InfoProducts - low priced digital products- working or no?

Sounds like a competitive market for ebooks. The answer might be to make the price higher rather than lower.

My instinct is that the markets for health supplements and health eBooks are different. It's possible you could break into the latter, but without knowing your area of specialization, it's hard to say whether you'd be wasting your time.

I'm a little confused about why you're intent on growth when you admit to being currently overwhelmed. Could you handle that growth?

One option that might be worth looking into is offering a white label service for your supplements, assuming you're the original manufacturer. That shouldn't require too much extra in terms of infrastructure, and would be less of a risk than diversifying into a completely new area.

What brought this on? Where'd the idea come from? I'm curious because the key here is how serious you are in solving the problem.

But...are you clear on what problem you're solving?

Being overwhelmed means you are not prioritizing correctly. I know all about this, so don't feel like I'm making fun of you. It's common for business owners. Let me share a concept I "knew" but was re-taught recently by a French programmer who makes a lot of money:

Think about your activities as binary. 0 or 1. 1 = money-making activity.

Anything that is less than 1 is really a 0, isn't it. As newbie coach Marlon Sanders famously shouted in a video a few years back now, "Half done AIN'T DONE!"

How many activities are you involved in that are not 1 activities? I'll bet a lot. And again, I get into this trap myself from time to time. Despite delegating a ton!

So start there.

But what is "the problem" you need to be focused on solving here? The one that this vague "Hey, maybe we should put some books out there" is approaching sideways?

You have two elements to making money: Traffic and Conversion.

From what you've shared I get the sense that you are a bit stuck for methods to increase Traffic right now--more people to see your offers.

A book is indeed easier to market than a supplement. And a book allows you to enter the conversation going on in your prospect's mind...Amazon/Kindle is a great traffic source because BUYERS are on there searching for info on the topic.

The book price is not to make money, you understand. It's to generate a little revenue to pay for more traffic. You see, you can't rely on Amazon's search engine to be the only source of traffic. You're going to have to pay for it. And that's fine...every business has a Cost of Customer Acquisition. You should know what the Lifetime Value of your supplement customer is, and that will help you with what your CCA can be.

I find many businesses, even some that are (temporarily) making money are flying by the seat of the pants. They don't know their numbers. I hope you know yours. I suspect you do not, though, because if you did know your LTV you wouldn't be here asking this question: you'd be saying, "We can invest $13 in traffic and book development to get a customer," and be off figuring out that split.

So the books are a traffic generation source using paid and free search engines on established platforms. They sell the reader on your solution to a specific problem. And then the offer to collect that solution is to buy your supplements package. That's what you're about here, if you go in this direction.

If you're serious, you'll realize you have to invest in this program, in time and money. If you're not, it'll blow away in the wind like another "gee that'd be nice" idea.

If I was in your shoes, I would do two things:

1. Pay a Kindle expert, a real one, to help outline the strategy. This includes traffic generation (organic at Amazon plus paid traffic) and book titles. You are not going to get quality help in this area for under $5K...I have some true bestseller experts as clients--not the "I got the badge from Amazon for selling a few copies today"-type bestseller but the longevity-minded, genuine bestseller for months and months-type

2. Look deeply into the case of Kevin Trudeau, who was able to side-step advertising rules for awhile through books, but eventually got in trouble for claims made despite the means of fulfillment (book rather than pill). You do not want to duplicate his end results.

You can outsource the writing of the books, the traffic management, and most other tasks. But the first thing you must do is UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE DOING, and I don't fully see that yet.

Simple - you'll never make good money buy selling low cost products.

If you have a successful business, like you say, going back to 1999, I think you would be foolish to begin selling low-priced ebooks. To me, the problem is your marketing and advertising of the current business if you are totally dependent upon Google. You're letting a minor obstacle get in the way of the real root of your problem.

Personally, with the limited information you've given, I think your plan is a "band-aid" approach to trying to get more traffic, subscribers, and sales. Get to the root of the problem, apply even a limited budget to your growth and marketing, and begin building upon the success you already have instead of looking for greener pastures with ebook selling and cross-sells.

Just my humble opinion,

Steve

Create some 'free' ebooks with your products advertised within. Try an experiment with Facebook Fan Pages.Then advertise on Facebook for affiliates to promote anyway they see fit. Work out an affiliate arrangement with a platform like Clickbank or MaxBounty. They will also advertise your affiliate opportunities.

You don't need to create sites for everyone. Just affiliate links to your site. Think about customizing your digital products so that affiliates can add their links.

The first thing, of course, is to create a digital product. Don't know your finances, but you can get a copywriter to do the work if you provide the necessary info.

Lastly, Google Adwords is not the only game in town. Facebook and/or Bing can be helpful. Just don't go overboard with exaggerated claims.

Just some ideas. Hope you find them useful.

Yep, that's exactly the strategy you want to be using. Run a free + shipping print book campaign where you recoup your costs on shipping your book or booklet as well as digital versions of your product for something like $5.99 and then promote your supplements on the back-end. This is not the only strategy changes you should make, but certainly is a good one allowing you to expand your advertising on Google and Facebook to capture a much larger front-end and then market your supplements as the back-end. Choose your top selling supplements to begin with, target the top desired use-cases and create your book or ebook around those so that you are well aligned to market the supplement on the back-end.

In addition to all of this you should be expanding your organic reach via --

1. Affiliates
2. YouTube
3. Podcasts

Jeff

What kind of health supplements do you sell, or what are your best sellers? What topics/problem/solution would the ebooks be based around, and how would you entice your customers from 1999 to purchase them from you? Would you make just 1 ebook, or a slew of them? Also, dont sell them for $7 or $9. Sell them for $20 and above.

I think the idea has potential. I think the ebooks might even provide you with the opportunity to expand your business (food? exercise?)

Well this is quite interesting. What will be your ebooks about? You understand that ebooks and health supplements will have different markets right? I'm not saying that this is impossible, but surely this will be challenging. Have you ever considered working with influencers? You can have an influencer under the health and wellness niche promote you, given that the influencer has a large following,then it will surely go a long way. Phlanx is a good platform to connect with one. Goodluck!

Have you explored sites like Market Health or Sell Health? These are platforms that specialize in working with affiliates and other marketers to sell health products. I'm sure you can get more ideas from them and possibly work out a business relationship when you feel you're ready. Drop them a note and see if they can be of service.

Low priced digital products working all the time with correct idea and good timing in marketing. Do not expect something huge at the start but after a while if you do everything in a good way you can expect some nice profit.

It can work but this is a very competitive (and expensive) niche. Best way to know is to try it and see if it works.

If your spending money on ads, then selling a low ticket offer is a good thing to do first and then adding higher priced related offer as an Upsell.

E.g when you $9 product, you can Upsell them immediately with a $97 offer an recople your ad spend.

I know! Nobody's ever bought a Ford. People only buy Ferrari!

Yup, but you're talking like a savvy marketer, a claim VidasVegas never made about VidasVegas, eh?

Try to advertise your physical product in:

ezine (search ezine solo ads)
fb ads using shopify
magazine ads
and google adwords display network pointing blogs regarding your niche.

You can also go to maxbounty and peerfly and subscribe as an advertiser: doing cpa for product sold