Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.

A Guide on Successful Product Creation and Internet Marketing

Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.

The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.

It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!

With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.

With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.

How Successful Investors Prepare Their Real Estate Analysis

Successful real estate investors never rely simply on what others tell them. Once a prospective real estate investment has been located, prudent investors conduct a close examination of the rental property’s income, expenses, cash flow, rates of return, and profitability. Regardless what overzealous agents or sellers say, vigilant real estate investing demands a validation of the numbers.

To achieve this, real estate investors rely on a variety of reports and rates of return to measure an income property’s financial performance. And in this article, we’ll consider a few of these reports and financial measures.

Reports

The most popular report used in real estate investing circles is perhaps the Annual Property Operating Data, or APOD. This is because an APOD gives the real estate analyst a quick evaluation or “snapshot” of property performance during the first year of ownership. It does not consider tax shelter, but an APOD created correctly can serve as the real estate equivalent of an annual income and expense statement.

A Proforma Income Statement is also popular amongst analysts. Although comprised of speculated numbers, a proforma provides a useful way for real estate investors and analysts to evaluate an investment property’s future, long-term cash flow, performance. Proformas regularly project numbers out over a period of ten to twenty years.

Certainly one of the most important documents for a real estate analysis is the Rent Roll. This is because a property’s sources of income and income stream are vital to making wise real estate investment decisions. A rent roll typically lists currently occupied units with current rents along with vacant units and market rents. During the due diligence, of course, rents shown in the rent roll should be confirmed by the tenants.

Rates of Return

Capitalization rate, or cap rate, is one of the more popular rates of return used by real estate analysts. This is because cap rate offers a quick first-glance look at a property’s ability to pay its own way by expressing the relationship between a property’s value and its net operating income. Cap rate also provides real estate investors with an easy method for comparing similar properties.

Cash-on-cash return measures the ratio between a property’s anticipated first-year cash flow to the amount of investment required to purchase the property. Though cash on cash return does not account for the time value of money or for cash flows beyond the first year, this shortcoming is often overlooked because it does provide an easy way for real estate investors to compare the profitability of similar income-producing properties and investment opportunities quickly.

Internal rate of return is more complex because it requires a computation for time value of money and therefore requires a financial calculator or good real estate investment software. Nonetheless, it is widely-used by analysts because internal rate of return reveals in mathematical terms what a real estate investor’s initial cash investment will yield based on an expected stream of future cash flows discounted to equal today’s dollars. In other words, internal rate of return converts tomorrow’s dollars to today’s dollars and then computes your return on investment.

Here’s the point.

Take the time to conduct a thorough real estate analysis. Create the reports and returns and hold the numbers up to the light. This is the only reasonably certain way of making the right investment decision on any prospective real estate investment. If you do your real estate analysis correctly you’ll know whether the investment makes good financial sense or not, and almost certainly guarantee your real estate investing success.