Written by: Andrea Cristancho, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Selling your knowledge in a nicely wrapped tight container is a thing. Are you part of the trend?
It was April 2021, and around 6 am in the middle of my baby feeds, I decided to grab my phone in the dark to check the Facebook feed. Yes, I know I shouldn’t have done that, but hey, no Miss Perfect on this side of the screen.
Back to my story!
As I was scrolling down, oh my God, I felt an invasion of Ads coming at me.
Hello retargeting, you got me, but come on! Give me some room here to gossip about my friend's life for a few minutes at least. Well, no! Every other Ad was showing me a digital product in the range of $7 to 47. It was right then that it hit me.
Yes, I’ve consumed more paid information than your normal cyber citizen. True! But also, I witnessed a pattern and a trend at the same time. It was 6:20 am, and here I was, still scrolling down, switching sides, and my boy and I continued our search. I must confess my weakness is books but used to be high-heel shoes when I lived in Asia.
I had to think if I was being retargeted this aggressively. I must have purchased a lot of these products recently, I told myself. So, I closed that window and went to my courses folder to count how many digital courses I’ve consumed and from how many more digital programs I’ve graduated. I was shocked! I doubled my high heels collection!
Around 6:50 am, I had the choice to put the phone away and go back to sleep or carry on in this scavenger hunt. I chose the latter, and that’s when it hit me. Information products had a huge chance to succeed for many entrepreneurs. Why? Because we can package them in a nicely wrapped tight container, price it, and place it in cyberspace, and for a price, let Zuckerberg do his thing - thank you, FB peeps.
It was 7:15 am. I already had a cup of coffee, pen, and paper on hand dissecting the elements of the digital products I had purchased from 2013 to date. By 8:00 am I was already exploring meta text on Amazon and looking inside the published books on information products. To my surprise, none were recent. I continue exploring the realm of digital nomads and online business, and more recently, published options came up.
It was 8:30 am when my daughter came up to hug me and give me my good morning kiss. And, at that point, my book had a name, a decision was made, the one book I’ve been thinking about writing for my people. And so, I scheduled writing time, and that’s when The Expat Infopreneur book outline came to life. But that’s not the reason why I wrote the book. It was time for me to stop spinning down that rabbit hole. I put my stuff away and started my day.
Needless to say that I couldn’t stop thinking about the topic, and since for a few weeks to this point, I had been researching and having conversations on co-authoring a book for Expats, my head kept on spinning. Until 5:00 pm that very same day, I hop on the phone with an author/book coach to learn more about her offer. After learning the ins and outs of this industry, I got challenged to write my own. And so I did in 10 days. That very night I started writing!
Is it okay if I share what I’ve learned by writing a book about becoming an infopreneur? I hope it is because I feel this information got to be shared across and wide. First, designing digital assets makes people’s lives better because you solve real people’s problems with them. Second, information products can be targeted, improved, and scaled at the pace or even faster than your business's wildest dreams. Third, the design process pulls out your best intellectual material when designing it. Fourth, you can create one asset and multiple income streams to monetize upon. Fifth, the creation process is fun and can be simple with proper guidance. Sixth, you go on to build a list of paying clients that, in time, become raving fans of your work. Seventh, you get to stay focused on building digital assets that meet your ideal people where they are at by designing an offer ladder always from your zone of joy. Even if you’re not in the service industry, I still believe you can pair up a physical product with a digital asset to enhance your clients’ experience. I could continue, but I feel you get the point.
I believe that if you’re a teacher at heart, information products are for you. Okay, I am biased, but I have to say it, I think every single expert in the service space could have a digital asset to position herself in their industry.
The way I teach this process in my program is a walk down step by step in the path built from my business expertise, having run my own businesses internationally in the past years. However, what’s particularly relevant is the focus I teach. I encourage you, my clients, and everyone that I welcome into my world to use the power of focus. Focus on one. I recommend building a name in the industry with your information product. Squeeze the lemon out of one digital asset before moving onto the next. How? Get curious, get creative, and stay focused. Inside my program, Flagship Ready, you walk in with a business idea to design a digital asset and walk away with a minimum viable product in 5 weeks. You do need expertise in your own field to join but not necessarily business experience. But if you have both, you’re in for a fun group ride!
I’m not a mind reader, but I know what you’re thinking right now. There are one hundred thousand information products out there. You said it yourself Andrea, why should I put the time and effort to build one now. I can’t possibly get everything I know into a single product. I would have to build a whole library. And, my favorite, I already have a library collecting digital dust out there. What’s your take on this? Here it is, are you investing energy, time, money, and effort in positioning your digital asset in front of the right people? Did you build your asset following your signature system?
If your answer is yes, then you have got to be cheering for info products as well in your world. And, if your answer is no, I suggest you invest in the latter in that order with what you have created. And, if you do not have an information product designed now, what are you waiting for? It’s time to join the trend. There are programs, coaches, communities, even ghostwriters that can help you get there. Your job is to decide what you’d like to build your name around it and go for it.
Just to name a few of my favorite information products out of the many available, really, it’s all up to your preference and criteria delivering an experience to your people. So here my top 7 list: email mini-courses/courses/challenges, private podcasts, short video recordings paired with interactive workbooks, audio-only bundles (I feel it’s like having the expert on the go), interactive eBooks, paid programs with active communities of like-minded people, VIP Days with direct access to the experts. It’s all about designing an experience for your ideal people. I encourage you to complete this list with your own favorite ones. Let's say the best way you consume information is most likely what you’d like to create and put out there with your name.
If you need help deciding and designing, you know where to find me. I hope next time I go down a rabbit hole in cyberspace in the middle of a feed, I get to find your info product beautifully branded, attracting your people into your world and monetizing like crazy for your business.
Until the next feed, then!
Andrea Cristancho, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Andrea Cristancho, the founder of www.andreacristancho.com, is a Holistic Business Coach helping female entrepreneurs in the wellness space. Through her signature program, The UpLevel Method, Andrea integrates the entrepreneurial mindset with practical business tools that re-engineer existing businesses to achieve their next growth level. As an international business mentor with Latin roots and serial entrepreneur, she has run her own businesses in 3 continents in many different industries. In the process, she has discovered that having a signature program, a personal brand, and the right mindset is the key to taking off your entrepreneurial success.
