Do You Think You Should Be An "Expert" In A Subject First Before Creating Info Products?

I second that. I know tons of people who are not experts to sell advice. I know a few who just research and sell it or sell compilations, guides, etc... I know one guy who made a fortune in a niche by saying I'm not the expert I just sell it here's the thing and he partnered wit the expert who I guess is shy but is the expert.

There is a bunch of ways to skin this cat not just spending 10 years making sure you are #1 before you sell in the niche.

One more thing, the threshold of being the expert in the eyes of your prospect is not as high as you might think, often if you can describe the problems better then they can and provide a roadmap to the solution (even if it's not your solution) they will more then often perceive you as the expert and that is really not much if you think of it.

Just my 2 cents.

Hey man,

ok let's do it this way. say I want to create a product on real estate and how to buy what to look for etc.
I do a ton of research talk to agents etc. I write it all down and release it as a product. I then get an email for support. How do I offer support having never done the thing I wrote about?

Research in and of itself is not enough when you then have others that research is passed on to. What needs to be is a balance. I researched this topic and I implemented strategies I learned and included with my pdf is a case study of how to implement these tactics and strategies in your own venture.

What we all need to remember is that people buy products because they want to either learn or use them. Now obviously a lot of people WON"T use them or read them but the ones that do we need to be able to take care of and support the product we put out.

So I think 2 things 1 is no you don't have to be an expert to sell a product
I.e affiliate marketing (products already supported by vendor/creator) but if you create a product you better be damn sure you can help the people who spend their cash with you or you will have a short lived life as a product creator.
IMO
-WD

Not at all. Here's an easy, legit and ethical way to create an info product
without knowing a blasted thing about the subject.

Interview experts on the subject and compile their contributions into an ebook,
audio, even video if you can get the interview live.

Nothing wrong with this tactic and you don't have to know beans about
anything.

Someone might create a product because they are wanting to break into a particular market or market segment. I bet there are more product creators out there that aren't "experts" than you realize.

As mentioned in posts above, you can always interview an expert on a subject to create a product if you aren't one. You can also know something in a certain area of a market and create a product out of that even though you don't know everything there is about the subject.

These actually combine into the same problem.

People unwilling to invest the time necessary for a quality product.

There are a lot of people out there talking about 24-hour products and "product in a week" goals, and they seem to forget that the people who do those things successfully have years of experience doing what their products are about.

At some point you have to decide whether "people will pay for it" is a high enough goal for your products.

I don't think you have to be an "expert" - but if you are advising people on how to do something, I think you should have tried it yourself first.

I don't believe it's sufficient to research a method and write about "how to do it" without trying it. It is done quite often in the MMO field and the product creators don't always mention "haven't really tried this myself".

Of course, if you produce a new MMO product to sell every couple weeks I guess you are an expert in creating MMO products.:rolleyes:

kay

Wow Mike! That's a great take on this subject! Thanks for your input! I fully agree with what you said and it gives me some ideas!

I think there are two alternatives:

> Be (or become) an expert in your subject, even if that subject is a small slice of a much larger subject. I once paid for a one-page report that showed me how to do something on my computer, a shortcut I'd been hunting for off and on for some time. The seller made no claims other than the fact that he could show me the shortcut. The fact that it only took one page was irrelevant.

> Have access to the needed expertise. Here I have a very mild disagreement with Steven. While you don't need in-depth knowledge of a subject to benefit from outside experts, I do believe you should have enough background to recognize real expertise vs. the 'fake it until you make it, I read an ebook last week' expert. Having at least a bit of background research under the belt also can let you ask better interview questions.

A variant of the second alternative is to develop real research skills, such that you can digest expert materials and explain them in plain language.

I totally agree with this. I think expert status is not real. It's perceived. In some cases it's just presented yourself in a manner that makes people believe you know more than they do or have more information.

I learned about credibility indicators and that is really what gives a person expert status. It's the "proof" of earnings that marketers say they've made that sells the make money online product.

I work in IT where certifications are all the rage and if you have a few Acronyms behind your name you're a computer expert. In many cases you read, study and pass a test and get certified. Some of these computer experts don't even know what a CPU really looks like.

Another way people get "expert" status is with associations. Being a member of the Underwater Basket Weaving Society and The Basket Weavers Guild of America indicates this person knows how to make baskets and their product will teach me how to make a sell millions of baskets online.

