Content is crucial when it comes to information marketing and product creation. Not just any old content, but fresh, original and quality content that provides value to your market place. But creating your own product or writing an ebook is not necessarily the easiest thing in the world, especially when you’re just starting out.

But, what if there was a proven system where you could create your own information product in as little as 12 hours… without having to write a single word?

In fact, this was the exact same system I used to create my #1 best-selling book, eMillions. It actually worked too well that my publisher rejected the manuscript telling me it was “too long”. (More about this in a future blog post)

But before I tell you, let me give you a classic example on how this system works.

On the left is a book called Chicken Soup for the Soul. It’s a huge bestseller and probably one of the best selling book series of all time. Over 100 million copies of this series had been sold worldwide. I’m sure you’ve read it before, if not, at least heard of it.

Anyways, let’s get right to the point. The whole secret behind this success is actually right on the front cover – the subtitle 101 Stories To Open The Heart And Rekindle The Spirit.

You see, Mark and Jack (the authors) really didn’t write too much of the book. They might have written the introduction but that’s pretty much it. But for the most part, it was from… guess what?

OTHER PEOPLE.

Mark and Jack got people to contribute stories, then all they did was edited and compiled them to create this phenomenally successfully series of books.

It’s all about finding a way to profit from OTHER PEOPLE’S INFORMATION.

LEVERAGE is what this is all about.

So, the question is:

• How can YOU apply this to YOUR internet business?
• How can YOU become somebody who profits from other people’s information?
• How can YOU create a product that is yours to sell and control, without actually writing the content yourself?

The “long answer” will be revealed over the course of the next few days into a 6 part series.

The “short answer” is simply…

INTERVIEWS.

That’s right - Conducting interviews with experts, thought-leaders and authorities in your field.

That’s what I’m going to be talking about over the course of this 6 part mini-series: How to profit from other people’s information by interviewing them. Interviews are a great strategy, but ONLY if you know how to do them. I know it because I’ve been through the process with my eMillions project.

Interviewing is one of the most important skills you can learn as an online information marketer

In a nutshell, this is a rough outline of what the 6 posts will cover:

1. Why you should do interviews
2. How to find the experts
3. How to land the big interviews with experts
4. How to come up with good questions to ask
5. How to conduct the interview itself
6. Packaging the content

BONUS: How to write a killer interview proposal (video)

Without further to do, let’s tackle the first one – why should you use interviews to create your content?

1. Leverage

a) Knowledge – You get to leverage and tap into the knowledge of the person you are interviewing. If the person is an expert in your field, chances are, he/she will know a lot more than you and is able to bring out that knowledge (if you interview them in the right way – more on that in series #4 and #5).

b) Credibility – The benefit of interviewing an expert is that they bring credibility and authority. Let’s take Tiger Woods as an example. He is an expert. He has the credentials. He is a leading authority in the golf industry. That’s why his book How I Play Golf is a huge bestseller. On the other hand, I’m not good at golf, so if I wrote a book on golf it probably won’t do too well. But if I were to interview Tiger Woods and turn that into a product, there’s no doubt that it would be a success.

2. “Free” Content

It’s super easy to set up those interviews and extract the content out of the expert (that is if you know what you’re doing – I’ll reveal this in the upcoming posts in this series). Most of the time, the experts will happily do those interviews with you for free, since they’ll get publicity in return. While it’s going to take some work coming up with good questions, the interviewee actually does most of the talking (i.e. content creation).

3. Instant Content Creation

It’s faster than any other content creation process out there. It’s almost likecreating content at the speed of sound. For example, when I interviewed Tom Beal, the time it took from sending the email to him and finish conducting the interview took only 12 hours.

If it wasn’t for the 12 hour time zone between Hong Kong (where I live) and New York (where Tom lives), it probably would have taken a lot less. If you know of any other content-creation methods where I can crank out 13,000 words in less than 12 hours without having to write a single word, tell me in the comment section. I’ll be curious to know 

4. Expert By Association

Similar to the first point about leveraging the expert’s credibility, by interviewing the experts in your field, it adds a certain level of perceived expertise to you. In other words, you sort of automatically “become the expert” as well. The reason for this is because people begin to see you talking to all the other experts and will eventually see you as the expert too, even if you don’t know anything about the topic. So by associating yourself with someone who is already well known in that field, you automatically increase your credibility in the industry.

But beyond this, you actually become a true expert as well after conducting many interviews within one niche. Not only does your customers/subscribers who listen to the interviews learn, you also learn from the experts. The more interviews you do, the more you learn, and the more you become of an expert.

5. Build Connections & Relationships

Let’s say you’ve finished interviewing all those experts and compiled them into an ebook or packaged them into a home-study course. And the time has come to launch your product… you need some joint-venture partners. Well, what better candidates for JV partners than those experts you’ve just interviewed?

If you have done your research right (I’ll show you where you can find the RIGHT experts in the next post), the experts you’ve interviewed should be the ones that have huge influences, large numbers of followers and big mailing lists. Chances are, if you’ve impressed your interviewees well enough by either asking good questions or being very professional and polite, they will come back and promote your product. Hey, why not? They are featured in the product, which means they are getting publicity. It only makes good sense for them to promote the product that they’re featured in.

Apart from the joint venture side, by positioning yourself as an interviewer also opens up more doors to world class though leaders and top influencers in your field. A public interview accelerates your rapport with that expert way faster than a private 1-on-1 conversation. You’ll become friends with industry leaders in your field and be able to leverage their network and connect to more interviewees and business partners.

6. Break Into Niches Even If You’re Unknown

I touched on this already with the Tiger Woods example and the “expert by association” point. So even if you are a complete unknown to that market place, by leveraging your expert’s name and credibility, you can not only turn your product into a hotseller, but also become an industry expert yourself almost instantly. That way, you’ve just successfully broke into that niche.

7. Become A Better Communicator

Lastly, on a personal benefit, the more you interview, the better communicator you become. It’ll help you with business in general in terms of becoming a better speaker and negotiator. You’ll also become better at communicating with your prospects thus close deals more easily.

That’s it for the time being. In the next post, I’m going to be talking about where to find the experts for your interviews.