A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. – John Lennon
Internet and the people working around it never cease to amaze me.
We’re living in an age where it’s easier than ever to reach out to (virtually) anyone. Unless you’re trying to contact some A-list celebrity (hey Oprah, how about a brief video interview?), chances are you can contact them pretty easily.
Email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.. long gone are those days when the only way to get “in touch” with your favorite book author, drummer of a popular band, host of a travel tv-show, sports idol, etc. was next to impossible:
- You Wrote a fan letter (yes, a paper letter) with a few questions to some P.O. Box address.
- Hoped someone answers.
- And if you were lucky, got an autograph and a response from your idol’s manager saying: ”Thanks for contacting xxx. Here’s his autograph. Unfortunately xxx does not answer questions unless you’re a press representative in some major newspaper / TV-channel, etc. Thanks for your support!“
Well, thanks.
Contacting A-list celebrities still ain’t easy, but at least you have plenty of channels to try! How about it, go ahead and say Diddy hi?
But this post is not about contacting A-list celebrities.
Let’s talk about collaborative product creation.
In short, a collaborative product is a product that you’ve created in collaboration with others. You give input, they give input, you collect the results and make a product out of them. Simple enough, huh?
Everyone who participates, get’s something out of the project and it doesn’t always have to be money:
Exposure, great contacts or maybe just a great feeling of being part of something great is often enough.
- Create an epic product sales campaign - http://www.only72.com/ (they sold a package of 23 products from 23 bloggers and had the sales page up for only 72 hours. An awesome collaborative product if you ask me!)
- Create a book together – This is what we just did with 11 other bloggers. More about that later in this post.
Or how about a music video: You’ve surely seen the Glow by Madcon?
How’s that for an awesome collaborative product! That must took some serious organizing to make it happen, huh?
Four Steps for creating your first collaborative product
1. Come up with a product idea
- Have a product in mind (which you’d like to create), but you don’t think your input alone would be enough to make it valuable to others? Plan your “online dream team” and plan how you could “sell” your idea to them.
- If you’re a blogger: Think about what kind of product you and the other bloggers in the your niche could create together?
- How about starting by creating a book or a membership website together?
2. Contact others and tell them about about your idea/project
- Contact the people you’d like to create a product with and tell them about your project (just email them a simple project description and information about the arrangements).
- Let them know what they get out of this and why they should participate. Like I said earlier, the “getting part” doesn’t have to be money. Just make it a win-win deal for everyone involved.
- Make it easy for them to participate. Create document templates that they can use, create a info site (1 information filled page is enough) where you put down all the small details (affiliate stuff, templates, example ideas etc.).
3. Start working together. Collect their input and create an amazing product from the end results
- Use Skype, Facebook groups, some collaborative web service of your choice or even just email and collaborate together around your product.
- When you have all the materials you need, compile the results and create the final product.
- Let others know you got the product ready and give them further instructions how they can get even more out of it (affiliating, sharing, promoting..). Don’t forget to give them a free copy of the final product.
4. Help Out.
- This is something that I personally feel very strongly about (= a really important step). If you’re going to sell your product (and not just give it away for your email list subscribers etc.), definitely consider giving out a percentage of the sales to some good purpose.
- If you saw bought the 72-hour niche product page, you probably know that 5$ from the product price went to water charity.
- I’ve seen many other bloggers do the same with their own products. For example:
- Chris Guillebeau from The Art of Non-Conformity is giving 10% of all revenues from his UnconventionalGuides.com to water charity in Ethiopia.
- While this will take a cut from your profits, I don’t think any of us should run our business just for the sake of money. Money is important, but there are way more important things out there. If you have the chance to make a difference and help out, PLEASE DO.
Real World Example: The Internet Business Ideas Book
A few weeks back, I was contacted by Ian & Amy Anderson about a book project they were putting together. They introduced a great idea for creating a “collaborative internet business ideas book” with bloggers who’ve been involved in helping people start their online businesses. I was definitely interested.
The project was pretty simple actually. All they asked from us was to come up with a few great online business ideas and submit those to them. They also offered a premade document template which we could use for writing down our ideas.
Now, if you’re an entrepreneur with an lively imagination (I know most of us are), coming up with new ideas for businesses is not really a big deal. New ideas come and go everyday (try jogging – one of my all time favorite times for coming up with new ideas – talk about idea flow!). The hard part is to filter out the good ones.
When I started putting my ideas down to paper, I realized I got way too many to submit them all. And to be honest with you, many of them weren’t really good ones. They felt good in the beginning, but turned out to be pretty lame after thinking more about implementing them to real life. That’s ok. Not all ideas are worth going after.
In the end, I filtered out 4 new online business ideas and submitted them to Ian & Amy. After that, they did all the rest. You can check the end result here: http://internetbusinessideasbook.com/. This was a (relatively) simple, powerful and a very inspiring project and I got a chance to participate! Who others were involved in this?
The Lineup – Yours truly + 11 other bloggers from 7 different countries contributed to this book:
- Ali Luke –
- Sherryl Perry –
- Heather Craik –
- Terry Dunn –
- Dawn Conklin –
- Henri Junttila –
- Michelle Dale –
- Jade Craven –
- Pat Romain –
- Amy Anderson –
- Ian Anderson –
By reading this book, you’ll learn (in less than 15 minutes each):
- How to setup and connect social networking profiles for businesses.
- How to answer readers questions for cash.
- How to earn affiliate income using nothing but articles.
- How to teach aspiring bloggers while building your passive income.
- How to dine out every day of the month for free.
- How to profit from bloggers that produce videos.
- How to tie together mobile apps, a website and termite exterminators.
- How to help small businesses promote their blogs.
- How to find drop shippers and setup a ecommerce site using open-source software.
- How to pay for a weekend stay with just one website.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are more than 35 ideas covered, all with real-world marketing concepts, sample domain names and more. You don’t need more schooling or more time. You need to take massive, immediate action on a creative idea that makes sense and works for you. That’s exactly what the 2011 Internet Business Ideas Book delivers.
SPECIAL BONUS – Unlimited access to exclusive resources – coupons, themes, links and more!
Check out the free sample chapter from the book! (Right click & save to download)
If you’re interested in getting a copy of the book (I hope you are!), here are “Nomad Couch Readers ONLY” links for getting the product at a discounted price:
- Digital Version – $27.99 (Original price $34.99 – Discount -51%)
- Print Version – $30.99 (Original price $37.99 – Discount -25%)
- Combo Version – $47.99 (Original price $54.99 – Discount -33%)
Helping Out.
From every purchase, a 10% will be used to purchase new computers to the kids in inner-city grade schools.
Passive income, Internet marketing, product creation… get inspired and kick start your online biz today (and let me know when you do, I’d love to check out which ideas you implemented)!
Your turn.
There you have it. My very first “half tips, half marketing” post. I hope you didn’t find it too hard on your eyes!
Have you created products online together with others? What did you learn? Did you face any pitfalls? Please share your feedback in the comments section below & please share this post on Twitter & Facebook, I’d really appreciate it.
Cheers!
- Juha
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