566 – Develop new products quickly: Tom talks Ask Tom A Product Development Question

Episode 566 – Ask Tom A Product Development Question
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode five hundred and sixty six of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about product development questions that I get all the time, so this will be some good insights on how you can develop products quickly. And I hope you didn't miss episode five. Sixty five, that was computer shortcuts. I give you a method and a bunch of ones that I use so that from 30 days from now or when you when you tackle what I teach on that episode, you will be lightning fast on your computer compared to where you are now, and that'll save you hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours and millions of keystrokes on into the future. So check that out. Episode five sixty five And of course, when you want to get to a back episode, you go screwthecommute.com, slash, and then the episode number 565.

[00:01:19] All right, let's get into a couple of questions here. Let's see, Tom, what's the best kind of product to develop? In my not so humble opinion, absolutely, it's digital products. They're extremely low cost or even free to develop. There's no shipping hassles. You get as much money or more for the product. Because of the topic of immediate gratification, people can get them instantly so you can get sales in the middle of the night.

[00:01:55] And they're way easier to develop. So formatting of let's say an e-book is way easier than formatting for a printed book, and you can have clickable links in them. You can have affiliate links in them too, but you have to be careful with them because you won't get accepted into Amazon Kindle with crazy looking affiliate links, and we have ways around that in my Kindle master class. So digital is the way to go for the least risk and the highest return. And it's like ninety seven percent profit, it's just a little credit card fees or PayPal kind of fees. So absolutely, I would say the best is digital. Now I love people that develop products that I use, all the gadgets I'm talking to the microphones, the engineers that create all kinds of things in my car. And yeah, I love those people. But if I was advising them in today's atmosphere, how to make money online. Or how to make money anyway, you want its digital products because. Of all the things I just said. Everything else is tiny profit margins, enormous development, it restaurant stuff is product loss and potential people, you know, choke on your thing, you know, so. So digital is the way to go, folks. All right, let's see. Tom, I want to do an online course, do you have any tips? Well, one of the main tips that I have on online courses is to make it multimedia.

[00:03:40] And that's just a fancy way of saying to put the same information in the course in three different formats video, audio and text. So let's say you decide I'm going to do a video course on X, Y and Z, whatever it is. Well, you take the audit, you create the video. Sure, create your script. Shoot the video. Put the pictures in it, everything you're going to do. But then you take you either take the audio track off the video to give them a download, an MP3 download they can put on their phone, take with them and listen, which makes them want to watch the video more. Because they can, they can do the audio on the road. They have to sit down and stop to watch the video. And some people are visual learners, some people are auditory learners. So you can either just take the audio track, which is the easiest, or you can record an audio that covers roughly the same material, but puts in a little extra detail because people can't see the visuals. And then either one of those, the video, audio file or the audio off the video or the separate audio that you recorded can be transcribed with these transcribed services. Now they're back in 10 minutes for five dollars per recorded hour, and I I never paid less than 30 overseas and 60 in the United States, and they're 90 to 95 percent accurate.

[00:05:23] And even the ones I got with a real person doing them. I still had the triple check them because there's always mistakes and words that they didn't understand and so forth, so online courses, you'll get less refunds because people will use the course because there's different learning styles and people. Some people will want to read and dig into the transcript, and some people will want to go back to the audio and listen to it while they're on the road, you know, driving somewhere or working it out. So I think that's a good tip for you to just keep in mind if you're doing an online course, I'm going to, I think one of the other questions I have a little later addresses online courses so, so hang in there and listen for that answer. And before I get into the next question, I want to remind you about my program to help persons with disabilities so that they can get hired or start their own business in the internet and digital marketing world. We have a Go Fund Me campaign set up to help them. They're making great progress in the course and it's amazing they're shooting videos. These people are shooting videos and two of them are blind. It's just very inspiring. So if you can help out with that, we'd love it.

