Creating Information Products But Which One? Part 4 – Cost

Creating Information Products But Which One? Part 4 – Cost

writing your book with technologySorry folks, but Thursday and Friday turned out to be busier than I could handle. So this article just might end up being a wee might late. 🙁  Sorry about that!

So far we’ve been kind of working up to one third of the decision matrix for identifying which information product you should create … Specifically the cost.

To a large extent I can’t tell you what the cost will be when creating information products.

You see as I hinted at in the last posts, you need to answer the question for yourself.

Generally speaking the relationships between writing, video, live/slideshow, and audio when creating information products are:

  • Text book (300+ pgs) = 1 week live seminar = 6 hrs finished Video = 12 hrs finished audio
  • Executive book (100-200 pgs) = 1 day live seminar = 1.5 hrs finished Video = 3 hrs finished audio
  • Article = 1-1/2 hour live seminar/webinar = 1/4 hr finished Video = 1/2 hr finished audio

HOWEVER, your own comparison will vary. First because you may be more or less comfortable speaking or writing when creating information products. Writing is a very private task and as a result doesn’t take a great deal of practice to become comfortable. (It does take a lot of practice to become capable but that can’t happen until you are comfortable). Speaking – public or otherwise – does require a great deal of practice before you become comfortable.

To make matters worse speaking to a crowd is much easier than speaking to a camera. A crowd gives you feedback and energy. A camera gives you nothing. So practice for one doesn’t help you with practice for the other. In fact, practice for the crowd is more a matter of becoming confident and comfortable. Practice for the camera is a matter of becoming able to generate your own energy.

Then comes the matter of repurposing and other techniques such as interviews. It might seem that there is little extra cost involved in repurposing (e.g. video to audio to transcription). However, as we’ll see in the next post, the costs are much higher than one will be told when investigating creating information products.

So all I can tell you is that you need to determine how much it will cost YOU to create the information product in the various forms. Just remember to include all the costs including preparation, production and post production.