Well, there are a number of reasons but the key reason is it provides the potential for residual income. If you think about it the plan that we are all sold when we are at school, the one where you get good grades at college or university, get a good job, and work at it until retirement, 
is all based on exchanging time for money.
You give the boss some of your time (usually a lot of your time!) and he or she gives you some money in exchange for it. If you are unable to continue giving your time for whatever reason, they stop giving you their money.
Even if you see through that plan and decide to work for yourself if you are in any type of service business you only get paid when you provide the service. Let’s suppose you run a carpet cleaning business you get paid when you clean a carpet, just once. You clean the carpet, get paid end of story. Until there is another carpet to clean you get no money.
The same thing applies to all service businesses. It doesn’t matter whether you are a web designer, accountant or even a coach/mentor. You tend to exchange time for money, either directly by the hour or by the price of the job which still equates to so much time when you analyze it.
The problem with this type of earnings model is that there are only so many hours in the day to exchange. Once you’ve exchanged all of the hours you can your earnings potential is capped.
With the information business, you can create a piece of work once and sell it over and over again. You are not restricted by the time/money trap. With the Internet, it gets even better because you are able to supply your information digitally and do not even have to be around to supply it yourself.
If you create the information products yourself you also eliminate any competition. You decide who can sell it and who can’t. If anyone copies your work you are protected by law and can sue them. You also have the option to create your own affiliate program and build an army of affiliates selling your product. This is the real key to the information business.
You can start with little or no up-front capital and if you are struggling to get started with your own product you can start by selling someone else’s product for a commission and don’t even need to have any of the products in your possession.
You can sell digital products through Clickbank or physical products through Commission Junction (cj.com).
Creating your own product
The key to creating your own product is in identifying a hungry market first. The biggest mistake that people make in all areas of business is to start with the product first. Having created the product they then have to try and sell it to someone, someone who may not actually want what you have.
All product creation starts with research. You need to brainstorm ideas, markets, to find one that is desperate for a solution to their problems. Once you find a good sized market of buyers that are rabid for a solution that they are prepared to pay for you have the basis of a successful product.
Research ideas
The first step in the product creation process is to research ideas. What hobbies do you or your friends and family have? Are you an expert on a particular subject?
If you are an expert at something that has an active buying community you could do very well with it. Having a good level of knowledge on a subject will make it easier for you to write articles, press releases and content on the subject.
This will put you light years ahead of the competition if they know a lot less than you do. You can find niche ideas everywhere you look. What magazines sell well, what topics have popular newsgroups? Do a Google search for subject forum or subject discussion group.
I find it useful to carry a small shopping notebook with me at all times and jot down ideas as they come to mind. You will always say you are going to remember that one when you get home but you don’t, at least I don’t and I’m not on my own.
Develop a habit of being on the lookout wherever you are. Ideas can come to mind all of the time. Once you get into the habit of doing this you will see niche ideas everywhere.
Spend some time browsing around Clickbank.com/marketplace to find products in every niche you can think of. When looking at products in Clickbank the gravity score is what’s important. This tells you how influential their product is in the overall market.
Another good place to look is eBay. eBay is the biggest online marketplace. Look at the top-selling products on there. This could give you an idea for a product for you to sell on a niche site. The places to look are ‘Popular Now’ and eBay Pulse (pulse.ebay.com).
Yet another place to look is PayPal shops. If you look at https://www.paypal.com/shops PayPal will show you how popular the businesses are in each category and they will also let you know how many PayPal transactions the company has. While the company will almost certainly accept other methods of payment this will give you an idea of how popular the product line is.
Look on Amazon.com to see what’s selling there. Look for classified ads both online and in your local newsagent. Ads that run week after week are paying and indicate a profitable niche. I think you get the idea by now. Look everywhere for potential niches. At this stage, you are just making a list of possible niches. Make your list as long as possible initially and keep it growing for the future.
Any of these niches could provide the basis for a product or several products going forward.
If you are new to marketing online and are thinking you would need some help getting started with this, help is at hand.
John Thornhill has an excellent program that takes you from raw beginner to successful marketer. He has done this many times and is responsible for the success of a lot of well-known names online and he can do it for you.
In fact, I use John as a coach myself now because there are always new techniques to learn.
You too can benefit from John’s help. The best place to start is by joining this free webinar and moving on from there.
If I can be of help please contact me at asktrevorgreenfield.com.
This is a guest post from Trevor Greenfield if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.