[00:06:44] It's at IMTCVA.org/disabilities and that will be in the show notes. You can go over to the Go Fund Me account and see their videos and and anything you throw in is great, highly appreciated. And hey, if you're really flush with cash, you could help out a person, a sponsor or a person yourself. What a great thing to do and be proud of helping someone change their lives for the better. Ok, so let's see next question. Tom, whatever happened to your e-book, click? Well, for those of you that don't know or new listeners, click the ultimate guide to electronic marketing for speakers dominated the professional speaking industry with four versions over 10 years, and the last version was a thousand and forty two pages. All right, so it got so hard to edit it that I'd edit one part, and by the time I got done, another part would go obsolete. And that's because of the rapid changes in the internet. Now my public speaking stuff, some of the stuff I've been teaching and doing on stage myself, I've used for almost 30 years. So it's a different kind of thing that's called an evergreen product. But there is still is changes in the I know my my old waking up book still has overhead projectors in it. All right. So, so yeah. So some things change, but not like internet stuff. So it's changing all the time.

[00:08:16] And also, people's short attention spans that are prevalent nowadays, it was kind of overwhelming for the reader. So what I do. I started to break it down into individual books on specific topics, and that's what I've been doing ever since, and I haven't gotten around to it yet. But Amazon loves in their Kindle e-book program series of books that one leads to the next. So you can make a bunch of relatively small ones, but each one leads to another one, or you can sell the bundle as a whole series. And so that has that works very well. Like I said, I haven't done it myself yet, but my students have, and I've seen a lot of other good Kindle sellers do that, do that. So you've got to break your stuff down into reasonably sized chunks nowadays, and they're way faster to edit and more easily digestible for the reader. All right. Tom, do you have a product development method? Well, I have several. But first, I get my idea. You got to think about where are you going to get your ideas for products? Well, I get mine in two to mostly two sources. One is my list of email. Subscribers are asking me questions all the time. So that's a that's a good source. If a bunch of people are asking the same question, you know, a bunch of others have that question and you create a product about it.

[00:09:48] And then two. I'm constantly studying internet trends and changes that I know from experience people need to know about, but they probably don't because they're not a fanatic like me that works on this stuff day and night say. Now, if I'm creating a product from scratch, here's how I do it. Well, in the old days, I used to use a mini cassette player and had a recorder and had it with me all the time. And then I went to a digital recorder, which I still think they're available pretty cheap, but nowadays I just use my cell phone because it's got a recorder app on it. And what I do is once I get the topic in my mind, I go around and do my just normal work and driving to the grocery store or whatever, and I'm brewing on this product. In other words, I'm thinking about it and I'm thinking about things that I have done with regard to the topic and stories that I can tell of myself or my mentees of what they did with the topic. And I'm not dictating into my cell phone like a lawyer would dictate a contract or something. I'm just reminding myself because here's the thing, folks. If you don't capture the idea instantly, it's probably going to be lost for a long time, I know I always say I could have the best idea I ever had my entire life.

[00:11:20] In my car, pulling up my driveway by the time I opened the front door, I forgot. Right. So I mean, seriously, I mean, I keep the cell phone near my bed if I'm doing it. And you know, I might wake up in the middle of the night and make a quick audio note because I know I'll never remember in the morning, but I was thinking about. So I just capture the idea. And then every day or so, I listen to them and start putting them into a word document. Just the the idea that so now I'm collecting all these ideas in the file and then I might sit down and research what I can find out about the topic that maybe I didn't know. This is my own professional development, which I'm adding to my own experience to make myself more valuable to you. You know, this is what I do constantly. I'm a continuous learner. Like, I think in Japan, they call it Kaizen continuous improvement. I think that's what it is. And then I when I get enough stuff in the word document, I start categorizing it. So I start, in other words, putting things together that seemed like they should go together. Well, that turns out to be my chapters. And then when the time comes, I got all this stuff. I sit down and start writing. And it's how to writing. I'm no brilliant genius on like fiction, plot development and characters and all that.

