Welcome
...
In
this eBook you'll find the complete transcript of the interview I had recently
with J. F. Straw specifically on just one subject:
How To Create A Best-Selling Info-Product!
Since just one of Jim's (many)
products has brought in over $3,000,000 in sales ... he really does know what
he's talking about. Here is just a little background on him:
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Over
the past 30 years, J.F. Straw has written well over 300 books, booklets,
manuals, reports, courses and articles about doing business all based
on his own personal, hands-on experience. His writings are "specific"
methods, techniques and approaches to doing business that anyone can
use to start or expand their business. Then
three years ago, Jim decided to start selling some of his products over
the web ... and even though some affiliate directories still won't list
his site (they consider it too simple-looking) it now brings in around
50% of his annual revenue.
And
since his company's annual revenue is in the millions of dollars ...
you do the math!
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You can also listen to
the audio for this 15 minute interview...
The audio is in MP3 format
and you can therefore listen to it on pretty much any player including Real
Player and Windows Media Player.
Enjoy the interview!
:-)
Louis Allport
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|
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that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other
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the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Hi
Jim ... so, I know that looking around your web site you have your
Power
Tools section which I believe you consider your perennial best
selling products -- let's say they didn't exist and you wanted to create a
best-selling info-product to sell online ... what would be your first step?
Oh goodness -- that's
a hard question Louis. You see I've never researched a product in my life
... I am exactly like my customers ... I started off as a 9 year old kid picking
up the ads out of the back of the comic books and selling stuff and moved
on into other businesses.
I was in business for
over 20 years before I ever started writing about it ... when I wrote about
it I only wrote about things that I had actually done or had been involved
with doing ... and after I completed doing something that was successful I
wrote about it. The things I did that weren't successful I didn't write about.
And
of course since there are other people like me out there in the world I discovered
that people would pay for that kind of information, that's why I became an
info-publisher ... but until I semi-retired here a few years ago I did the
other businesses and my wife and kids actually took care of the publishing
side of it, all I did was write the products.
Now I write them and sell
them and mess with the web site and all of that. And I've never had a loser
as far as a product although I have had some products that it took me two
or three years to find the advertising that would work to sell that product.
Because the products themselves
... I don't try to figure out what people want because there's just too many
people out there for me to try to figure on, but the things that I do I know
that other people like me would be interested in doing them so I simply tell
the stories of how I've done it, how I go about it, and then let them follow
through. I think that's probably the reason for the success of my products
over the years.
Right. So in a way
people are really interested in them because they actually want to emulate
your proven success?
Oh yes. But if I was
actually doing any research writing I would not rely entirely upon the internet
for information and all of that in order to write a report ... I have gone
out on the search engines and searched out product information and information
on various operations and believe me it's not all the way they say it is.
And
now I've got between 4,000 and 5,000 books in my own personal library but
when I'm working on something, if I need to know something I may check the
internet and search through and find information but then I go to the books
... hard-copy books ... I go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and down to the
local library and I check and see what's written there because I found that
too many ner-do-wells with a computer in front of them can make up all kinds
of things about a subject matter.
Especially
after having been in business for 50 years I could take a look at a lot of
their stuff and see where these people have never really done it, they're
simply spectators telling you what they think it's about.
So,
which would you say is your most successful product out of your Power-Tools
collection?
Currently the most successful
out there is the mail order marketing course --
"Own
Your Own Mail Order Business". Because there's a great
deal of interest in mail order marketing -- always has been.
I didn't want to write
that report, refused to write that report for 20 years and then I started
buying information on mail order marketing that I saw on television infomercials
and like that and discovered that it was
a lot of crap. People who were teaching it had never done it and didn't know
anything about doing it. And so I wrote the thing in self-defense literally
so that people would know the truth about mail order.
And I think one thing
about your product that makes it more interesting and maybe more of an opportunity
rather than just information is that you also offer dealerships? 60% dealerships,
is that right?
Well,
it's 50% on the affiliate program, on the internet ... then of course they
can earn a 60% profit on the products through the direct mail where they do
their own processing and all of that.
I see. And that product
of yours, has it been like a perennial best-seller?
Yes, since I wrote it
it's been my best-seller right down the line. Of course my best all time
seller is the
finders
fee course. I taught that course originally in 1978 and there
have been well over 30,000 people who've bought that since 1978 ... it's a
$100 course. Back then they told me I couldn't sell a $100 course by mail,
but I did.
You said something
very interesting, that on one of your products it took two or three years
for repositioning it and working on the advertising to really make it sell.
I was going to ask you how important you felt the actual product was against
the way it's marketed and maybe not the slickness of the copy, but the way
it's presented?
Whenever
it comes to product and selling, the product actually has to be better than
your sales material but you have to have the right keys in your sales material
in order to make the sales.
I once wrote a beautiful
sales piece ... I thought it was absolutely best thing I'd ever written ...
showed it to everyone in the office, all of them praised it ... I didn't even
test it I rolled out with a 10,000 piece mailing. I got one order.
