Why create information products?

If you're a professional speaker, thought leader or expert, there are four key benefits to creating products.

New Income Streams

The first - and most obvious - benefit is that it creates new income streams for you, especially if you can bundle them together with existing products and services.

Message, Not Method

Your expertise is what matters, not the way that you get it out into the world. Your products are just another way of getting your message out into the world.

Multiple Formats

As a presenter, you focus on your main mode of delivery - a keynote presentation, or coaching skills, or facilitation processes. But what about the people who don’t come to your keynote? If they can’t hear you in a conference setting, how are they going to get your message? When you go to a networking function, you might wow someone by talking to them for five minutes but what do you do afterwards? Do you send them a business card or do you send them your book? If you’re about to go into a sales meeting to sell your first serve, what do you have as backup that you can offer them as collateral material?

Positioning

Finally, remember that products don’t always have to be sold. I get a lot of leverage from giving books to key clients, publishing a newsletter free of charge, and sending e-books to people as bonuses as part of my loyalty program.

So just remember the products you’re creating don’t have to be only for selling. You can get leverage from them in lots of other ways.