Never Underestimate How Much You Already Know

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I’m working with a client who is in the process of creating and selling an ebook online as a way to transition her business from a purely offline model to a mix of online and offline. At the same time, I’m also working on a few little side projects of mine, also focused on ebooks and other digital products. What’s interesting is that it’s made me realize how much we really know (and take for granted) as Internet marketers. Here’s a quick list of things that will seem like no-brainers to most of you. But to your average person unfamiliar with direct response marketing, online marketing or nose-to-nose sales, it seems like a mountain of information to get through (and it is).

Finding a topic

Testing whether the topic will be profitable

Creating the product

Creating bonuses for the product (and why you’d want to)

Getting a domain name, web hosting, how to FTP and other techie stuff

Creating a sales page

Adding audio to the sales page (and should it auto-play or not)

Testing (what to test, how to do it, why to do it, impact it could have)

Tracking (how to track, what to track, why to track, impact)

Writing good sales copy

Creating terms of use, privacy policy, contact pages

Finding royalty free images (why you need these vs. any old pic from the web)

Getting traffic to the site

Autoresponders (what they are, why use them, etc)

List building (why bother, how to do it, etc)

Upsells, downsells, cross-sells, backend offers, etc. (why this is important)

Pricing your product

Affiliate programs, JVs

Accepting credit card payments online

Web audio, video

Outsourcing

Blogging

Social media

The good thing is that the client I’m working with is a real go-getter so it’s been pretty easy getting through these concepts without getting caught up in minutia.

Also, there’s probably more to this list than what’s listed above, but these are the things that came to mind off the top of my head. Like I said, this is probably super basic stuff for most of you reading this. But think about your parents, neighbors, the lady you sat next to at church last weekend or whoever. How much of this would sound like complete gibberish to them?

Yet sometimes, it seems like some of us think that because we haven’t hit the big time or become some sort of “guru”, that we still have a mountain of stuff to learn. But not so. I say that if the above list looks like “just the basics” to you, then you’re probably 90% of the way there already. It’s more of a matter of “implementation” vs. “education”.

Just something I was thinking about as I close out the week.

One Response to “Never Underestimate How Much You Already Know”

Geoff Dodd from Residual Income Blog says:

June 10, 2010 at 4:09 am

Thanks for reminding me. We’re all soaking up information all the time, and most likely underestimating the marketable value of what we know about our closely loved interests. Passions fire us up to write, share, film and get involved with others akin to ourselves. More ‘output’ is required rather than endless, passive, obedient ‘input’ – as in school. Geoff D.
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