This Is An Exercise In Words – ReubenRock.com

Internet marketing noobs seem to get hung up in one major place: product creation. That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been doing this for a few years, and I still have trouble in that area from time to time. When I can’t just outsource my product creation, and all the pressure is on ME – what do I do?

Well, I recently started taking advantage of Skypefor creating information products. This is not a new concept or idea. I don’t claim to be the ground-breaking inventor of the Skype product. Not at all! In fact, it’s really just a simple variation on a method that many many other marketers use. For instance, check out Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss’ free audio:

Making Money With Your Microphone

In that audio, Perry and Ryan discuss using simple interviews as products. That’s as easy as it gets, right? Find an expert (or be the expert), interview the expert, and record the interview. 1-2-3 done.

The only thing I have done differently is using Skype as my platform. Why would I use Skype? Why wouldn’t I just sit down with my expert interviewee and record our conversation? Well, I don’t always have physical access to my experts. Sometimes they are on the other side of the country, or they are just too busy to sit down in my home studio. Skype calls are convenient for those situations.

I know there are free services for recording phone calls. Dial in, give an access code, and they send you an mp3 recording of the call. That’s awesome. But hey – we don’t all have unlimited minutes on our phones. And like many people these days, I don’t even have a home phone! So Skype is an excellent free alternative to this route.

Next time you are stuck on product creation, ask yourself if Skype can be your savior? Could you hook up with a know-it-all on the topic and get them on Skype? I bet you can.

After you have the call recorded, you essentially have a finished and ready product. I like to add a few additional touches to bump up the value. First, I like to transcribe the call. Not everyone will sit down and listen to the audio at work. Sometimes they want to read it or print it out for later. Give them that option. Also, including a PDF version of the transcription gives you the opportunity to embed links and other resources.

Think about that – LINKS and other resources. While your customer sees that you have provided extra value by showing them other resources on the topic, you can also get them to click through on affiliate links you embedded in the PDF. There are so many ways to incorporate a few affiliate links into your products, and I would encourage you to experiment with this idea.

That’s all I have for today, but I hope that got your gears turning. Best of luck!

Reuben D. Rock