Product Creation Plan

There are any number of businesses to be in online, whether that is stand alone or supporting your offline business.

If your thing is creating informational or educational products for people then the trick is to have a definitive overarching plan. And we know any plan can be flexible so long as we’re heading to the end goal.

What I have been guilty of doing is relying on inspiration. Something will trigger in my neo-cortex and I’ll immediately get to work on realising that thought into a product. Or, I’ll grab a notepad or PDF or mindmap of the trigger and file it on the HDD hoping that I can find it when I need it (and that I can remember what I was going to do with it!).

Ohh sure. I do have a plan too! But life gets in the way and my productivity habits are, well, unproductive! So every now and then frustration with progress calls me back to the plan. And because I’m not inspired I can’t seem to kick into creative mode because instead of play it seems like work.

Sound like a teenager you know?

I’ve usually been taught to have a sales funnel with different price points. Online this translates to having a free front-end offer, a low price point product, a midpoint priced product and a high price point product.

Something like a “10 Top Tips” giveaway paper of 10 pages, a detailed Action Plan ebook for say $7, a 90 day Course for maybe $197 and a “live” Webinar based Training Program for $497. This is just by illustration. See image.

Traditionally we’re encouraged to follow that pattern in a sequential funnel.

Barb Ling mentioned how she was approaching something today and it got me thinking.

If you develop a logical product funnel of $10 – $100 – $1000 you can either
(a) start at the beginning and upsell
(b) start at the top end and downsell
(c) start in the middle and downsell and upsell
(d) permutations of the above.

In other words, have a plan rather than pump stuff out.

Note 1:
A “logical product sequence” is where the product offerings in your funnel are all related eg E10 gas, Regular unleaded, Premium gas. It could be the products ‘fit’ together eg “how to write a draft short story in a weekend”, “preparing your work for publication”, “complete DFY kit of story lines, characters, scenes and more”. A sales funnel is not a product on list building then a course on using photoshop then a product on building Amazon stores. You might get someone buying all three but it’s a higher risk. If someone has signed up with you for one topic, it’s more likely they will buy more from you about that topic.

Note 2:
You might have more than three items behind your free offer. You could have four or five.

Note 3:
Develop complementary product funnels so you can cross sell

Nite 4:
You don’t have to have everything in place to start

Next steps:
1. Define your niche/topic area
2. Decide on your free offer – video, audio, book excerpt, ebook, etc – and get it online
3. Identify what can go in the funnel in a logical sequence. If you have nothing start with one item in your funnel
3. Put it together and build from there.