I apologize to anybody that's a member of one of the groups I thought was fictitious that might be offended.

Of course anyone can claim years of experience doing something that many customers will just take at face value and be considered an expert.


If you believe you're an expert and tell me you're an expert, I'll accept it until I realize I know more than you about the subject of your expertise. I think most people just want credibility. People who use and site third party expertise are actually boosting their own credibility.

Definition of an "expert" is relative.
Who you call an expert may not be
an expert to me.

Your knowledge on a subject vis-a-vis
your audience is an important consideration
before deciding who is an expert on a
subject.

So you can write a product based on research,
interviews, surveys and your knowledge.

Of course you don't need to be an expert to write an info product. Nor do you need to claim to be one.

If you can help someone get something they want, you can sell that information to them. The buyer isn't looking for an expert, they're looking for information that will help them. Anything you have that is of value to someone else can be sold.

You can write and sell an info ebook if:
- You can help someone get something they want but don't have.
- You can help someone do something they can't do but want to be able to do.
- You can help someone find the information necessary to help them with the above.

For example, there's huge value in saving time (and therefore, money) so if you can just help someone find the information they need faster than they can find it themselves, there's value in that also, and therefore you can sell that information.

The cost of the product is determined by what the consumer will pay for it based on how much value it holds for them.

Oh, I'm glad I'm not alone in this thinking. I've seen publishers who advocate you can create a product in a few days by researching the product and creating an ebook. I've always felt this was little more than what the average user could do anyway, (Again, the publisher's "excuse" is that people are too lazy to do their own research, so you're saving them time. Bull!)

Like others say, if you interview a person who KNOWS their subject, and you act as middle-man to bring the subject to the digital domain, that's different. After all, that's the logic journalists / TV reporters have used for years.

Interesting point, Andy. I guess everyone has to make up their own minds on what's acceptable and what's not...and buyer's have to use their discretion. For me personally, I don't think it's right to sell information that I haven't fully figured out and am not an "expert" at in my own mind. I still have too much to learn to say that I know all the ins and outs.

I like this discussion, though...I'm going to use this topic for a post later this week I think!

In other words:

People who know what they're talking about will say No

Idiots off the street who don't know squat will say Yes

You forgot to mention reading the top 5 articles on a directory like EzineArticles, and at least one Squidoo lens or Hub page...

The points I was trying to make are:

1. Success and knowledge and expertise is relative. How do you quantify self-confidence or self-esteem, for example? Yet there are tons of products about increasing both.

Who coaches or can help the CEO of Microsoft or any of the Fortune 500 companies - only those who are more "expert" than them and has run a bigger more successful company??

2. Expertise comes in many different areas and different ways. People may not buy the tell all guide about making $10 a month online, however all the stuff that goes into making $10 a month is the same stuff that goes into making $10,000 a month - buying webhosting, putting up a page, writing content, creating a list, writing a sales letter, creating a PDF out of a Word document, signing up for Paypal, handling affiliates, etc. They will buy that.

For example, just how many times do you have to install WordPress before you can say you're an "expert" and help others with a little infoproduct that has the step-by-step details? How many Paypal accounts do you have to set up before you can help someone else?
1? 10? 100? 1000? 10,000? 100,000?

3. For too many of us a 7 day product turns into 7 weeks which turns into 7 months which turns into 7 years which turns into "dying with our music still in us". If you want to help others, get the expertise - don't fool people - always provide quality - but don't wait for some magical time when you're an expert because there is ALWAYS someone who knows more, can work harder, run faster, talk smoother, whatever, than you can.

Mark

I tend to value information from someone who has walked the walk. For instance, if you are thinking of being a pet sitter, reading an account of someone who has done this for a while will be a helpful way to see the various obstacles that can arise (ie collecting money, coping with a pet missing the owner, learning ways to make the animal feel more secure etc). Can someone research this and do a report? Yes, but there is an added element in a first account that gives depth. Internships are part of many training programs to teach something that can't be learned through books.

Debbie

In my opinion: An "expert" is someone who sees in something a set of logically sound, creative angles useful for solving specific problems or satisfying particular needs of a specific group of people, unseen by anybody else during that time...

