Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3: Turning Information into Profit, from e-Books to Webinars

In This Chapter

• Creating an information product
• Finding hot topics to write about
• Writing, formatting, and distributing an e-book
• Earning revenue from informational videos on YouTube
• Developing and promoting a Webinar

Many people think that online sales involve physical products, where you put something in a box and ship it off to Jane Smith in Iowa, who ordered your product online. These eager sellers sometimes overlook the most valuable “product” they can offer the buying community: their knowledge. The adage goes “Knowledge is power.” Well, if power leads to wealth, knowledge also leads to wealth. Thanks to many of the technological advances of computers and the Internet, it's now much easier to build a system and earn money by sharing your information, knowledge, and techniques with people who desperately want to learn.

Information products are becoming one of the hottest categories of products you can find on the Internet. Unlike a physical product that has material costs (such as the cost of the paper for a book or the cost of microchips and a metal case for a computer), an information product can have zero physical costs. Unlike a television or car that has to roll off an assembly line and requires a certain amount of labor to produce one unit, you can make infinite copies of an information product — instantaneously — and meet whatever demand you have for your product. In the past, information products ...