A Step-by-Step Guide to Launch Products Online

By Deepak Kanakaraju in Digital Marketing — Jan 17, 2020

This blog post can empower you to change your life as you always wanted. But, you need to follow it. You shouldn’t stop after you completed the post. You should continue. You should take action. If you take action, I’m confident that you’ll succeed. Because this is not a theory post. I’ve written the entire book based on my experience of creating and launching info products and generating over ₹3 crores in revenue in the last three years.

You want to earn more. Probably you are in a job or doing something else, and you’re looking for a proven method to earn an additional income. There are lots of ways you can earn additional income. If you’re blogging, you could run contextual ads like Adsense, or you could promote affiliate products and earn a commission when someone purchases a product through your affiliate link. You may not make a lot through the first one, but you can definitely make a living with the second one.

And btw, if you aren’t blogging, you should start now. You’re missing a tremendous opportunity there. You can consult. You can help others solving their problem and getting paid for it. You can sell your services or skills on platforms like Fiverr and others. You can do a lot. The problem with most of the methods is, you need to invest a constant and regular time in it. You’ve to spend an hour or two or more regularly so that your earnings aren’t affected. But, you don’t want to do it.

It’s no difference compared to the job or other stuff you are doing where your earning is tied to the hours you spend. You want to earn an additional income so that you can be free. So that you are no longer bound by your 9 to 5 job, and you can travel to places or spend those hours on something else. What you need is a proven method that could help you earn a constant and steady stream of income that’s is not tied up to the hours you work. That’s the only way you can escape the rat race you are running and finally achieve the real freedom. And that’s where info products come into the picture.

Listen, I’ve been there and felt the same. Like you, I have also had my earnings tied to the hours I work, and it was suffocating me. I wanted to be free. I’ve tried all the possible earning methods out there. But, as I mentioned earlier, all of them had the same “hours-earnings” connection. If I stopped doing things, my earnings would fall. Earning a little extra was nice. But it also required me to spend an hour or two extra. I wanted to escape from it. That’s when I found the info products option. And three years later here I am.

I have quit my job. My earnings are no longer connected to the hours I work, and it doesn’t fall if I stop working for a day or two. I’m earning more than I could have made from my 9 to 5 job. I am living my life as I always wanted to. And you can too. That’s what this book is all about. In the following pages, I am walking you through the exact steps I took to create and launch my first and most recent info product. Let me repeat it.

All you need to is read it, follow it, create your info product, launch it, and change your life. That being said, let’s get to the first chapter.

Welcome To The World of Information Products

First, you need to understand what’s an info product and why it’s the best option to achieve freedom from the 9 to 5 life. An information product is a product of any form that helps others [the target audience] to learn something new or solve their problem. It could be a book like “Think and Grow Rich” or “How To Win Friends & Influence People” or… It could be video training like “Shilpa’s Yoga” or it could be a webinar or it could be an online class or coaching program.

If you notice, regardless of the format, all the info products mentioned all do one thing. They help their consumer to get better. They help them to improve their financial situation or social status or help them to be healthier and fitter or in short, improve their life. That’s what information products do.

Why Information Products?

Because information is the most valuable commodity in the 21st century. People want to learn. We want to learn how to improve our lives. We want to learn how to solve our problem quickly and easily. We want to learn a new hobby or skill so that we can impress the others. It’s how we are wired. We continuously seek information to fulfil those desires that need learning. And we are willing to pay if we come across a course or book or program that can help us to achieve our goal.

People are looking for two things. They want to learn. And they want to do it by following a system or program. That’s why the book Think and Grow Rich has been selling hot for 80 years. That’s why the book How To Win Friends is still selling. This is not going to change. Because we cannot stop our desire to get better.

Peter Drucker once said, “The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom.” It’s happening now. The online courses and self-learning options are growing and becoming the new standard. And the best thing about info products is, you can create one in almost any niche or topic. You can create an info product on drawing, sewing, cooking, dance, music, hobbies, pet training, gardening, yoga, exercise, vision improvement, weight loss, building abs, using Evernote or photoshop.

It’s just a few I could write on the flow. But, the real possibilities are infinite. It’s not that it works only in few niches and topics. If you don’t believe, go to Amazon and check.

Want to learn Piano, you got a book for it.
Want to learn to play Guitar. You got a book for it.
How to cook? A book for it.
How to eat? We got a book for it.

