Outsourcing Product and Marketing Material Development

[Alminc]

Hi guys,

I am searching for specialised product developers for IM niche.

What I'm looking for is a service that offers a complete package,
including:

- reports/ebook writing/formatting
- audio/video production,
- copy writing,
- mini site graphics and ecover graphics creation,
- complete marketing material creation for affiliates
(banners, emails, ppc ads, text ads, keyword sets, autoresponder series...)
- marketing materials for me as product owner
...

It should be a service that should develop a complete product and all marketing
materials for me, hands free for me, against a couple of thousands of dollars.

But I find only the general ghostwriting services and freelance sites.

Are you aware of any product creation services for IM niche?

I would highly appreciate your tips.

Almin

[citrus]

Hey Almin,

If you're looking for a service that offers all that stuff, I think you'll be disappointed. I'm not personally aware of any such service, but if there is, I'd advise against using it simply because they don't specialise in anything.

I just finished reading "The Dip" by Seth Godin (founder of Squidoo) and he asked whether a company should hire a student who got (something like) 2 A's, 2 B+'s, and a B, or a student who got an A+ and 4 C's. If the second student got the A+ in a class that is relevant to the job, then the second student would be a better choice. The lesson here is that you should hire, or outsource, each part of your product creation to specialists.

Copywriting, for example, is something you shouldn't leave to "some guy".

For a couple thousand bucks, you can get a complete minisite done + a well written ebook between 40-60 pages long. Everything else, especially the salesletter, will cost you loads more.

That said, if you're doing something like ContentGrab.com, a good solution would be just to keep hiring (and firing) outsourced talent until you assemble a good team. A Warrior by the name of Kate Anderson is behind that site...go PM her or something...I'm sure she'd be happy to answer some of your questions.

Good luck,
Curtis

[Daniel0604]

I'm going to agree with curtis on this one. I haven't personally launched any products yet, but what you need to do is find a separate person for each field really. One to write sales pitch, another for graphics, someone for the ebook or videos. I do know you could find some that do all the site work such as graphics (header, footer, ebook cover) and create the site and layout. I found one that looked good and was relatively inexpensive ($130 or so for a site). www.trendyecovers.com Good Luck!

[wbakhos]

If you really don't want to create your own work you could probably get a PLR bundle with everything in it and have the full resales rights to it. Probably cost you about $20 instead of a couple of thousand.

http://master-resale-rights.com/ is one place you can have a look.

I wouldnt recommend it because I'm a fan of creating good unique material but you might find something you like here.

Hope this helps a little

Cheers
Will

[Kristen Arnold]

The IM niche in itself is rather large and of course there are thousands of variables in what people will actually buy.

Honestly I see more success from people using the good 'ole fashion process of getting a mini-site, grabbing a plr report from WSO or one of those ghostwriter sites and start building their list. As they build the relationship they are testing with affiliate products and watching the reaction, using survey's/blogs/feedback and then have their hot selling product done because they know it's what will sell verses a guess.

If you are at the point of being ready for a product to be made, it sounds like you need more of a project manager type roll but I agree with the above, a good copywriter alone is going to cost a good amount. Can you keep pushing the affiliate promotions and re-invest in your own product?

[Patrick Wooley]

Almin,

There are many people that do this for a living and you can surely find someone for around $1000 or so. Agree with Curtis regarding Kate Anderson, her work seems to be top notch.

There are products ready for sale if you go to http://flippa.com/buy-websites?filterby=startup or http://forums.digitalpoint.com.

If you can't find the ready made product, you can surely find the people to complete each phase of it. Also, the warrior forum seems to be a great resource for anything IM related. Hope that helps. Take care and good luck.

Patrick Wooley

[cre8iveq]

Almin,

I'm going to try not to come across rude here, so sorry if I do... but if someone else was going to make your product, your website, graphics, and do your marketing... why would they do all that for you? If they had all these skillsets, wouldn't they just think "ok, I have everything I need, I can either give it to this guy for a couple grand, and let him make the profit, or I could profit myself". Basically, what would you be bringing to the table?


Don't get me wrong, I am all for outsourcing. Infact, I think the entrepreneur's job is to bring together all the different skills... but if all the skills came from the 1 place, they wouldn't need you. You are trying to outsource the "entrepreneur" part... which is the only part you can't outsource.

[Patrick Wooley]

Dan,

There are many people who do this for others that are business oriented. You have to remember that while many may be great at product creation, they might be terrible at the actual marketing part of it. Hence the saying about starving artists. Plus, maybe they need a quick cash infusion and don't want to go through the whole marketing part.

You have only to do a bit of searching online to see that there are people offering complete packages for sale without monetizing them except for the sale. Yes, from our standpoint, it makes no sense at all. But think about if they're outsourcing the products, which you can almost guarantee, and paying $300-$500 or less for everything, turning around and selling for $1000, its still 100% profit.

Do that 10 times a month and you have a $5000 monthly income without doing much except some marketing. It's all about finding an angle to make money smarter and exploiting it. It's just smart business any way you cut it.

You can rest assured that the services are available and people are making money on the one time sale. Many of the outsourcers live in third world countries where they would otherwise make a hundred bucks a month or have no job at all. So, five hundred in two to four weeks is a great deal.

A lot of the article writing services being offered now are doing the same thing. The hard part is finding someone who puts out quality. But once you find them, it makes sense to either monetize the situation, or have your own source of quality products at a reasonable price. Anyway, just my two cents worth.

Patrick

[Stephen Carter]

i don't think you can get a decent product created for $2000 unless you do the product creation yourself and have the packaging (product graphics, website, etc) outsourced.

the packaging by itself will likely cost you $200-$1000 which does not leave too much for the product itself. but let's say $1500. who is going to create a top-notch product for that amount of money when they could create it for themselves and make a lot more as the product owner?

i just reviewed a product that someone outsourced 100 percent in a niche that he had no experience with. the web site looks great, but his outsourced product, not so much.

he spent about $1200 on the packaging and $800 or so on the product, which was a couple of 40 page ebooks and 3 videos. when i watched the videos i could barely understand what the narrator was saying because it was probably the first time he had narrated for video, and he was no-one you would ever hire to do that particular job.

i am sure the product owner will learn from his mistakes, but the point is that unless you know the capabilities of the people you are hiring to do the job, the likelihood that you will get a great product created for a small investment of $2000 or so is not that high.

[mr julian tion jr]

hello my name is julian their is a guy by the name of cory thomas from las vegas thewebsquad.com if you would like his phone number let me know ......

[behzad]

I believe it is completely possible to create a product with 100% outsourcing as Almin wants, but as Dan said, your job as an entrepreneur is to get together different skills for different parts of your product creation. At least I am not aware of a service to do everything for you.

And one point to those who believe that if a person can make an ebook, create a minisite, do graphic design, then they will do it for themselves, I think this is a complete wrong idea, first of all not everybody is capable of doing everything in different skills, second is they are service providers, this is their business for example to create a minisite for you. Remeber providing service and tools for gold miners is better than to be a gold miner.