Creating Information Products But Which One? Part 5 – Reputation

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.

The next part of the matrix is related to client opinion or more correctly the effect on your reputation as a provider of information products.

Generally speaking, customers will view information products in the following order (from most reputation building to least):

1. Text Book  (200-300 + pgs)
2. Executive Book  (100-200 pgs)
3. Live Seminar (1 week)
4. Video (+8 hours original content/4 DVDs)
5. Real eBook (60 pages)
6. Live Seminar (1 day)
7. Video 1-1/2 hours (original content or interview)/1 DVD)
8. Audio recording (original radio quality)
9. White paper
10. Article
11. Video 1-1/2 hrs -4 hrs (recording of live seminar) (1/2 DVDs)
12. Webinar
13. Video 1-1/2 hrs (interview)
14. Audio recording (interview)

Generally speaking for equal effort the reputation order is:

• Writing
• Live
• Video
• Audio

(Meaning you get more reputation building from a written work taking 25 hrs than you would from a video also taking 25 hours).

Now there is one issue that is very important. Many “gurus” recommend a repurposing strategy such as:

• Develop and hold a live seminar
• Record seminar & sell recordings as DVDs
• Convert to audio and sell as CDs
• Transcribe and sell as book

The problem with this technique is that each step must be professionally done (as in quality). Your seminar must be of a professional quality in order for ANY of the other media to have reputational value. In addition, each of the repurposing steps (video, audo, transcription) must be carried out to a professional level in order to be perceived as quality.

So to continue with the example above, your seminar must be of professional quality. Otherwise nothing that is repurposed from it will be considered professional. Fortunately, because it is live, people will forgive a great deal. However, when it comes to video recording, the video recording must be professional. That means that slides must be separately recorded, editing must be professional, and if possible, multiple cameras should be used (to provide the editor with options if nothing else). Proper titles and sound track must be added. Voice track may need to be re-recorded in order to give an acceptable level of quality. Similarly, the conversion to audio needs to be done professionally. The sound may (and most likely will) need to be rebalanced for audio. Video titles need to be removed and replaced with audio titles (aka intro music and maybe an introduction). Finally, when making a transcription of the Seminar/DVD/CD the written version cannot be left as a transcription. Rather it needs to be restructured and rewritten (perhaps with additional items) into a proper book.

The whole point is that your reader/customer will know if you have simply changed formats without doing anything else. If so they will reject the effort and the revised product will be considered as reputation negative rather than promoting your reputation.

Keep in mind that this applies whichever direction you choose to repurpose in. What do I mean by direction? I’ve been using repurposing to refer to taking an expensive product and then creating other (less expensive) products. That’s the example above. But the other direction is also a possibility. That’s where you take a collection of simpler products and then repurpose them into a single entity. For example, a number of articles can be combined into a book. Or a well-written article can be redesigned as a webinar.  It should be obvious that in this case, major work will be required to create the other products.

But the truth is, it doesn’t matter which direction you take. Repurposing requires major work if you are intending to have a high quality end product.