Name anything you want to learn. You can find a book or a video course or both to do so. And that’s the power and potential of info products. Another best thing about info product is – you don’t have to put regular hours to earn from it.

You write the book. Get the cover designed by someone. Convert it into an ebook. You can start selling. And you can sell it for a long time without needing to update it again and again and you’ll never run out of stock.

Think about “Think and Grow Rich” book. It wasn’t much updated since its first edition, and it still makes money for its creator. Even after 80 years. That’s the solution you have been waiting. Your chance to work once and earn from it again and again for a long time. And this won’t happen with anything else. Not with running ads or selling your services on Fiverr or anything else.

Only creating and launching info product can make it possible. Now, let’s quickly dive into the different types of info products you can create.

1. e-books:

The first on info products ladder is the ebooks. You create a short and focused ebook that solves one problem people want to get rid off and will be willing to pay; you are good to go. It is usually priced low and it is easy to create. Because you don’t need expensive tools or softwares or additional skills to create it.

2. Checklists and Templates:

People want to do things quicker and better. And checklists help them to do so. They help people to follow the set of tasks in orderly manner and not to miss anything. And templates also help them to finish things quicker. With an easy to follow steps and structure, templates help.

There is a good demand for them. If you are good at breaking down complex process into easy to follow simple steps, you can create such checklists and templates. These products are also low priced, and the creator makes revenue from the large volume of sales he gets.

3. PLR Products:

There is a lot of demand for content and information people can buy and use it on their websites or products. Not everyone can write or spend hours on researching and creating content for their websites [affiliate sites or other money making sites]. These people prefer to buy the public license rights [PLR] products, modify them a bit and use it on their websites. Again these are low priced products, and revenue depends on the large volume of sales.

4. Audio Courses:

Though these are not a popular choice, some people prefer to listen than read. You can expand your ebook into an audio course and increase the price of the combo.

5. Webinars:

These are a recent entrant into the info product list and works pretty well. You run a webinar live or recorded, provide a solution to the audience’s problem or help them to do something quicker and easier and answer their questions at the end of the webinar. Baam. It works well because people can learn something new in a short time and they can also get their questions answered at the end.

The webinars can be priced a little more than the books but less than the full-length courses. If you identify the right problem your market wants to be solved, you could make good revenue from the webinars. And you can run them again and again without presenting them actually.

6. Online Courses:

You know about this already. This is how I make my earnings. I help people learn the Digital Marketing skills without needing to spend a fortune that would cost them in an offline training center or something, and people love it. They can learn from anywhere and anytime they wish. Also, the buyers could access the course whenever they want as they get lifetime access to it and they also get the future updates free.

All of these benefits together make online learning an attractive solution for the consumer and a potential revenue maker for the creators. These are the top of the info products.

7. Events, Masterminds, Workshops, and Retreats:

These are all advanced info products you can do once you’ve established yourself. These are offline events that are priced high and are also sold in the form of recordings post conclusion. And that’s it. You’ve learned what info products are and why are they a good option to achieve real freedom. And the different types of info products.

How To Choose The Right Product Idea & Validate It

It’s time to brainstorm and come up with the right idea for your info product and validate it. First, I want you to remember one thing. You can or will never come up with the perfect idea for a product. So don’t get stuck into the perfection web. You should focus on finding a good enough idea that you can turn it to a product and sell it to the audience.

I am mentioning this because even the sharpest product creators and smartest marketers have been a victim of the perfection syndrome.

1. Picking The Right Idea

Now, what is a good enough idea? It is something that fulfils three conditions.

It solves a problem that your audience wants to be resolved.
It is something fit for your audience, and they will be glad to pay.
It makes the audience a better version of themselves.

Let me run you through some of my products and how they fit these three conditions.

The first product I created is Google Adwords Mastery. People who want to become digital marketers wanted to learn Google Adwords. Though there were tons of materials out there that could teach them how to become an Adwords expert, they preferred to learn from someone who has actually worked with Adwords and someone they can connect with. And they were willing to pay for it as long as the price is right.

The course made them better in Adwords than they were before and helped them to get confidence and career growth. See, it fits right into the three conditions mentioned earlier. Let’s go through one more product.

The most popular and successful one I have created is 100 Day Blogging Course. Most people knew the power of blogging and wanted to start a blog. Though they wanted to start a blog, they didn’t because of the reasons like lack of time, skills, not knowing what to write, how to promote, etc., and my product focused on all those issues and promised them that they could create a blog if they follow my step-by-step process for 100 days for which they were happy to pay.

