Despite the state of the economy and the fact that most people are struggling to make ends meet and get by, curiously enough some parts of the economy are still going very strong and some niches and product markets are still doing very well and are in fact thriving in this downtrodden economy. One instance of this is informational product sales.
An example of an informational product would be like an electronic book, also known as an eBook, based on weight loss. A self-proclaimed guru in the field of weight loss writes a book based on everything they know about weight loss or everything they’ve researched about weight loss and then takes it to an online affiliate network and sells it to people online.
Informational products have always sold very well, so much so that there are specific affiliate networks which exclusively deal in the sales of digital products and a great deal of their inventory is made up of informational products.
Take Clickbank, for example. Here is an affiliate network which exclusively deals in digital products, and a vast majority of their products are eBooks. Clickbank generates sales of over $1 billion every year just to give you an idea of how big the informational product marketplace is and how often people are willing to pay and pay well for an informational product.
This begs the question of, when the same information is generally available elsewhere on the Internet and for free at that, why do informational products sell so well?
Convenience
The vast majority of what people pay for when they purchase one of these eBooks is convenience.
eBooks are available for instant download to your computer as soon as you pay for them, and with the way and language with which these products are promoted, the consumer gets the idea in their head that this book is the be-all end-all solution to their problem, so if they can find that solution as soon as they purchase the eBook; well when you think in those terms, it’s no wonder why these products sell so well across the board in all kinds of different niches from health to how to do everything in between.
(Perceived) Quality
The second reason informational products sell so well is because of the perceived quality associated with them.
Often times the merchants behind the product, the person who wrote that book themselves, puts far more time into the promotion of that product and specifically into the creation of sales page for that product, more time than they spend writing it itself.
They make an elaborate sales letter on their sales page which explains why this is the best product which anyone will find on this particular topic of interest anywhere be on the Internet or on bookshelves in a physical format.
Inexpensive
The last reason for why informational products sell so well is because they are relatively inexpensive in most cases. Most eBooks sell for anywhere between $15 and $30. For most people, it’s easy to justify a purchase of $30 or under, especially if as I talked about a moment ago that product guarantees the solution to their problem.
Receiving an instant solution to an ongoing problem which you may have had for a long time and for a cost of under $30 at bat, it’s no wonder for why these informational products sell so very well. And consequently it explains why so many people get into the business of writing their own informational product in hopes of it selling very well.