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Today’s guest post is by Daniel Sumner. Dan loves to create great free helpful content at his on own blog. You can also catch up with him on Twitter @danielsumner. Don’t be afraid to slide over and connect with Dan. 

Product creation is hard work!

I would also like to bet that 90% of people who create a product only get as far as the idea stage and don’t know how to progress further.

I mean how would you get past the idea stage? What knowledge do you have on product creation? We weren’t taught it at school? The last time I looked there were no college courses for online product development. Do you just go it alone? Maybe I can help you out a little.

Choose your passion

Why would you create a product in one niche if you weren’t passionate about it? Could you immerse yourself into a product? Could you live it and breathe it if you didn’t like it? How could you give that product 100% 24/7 if you didn’t love it and love learning about it? With the world as your audience and the internet as your shopping mall, there aren’t many niches out there that you can’t provide a product for.

I guess by now you may have a niche idea in mind, so let’s move on

Planning is the key

Without prior planning you are dead in the water. Yeah sure you can create a product on the fly, you can wing it, you can scrape it all together and create it with post-it notes. But would it be as cool and as awesome as it could be if you just planned your full product before you even started?

Are you asking yourself the critical questions, such as:

• Do I have enough knowledge?
• Can I learn this knowledge?
• Is my niche profitable?
• Am I in the right niche?
• Can I monetise my product?
• What sales flow should I have?
• What payment processor will I use?
• What format should I have?
• What format is going to work best for me?
• What is the purpose of my product?

These are just some of the questions you need to ask yourself before creating your product. If you have your bases covered then your product is going to CRUSH IT. I have no doubt.

The first stages of product creation start with an idea of what could be. Ask yourself the question, what do I need? What do others need? What can I provide to help people? These questions provide you with the grounding for the start of your product development plan.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when creating your own product, your new product just needs to work and provide good information for the end user. For example, how many traffic programs are out there? How many FaceBook programs have you seen? If something is working for you then you can create a product. If you have something to teach, then why not teach it? If you have a software idea then why not create it? Like I said you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just provide some great info that works and helps others.

Break out the mind maps

Below you will see an example mind map about product development (You can click the link to look at the map in full). As you can see there are a lot of angles to cover when creating a product and a mind map is the perfect starting point.

Mind maps allow you to see things clearly and effectively build on ideas to create the perfect idea. By building mind maps for your future products nothing should be left on the table and no critical parts should be missed.

By creating more than one mind map for each module of your product, you can break your product down, and then bring it all back together again. With all avenues accounted for, it’s time for product creation.

Play to your strengths and outsource

Lets take a few things into account, such as what are you good at? Are you a good writer? Are you articulate? Do you have confidence behind a camera or using screen capture software? Are you awesome at graphical content?

By playing to your strengths you can make product creation very easy indeed. I mean how easy is it to do the things which are second nature to you? Very easy!

Unless you have the time to learn all aspects of product creation, it’s time to get tough and outsource. If you have problems with certain aspects of your products e.g. graphics, is it not time to outsource and save time and quality rather than struggle along with poor quality? Outsourcing is a must for a professional look and feel.

Here are 6 things you may want to remember when creating your product in the future.

1. Niche – Love your niche and be passionate about it. Your knowledge is power.

2. Format – Decide on your format and create the best product to your ability. eBooks, video and audio all have awesome power. Master these techniques.

3. Pages – Get your website pages down before hand. The last thing you need is to miss one when it comes to the end and launch day.

4. Sales flow – Plan your sales flow and how you want your product to flow. Do you want upsells, down sells, exit pop etc.

5. Payment processor – Plan your payment processor and who you are going to use. Can they accommodate the sales flow?

6. Test, Test ,Test

By using the techniques above you can create a great product easily and more efficiently with a lot less effort. By mind mapping and structuring your products, you can use the same model time and time again creating a fail safe structure which you can use over and over again which works!

Your turn

Did you find this helpful? Is this your first product? When it comes to product development and product creation, how do you do it?

About the Author:

Dan Sumner loves to create great free helpfull content at his on blog: www.dansumnerblog.com. You can also catch up with him on Twitter @danielsumner. Don’t be afraid to slide over and connect with Dan he really is a nice guy…