Ben Roy

Most of the people I interact with in the Internet Marketing world are making money by selling information. Information is readily available, doesn't necessarily require any specialized skills, and is fairly quick to package up and deliver. I guess that makes selling it a great business model, and plenty of people are quite successful doing so.

When I'm going about my daily business though, it's rarely ideas for information products that pop into my head. Much more likely is that I'll be struck with a great idea for a new piece of software. Not surprising if you know me at all, I know.

There are some problems though, with the idea of software. First, it can be quite troublesome to just get it written and ready to go. Depending on how complex the idea is, it could be months of development or longer if you happen to be a minor perfectionist. Then there's the issue of support. Once you get the application out there, people will inevitably need help, ask questions, etc.

There are lots of other issues that you never really think about, like needing to create documentation for the software and having to integrate a custom payment solution. All of this combines to make shipping a new software product a rather hefty task.

The conclusion? I should be concentrating on producing and selling information rather than software, but it's easier said than done. It's so much more exciting to be building something that functions, that actually does stuff. And I'm not going to give that up, but I am going to dip a toe in the info product water and see how it feels.