Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Internet Marketing in the 2010s -- Videos Disrupt the Value Equation
With video getting easier for anyone to do online, ebooks are becoming less and less valuable in the minds of your potential customers. This decrease in perceived value will continue throughout the new decade.

You can't charge the same price for a downloadable ebook as you can charge for that exact same information in a nicely packaged, physically shipped, video DVD. And with it becoming increasingly easy for any marketer to produce nicely packaged, physically shipped, video DVDs, those who stick strictly with PDF ebooks will get left in the dust.

The more technologically advanced way that information is packaged, the higher customers perceive its value. That means that as video becomes more common online, the more that people expect that valuable information will be packaged in that way.

Does that mean that ebooks are dead? By no means. They will still serve a valuable purpose as supporting materials. You will still be able to increase the value of your video product by including bonuses in written form:

• Transcripts of your video
• Fact sheets
• Step-by-step process blueprints
• Cheat sheets
• Tip sheets
• Resource lists

They will also serve a valuable purpose as low-end door-openers to introduce yourself to potential customers and get them into the sales funnel for your higher-end products. Ebooks won't go away. They simply won't be the core of selling information online.

The days of getting $97 for an ebook are fast disappearing though. (Although you still might be able to get $97 for the same information in a set of DVDs with assorted bonuses.)

It will become important as the decade progresses to master creating products in forms that customers perceive as requiring higher technological skill. As I said before, these skills are increasingly available to marketers, so there's not reason not to learn them.

If you're currently feeling a little behind the curve of Internet product creation, I suggest you check out Jim Edwards' "The Net Reporter" training site. Jim is at the forefront of teaching marketers how to create all of the product types that have the highest perceived values. And you'll get training not just on product creation, but on all aspects of promoting your products, too. TNR is the one business expense I would never cut unless I was closing my business forever.

Whether you're already comfortable with creating products in forms that have higher perceived value or looking to learn, it will be important to move your product creation into those higher perceived forms.
Jeff

Labels: Jim Edwards, marketing, predictions, The Net Reporter, video