The course converted the audience from someone who wants to blog to someone who has a blog, and they made a better version of themselves. I know these examples are from digital marketing niche. But, what about other niches? Let’s take a different idea – learn to draw animal pictures in two weeks. Assume it’s your idea. Some kids want to learn drawing, and they will be interested in this. Their parents know about their kid’s wishes. But they are struggling to find a place where they can take their kids to learn. It’s going to cost them time and effort. If they can see a program that could teach their kids to draw pictures from their home without needing to commute or spend time somewhere else, it’s a win for them.

If the kid is even able to draw a couple of animals, she/he is excited and happy about it. They’ll be showcasing their skills to others feeling better than before.

Fits, right?

That’s what you have to do. Come up with an idea.

That solves a problem your audience want to solve
That fits their need, and they will pay for it.
That transform them into a better version of themselves.

2. Validating The Idea

You’ve picked the idea. And the idea passes the three rule test. You think it’s a great idea and wants to develop the concept into a product. Not so fast. I’ve seen people who thought they have a great idea, spent hours to create a product and when launched the product, they couldn’t get sales. It was like no one was interested in the product. No one wanted to buy the product.

Can you imagine the heartbreak they had? And can you imagine yourself in such a situation? Do you want that to happen to you? I guess not. And I don’t want that to happen to you. That’s why we are going to validate the idea before you start working on it. You want to find out whether people are interested in the product idea or not before you create it.

So, how to validate the product idea? If you have a blog, you can write a post around the idea and ask whether the readers think it’s a good idea or is the idea something that can help them. Based on the feedback, you can take a decision. If you have a Facebook page or group, you can ask questions like “what’s your biggest problem with [idea]?” Or “if someone creates a product about [idea] do you think it could work? If yes, what would you expect from it?” The answers could help you decide whether the idea is going to work or not.

If you have a list, you can email the idea to the list and ask their feedback. If you don’t have a blog or a Facebook page or a Facebook group or an email list, I strongly recommend you to build one of them. You need to have a platform where you can test whether your idea is good or not. You can run a Facebook ad targeting your audience. For example, you can run an ad – do you want you [or your kid] to learn how to draw animal pictures in 2 weeks? You can get responses either yes or no that could help you decide.

You can ask similar questions on related Facebook groups or reddit. However you do, just make sure you have a decent amount of positive responses supporting your idea before you start working on them. I know I didn’t talk about knowing things or being passionate about the subject in the three rules approach.

The reason is simple. When you start picking your first idea, you’ll be focusing on something you are good at, something you know a bit more than the rest and can help them with it. That’s why I didn’t address it. But it doesn’t always have to be true. If you are someone who can understand difficult concepts and break them into simple and easy to understand formats, you’ve got the perfect skills to become an info product creator. You can take any topic or subject and convert it into the easy to understand format and sell it. Or you can even create a product about how to break complex concepts into easy to understand format. See, there is another product idea.

How To Position & Price Your Product

The success of your product depends on two things: how you are positioning it and the price of the product. If you don’t get them right, you are heading to failure.

1. Position Your Product

Here’s something you need to remember. People don’t buy products. They buy a better version of themselves. Let me elaborate it a bit.

People buy products hoping that the product will make them better. That’ll

Improve their lifestyle
Reduce their problems
Make them smarter and efficient.
Make them healthier and fitter.

They aren’t buying the product for the solution it offers or the product it solves. They are buying it for how the solution can change their life. We already saw it in the previous chapter where I run a couple of my products through the “three rules” method.

People bought Adwords Mastery or 100 Day Blogging Course to become a better digital marketer than they are. They didn’t just want to learn Adwords or Blogging. They want a better version of themselves. And it applies to all info products.

The products that fulfil this criterion become successful and those products that don’t, fail. But how can create a product that can make someone better and transform their lives?

That’s where the positioning comes into the picture.

First, you need to decide on two things:

Who is the product is for? Who is your target audience?
What’s the problem it solves? How it helps your audience to become a better version of themselves?

