The 24-Hour Product Creation Blueprint: Packaging Your Product

Hour 21: Package Your Product Document, Part 1 (Contents)

Your report itself is complete, but now you need to add a few pages to the package to complete the product. Here’s an example of a way to arrange these pages:

· Title page. Includes your title, subtitle and author name.

· Legal page. This page includes your copyright information, information about piracy, and other legal issues.

· Author page. This is your author bio page, where you insert a few paragraphs about yourself. This bio should relate to your experience with the topic.

· Special offer page. Here’s where you can insert a special offer for a related product.

· Product content. Next, you insert your product document.

· Resources page. At the end of the product you may include a list of useful resources. These may include your own products, other people’s products (with affiliate links, where applicable), paid resources and free resources

In the next hour you’ll continue with packaging your document. Take a look…

Hour 22: Package Your Product Document, Part 2 (Cosmetics)

Now that you’ve put your product together, let’s focus on the cosmetics. This may include:

· Header and footer. This may include information such as the product name, author name and the page number.

· Margins. Generally, an easy-to-read document includes 1” margins on the top, bottom, left and right.

· Fonts. While your document shouldn’t look like a circus with a dozen different fonts, you may use two or three different fonts for the headlines, sub-headlines and body text.

· Headlines. Insert headlines to break up sections and draw the reader’s eyes back into the text. Headlines should be benefit driven, and when possible they should arouse curiosity. Be sure to put headlines in bold font.

Here are a few examples of curiosity-arousing and/or benefit driven headlines that might break up a weight-loss manuscript:

Example 1: “The curious herb that melts body fat!”

Example 2: “The #1 dieting mistake that actually makes people fatter—are you making it too?”

Example 3: “A little known trick to break out of any plateau…”

· Indentations and boxes. These style elements can be used to separate out important pieces of text.

For example, let’s suppose you have a weight-loss product. You might highlight a set of meal plans inside a Johnson Box. Not only does this highlight important material, but it also makes it easy for people to locate that specific information again later.

· Styles. You may use a document template to create a polished look.

TIP: Check your word processor for built-in templates. You might also search Google for additional templates. E.G., “Microsoft Word templates.”

· Colors and highlights. Again, you don’t want to go overboard with these elements, but you can emphasize certain parts of the text with different colored fonts and highlights.

Example: you might put warnings in red font. Not only does it highlight an important warning, but most people do associate red with “stop” or warnings. That makes it more likely all your readers will notice and read the entire warning.

· Graphics, screenshots and photographs. Use graphics to break up the text and to help illustrate concepts. This also tends to add value to your product.

For example, if you have a weight loss report that talks about how to do certain exercises (such as crunches), you can really add value by including illustrations that show users exactly how to perform the exercises.

Once your document is complete, you have a product ready to go. But let’s finish off by creating a slide-share video…

Hour 23: Create PowerPoint® To Match Main Points

You can use PowerPoint® or an alternative to create your slides, such as Prezi or PowToon. Here are tips for helping you create your slides:

· Pull out the main points and put on slides. You won’t want text-heavy slides. Instead, put a couple of the main points you want to cover on each slide.

· Insert graphics. You use illustrations, screenshots, photographs, infographics, charts and other graphics to break up the text and provide visual interest.

· Be sure it’s appealing. This means you add visual interest to each slide (such as a photo), plus you keep the slides moving to hold interest. You can add in extra effects such as fades to make it more visually interesting.

Once your slides are ready, you’ll be ready to do the last step and the final hour…

Hour 24: Record a 60-Minute Screen Capture Video From the Manuscript

For this step, you’ll need a couple tools:

· A quality mic so you can record narration. There’s a good chance you already have a good mic that produces high-quality sound for recordings. If not, check out the Audio Technica line of mics.

· Screen recording and video editing software. A good option is Camtasia, which you can find at www.techsmith.com.

Now what you’ll do is read your manuscript while flipping through your slide show presentation. Here are a few dos and don’ts to make this a good presentation:

· Do some practice runs. You want to be able to give the narration smoothly while flipping through your slides.

· Don’t be a monotone. Offer some enthusiasm in your voice. Check the samples on a site like Voices.com to see how the pros do it. (Or hire your own pro through the site.)

· Do edit the video. You don’t have to do it 100% perfectly in one long take. You can start and stop your narration and slide show, and then piece the components together later. Just be sure that you have the mic the same distance away and that you talk in the same manner throughout the pieces so that they aren’t markedly different.

Now let’s wrap things up…

Conclusion

Boom! It only takes 24 hours of work, and at the end you’ll have a one-hour video presentation product AND the manuscript. You can sell them together or sell them separately. You can even sell one of them (such as the manuscript) and offer the video product as an order-form upsell. It all depends on your needs.

So now that you know exactly what to do, the next step is to get started. Go back up to “Hour 1” and start working through the steps. Within a few days you too could have your own high-quality product read to sell!