I've just given you real-life examples of several information products that were produced in very little time. They all have very real perceived value, but cost very little to produce. They will each sell for years to come... some of them will undoubtedly be selling for rest of my life. That's beauty of creating and marketing information products.

I'm sure you now see how incredibly easy it is to create information products.

-- With tele-seminar, all you have to do is make arrangements with one of numerous companies that offer this service - they can record event and some offer transcription services. -- With workshop, recording crew just had to record event as it unfolded. -- With books, I just created an outline, added sub-bullets under each major heading and then added more to product each time I sat down to work on it. I did corroborate with a few other people on traffic book because I did not have all of expertise and experience necessary to create a product of this magnitude. People enthusiastically jump at chance to help with a project like this!

You do see a lot of products on market that you wonder how well they are selling. Therefore, you do need to spend sufficient time in beginning - confirming that your info product is needed. I generate product ideas by discussing them with others, by "listening" at discussion forums, and by reading books that stimulate my creative faculties. A good book on creative thinking is worth it's weight in gold.

My favorite book on creating info products is by Jeff Smith. It's called The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur's Success Package. Jeff and I discussed creating information products at length, as he was finishing up this book. If you get a copy, you will also get a recorded interview I did with him as a bonus :-) You can find Jeff's book at: http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin k.cgi?jeffsmith

I have discovered that discussing your product ideas with other naturally generates additional product ideas. Discussing your product ideas with others both generates new ideas and helps point out flaws in your ideas. You do have to get over fear of someone stealing your ideas. That IS a possibility, but there is an endless stream of product ideas. Also, just because a product has been created doesn't mean that you can't introduce a similar (better) product. Heck, there's still room for hundreds of more cookbooks - this year! Write fast enough and you can catch incredible Christmas sales :-)

I discussed cookbooks with Armand Morin at recent Internet Marketing Power Workshop. For those of you who don't know Armand, he generated $4,000,000 in sales from one software product in 12 weeks. The even more amazing thing about this feat is that he doesn't even know how to write software code. He hired someone to write this program for a few hundred dollars. That's power of information products and other digital products. Armand told me he has also written a cookbook. That validates fact that cookbooks are a perpetual hot seller.

In next installment, we will examine creating your own service. Many of factors that it takes to create a successful service are same ones it takes to launch a successful product. If you have questions brought up by this article, why not post them in forum. Brainstorming is a very powerful force.

If you'd like to see video series I created you can get more information on it at: http://williecrawford.com/workshop-videos.html For more information on pay-per-click tele-seminars visit: http://williecrawford.com/pay-per-clicks.html These are examples of painlessly created info products that you can examine to see how it they are actually created and marketed. These are living examples that you can use in creating your own best-selling info products.

To your success. Willie Crawford

You can also use free-standing services set up for precisely this kind of search, such as linkpopularity.com, which provides easy access to links turned up by Altavista, Hotbot and Google.

Now once you've identified sites you consider likely to add a link to yours, how should you approach them? I'm not a big fan of a "you link me, I'll link you..." overture. To me that implies that your site lacks intrinsic value and that you have to add an incentive to become worthy of link. Also, you'll often find sites you don't want to link to (because they're amateur-looking or contain nothing distinctive, for instance) but still want links from. Instead, I tell Webmaster or site owner that I'm writing to tell them about a new resource on ___ that would make their list of links even more valuable, or more comprehensive.

If you are creating a master list of topical links for your own site, it works well to say that you've linked to them and would they consider a link in return? This makes most people curious enough to check your site and reciprocate where appropriate.

Make sure your link request is patently personal, a genuine one-to-one message. And instead of merely providing a URL that you invite them to check out, provide title of your bait piece and say something about its value to their site visitors. Something in format of a press release, or any kind of carbon-copy message, will definitely not yield results you want.

I have to admit that even with strategy outlined above, quest for links is tedious and slow. Don't even get started with it unless you feel relaxed, with a long evening ahead of you. You'll encounter frequent frustration when you find a perfect link candidate and comb site in vain for Webmaster or site owner's e-mail address -- indeed, any contact information at all.

Above all, remember that links to your bait piece are not end in themselves. You've installed your bait within your site, so that any inbound link to your information piece stimulates readers who find it valuable to explore rest of your site and buy your products or sign on as clients. That's real goal of all this work!