Most product creators and products fail on the first criteria. Most of them aim at creating something that appeals to everyone out there. And unfortunately, that doesn’t work. A product targeted at everybody is targeted at nobody. None of the audience would feel that the product is for them. They won’t feel it solves their problem, and it’s going to change their life. And when they don’t feel so, they don’t consider buying it. Thus, the product fails. But a product created with a target audience in mind and focusing on solving a problem always wins. It always sells.

Consider my FB Ads Mastery program. My target audience was digital marketers, or those want to become digital marketers who want to learn and master FB Ads. The course was focused on helping them learn Facebook ads based on my experience in creating and running Facebook ads campaigns.

The transformation that happened is people who weren’t knowing how to Facebook ads can run Facebook ads for them or their business after completing the course.

I had my target audience defined.
The problem I’m solving is identified, and
The program helped the audience to become a better version of themselves.

And you know what, the course worked, and I made a good revenue from it. That’s what you need to do. You need to position your product. You need to define who’s it for and what it solves. Unless you do that, you aren’t going to create a connection between the audience and your product, and when such a relationship doesn’t happen, no sale happens.

2. Price Your Product

The success of your product lies in the price of it. It is probably the most important yet the most challenging task in the entire product creation and launch process. It’s difficult because there are no hard rules or guides. But I’ll try to decode it as much as possible and help you price your product correctly.

Your pricing of the product depends on 4 elements:

How much can your audience afford?
How painful is the problem your product solves or how serious your audience wants a solution to the problem?
What’s the median of the other products available in your niche solving similar problems?
Your brand power.

Let me explain each one.

How much can you audience afford?

It’s almost the one that decides how much you can price your product. If your audience is beginners, not earning much or who don’t earn at all, you cannot expect to price a product 4999 and sell it to them. Even if your product is the best out there, it’s not going to work. You need to price it around 499 or at the max 1999 to make sure you sell some of them. If you notice, most of beginners guides or ebooks or courses are priced on this sweet spot.

If your audience is intermediate users, who are in a job and earn and your product can transform their lives, then you can price it a little higher. If you noticed the courses focusing on freelancing, affiliate marketing, healthy living, etc are priced around 4999 brackets to ensure, it works. If your audience is advanced users, who are a bit of settled in their job and lives, want to take it to the next level or so, then you can price it on the top range. 11999+. The awareness level of your audience also plays a vital role in pricing the product.

If they are aware of their problem, the solution your product offers and you, then you could price the product high and get away with it. For example, most of my products are priced around 1999 to 4999 because of my target audience purchase ability and awareness level, and it works for me.

Pardeep sells his products at higher prices, and it works for him because of his delivery model and audience’s awareness level. Gopal sells his product at a little higher prices because he is targeting entrepreneurs who want to increase their revenue potential. They can afford and they understand the worthiness of the solution. How painful is the problem you solve or how serious your audience wants a solution to the problem?

The second deciding factor is the degree of the problem.

If your product solves a serious problem your audience wants a solution badly, then you can price your product a bit higher and sell it. For example, Pardeep sells his content writing pro course at 10K because he is teaching people how to earn through content writing and he is even providing them paid work if they are selected. People buy it because they want to make a steady income from content writing and the guarantee makes it a perfect product for them. They aren’t worried about the cost.

But, if your product is not providing such transformational guarantees and is not solving any severe problem your audience want to get rid off, then you have to price it conservatively.

What’s the median price of the products in your niche?

People measure the prices comparatively. If most of the products in your niche are priced around 1000, and you are pricing your product 2000 or more, then you got to convince them that your product is way better than the rest with proofs and testimonials. Otherwise, it won’t work. But if the average price is around 1000 and you are pricing your product 1299, then you need to position it as the latest and the most effective method out there. You can make it work with a little bit of convincing copy support.

Your brand power

You would have seen it very often. A similar product of similar qualities are priced differently, and still, people choose the one with a higher price because it’s from a known brand. For example, take the ice cream sold on the local shop and somewhere like Ibaco. Though the product is different in a few ways, the higher price at Ibaco can be attributed to its brand.

A coffee from a local vendor, at cafe coffee day, and at Starbucks are different. And you know it’s because of their brand power. People are willing to pay a premium price for almost similar products or services if a favorite brand sells it. So if you are a favorite brand in your niche, you could price your products higher than the rest and still make sales. If not, do it conservatively.

Well, that’s it all about pricing.

How To Plan & Produce Your Info Product

It’s time to create the product. But you need to complete one more step before doing it.

You got to plan the product.

