"Booklets." "Special reports." These words sound pretty insignificant, don't they? But the results you achieve with these little collections of useful information can be anything but small and limited.
They don't cost much energy or money to produce, but booklets and special reports can bring you the following kinds of results:
* A big burst of extra money, or a steady stream of revenue for years, as you prefer - some items have earned as much as half a million to a million dollars for their authors!
* A valuable list of people interested in your topic, to rent out or use yourself for sales of more expensive products and services
* Possibilities for translations and bulk sales - i.e., greater exposure and income
* Content that you can resell in other formats, such as audio or video tapes, articles, books, subscription Web sites
* An inexpensive means of testing the waters for bigger products
* A method of making an end run around the editorial gatekeepers at magazines and book publishers
* An easy, inexpensive entry into the highly profitable information business
* Additional opportunities such as speaking engagements, consulting, audiotape possibilities, magazine articles, book contracts and business partnerships
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Products
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Compared with some other vehicles for selling information, booklets and special reports have these advantages:
* So long as you have a computer and either a high-end word- processing program or a desktop design program, you don't need additional equipment to create these products.
* Most people will not need to hire a producer or designer in order to create a salable product.
* You don't need the space or advance investment to stock inventory, but can instead create booklets and special reports on demand, as people send in money. Hence you can get started with an outlay of less than $10. Truly!
* You can change or update the contents of your booklets and special reports immediately, as circumstances warrant. This enables you to scoop monthly magazines and books, which have lead times of three months to one year.
* Although your information must be up-to-date, useful and valid, it needn't offer content that no one else has. Buyers pay for booklets and special reports primarily to have information in a handy, easily digestible form.
* You don't need high-level communication skills to produce salable booklets, although I do recommend that you take steps to ensure proper spelling, punctuation and grammar.
* Unlike newsletters, you don't commit yourself to future issues on into the future.
* You don't need to convince editors that you and your idea merit space in their publishing program. Buyers deal with you directly.
* Your profit margin is high - a booklet selling for $5.00 might cost you $.10 to produce, while a special report selling for $95 might cost nothing other than the labor that went into it.
To be fair, let me list some disadvantages of booklets and special reports, compared with other information products:
* They don't last anywhere as long as books, audios or videos and don't look impressive on a buyer's bookshelf.
* They can't contain as much of your personality as an audiotape or video.
* As one-shots, they have less impact over time with each buyer than a newsletter.
* Since they're self-produced, they don't serve as much of a credential, although they can do an excellent job of proving that you know your stuff.
* They don't make it into public libraries very often, compared to information in other formats.
* Since they need to be practical and snappy, they can't provide an outlet for the full range of your creative talents.
All in all, however, booklets and special reports are easy to write and can easily generate a stream of extra revenue not requiring your time and attention once everything's set up. This passive income can become plentiful indeed!