Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.

The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.

It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!

With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.

With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.

4 types of viable small business financing

Many small businesses face the prospect of going under if they are not able to secure good financing. The need for quick cash injections to keep a small business running can continue even after the first few loans are acquired. However, with each loan taken it becomes increasingly difficult to get a new loan approved. Also, the number of banks and financial intuitions who are willing to lend money to small businesses are rapidly shrinking.

A regular small business loan from the bank

Before you go anywhere else the first place you should go to is your bank. Banks offer some of the best small business loans which can be used as startup capital or to further expand your business. However, your proposal needs to appeal to the bank in a way that helps them feel that giving you a loan is a worthwhile investment. If you’re just starting out your business plan should go into detail about your business and your experience. This will help the bank understand your industry and how effective you can be. Banks will also require the following details from you:

• Cash flow projections which tells them how they will get paid back and when. These should be honest figures.
• Make sure to add personal financial statements.
• If possible add past business tax returns. This will show how exactly your business has been doing.
• You need to have good credit rating to be trusted. Even though this is a small business loan but you are getting the money. Make sure to add your credit report to the file you send as part of your loan request.

Try finding micro-loans

If you are not able to acquire a regular small business loan you may try to get a micro-loan. Micro-loans allow you to borrow up to $35,000 and they are easier to get. Micro-loans work great as small term capital and for equipment purchases. Because micro-loans may require collateral the best use for it is equipment purchases since then the equipment can be put up as collateral.

Short term supplier credit

This type of loan clearly does not work for every business. So, if you’re not a retailer or a manufacturer then you’ll have little use for it. You’ll usually need to pay back this type of loan within 30 to 60 days. However, you should be aware of the fact that the interest rate on short term supplier credit is very high.

Instant small business loans

Also known as quick cash loans and quick cash advance loans these work great for businesses that are not able to find a loan anywhere else. It is also great for businesses that do not have the required assurances to secure a regular small business loan. These types of lenders will usually process your request within a few days and deposit the amount into your account. In most cases you can apply for the loan directly from the lender’s website. However, because the lender is taking a higher risk of lending you money without due diligence the interest rate is slightly higher than what banks offer.

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.