Passive Income from Booklets
and Special Reports
"Booklets." "Special reports."
These words sound pretty insignificant, don't
they? But the results you achieve with these
little collections of useful information can
be anything but small
and limited.
They don't cost much energy or money to produce,
but booklets and special reports can bring
you the following kinds of results:
* A big burst of extra money, or a steady
stream of revenue for years, as you prefer
- some items have earned as much as half a
million to a million dollars for their authors!
* A valuable list of people interested in
your topic, to rent out or use yourself for
sales of more expensive products and services
* Possibilities for translations and bulk
sales - i.e., greater exposure and income
* Content that you can resell in other formats,
such as audio or video tapes, articles, books,
subscription Web sites
* An inexpensive means of testing the waters
for bigger products
* A method of making an end run around the
editorial gatekeepers at magazines and book
publishers
* An easy, inexpensive entry into the highly
profitable information business
* Additional opportunities such as speaking
engagements, consulting, audiotape possibilities,
magazine articles, book contracts and business
partnerships.
Compared with some other vehicles for selling
information, booklets and special reports
have these advantages:
* So long as you have a computer and either
a high-end word- processing program or a desktop
design program, you don't need additional
equipment to create these products.
* Most people will not need to hire a producer
or designer in order to create a salable product.
* You don't need the space or advance investment
to stock inventory, but can instead create
booklets and special reports on demand, as
people send in money. Hence you can get started
with an outlay of less than $10. Truly!
* You can change or update the contents of
your booklets and special reports immediately,
as circumstances warrant. This enables you
to scoop monthly magazines and books, which
have lead times of three months to one year.
* Although your information must be up-to-date,
useful and valid, it needn't offer content
that no one else has. Buyers pay for booklets
and special reports primarily to have information
in a handy, easily digestible form.
* You don't need high-level communication
skills to produce salable booklets, although
I do recommend that you take steps to ensure
proper spelling, punctuation and grammar.
* Unlike newsletters, you don't commit yourself
to future issues on into the future.
* You don't need to convince editors that
you and your idea merit space in their publishing
program. Buyers deal with you directly.
* Your profit margin is high - a booklet
selling for $5.00 might cost you $.10 to produce,
while a special report selling for $95 might
cost nothing other than the labor that went
into it.
To be fair, let me list some disadvantages
of booklets and special reports, compared
with other information products:
* They don't last anywhere as long as books,
audios or videos and don't look impressive
on a buyer's bookshelf.
* They can't contain as much of your personality
as an audiotape or video.
* As one-shots, they have less impact over
time with each buyer than a newsletter.
* Since they're self-produced, they don't
serve as much of a credential, although they
can do an excellent job of proving that you
know your stuff.
* They don't make it into public libraries
very often, compared to information in other
formats.
* Since they need to be practical and snappy,
they can't provide an outlet for the full
range of your creative talents.
All in all, however, booklets and special
reports are easy to write and can easily generate
a stream of extra revenue not requiring your
time and attention once everything's set up.
This passive income can become plentiful indeed!
The above is excerpted from "Profiting
from Booklets and Special Reports" by
Marcia Yudkin, available from http://www.yudkin.com/bookletsreports.htm
. Marcia Yudkin marcia@yudkin.com is the author
of 11 books, including Persuading on Paper
and Poor Richard's Web Site Marketing Makeover.
Copyright (c) 2003.
|
