Something you hear many of the internet marketing gurus talking about is creating your own products, especially information products. Supposedly there’s this big market for almost anything that’s intellectual property, and big money can be made from these things.

Well, I’m about to somewhat challenge that view by talking about my own products that I’ve created. Some I’ve talked about here, while I haven’t talked about the others. So, I’m going to do that here, with links to where I might have talked about a product before, and then talk about the other things I have. Of course, within those other links is a link to my product.

First, for this crowd, is my book Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool, which is up there at the top left of this blog. Do you know how many people have actually visited the book from this blog? Four ever; period. That’s it. Now, to be slightly fair, the last time I actually promoted the book in full was in August, but come on, only four people ever, with all the visitors I have coming to this blog? All the people who say they’re interested in making money, all the people who have businesses with lousy websites, and I could only drive four people to that site? That’s pretty pathetic. What’s also pathetic is that for each of the times I’ve written about this book, I didn’t get a single comment on that post; I’m obviously a terrible marketer.

The second thing you see over there is for my webinar Social Media, SEO & Your Business in 90 Minutes. That post also didn’t get a single visit, and I’ve driven 3 people to check out the ad for the book from this blog. At least it’s newer than the other ebook, but still,… And, once again, no comment on this post, though I did get a couple of comments when I was talking about it before I actually did the webinar. Once again, created product, but lousy marketing I assume.

Next, look to the left there under the ad for 123Inkjets. This is my book Embrace The Lead, the one product I’m the most proud of. It was a labor of love, and I worked hard on completing it before my dad passed away. I was able to get 9 people from this blog to go look at it, but that’s not really great either. It has been my biggest selling product over the years, as I sell it in both electronic and soft cover form (I’ll even autograph a copy if asked). But I have to admit I’d have thought I’d make at least one sale from it off this blog, which has never happened. I have made a sale because of my Mitch’s Blog, which is my business blog, but not this one. And I’ve had two different squeeze pages for this book, but neither has generated all that much action ever, which is why it’s a muted looking page integrated into my business website format.

Below that is my CD series Keys To Leadership, and I’ve driven 7 people from this blog to check it out, even though it got some nice comments here. Seems people were more interested in what I had to say on the blog, which was a pretty funny story, than actually deciding it was worth taking the time to go see what the CDs were all about. You know, it makes me wonder just how many people actually even use the Listen button at the top of each blog post instead of having to read some of my longer posts. Okay, that was a sidebar thing; don’t answer it. Once again, it had one of those fancy squeeze pages that I later decided didn’t work, and integrated it back into my business website.

The last two products I haven’t really talked about here, but I will now. One is called the Mitchell Manager Training Program, and is a training program for new managers who want to gain some skills in things managers or supervisors need to know, but don’t have time for a lot of deep theory. It also has a portion that talks about stress and time management, as well as a brief lesson on budgeting. Sure, it’s still around 150 pages long, but I wrote it to be fairly easy to understand. Two weeks ago I made my first online sale, as it was only maybe 4 months ago I turned it into a digital product and began marketing it in that fashion. This one has never had a squeeze page; I’ve always marketed it basically through my business website. I haven’t put it on this blog because, frankly, I figured I’d be wasting my time. After all, it hasn’t lit a spark for any of my other products.

And finally, there’s my Mitchell Employee Evaluation Module, which has always been on its own squeeze page, though I’ve thought about pulling it back within the business site. It’s about 27 pages worth of information and sheets that will help managers evaluate their employees, as well as set up criteria to use in evaluating new employees. Once again, I’ve only made one digital sale of this product, and the buyer seemed to be happy with it. I knew this one would have no interest whatsoever on this site, which is why I haven’t marketed it here before now.

So, there’s six information products that I’ve created, and how are the sales? Lousy. How is my marketing? Obviously lousy. See, a big part of the piece says to try to find out what someone is interested in, then create something towards that interest. The other part of it is that, if you’re not interested in that, how the heck can you write about it? Some of these gurus aren’t interested and don’t care about stuff. They pay someone else to write it, someone else to help market it, and collect the profits. It works best when they’re already big names in selling something else; I doubt most of us could get away with that.

And why would we want to? What could be more dishonest than that? Matt Cutts was talking about that once with a website that advertised medical services that someone needed for their mother, but when asked for more information they couldn’t give it because the person knew nothing about the procedure; they had paid someone else to write it for them so they could put their name on it. How irritated would you be about something like that?

In any case, this post has a twofold purpose. One, to highlight all of the products I’ve created thus far; more are coming as I move along. And two, to show you that even creating your own products doesn’t guarantee success or interest. This doesn’t mean don’t create new things; it just means to temper your thoughts on how successful it might be once you put it out there.

Once again, there are no get rich quick schemes.

Ultra Diamonds