I have decided to write an occasional "how-to" series to walk you through the steps of a handful of new potential revenue-generating business activities. I hope this will be helpful .... and I will depend on getting your feedback to give you more of what you want, and to shape this series to be useful! Do we have a deal?

Today's "How-To" is how to inexpensively create a simple information product in a CD format that you can either give away as a marketing tool, or sell to clients or patients.

Step 1: Pay attention

Your best products will provide information and solutions to the most commonly asked questions in your business or practice.  For example, if you have a newly diagnosed asthmatic, there might be a number of questions that your patient will need answered.  Or you may have observed that many of your pre-op patients express similar concerns or questions. Or, if you're in business, you may be thinking about developing an FAQ column for your newsletter.

The secret here is to be observant about what is on your customers' or patients' minds, or where you feel you have to repeat your responses several times a day or week. 

Step 2: Draft a script

Once you have determined what you content is going to be, write out a simple outline or draft a more detailed script. The ideal length for a CD is between 40 and 55 minutes of spoken content. Practice speaking the content to feel more comfortable - make sure you time yourself.

Step 3: Sign up for a digital recording account

You no longer need a recording studio to create and publish a decent audio recording.  Current technology has made it a whole lot easier.

My favorite digital recording service is AudioAcrobat, a remarkably simple and intuitive web-based application. It's the service I use every month to record our complimentary teleclasses. AudioAcrobat enables you to record conversations by telephone, or via a microphone into your computer and they then host all those huge recorded audio files on their servers, for the princely sum of $19.95 a month. Once you sign up for an account, you will receive notifications of free telephone-based trainings that are repeated every week.

PS: If you sign up through this link, I will receive a little credit!

Step 4: Record your content

To record your content, you pick up the telephone, dial the AudioAcrobat number and access code that you have been assigned with your account, introduce yourself and the title of your content, speak your script into a landline telephone as if you are giving a conversational lecture, hang up and return to your computer.  Within a few minutes, your recorded audio file shows up on your personal AudioAcrobat page.  You then re-title the recording (instead of "Saved phone recording"), and download it to your computer in a specially designated folder.

You will then need to copy this to a recordable CD (a CD-RW).

Step 5: Get set to publish your CD

At Kunaki, you can create your own CDs, in jewel cases with your custom-designed case covers, that can be ordered in quantities as low as one at a time - a kind of "print-on-demand" service. The typical cost for producing a CD is $1.60, irrespective of the number you order.

Here's how you do it.

1. Create a user account
2. Download a small piece of CD-DVD publishing software to your computer
3. The publishing software will guide you through the process (this is from their website):

• You select the product type (audio, video, ebook, game, data), and enter product information like title, publisher, author.
• You select and design your jewel case, and disc label print. Use our automated design system or custom design your own.
• You select the disc content by selecting your existing source CD (the one you downloaded your recording to) that you have placed in your E:drive or F:drive.
• Your product design, and content are compiled into a master product you test and review.
• You click the publish button and your master product uploads itself to our facility.
• Your publisher account is created for you. You manage and order your product by accessing your publisher account.

    4. To add a custom photo for your jewel case, instead of using the template images provided by Kunaki, you can go to iStockphoto.com (you can sign up through this link as well) and, using keywords, search for and then select royalty-free images for as little a $1 per image.

    5. Save your photo or photos (you might want one on the front cover and one on the back) to your computer, and then when you are asked to upload your photo from your computer to the Kunaki webpage, do so. See what your case looks like with the front cover, back cover, inside left side, and CD label itself.

    6. Select the "Custom images" option. Once you are satisfied with how your product looks, all the information will be sent in a digital file to Kunaki, ready for production!

    7. Kunaki will go so far as to set up a sales page for you (for an extra fee). Here again are some details from their website:

• The service lets you outsource: order acceptance, manufacturing, packing, shipping, and customer service.

• You set the retail price and we set up a sales page for your product. We accept credit-card orders on your behalf; and manufacture and ship directly to your customers. We provide you with accounting data, customer names and addresses, and send you a monthly check. You can expect to receive the check on the 15th of each month.

• We add a handling fee of $3.00 to your retail price when accepting orders on your behalf. Each month, we send you a check for the quantity sold multiplied by your retail price minus the manufacturing cost ($1.60).  

So, for example, if  you want to net $20 per CD, you need to charge $21.60 (to cover production costs) and then Kunaki will actually sell it for $24.60, to include the $3.00 fee for handling sales and fulfillment (filling and shipping the order).

Not too difficult, correct?

I challenge each of you to think of at least one product you could create in less than a month, that would provide valuable information to your patients or client. For not much more than $1.60 and your investment of time, you could have a customized information product to give away as a marketing tool. And when you see that there is a demand for these products, you can begin selling them from a simple one page website linking to the Kunaki sales page!

Who wants to take me up on the challenge? I'll be creating at least one myself!