My wife and I have been online for 3 years now it's been a fun ride. We hit six figures online fast (within 8 months of starting our biz with no prior knowledge of e-commerce) and are now well into the six figures and it's only getting bigger. I want to share a few techniques I've learned that will guarantee success when creating your own products.

These techniques work better for existing websites and even better if you have a list. But it can be used for start ups also as long as you have traffic.

After 3 years of creating products that have never flopped in our niche, I have found this to be the most effective way to not only create products, but get product ideas. We've mastered it so well that I can tell you without a doubt ALL of the products we create WILL be successful. Why? Because we have killer information loops. Information loops meaning we have CONSTANT information flowing into our business every single day.

The first information loop I learned was from Ari Galper's course, Unlock The Internet Game. It's gold.

So, the first information loop you need to set up is your LIVE CHAT. There is an entire mindset behind this, you can't just slap a LIVE CHAT button on your site and be good to go. You will need to pick up Ari's course or you'll screw it up.

Your Live Chat will provide information you never thought possible. You will hear complaints, thank you's, problems, what people want, etc. It will also expose serious holes in your website/landing pages you never thought you had. People will basically TELL you how they want to be sold, what they want, etc! You can make products off this information alone if you want to.

I could write a 100 page report on how to do this correctly and profit, but I'm too lazy, so I'm not. Just go get Ari's course.

The next thing you need to do is ask two direct questions 30 days apart within your autoresponder follow ups. For example, when you sign up
for our autoresponder, you will get messages for 1 year. About a month after you sign up you'll get a direct question from us and about a month later, you'll get another one.

But, we'll never ask you anything before giving you great content.

Here's an example of one of our *information loop* autoresponder follow ups:

SUBJECT: If You Had To Choose Just One Hairstyle...

Hi Name

If you had to choose just one hairstyle to be filmed by me,
what would it be?

It's simple to respond. Simply reply to this e-mail and let
me know which hairstyle you're most eager to learn and I will
do my very best to film it.

Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it!

Warmest Regards,
Marquetta

Simple as that!

They get this about a month after signup and after receiving about 4 emails filled with great content. So, you can imagine how powerful this is. We get tons of replies of people TELLING us EXACTLY what they want filmed.

Then, we'll ask what their biggest hair challenge is after giving some more content. We can do all types of things once we know exactly what they want filmed, what their biggest hair problems are, etc.

Can you see how these automatic information loops work? It's powerful. You'll never have to worry about the success of your product launches ever again once you put these two things into place! And this is only the beginning of what you could be doing!

I've also got an automatic way of collecting success stories with Audio, Photo, City and State that costs 25$ to set up and it's on autopilot, maybe I'll share that one day

To your success,
Ricky

Thanks, Ricky, great article. It also ties in well with Michel's Death of the Salesletter report.

Thanks, Ricky.

I'm doing research for a JV product I'm developing, and your article is very timely. Thanks again for some great information.

Ricky,

Thanks for sharing your "insider secrets" for success us. I had no idea you could make 6 figures helping people with their hair. Well done!

You know what? I was thinkin the same thing. Thats where this strategy is so ingenious - things you could never think of on your own - well your clients create them for you really which, like Ricky says, virtually guarantees you success.

On a somewhat related note: a lot of us fall into the trap of looking for a "product" to sell first, particularly if we are just starting out in direct response. But really, that is the wrong approach - like Halbert says, we need to become a student of markets - identify the starving crowd and give it what it wants. Clayton Makepeace had a story in his Total Package today talking about this - he had done some copywriting to the Christian market and he and his partner keyed in on the psycholigical hot buttons of that group, and on their own wrote a report and sold it like hotcakes. They didn't start out with the product, they had a market they knew about and catered to it.

Ricky, hats off to you...it really drives the point home about identifying a good market (tightly niched in this case) and finding out what it wants, and then delivering it in the way it wants it with virtually no trial and error. And if you do everything else right, they will keep coming back for more. Cool. Sexy Cool.

