Is There Room For You In Internet Marketing? by Bob Bly

Does the idea of selling information products on the Internet appeal to you?

It does to GL, one of my subscribers. But she is hesitating about whether to even start.

GL is worried that there are already more than enough people hawking e-books, DVDs, and courses on the Internet.

“Isn’t the Internet already overcrowded with a million info-marketers selling look-alike products on everything from dating to real estate?” GL asked me the other week.

“Aren’t I getting into the game too late to carve out a piece of the Internet profit pie for myself?”

It’s a fair question. And the answer is: yes and no.

Yes, you are getting into the game a little later than some of your peers.

But so what?

The old saying “better late than never” is true.

And in fact, there is still a huge opportunity to make your fortune online.

Newbie Internet marketers despair that there is too much competition on the web and therefore no room for them.

What they do not understand is that the information business is not competitive in the way most other businesses are.

For instance, a consumer shops and makes a decision to buy a certain model washing machine when her old machine breaks down, just as my wife did months ago.

If the consumer chooses your brand or buys from your store, you have her money.

And all the other washing machine manufacturers and retailers have lost the chance to sell to her for at least a decade.

That’s because she only needs one washing machine…and new machines typically last at least 10 years.

But the buying of information products is a bit different. It’s more like the video game market than the appliance market.

Kids just don’t buy and play one video game: they buy game after game and never stop.

They are video game junkies. And they’ll spend a small fortune feeding their “habit”.

It’s the same with buyers of how-to information products.

Consumers of info-products are “information junkies”.

They buy many information products including e-books, DVDs, webinars and e-courses on their favorite topics.

That means customers will buy your information in addition to your competition’s info-products, not instead of.

The first thing you should do if you are thinking of selling information products online about a particular topic is to Google that subject.

If there is no one else selling information products on that topic, you have no competition.

But that’s actually a bad sign. Why?

The fact that there is no one else doing it probably means others have tried and found no demand.

On the other hand, there are some topics that, when you Google them, it seems like there is an almost infinite number of sources for information on those topics…and you despair of how you can ever break through the clutter.

The answer is to narrow your focus: find a niche within that broad topic—a subtopic that (a) people want to study and (b) about which there is a scarcity of good content.

For instance, “make money on the Internet” is an overcrowded topic, one I would not recommend you go into as a generalist today.

But there is still room for niche products centered around making money on the Internet.

For instance, I saw one product recently that told everything you need to know about marketing yourself and your product on Facebook.

If you are an Internet marketer, doesn’t that sound like something you should learn?

Let’s say you come up with a narrow niche topic that you don’t think is overcrowded.

Do some research to make sure Internet users are searching for information on that topic.

You can do this by checking keyword phrases related to that topic (e.g. “marketing on Facebook”) and seeing how many people searched those keywords on Google this month.

Use a keyword research and discovery tool like WordTracker.

Once you determine your topic and niche, you then need an actual information product to sell.

And one thing that stops many aspiring Internet information marketers from getting started is that the idea of creating their own information product intimidates them.

But in reality, it’s not all that hard. Trust me.

In fact, it takes only 5 simple steps to create your own information products from scratch.

And my home study course, “Creating Information Products That Sell Online“, covers all 5 steps in great detail.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.