That sounds simple, doesn’t it? But there are still some people out there that don’t seem to get it.

Question: Who knows what you should provide for your customers?

Answer: The experts on your customers, of course.

Your customers know what your customers want much more then you do. They are the leading experts for what you should be providing.

Question: How do you find out what your customers want?

Answer: You ask them. In other words you create a survey and see what they want.

Question: How do you run a survey?

Answer: You can run a survey as simple as sending out an email and asking them to respond or setting up a formal survey on a web page or you can mail out a physical survey.

Doesn’t that sound easy? In concept it is very easy, but in practical application there are a lot of things that you need to do to make your survey work for you.

When you ask a question you can lead the person reading the question to an answer. This can give you bad information from your survey. You have to be careful when you word your survey questions, if you lead a person to the answer that you want to hear you will end up with the information you want instead of the information you need to have when you create your product.

Remember, you can lead a person to the answer with not only the question but with the choice of answers, if it is a multiple choice answer. For example:

Question: Who do you think is the world’s most peaceful person?

1. Adolph Hitler
2. Osama Bin Laden
3. The Una-Bomber
4. Mike Tyson

As you can see that is a question that most people either wouldn’t answer or if they did answer they would be picking an answer that they didn’t really agree with. This is why it is very important to phrase your questions, answers and the way the questions are answered in your surveys.

Once you have your answers and you have analyzed the results you will know exactly what your customers want. If you are the one that provides the information or product that people want they will gladly pay you for it.

Michael Cheney has done a lot of surveys to learn what his customers want as a result of these surveys he has had a couple of products that have sold over $100,000 worth of product in a very short time. Wouldn’t you like similar results?

Even though setting up a survey sounds easy there are people that get paid thousands and thousands of dollars to create, run and analyze surveys for other people companies and some of the larger companies actually have a survey section of their marketing company.

Besides product development, surveys are also used to:

1. Generate qualified leads for your products
2. Refine your existing product
3. Streamline support issues
4. Check your customer satisfaction
5. To find out almost any information you want on how to make your business, product, customer support, etc., better.

Question: Why doesn’t everybody use surveys?

Answer: Who knows? I would assume a lot of the time it is because they don’t know how to run a survey or they don’t know what to ask or it could be they don’t know whom to ask.

If you are thinking about doing a survey I would recommend you do some research on it before you create. There is a bunch of information out there to be had but I can personally recommend Marketplace Detectives. This is by Marie Kane who made a good living doing surveys for other businesses.  In Marketplace Detectives she gives up all the tips, tools and information she used to become a expert in the survey field.

If you want to maximized your money, surveys are one of the most reliable ways to start and will provide you with the most bang for your buck. Don’t believe me? Ask!

You might be wondering how I can say you will fail with private label rights products.

It is a statistical fact that 95% of the people that try to make money online fail. That makes me right 95% of the time.

Don’t worry, if you want to be one of the 5% that makes money online I have some tips for you that will help you succeed with private label rights products.

#1 Make sure you get a product with the proper rights.

There are a number of different rights and restrictions that come with private label products. You need to make sure you have the rights to do what you have planned with your product.

All private label rights products will let you edit the product, put your name on the product and resell the product. But that is all they have in common some of the rights that vary are:

* Whether or not you can claim copyright.
* Whether you can give away the end product.
* Whether you can sell the private label rights.
* Whether you can group the products.
* Whether you can sell in a membership site.
* Plus more. . .

Be sure you read the terms and conditions before you purchase the product. If it doesn’t give you the rights to do what you want to do keep on looking.

I personally find that the more restrictive products (no private label resale rights, no give away rights) are the ones that I can make the most profits from. But if you are trying to build a list by giving something away then you need to make sure you have giveaway rights.

#2 Make the private label product your own.

What does this mean?

It means actually use the rights that you have. At least 90% of the people that have the rights don’t change the name of the product or the graphics or the sales page, let alone the product itself.

Now, if you remember 95% of the people don’t make money, we have just accounted for a large percentage of them with this one step.

Change the name, change the graphics and most definitely change the product. Make it promote you and not the person you bought from.

Put your affiliate links in the product.

Put your name on the product.

Point the product to your site.

#3 Improve the end product.