What’s going to be the format?
How long it’s going to be?
What additional materials are you planning?
The product creation timeline.

You’ve to plan them everything before you start the creation process. And you got to stick to the plan no matter what. Otherwise, once you start creating the product, life gets in the way. You get sick. Or you get busy with the work. Or something happens in the family.

Or even worse you lost the motivation to work on the chapters or videos. Or you are stuck with the writer’s or creator’s block. Too much happens in between the time you start creating the product and finishing it. That’s why you need to have a plan and work in chunks. Let’s go through each aspect of the plan.

1. What’s going to be the format?

This one is going to be easy. Because you had decided it when you started this ebook. But, it could have changed based on your idea, audience problem and price point. If you want to revisit the choice, do it now and decide what’s going to be the format? Is it going to be a short ebook or a full ebook or webinar or an online course? Decide it now.

2. How long it’s going to be?

It’s one of the critical element you need to plan before creating the course. You don’t want to create an ebook of 1000 pages or a video course with 50 videos running an hour each. No one will read it or watch the videos. You want to focus on the critical information you need to present to solve the problem you’re planning to address. Nothing less and nothing more. Maybe a bit of concept talking in the beginning and a few examples [and stories] here and there to support your message. But you wouldn’t want to overdo the length part. Remember, your audience has too many things happening in his life at the moment.

He is trying to learn and his ability to focus and spend a considerable amount of quality time is shrinking continuously. If your product is not on target, gets to the point quickly, and explains it crisply, it’s not going to produce the transformation results it wants to. Many marketers and product creators are producing products worth of 30 hours and all. No one will consume that much information, retain it and put it into use. But still, creators do it to justify their inflated prices. You wouldn’t want to do that. Try to keep the length of the course or ebook or the product to as much as it is absolutely required to solve the problem or achieve the result.

So, decide how long the program is going to be, how many chapters or videos or modules. It’ll also help you to plan the content creation part. It’ll help you to spread across the creation process over a week or certain period to avoid burning down, etc.

3. What additional materials are you planning?

Are you planning to give some worksheets or cheat sheets or checklists or templates to support the users of your product? Are you going to provide lesson notes or summaries or presentation decks to them? While all of them will be good for your product, will increase the perceived value of the product and help you sell better, each one is an additional task.

Each one is an extra piece of content to produce, and it’s going to take some time. You need to factor them accordingly in the content creation calendar. So that you don’t delay the production deadline because of a few additional pieces of stuff, you thought along the way.

4. The product creation timeline

Now we come to the essential piece of the plan. The product creation timeline. A successful product creation requires a proper schedule.

When will you complete the outline?
When will you be completing the research?
When will be finishing the notes arranging process or listing the bullet points?
When will you be finishing logically organizing the stuff?
When will you start writing the chapters or recording the videos?
What’s the timeline of that actual content creation process?
When will be you be completing the content production?
When will you be editing them for factuality and brevity?
When will the first draft be ready?
When will the final draft be ready?
When will the production completed content will be ready?

You need to list them in your creation timeline. It might sound overwhelming. Trust me. The timeline is not to overwhelm you with the size of the work you need to complete. It’s to reduce the uncertainty, help you with the clarity of what you will be working at any given point of time and also track your progress.

5. Content Creation

Here comes the action part. You’ve done all the thinking and planning. Now it’s time to put them to work and create your product. After creating 8+ info products, I’ve finally created a proven approach to the content creation process. It works very well for me. And it has reduced the stress of content creation I used to have. In fact, it has made the entire process more relaxing and enjoyable. And you can see in the content pieces I’ve produced recently.

It’s a 6 step process.

Outline.
Research
List the points.
Organize the points.
Expand the points
Edit and complete.

I’ll walk you through those steps and the entire process I follow.

6. Outline

It’s the first step. Based on the target audience and the problem I’m solving or the goal of the product, I create an outline for the entire product. It’ll be a very high view outline.

For example, for this ebook, I started with an outline like this:

Intro:

What is info product & Types of info products
Step 1: Pick & validate your idea
Step 2: Position & Price the product
Step 3: Plan & Produce the content
Step 4: Prepare for the launch
Step 5: Promote
Conclusion

As you see it’s a very high-level outline. There are no details about what goes into each of the chapters and all. That’s where you start. Create your high-level outline.