[00:12:50] No, it's just I put things in a logical order. In fact, one person said to me, Oh, you must have gotten a PhD in organizational development or product development. No, I'm just came from a small town where we had common sense. And I just put things in a logical fashion. You got to know this before you can. You got to do this and learn about this before you can do the next step. So I just put it in a logical order. And that's pretty much it, I develop a I usually nowadays go to Canva to do the book cover for free. You know, they have hundreds of book cover templates where you just change a few things and boom, you've got a beautiful book cover. And and I converted, you know, finish it off, put some advertising stuff, you can, you know, my mentor program and, you know, the documentary I'm in and all that stuff. And then I converted the Adobe PDF and start selling it. And then and then I don't do it on all of them, but I convert it to Amazon Kindle, which I have a Kindle masterclass. If anybody's interested in really knowing the details of Amazon Kindle. And then there you go and then promote it and make the money and rinse and repeat. All right. So that's the method I use if I'm starting from scratch now, if I'm starting from a private label product.

[00:14:17] Well, private label products are products that somebody else has written a book on something or done. You know, it could be an audio or video product, but mostly for me, it's an e-book product. And so. I searched for ones on my topic, I might buy one or two, and they've already laid it out for me, the book and then and there's no shame to this folks. All right, because I'm not saying you just buy the book and then put it out under your name, which you're allowed to do. In most cases, they tell you what you're allowed to do with the book you bought. You bought certain rights to this player product private label rights. Sometimes called white label. So I go through it carefully and I scratch out the things that are, I think are ridiculous. And I start popping in things that I think should go in that section from my experience. And I go through the whole book like this and then I think, oh, they didn't even put a chapter on so and so in, so I'll add a chapter on whatever I think they missed and I'll delete a chapter that I think is stupid. All right. So so I'm basically making it my own, but you know, just my time is very valuable and somebody else's thought out the basic stuff. What all should be included in a book like this, but they probably haven't done it to the level I've done it, you know, and I won't do it on something that I'm not an expert on because I don't want to, you know, dilute my brand and the saying, OK, well, I'm going to write a book on ballet.

[00:15:57] So I mean, I'm not opposed of writing a book on ballet. Like I could write a book on how to get your child interested in ballet. And then I would go interview a bunch of ballet teachers and a bunch of parents that have gotten their kids in ballet, and I could legitimately write a book. In fact, I have a method of that writing a book on things that you don't know anything about. However, if you're trying to build your own brand and your own name up to get your fees and speaking fees and consulting fees and product sales up, you want to build it up under your own name. So I can discuss that, that other method that some other time. But those are my two methods. I either brew on it on the stuff that's from scratch and then eventually put it together, or I get a private label book and some of those I've knocked out in like eight hours, you know, the whole book is done. Yes. So and I put it out to my list and a couple of thousand bucks comes in like a couple of days, so it can be very quick doing it that way.

[00:17:05] But you definitely want to make the book great and under your name if it's going out under your name. All right, here's a question I get all the time. I'm going to repeat the answer and try to hammer it into your head. How long should an e-book be? Tom How long should an e-book be? My answer is, don't worry about it. Make the book so great that people, when they get it, say, I can't believe I got this great of a book for so little money. That's the key sentence right there on all your products, folks. I can't believe I got so much value for so little money, even if the money is high. You want the value to be way higher. And what this does for you is it creates a reputation for you. And, you know, literally I get lazy, I mean, I'm the hardest worker you can ever find, right, but I get lazy and don't even write sales letters for a lot of things I do anymore because I got such a big list of people that know if my name is on it, it's going to be great. It's going to be a great value and they just buy it. And that's the reputation you want to to get that you want to drive and strive for. And you do that by not worrying about page count, and another reason page count is ridiculous in ebooks is because you can manipulate it easily by white space graphics, font size and so forth.

[00:18:36] Say so. So don't worry about that. I'll tell you in a minute. The only thing you got to worry about when you talk about page count. But make it great. Now. If it's really short. It's still fine to sell it, but here's the super key folks do not do not under any circumstances, call it a book or e-book. Call it a special report. Call it a white paper. Call it a feature article or whatever. Just don't call it a book. And here's why. Because if you if you call it a book and it's only eight pages or seven pages or something. You're going to get instantaneous bad reviews, and the whole project is over at that point. Everybody will say this is not a book, this is a piece of crap. This is not. I was expecting this. You know, they'll just go off on you. But if it's a special report or a white paper or something. Don't people don't expect it to be book length. And then you you'll get normal or good reviews, hopefully if it's good quality stuff. So quit worrying about how long in e-books. All right. Ok, next thing. Tom Do you like teachable Udemy? Or think efic for course, development? Well, I really don't like them from the standpoint of you being lazy because they make it relatively easy to put up a course.