Make your product better then the products of all the other people that purchases private label rights. You can do this by:

* Adding related bonuses to the product.
* Group some related articles with the product.
* Create an autoresponder series to go with the product.
* Create instructional tutorials to go with the product.
* Anything else you can think of to increase the apparent value of the product.

#4 Read or use the private label product.

This sounds like a rather obvious thing to say but I have purchased private label products that were absolutely trash. Not only providing poor information to the end user but giving damaging information.

Fortunately, I knew enough about the products to know they were trash and possibly even harmful so I didn’t use them or resell them until I had them fixed.

I have followed up on these products and found people selling them without changing the name or information at all. If they do manage to make a sale I doubt they will make a followup sale if their customers actually read the products.

#5 Avoid the cheap stuff.

From personal experience I found that you can profit a lot more from the higher priced private label rights products.

The reasons for this are:

* They are usually better quality products.
* They have fewer people selling them.
* They have better promotional materials included.
* They usually won’t let you sell the private label rights.

Remember the price is relative. If you buy a $27 PLR product and you don’t sell any or if you buy a $500 PLR product and you sell 100 of them at $97 each which actually cost you more?

The key is the first four points. If you don’t do those steps you will fail with private label products.

OK, you want to make a product but you don know enough information to create a product, how can you be an expert?

Well, you aren’t actually the expert but you will be seen as an expert by association. You do this quite simply by interviewing people that are experts on the subject.

How do you get interviews?

The easiest way is to start going to seminars and conferences covering the topic you want to create the product about and just ask the experts on the subject, you will be surprised at how many will actually jump at the opportunity.

If you can’t get to these events then you can check their websites and use the contact form to request an interview.

Remember this is also usually a benefit to the person you are interviewing too. It puts their name out in the spotlight and marks them as even a better expert then before. In the Internet marketing niche the interviewee will often ask for rights to sell or use the product when you are done so it also works to create a new product for them.

How do you get the interview recorded?

If you are at an event, seminar or conference you can simply record it will a digital recorder or your computer and a microphone.

If it is something you set up over a distance you can use a conference line. There are a number of services out there that will provide you with a free conference line.

1. You just sign up
2. You get the number a
3. Ask the person when they are available to call in
4. Meet them on the call
5. Record it

Most but not all services offer to record the calls and let you download it. If you click on any of the text that says conference line in a different color it will take you to a free service that offers the conference line and recordings.

Before you start your interview make sure you provide a copy of the questions to the interviewee and ask them if there are any other questions they would like you to ask or if there are any questions they would like you to avoid. You don’t want to surprise them but remember you can edit the audio after it is recorded.

One of the best ways to get traffic to your website is to make sure you have a link to your site in every product you sell or giveaway. Especially with products that have resell or giveaway rights, this way when other people sell your product you can get traffic from it.

I am amazed at the number of products that I see and download that don’t tell me where I got them, where they originated from this even includes products given away on squeeze pages. People just take the giveaway or master resale rights product and give it away without adding anything to bring them back to their site.

OK, OK, I hear you. You are saying, “But I don’t have the rights to change the product!”

No one said you needed to change the product.

There are a number of ways you can get noticed and have the users of a product (even if it isn’t yours) come back to your site.

For example: Repackaging

Most of the time for repackaging you will need a program to Zip the files. I use winzip but the free version doesn’t allow you to create zip files it only allows you to unzip them. The guys at Coffee Cup have a free program that will let you zip file called Zip Wizard that will create your zip files for you.

Repackage the download and include your own special instruction sheet with a link to your site or sites.

Repackage the download and with a special report that increases the value of the product, include this as a bonus and make sure it has links back to your site or sites.

If your product is a pdf you can use a PDF brander like PDF Profitlock to wrap your pdf file. This will make it possible for you to put a splash page that they will see whenever they open the file and a splash page they will see whenever they close the file.

There is one draw back to wrapping a PDF. That is the file gets changed from a .pdf to a .exe file and isn’t compatible with Mac’s. Depending on your niche this might be fine or disastrous. When I look at the stats for my sites I average 1% to 3% Mac users so for most of my sites this wouldn’t be a major problem. But if you are selling Mac accessories this would be a major problem. Use your best judgment because you should know your niche much better then I do.