If you want to make the most of your expertise, you must ensure that your income doesn’t depend on how many hours you work.
No matter how high your hourly rate, you can only work a limited number of hours and you can only be in one place at a time.
So, to make more profit, you need to find a way to package your expertise that lets you profit from the same work over and over again.
Why to package your expertise
You need to make your services as easy as possible for people to buy.
One way of doing that is by packaging them in a form that makes the purchase easy.
Packaging could mean turning your expertise into a book that people can easily download online. It could mean a series of lessons delivered by email or it could be a coaching program that involves one-to-one meetings over several months.
The key benefit of packaging your services in this way is that it makes it easy for people to see what you can do for them.
In many cases, you can package your services in such a way that you deliver them over and over with no further work on your part.
What does packaging mean?
Here are some examples of the ways you can package your services:
- Write a printed book: Imagine you meet two consultants at a convention. One hands you a business card, the other gives you a signed copy of his book. Which one is likely to win more clients and charge higher fees? There’s no doubt that people who have written books have instant authority status. Yet, with on-demand publishing, it’s now quite easy for anyone to do this.
- Write an e-book: For people not ready to produce a published book, there is a faster option of producing an e-book for sale online as an instant download. E-books are very fast to produce and are usually much shorter than printed books. However, because of the instant access – and usually because other bonuses are added to the purchase – the sales price is often much higher.
- Audio and video programs: Technology now makes it very easy to produce audio or video delivering valuable information, either as a special recording or as a recording of an existing event. These can be quickly packaged and sold at relatively high prices, either as an instant download or by mail using low-cost fulfillment services.
- Membership sites and online courses: Another way of delivering information is through subscription-based membership websites or online courses dealing with a specific topic.
- Coaching programs: Books, audio and video typically provide information in a general way so there is often demand for personal
advice on how to apply the information. This opens the demand for coaching which can be delivered online, by telephone and in person. - Seminars and workshops: Personal coaching is typically only delivered to one person at a time but seminars and workshops are a method of delivering the same information quickly to a much larger group. While the revenue per head may be lower for this approach, the large numbers of people that can be covered make it very attractive.
- Training programs: Some organizations may want the expertise delivered to larger groups of people in an interactive way through training programs and will pay significant fees to have this done.
- Consultancy: Often people are looking not just for information but they want specific solutions for exactly how they should apply the information to their own situation. This can open up opportunities for very significant fees.
Creating a Profit Pyramid
To maximize your potential revenue, you want to build a range of packages and profit centers that can meet the needs of different people.
When you cover a range of different price points, you are giving people a chance to try you out with little risk and then spend more with you as they build confidence and deepen the relationship.
This approach can be described as a ‘profit pyramid’ or ‘funnel’.
The significance of the name is that these are both concepts that are wide at one end and narrow at the other.
This also applies with your package of services.
At one end of the funnel or pyramid, you have a large number of people interested in a free or low-cost product or service.
At the other end, you have a smaller group of people buying much higher-priced services.
For example, your profit pyramid could involve:
- Free report: Anyone can download in exchange for their email address
- Low-cost trial product: A simple report selling for $7 – 27 that makes it easy for people to sample more of what you can offer
- Entry level product: May be an e-book, audio and other support material selling from $47 – 97
- Medium-price package: A more sophisticated service perhaps involving different media or some element of personal contact perhaps selling for $197 – 497 or a monthly subscription
- Advanced level offer: An advanced program offering significant resources or personal contact, selling for anything from $997 to several thousand dollars
You don’t need an offer at each of these levels but the general approach of having different levels is a proven way to build closer relationships over time.
People get to try you out at the free and low-cost levels and some will stay through all the stages with you.
You’ll also find that some people want to go straight to the high-priced package if you are offering something they want.
You can start building this pyramid at either end or anywhere in the middle.
Though creating a high-priced offer takes more work, the potential return is much greater so you can often reach your objectives more quickly.
How to create your packaged product
The secret to making the most of these opportunities is finding the fastest and easiest way to turn your expertise into packaged product. Here are some ways of doing that:
- Write it: If you have the skills and the time, you can write your own book or program. This doesn’t have to be time-consuming and, where it does not need new research, it can be done very quickly. You could quite possibly produce a valuable e-book and have it on sale within a few days.
- Record it: For those who don’t have the time or inclination to write, the information can be recorded. The easiest way to create a product is by recording an existing event. This can then be transcribed into a written product or sold in exactly the same format as it was delivered.
- Buy it: In many cases, you will be able to buy content that has been previously created by someone else. This could either be in the form of existing material that you are then licensed to deliver. Or you could buy ‘Private Label Rights’ to someone else’s material, where you can edit it and then sell it under your own name.
- Have it created: Another option is to develop a specification of what you want and then pay someone else to create it on your behalf. You can get easy access to freelance writers at sites such as www.elance.com
Whichever option you choose, the secret is to repackage and re-present your offer in as many ways as possible for maximum return.
Setting up your selling mechanism
For most types of packaged offer, you need a way for people to order and pay for it. Though you should sell your offers both online and offline, setting up an online sales page is often the easiest way to get started. The two key elements of this are:
- A persuasive sales letter
- An efficient payment collection and delivery system
Persuasive Sales Letter
You need to create a persuasive sales letter that explains to people why they should buy what you are offering.
- For a free or low cost report, the sales letter could be just a couple of pages.
- For a more complex or expensive offer, the letter will usually need to be much longer – perhaps about 20 pages.
You can write the letter yourself – and this is probably easier than you think if you follow a good, proven system. Or you can hire a freelance copywriter, which could cost you anything from a couple of hundred bucks to several thousand, depending on their reputation and what you are looking for.
Payment and Delivery Mechanism
There are many options for collecting payments and delivering purchases.
Your choice will depend on how much business you expect to do and how much of the process you want to do yourself.
If you are delivering everything online, you only need to hook up a PayPal button and create a download page. This will take you a couple of hours and you will be collecting payments immediately.
A popular method of collecting payments and deliverin
g solutions online is a processor such as Clickbank.
Clickbank handles virtually all the payment processing work for you, including paying any affiliates.
Alternatively, you can set up your own merchant account and use a more sophisticated shopping cart.
If your solution has to be delivered offline – either by post or in person – you will need to set up separate fulfillment arrangements.
It’s often best to keep it simple to get started and use Paypal or Clickbank. You can move to other solutions if your needs change.
In the next part of this series, we’ll look at how to promote your expertise to attract more clients and make more money.
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