7. Research

The next is the crucial step. Following your outline, you are going to research and see what else is out there. Though much of the content creation should be based on your experience and learnings, you still need the research to understand what information is presented out there and how it is presented so that you could put yours in the best way. While doing the research, you also need to identify what other products are out there related to your idea, what’s the gap in those products, how you could leverage it to make your product better.

8. Create a list of points

For each point on the outline, you might come across several points you want to list either based on the research or based on your experience. List them all in the order it happens to you. Don’t think about the sequence or duplication or validity or anything else. Focus only on coming up as many as points as possible for each one in the outline. Keep doing it till you couldn’t find anything else to list.

9. Organize the points

It’s time to organize the list. Prune the list for invalid points. Delete the duplicate ones. And then order the points into chapters or the most logical manner where it makes sense. Go through the organized list a couple of times till you find it satisfactory.

10. Expand the points

Now, your outline for the product is complete. You have the high-level outline filled with points that are organized in the logical sequence. But, it still is an outline, waiting to be developed into a full product. Expand each point into chapters or lessons or videos or audios, following the content creation timeline. Since you’ve done most of the creative work already, you wouldn’t be feeling stressed about the content creation. You will know all you have to do is follow the outline and the points and record them as a video or write as a chapter.

While you are doing that, you’ll feel that your brain is working at a higher level and you can come up with better examples, stories, and it completely changed your content flow. You can see you are producing content that is much better than the ones you have done before.

11. Edit and Complete

Once you have expanded all the points into relevant chapters or lessons or videos, it’s time to edit them. First, you edit for the factual correctness of the material. Make sure you have mentioned the dates, years, names, creators, etc correctly. If there are any mistakes, fix them immediately. Next, you got to edit the content for the brevity. Read or listen to the content you created.

Are you repeating the same information or message multiple times without any need for them?
Are you explaining things in a roundabout way?
Are you taking time to come to the point?

If so, then edit them to make the information delivery crisp and to the point. Trust me, your audience and customers will thank you for that. When the edits are over, mark the content production as complete. And that’s it.

Congrats. You’ve created your info product.

How To Prepare To Launch Your Info Product

So, you’ve created the product. You know what’s next. Yes. You got to launch the product and let the sales avalanche start. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

You’ve created a product. But, no one else knows about it. No one else knows what the product is, what the problem it solves, and how the product could change their lives. You need to let the people know about it. You need to create an expectation for the product.

You need to generate interest towards buying the product. So that when the product is launched people will be ready to buy it. That’s why you need a launch sequence or launch plan. A perfect launch plan generates enough interest and awareness about the product to make it a success.

There are 5 parts in a launch plan. And each one requires several pieces of content and information to make the launch a successful one.

What’s the launch period or window?
What are the required components or materials for the launch?
What’s the launch timeline?
What are the launch goals?
What are the launch metrics you are going to track and measure?

Let’s get to each one in detail.

1. The Launch Window

First, you need to decide the launch window. The start date and end date of the launch which is the dates when you open the cart allowing people to buy the product and closing the cart so that people can no longer buy the product.

Though the advantage of selling information products is that you can sell unlimited copies of the product without running out of stock ever, the product sells a lot better when it is launched during a window or a limited period.

The reason is, people are mostly driven by the fear of missing out and scarcity. When I do launches, the most number of sales come in the last day of the launch, after I send the closing tonight email. Because that’s when people act. They act when they realize they cannot get the product on the next day or at least for the same launch offer price.

If you notice, that’s why Amazon and Flipkart have come up with the Great Indian Sale and Big Billion Days. They come up with offers that are too irresistible and are available only for a limited period which even turns the non-customer into a customer. So you need to decide the launch window.

2. The Launch Components

Once you have decided the launch window, you need to determine the components or materials involved in the launch.

Some of the most used launch components are

Blog posts [published before the launch to create interest and awareness],
Emails [both pre-launch and launch sequence], and
The sales page [and the product listing page or payment page].

Doing a successful launch without these materials is difficult. Of course, you can launch without any of these components. You can send an email to the list announcing the product is ready, the offer price and bonuses if any and you can wish for the sales to happen. If you have a decent following and an email list, you can make a decent revenue from such announcement driven launches.

But, if you create a proper launch sequence with all the components, you can get 5X more sales and revenue. And the best part is you can re-use those launch materials again and again with slight modifications at regular intervals, and you can get more and more sales every time.

