What’s on your hard drive?

The creation of an information product can happen in mysterious ways. Judy Murdoch and I created another information product during our Information Product Roadtrip Workshop a few months ago. During the class, participants asked a lot of “How do I” questions. “How do I podcast?” “How do I find someone to design my web site?” And these were followed by “Can I recommend” questions, as in “Can I recommend a web designer, podcast service, audio recording software.” In the course of the discussion, I said we needed to develop a resource guide listing web sites and service providers we know who do those things. Our class liked that idea a lot.

Our Internet Resource Guide and information product was born. This one was simple to do: I went through my rolodex and started listing service providers I knew and trusted. Added web sites. Thought of new categories. Sent the rough draft to my assistant to format and flesh out. Then, I sent it to Judy for her input. Ta-da! The Internet Resource Guide was ready to upload to our Yahoo group forum for our students.

Then, another interesting thing happened. A new acquaintance who was a web designer asked to be on the list. Hmmmm. Maybe this is more than just a list for our students. Maybe it’s a product that we can develop on its own.

What could we do with our Resource Guide? We could -

• sell advertising in it
• update it every year
• publish it

and, we could

• sell it by itself
• or give it away as a bonus for our information product class (which is what we’re doing right now.)

I need to take another look at my computer hard drive. What other potential products are lurking there?