Einstein didn't have to ride a photon. He didn't need to experience cruising at the speed of light. He can't test out his theories with any experimental procedure. His theory of relativity, an info product, is still being taught and studied by the greatest minds on the planet at present. Why? He had a set of observations, inferences, logically related knowledge, test results and experience, theories, opinions and perspectives enough for him to see in the physical laws of the universe logically sound, creative angles unseen by everybody else during his time...

Stephen Hawking didn't need to take a magical mystery tour in his chair back in time. He didn't need to experience 0 and infinite gravity, 0 and infinite space, 0 and infinite energy and 0 and infinite time to conceptualize a Singularity, a possible original state of the universe, pre-Big Bang, if there ever was one. His book, "A Brief History of Time", sold sevenfold more than Madonna's "Book of Sex", both info products, and his lectures and seminars are almost always fully booked and sold out, making him the "Genius Rockstar" of the planet. He just has sets of observations, inferences, logically related knowledge, test results and experience, theories, opinions and perspectives enough for him to see in the physical laws of the universe logically sound, creative angles unseen by everybody else during his time...

Jimi Hendrix didn't need to know everything about playing blues guitar. He didn't even need to experience how an audience would react to his music. He just got into a drunken stupor of some sort and started playing his music right from the start. Just like Kurt Cobain...

Implemented creative ideas for products and services are the ones that sell the most today, in my opinion. Microsoft. Apple. Google. Yahoo!. Amazon. EBay. PayPal. YouTube. Facebook. Marvel. DC. Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings. Disney. And so on and on and on...

I think it's mentioned somewhere already, but it depends very much on how your product is marketed and whether or not you are being honest about your experience and reslults with what you are teaching or lack thereof.

As an example, I could easily write up a report teaching some methods to promote CPA that I have read about. Anyone could do that, but the only promise I could make my prospects without feeling I was deceiving them would be that my product would "point them in the right direction".

If I were to make a product about traffic though, I would have a much better gut feeling about it because driving traffic is what I spend most of my time doing in IM, and I have the results to back up the claims I would make in such a product.

So I guess it all comes down to your ethics, and there are lots of people ready to make claims that they have produced no real results to back up.

I sell books that I can't even read, equipment that I don't understand, and products that I would never use. This is marketing at its finest.

I think it is more important to be an expert who can actually teach rather than one who can't. Eben Pagan once said that the difference between a marketer and an expert is that an expert tells people what they think people need to know, while a marketer tells people what they want to know. So if you go out and identify a problem and do some research and give them a solution, does that make you an expert? I think from the perception of those you are helping, yes you are, it is a mater of perception.

And notice here that becoming an expert means you simply need to be two steps ahead of others, you don't need to get a PhD in the area. These days, it is not that hard to be two steps ahead really. Just read 2 or 3 really good books about the information topic. Because most people don't read these days, you will be able to get a big advantage over more than 90% of people.

Note that this is not always true in certain fields that involve life or death or legal situations, I generally steer clear of those.

Which is another form of expertise in itself, one claimed more often than earned from some of the products I've seen...

Here's a question for the "read a couple of books" guys.

How do you knw you're reading the right books?

But if you read two books, how do you know which is the weird one? If you know nothing about the subject, how do you know that what you're reading is ten years out of date? (and the copyright date won't help, at least in some popular subjects we could all name - lots of "experts" regurgitating old stuff as new).

So far, so good. File this under "simple but not easy."

The successful ones mostly do. I'd never buy a Caddy from a GM salesman driving a Lincoln.

They may not eat every meal, but the best ones taste every single dish before it goes out.

Again, the best ones may currently live in an apartment, but you can bet they know a lot about home construction, financing, and selling to certain market segments. Read through an agent's listings, and you'll see that they are mostly in certain neighborhoods and price ranges and styles. They sell what they know.

It depends on the person of course, but knowing whether that person's main goal is to sell or to help first may not be easy to determine.

Perhaps their main objective is to minimize refunds and move on to the next product before they consider who has been helped :-/

Those marketers do have a form of expertise. They know how to hire expertise and they must be able to tell shit from shinola, even if they aren't subject matter experts themselves. And the writers who, as you say, "KNOW their stuff", have some expertise.

Bottom line, there has to be somebody in the production line who knows what they are talking about.

There has to be an expert in there somewhere.