3. The Launch Timeline

Now, you need to prepare the launch timeline which involves three components –

The pre-launch window,
The launch window, and
The post-launch window.

4. The Pre-Launch Window

During the pre-launch window, you publish the blog posts you’ve planned and created at regular intervals and create awareness among your audiences about the problem and the need for the solution. You can also create a content upgrade or lead magnet that is either downloadable or delivered through a series of emails to segment the people who are interested in the product.

The people who opt for the lead magnet are the people who are rising their hands when you ask them whether they have the problem X. If you are not having a dedicated lead magnet or email sequence to segment the audience, you could create a pre-launch email sequence which tells the audience

about the problem,
why the audience needs a solution, and
how the solution can improve their lives.

You can use this pre-launch sequence to educate and create awareness in the audience.

5. The Launch Window

During this window, you are sending a sequence of emails [aka launch sequence]

Which introduces the product,
Positions itself as the right solution for the audience’s problem,
Answers their most pertaining questions,
Provides testimonials and social proofs and
Announces the bonuses.

This sequence also warns the audience about the close of the launch window and reiterates the importance of buying it before the window is closed. This sequence continues from the prelaunch sequence and builds upon it.

And this sequence also applies the persuasion principles like influencing, scarcity and fear of missing out to increase the sales.

6. The Post-Launch Window

This is time during which you onboard the customers to the product and fix any issues that arise like product not delivered, access not provided, and so on.

This is the period when you focus on getting the most of the customers to put the product into use and get feedback from them. You could use the feedback to improve the product.

You should also set up a follow-up mechanism that follows up with the customer at regular intervals, interact with them about the experience of using the product and success achieved from the product.

You could use the success stories as testimonials during the next launch.

You got to the plan all the dates.

7. The Launch Goals

What do you want to achieve from the launch?
How many sales are you wishing for or expecting?
How much revenue do you wish to make from the launch?

You should decide on your goal numbers. It can help you to plan the launch better.

For example, if you have done a launch earlier and you know your numbers like conversion rate, refund rate, and all, you could plan how much traffic you need to drive to the content pages to get to the launch numbers you wish for.

If you haven’t done any launches before, I would recommend you to come up with

The minimum number of sales you need to break-even [considering all the investments you
Have made in getting the marketing materials ready for the launch and the cost of tools],
The right number of sales that could get you a decent profit and help you believe in the info product system, and
The best sales numbers that’ll make you wow.

These numbers also help you decide whether the launch is a success or failure and analyze the results.

8. The Launch Metrics

Well, you got the launch goals, and you know whether the launch is a success or a failure. But regardless of the results, you need to analyze why it happened or how it happened. To understand that you need to track and measure specific metrics.

These are the few metrics I recommend:

Content visits to lead magnet signups.
Email sends to opens.
Email opens to clicks or responses.
Sales page visits to payment link click or visits.
Payment page visits to purchase complete.
Order completes to order cancellations.

These are the key metrics that’ll help you understand where the success happened or didn’t happen and you can fix it during the next launch to improve the numbers. And that’s it. You’re prepared for the launch. You have the plan, and you know what to measure and analyze.

9. How To Promote Your Launch & Drive Traffic and Sales

You are almost done.

You have created your product.
You’ve prepared the launch plan.
You’ve prepared the launch components like the sales page, emails [both pre-launch and launch sequences], and prelaunch blog posts.
You have identified the metrics you need to track and measure to understand what worked and what didn’t.

Now, only one thing is between you and achieving the launch goals. It’s the promotion part. Let me tell you one thing upfront.

If you fail at the promotion part, then the entire launch fails. You’ll end up with some mediocre results. You might lose the confidence in the whole info product system at all. And you might even lose the confidence in you and your ability to generate the additional income that could liberate you from the 9 to 5 job and allow you to live your life as you wish. It’s that important. So read carefully.

What you are about to learn is the fruit of my experience in running promotions to the companies I worked and spending around $100,000 on my own promotional campaigns. I have never revealed them ever before as I am going to do now. Before you start with the promotional campaigns, you need to identify the network that’ll help you to reach the most your audience.

For me, it was Facebook. And for you, it could be the same, or you could get better results from Adwords. If you are launching a b2b focused info product or an info product targeting the CEOs, and other top executives, you might even try LinkedIn ads.

The promotional campaign is of two parts.

The pre-launch promotion
The launch promotion.