[00:20:17] I mean, they certainly do that. What I don't like is that you can't do everything you need to do to make money with your course. I mean, there are affiliate programs have limited features and and maybe worst of all, you're surrounded by discounting to super cheap. Other courses by other people. And I'm talking like they're always putting some deal for nine dollars and ninety five cents right next to year two hundred and ninety seven or four hundred and ninety seven dollars course. All right. See, I want you and the value you bring to be the focus of attention. And I want you to get all the money. I mean, of course, still less credit card fees, but it's still 97 percent profit. And also, I've specifically heard complaints about you to me, changing the compensation system, so you, the creator, get paid less. All right. So when you add all those together, no. Now yeah, there is a small advantage that lots of people visit these sites and they may see you. But to me, the disadvantage is far, far, far outweigh the advantages. All right now, if you want, I got another really important one for you. But if you want help with all this stuff, I mean, I have the longest running, most successful, most unique mentor program ever in the field of internet and digital marketing.

[00:21:52] I also have the longest continuously running. Similar public seminar called But Camp based on boot camp, but I couldn't I couldn't just do what everybody else does. So I call it boot camp and it's been done and caught on and Typekit because I'm sitting on my rear end making all this money that it caught on. I've done them in 11 countries and and but in London, they made me call it bum camp. So, so anyway, it's amazing program. It's nobody on Earth will put their program up against mine because of all the great features of mine, which, you know, I've talked about it lots on the podcast here, but I mean, it's just you can't find and I'm not using hyperbole here, and I heard some idiot on TV say I didn't. I'm not using Hyper Bowl. There's going to a TV person. So. So it's just got amazing things. You pay an entry fee and I don't get big money unless you make money. So I get I tie myself to your success and there's just all kinds of pluses to it. You can check it out at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and if you're interested at all, you can get in touch with me and. And no pressure we discuss if it makes sense for you. Ok, let's get to the last question. Tom, do you like audio products? Wow, I've heard.

[00:23:25] I mean, this is an audio podcast. And first of all, I've always been a big fan of audio products I have been. Are doing them for over. Thirty years, I've been editing them myself for twenty two years now. One of the reasons I like him, it's the only medium where you can be entertained or learn something while doing something else. This virtually guarantees people will consume your product, and I emphasize the word consume. Because if people don't use your product, which is consume your product, they are more likely to ask for a refund and way less likely to ever buy anything from you again. Now, it's fairly easy to create and edit audio products. You just want to make sure you have quality audio. I mean, you will be compared when they're listening to high end audio like people here on Audible and when they've purchased audio books from the bookstore. And so it needs to be good. You need a decent microphone and a good recording environment, which I've covered ad nauseam in my series on getting my first audio book on Audible Audible. So I'm going to give you the numbers of the episodes that cover that. And of course, they'll be in the show notes. So Episode three oh four. How to create great audio. Episode five thirty five, five, thirty six and five thirty seven was my series on me, getting my first book on Audible and all the details of it, which would include your recording environment and all that stuff.

[00:25:13] And if you're really serious about it, I did an episode on promoting your audio book that was five forty three, so we had three oh four five thirty five five thirty six five thirty seven five forty three. And with you listen and implement all that stuff, you'll be cranking out great audio and people will be consuming it because they can do it while they're doing something else. They can be jogging or driving or whatever, and they can be listening to you and making you the celebrity, making you the expert and the likelihood that you'll get hired for bigger stuff like speaking engagements. Consulting coaching is much greater, and you can just crank this stuff out for very, very low investment. A decent microphone, you can start at sixty seven dollars a USB microphone. I'm not going to get into this because I want you to listen to those episodes. I go into great detail and all that stuff.

[00:26:14] All right. So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program. It's the longest running, most successful, most unique ever in this field at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com. And also check out the the program to help those persons with disabilities. And I think it's something you can really be proud to support. I know that I am. All right. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.