Ricky,

Thanks so much for sharing this!

I have been looking for information on what to include in followup autoresponders, and this has some great ideas.

In your series, what is the interval between messages?

Marcia Yudkin

Ricky,

Your openness in sharing your inside secrets of success is really appreciated, especially by people like myself just starting out in this new world.

Thanks!

Nice post Ricky...

I commend you on the live chat thing.

It seems that most e-commerce businesses are trying to keep the prospect/customer at "arms-length".

-No live chat
-No phone number (and hell I won't even suggest a phone number that goes to a freaking live person connected to the company!)
-No mailing address

Just yesterday I was trying to make contact with a site owner in order to inquire about a possible JV... but instead of emailing them (which I've found to be next to useless-- most people are flat out ignoring/not answering emails any more) I wanted to send the party a letter. A REAL letter. Ink, paper, envelope-- the whole shebang!

Do you think I could find a mailing address on the site? HA-HA-HA!

So I sent an email requesting their mailing address...

The reply I received this morning?

They don't even have a forking mailing address! Or at least one that they'll admit to!

What the hell is wrong with people?

I have found that the more you make your company accessible to customers the more they'll buy. My company has doubled in size in one year because of that and other common-sense approaches marketing and customer support.

Is it a pain in the arse at times? You bet. Some days you had better have your hard-hat on when a customer says your product sucks or your delivery method isn't worth a damn...

But you know what?

It's made my company better-- far better. To the point that I receive "Thank-yous" and other messages of appreciation. I also don't have my emails opted out of when I pike a product particularly hard-- they (the customers) allow me a certain latitude because that's what I allow them.

I know this doesn't all have to do with what you posted but I think it's important none-the-less.

We have a lot of new people visiting this site everyday and if I can get one person to avoid trying to keep prospects/customers at arms' length all the time then so much the better.

Marcia,

Here's the first 10 messages in our autoresponder series as a good example for you. The number of days between each message is the number on the left.

This goes on for one year and the messages average 20 days apart. We'll end up having messages for 3 years once you sign up by the end of 2007. You wouldn't believe how many people just quit or give up in their autoresponder series. Don't do that, keep giving people your message.

1 Secrets To Healthy Hair!
1 Just Wanted To Say Hi
4 Tips For Preventing Hair Loss
10 Memories of Braiding Hair
10 Check Out My Blog
10 What's your #1 Hair Problem?
10 Common Hair Myths, Don't Fall For These...
10 Get Answers to Your Hair Questions...
10 A Crazy Hair-Braiding Story...
10 The Dangers of Shampoo

I never want our valued subsribers to STOP hearing from us. Even the "big name" marketers autoresponder series end up quitting after about 45 days. It's terrible.

One person who I really like to hear from is Perry Marshall. He knows how to be timely in his emails. It's never junk. We personally don't promote anyone elses products to our list at this time. We would, but it would have to be a great product. We never want to wear out list out with pointless product offers or content. Our emails are not only valuable, but we actually care, would you want crap being sent out to you every 4 days promoting trash?

Unfortunately, that's all I get for the most part from other marketers. I unsubscribed from over 25 lists the first week in January, I don't even want to see this crap anymore in my email box, it gets old.

The biggest change for me was when I stopped looking at an email list as money, but as real people that want quality products and information. We truly want a real relationship with our list.

Corey Rudl said it best when he said, "You can take my entire business away from me right now, but if you leave me my list I can bounce back".

That's one thing I admire about you Marcia, you don't rip people off or take advantage of people. You have awesome products at GREAT products. When I saw your pricing I couldn't believe it, I was like "Wow, someone with fair pricing in the marketing niche". So much stuff is trash in that niche and overpriced. I think that's why your so successful in that niche. Good job.

Micheal,

Good job on putting yourself "out there". I'm surprised how how difficult it is to reach people these days, it's crazy.