Let’s start with the pre-launch promotion. Assume you’ve published your prelaunch blog posts to create awareness among the audience about the problem and the possible solution to it. Also, assume that you’ve created your lead magnet or the content upgrade.

In that case, you will start with two campaigns:

Content promotion campaign
Lead magnet promotion campaign.

10. Content Promotion Campaign

Setup a campaign targeting your audience on the platform of your choice to promote the content you’ve published. At the end of the content piece, you should promote the lead magnet to all the visitors.

The goal of the campaign is to get as many visitors as possible to the content pieces. Here the metric to measure is the content page visits to lead magnet offer clicks and content page visits to lead magnet signups.

11. Lead Magnet Promotion Campaign

The goal is to promote the lead magnet and get as many as people to your list.

The materials you require for this campaign is

A squeeze page to capture the lead details,
A thank you page delivering the lead magnet and
A welcome email which also provides a link to the lead magnet and starts the pre-launch content sequence.

Here the metric to measure is the squeeze page visits to thank you page visit [aka lead magnet downloads]

Bonus: You could also run a retargeting campaign promoting the lead magnet offer to the audiences who visited the content page but never get to the squeeze page. This will help you to maximize the target audience to download the lead magnet and enter the email funnel.

Now, let’s get to the launch promotion campaign:

Here you’ll have 4 campaigns.

Product promotion campaign
Bonus promotion campaign
Testimonial promotion campaign
Closing in 24 hours campaign

12. Product Promotion Campaign

In this campaign, you are going to promote the product offer to the entire target audience group. You’ll be driving them to the sales page. You need to create the ad that triggers enough interest to get them click and visit the sales page.

The metric to measure in this campaign is sales page visits to the payment page visits and sales page visits to products sold.

Bonus Promotion Campaign

In this campaign, you are going to promote the bonuses to the audiences both
the direct target audience set and [a retargeting ad to] those who visited the sales page but didn’t visit the payment page. The goal of the campaign is to entice the audience with the bonuses. Again the metric to measure is the visits to the sales page to the visits to the payment page and sales page visits to the products sold.

13. Testimonial Promotion Campaign

Like the bonus promotion campaign, this campaign is also targeting
the direct audiences set and [a retargeting ad to] those who visited the sales page but didn’t visit the payment page.

The goal of the campaign is to reduce the audience friction and increase the belief in the program with the testimonials. You can have multiple ads having different subset of the audience like a beginner getting the results, someone growing in their career or someone getting results for their business.

Think about the different audience subset you might have and use a relevant testimonial that might appeal to them. Again the metric to measure is the sales page visits to the payment page visits and sales page visits to the products sold.

14. Closing in 24 Hours Campaign

Now, this campaign is telling the audience that the product launch is coming to an end and they couldn’t get the product after the closing day.

The goal of the campaign is to push the audience towards action through scarcity application. The ad may take about what they will miss if they don’t take action now or before the launch ends.

This campaign is for both
Direct target audience set and
The retargeting audience set of people who visited the sales page but didn’t buy the product.

Again the metric to measure is the sales page visits to the payment page visits and sales page visits to the products sold.

Bonus: You can have another audience set for all of the above mentioned campaigns – those who visited the content pages.

Since those people already visited the content page, it can be assumed that they might be interested in the product.

Well, there you have it. You have got my entire promotional blueprint, and this completes the whole product creation and launch blueprint.

Remember, you need to invest a bit in creating and launching your info product. There are not many other options available. Trust me, and you’ll get the best possible returns for your investment.

Conclusion

Congratulations. You have successfully completed the info product creation and launch blueprint. I have done my part. I have revealed everything about my info product business. You know how I create my info products, how I prepare for the launch, and how I promote to make it a successful one.

You have learned everything you need to create your info product, launch it, and earn your ticket to freedom. You can create and launch a product regardless of the niche and topic. The success and the dream life is yours. There is only one thing between you and the dream life you always wanted. Taking action. Your success and failure depend on it.

You need to make sure that yours is not just a wish. You have to stop wishing, whining, complaining, and start taking action. It’s in your hand. Believe me. What you have just finished is not an ordinary ebook put together in a rush to make some moolah.

It’s a complete, proven blueprint to success.

And I wish you success.

Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju.

PS: If you are looking for little more details and probably prefer video-based training, hang on. I am working on the Product Launch Mastery Course, and you’ll hear about it soon.