3 Mistakes That Kill Product Sales (Even Before You Start Selling!)

by Yaro Starak, creator of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

How To Create A Product That Sells Part Three

This is the third part in the series on product creation. You can read the previous parts here:

• Part 1: How To Create A Product That Sells
• Part 2: 3 Ways To Make $100,000 Online Selling Your Own Product

This article will discuss the common mistakes that are made with product creation.

If you have been following along, you would have been able to realize the best way to look at your product is not as a product but as a solution. You also would not be “product focused” but instead focused on “who” you are providing a solution for.

You could also be rest assured that your product will have a hungry audience because you have chosen a niche from the big three and drilled down deeper into a smaller and tighter focused niche. If you have done all that you can get started creating the product with this product creation outline .

Despite all that groundwork, I will recap the most common mistakes that product creators make:

• You create your product first, and then try to figure out how to sell it later.
• Creating a Title for your product that is Too Cute or Clever.
• You think the most important part of your product is the product.

Now I use the term “product” and that can mean ebook, video course, audio course, etc. As you will notice from How To Make 100K From Selling Your Own Product, it can really be anything. For simplicity, I think most people’s first product will be an ebook, so let’s talk in the context of ebooks.

Mistake #1: Create First And Sell Later

If you have done your market research and niche identification you should know your market. You should know the places on the internet where they hang out. You should have an idea of how to reach them.

Also, as you are writing or before you start writing, you should be brainstorming ideas about how you are going to get your book in front of people.

If you have the money you could do PPC, banner ads or media buys. If you have the time you could do SEO, blog commenting, forum participation, article directory submissions and yahoo answers. There are endless possibilities.

Just be aware of them and have your battleplan ready to go, so there is no lag time between finishing the product and waiting for the cash register to start ringing.

Mistake #2: Creating A Title For Your Ebook That Is Too Cute Or Clever

Remember from the copywriting series that curiosity is the lowest form of headline. The same applies to naming your book.

What’s In A Name?

Did you know the wildly famous Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus book that is basically a household name now was originally released under a different name? Under the original name it totally bombed! Same book, same content, new name and suddenly it exploded.

What about this title by Internet marketer Marie Forleo “Make Every Man Want You (Or Make Yours Want You More): How To Be So Damn Irresistible You’ll Barely Keep From Dating Yourself!” – Descriptive and catchy. What women wouldn’t want to buy this book?

Once again we go to the faithful Clickbank marketplace. Clickbank is great for market research. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel, just learn from those that are successful. Let’s look at the best selling titles of books in heath and fitness:

• The Diet Solution Program
• The Truth About Six-Pack Abs
• Fat burning furnace
• Burn the fat

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what the book is about and that’s a good thing. You want to grab your reader’s attention and make sure they know this is the solution they have been looking for.

Mistake #3: You Think The Most Important Part Of Your Product Is The Product.

Now please remember I never recommend making bad or poor products. There is no excuse to ever make a bad product. But once your product is good enough, if you have the decision between spending more time on your product and more time on your marketing, it should be a no-brainer on what is more important.

If you have no marketing, then you have no sales.

Even the best product in the world can’t sell itself.

Did you know that pharmaceutical companies regularly spend more money on marketing than they do on research and product development?

That’s because they know that if they can’t get their product into the hands of their customers with their marketing, their business is dead.

Remember what famous marketer (and very rich businessman) Dan Kennedy said:

“Spend 10% of your time on product creation and 90% on marketing”.

And it’s the same for you and your ebook business.

The 2 Most Important Skills You Need Online To Make Money

It has been said that the two most important skills an online entrepreneur can learn are copywriting and how to test properly. These two skills will carry you a long way to reaching more people, helping more people, selling more stuff and making you more money.

You don’t need to become a world class copywriter. Just look at copywriting as learning how to communicate more effectively. A better way to get your message across to your prospect. The better you can communicate what you have and how it can change their lives, the more likely they are to pay attention to what you have to say and buy your products.

You can apply your copywriting skills to all facets of your business. One massively underutilized aspect of copywriting is email copywriting (here is an example of How NOT To Do Email Marketing).

This is one of my favorite ways to build a relationship with prospects, deliver them awesome value and turn visitors into friends and then into customers. If you are serious about making real money online, click here to learn more about how to properly do email marketing.

And don’t forget to test, test and test. Never assume you know what works. For a recap on testing click here and for the best testing methods click here.

To wrap up the series on creating and selling your own product online we will talk briefly about web design (including the best WordPress theme for making money) and the seven money making pages you need to have on your website to sell products.

Leevi Romanik

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