How Man Vs Debt Makes Money
By Richard
Adam Baker started this site to share the lessons he learnt along with his wife, when they set about eliminating their mountain of personal debt a few years ago. The site is thus a personal finance blog, but with a focus on eliminating debt. I like focus!
What’s most interesting about Adam Baker is how he grew into a real online business builder. Starting out with an ebook on how to sell your stuff for maximum profit on ebay, Craiglist etc, he’s progressed to launch a membership site on debt reduction (You vs Debt) as well as a freaking feature length movie (one I might add was crowdfunded and not so much profit oriented).
He was also the co-creator of Only72, which did to information products on making money online, what Groupon does to small businesses every day – ie bundle deal site.
FYI Only72 did something like half a million in sales when it launched, thanks to the power of every featured author letting their audience know about it and the fact it was a smart structured deal with everyone giving away some good content in exchange for affiliate fees and the chance of getting exposed to a brand new audience.
Man vs Debt is a great information product example because it shows you how easy it is to find an idea by looking at by-product. What do I mean?
Well, the guys over at 37 Signals were the first people to really bang this into my head. Look at what you’re doing right now, what you’re learning etc, and ask how you can turn that into a product.
Example, this very site you are reading right now – it is simply a by-product of my many years spent searching for the next passive income idea to start. This site is basically an elegant version of all the notes I took when I was doing my research, testing and all manner of experiments. I thus didn’t spend that much extra time creating this site that I wouldn’t have already had to spend.
You can see how Baker did that with something like his Sell Your Crap ebook. He would have done all the research and experiments before even thinking about the ebook. And thus in order to create it all he needed to do was pull together his fragmented notes and edit the shit out of it. Perfect!
So what by-product products can you create? Just one more example because it’s a classic; a guy who ran several self-storage buildings, wanted to DIY install security cameras. For a self-storage place there is a bit involved. He spent ages researching it, thinking about it etc. Eventually he had the perfect setup in place. He then turned this into an online course – or ebook, I’m not 100% sure – and sold that to fellow self-storage business owners. The result was something crazy, like $100,000 in sales in the first year. Exact numbers allude me, but can you see how crazy valuable by-products can be…and these are the things that no one else really pays attention to or bothers to get value out of. Enjoy the ideation!!
Visit Man vs Debt