hour consultation.