So the product was good
but the ad-copy wasn't worth a dart. As a member of Mensa with a high IQ
I had a friend read my sales copy for that piece, he wrote me back and said
"Only two people in the world could understand it, you and me".
So you can't get too smart
for your customers, you have to be able to speak their language at their level
and so the ad-copy is ... 99% of your business has to be your advertising.
Of course if you have good advertising and bad product it doesn't help you
very much because then your refund rate is high and your complaint rate gets
higher and higher so you end up with more problems than a business.
So
out of interest how did you ... I imagine you reworked that piece of advertising
... so how did you develop it after that?
Well, it was just a matter
of testing. That's the name of the game in mail order ... the only reason
that an old-pro like me is an old-pro is because I test everything.
Since
1999 when I set up our website I have tested just about everything and anything
you can imagine on when email should be mailed, what they should say, what
part of them are most important, what time of the day to mail, what day of
the week to mail.
Because each of those
items are important to the success of your mailings. Whether it be direct
mailing or emailing and every element of it has to be tested, re-tested, and
then tested some more.
And that's how you end
up with the winners. You find something that works and keep it as a control.
A control is a piece that you know that if you mail it you'll get x percentage
or x dollars profit on each mailing.
Then you mail a split-mail
where you mail your control and a new test piece so that the test-piece says
something different, and see how it produces against something you know is
already producing. And you keep doing that, testing the different elements
until you come up with your best-selling pieces.
Is
it possible you could give me an example of one such test you've done for
your web site?
Let's see ... I have a
report out there "How
To Make A Fortune Just Snooping Around" and I have run
seven different test emails producing at various levels. I ended up with
one that produced a significant amount of orders each time I put it out.
So I kept that as my control.
Two weeks ago I tested
a new piece against it and I pulled twice as many orders. So that's now my
control.
But
you have to do that even when you've got a winner, because even your winner's
are going to wear out when people have seen it too many times ... and so the
name of the game ... success in email marketing, or direct mail marketing
is to constantly be testing for new methods and new times of the week for
mailing, new headlines...
A problem that too many
people do when they do testing is they test too many things at once. Where
I may change only a headline and test that then I'll add a paragraph in one
and delete a paragraph from the other one but I test only one element at a
time.
So
testing is ... probably the biggest percentage of my time and effort in order
to keep the sales up, is in testing.
So, let's say someone's
about to develop their first info-product or put together a new info-product,
and they're really looking for a best-seller, what would be your advice to
them? To help them have as much chance of success as possible, what would
you suggest?
Well, the best thing to
do of course is you respond to the need of the buyers out there. And I have
seen a number of products that if I were a research writer I could write and
make some money on, simply by going to the various discussion boards and reading
the kind of questions that are out there.
And
whenever you find a bunch of questions about one particular piece of information
then that's something you could research and create a product from because
if there's enough interest, if people are asking the question then you could
find an answer for it, if you can find an answer you've got a market.
So
really you would say to create a best-selling info-product is answer the question
that a lot of people are asking?
The answer is ... you've
got to listen. Because see, besides selling info-products I've sold just
about everything else you can imagine and I've always listened to the public.
Listened to what they are asking for.
As a matter of fact one
of my best newsletters of many years ago was Offshore Banking News. And the
reason it was a best-seller is because there was a great interest in the off-shore
banking community ... What was going on? What was happening? ...
Most of the newsletters
in that genre were written from the stand point of tax evasion, tax-avoidance,
that kind of thing. And what I did was develop the Offshore Banking News
which actually reported on the financial activities within the various countries
around the world.
I had stringers in 40
counties that picked up news items, clipped articles from magazines and newspapers
in their local area, translated them into English, and sent them to us. We
reported on the banks in Panama with Noriaga and we got a call from CBS News
and they featured Offshore Banking News in the article we had written about
Noriaga's banks in Panama.
Because
we were picking up legitimate information about the offshore banking community,
the financial institutions in those areas, rather than touting the tax evasion
and all of the other nonsense that was going on in the supposed offshore banking
newsletters.
It's
interesting that you said you didn't go through perhaps the usual method of
surveying the market, and then creating the product, you created it because
it's something you'd done and been successful in.
Well, when I started Offshore
Banking News I owned an offshore bank. And because of the interest from the
people out there then I knew what they were really looking for was information
about what the financial community was actually doing because we didn't cater
to the tax avoidance, tax evasion type of people, we catered to the investment
type of people that were interested in what was going on in the financial
communities. And like I say I was doing it and so I wrote about it.
Maybe
that's one distinct advantage you have ... you've been so immersed in different
businesses ...
You see I am just exactly
like my customers. I'm just an older version is all. Because what the young
guys are thinking about ... you know making money out there, how to get into
business, and all of that, that's what I was doing when I was their age too.
And so my product fulfils a need that I would have had at their age.