One of the best avenues to building an Internet Marketing business is with “your own” products. But how do you go about creating your own product?
There are 3 basic methods: creating something from scratch, modifying an existing product such as PLR (Private Label Rights) or public domain, or building on top of something, such as Open Source code.
Modifying an existing product or building on top of something is usually quicker than creating something from scratch. Through outsourcing, you can create your own products quickly and relatively inexpensively.
I did this with an Open Source program for creating Camtasia-like screen capture videos. I spent a few hundred dollars at Rentacoder to take the Open Source version, change the GUI or interface, add some features, and create a Website around it.
The result was my own custom software program that I was able to market – I sold nearly a thousand copies at $37 each., and then sold the entire ‘business’ for a nice 5-figure sum. My less-than-$1000 investment returned well over $50,000.
Here are some resources that you can peruse for ideas (be careful to read and follow all licensing agreements):
Open Source
The Free Software Foundation => http://directory.fsf.org/
Source Forge => http://sourceforge.net/
Open Source.org => http://www.opensource.org/
OS Alt => http://www.osalt.com/
Open Source Mac => http://www.opensourcemac.org/
Open Source Windows => http://www.opensourcewindows.org/
Apple Open Source => http://www.opensource.apple.com/
Open Source Living => http://osliving.com/index.php
Open Source Directory => http://osdir.com/
Gnu.org => http://www.gnu.org/
Freesoft => http://www.free-soft.org/
Scripts, freeware, shareware, etc.
Tucows => http://www.tucows.com/
Cnet Download.com => http://www.download.com/
Freeware Files => http://www.freewarefiles.com/
Free Utilities => http://www.software995.com/
5 responses so far ↓
1 Reba Collins // Oct 29, 2008 at 4:59 am
I’m starting to toss around the idea of creating an info product for internet marketing. First I thought I’d rewrite a PLR product however, my experience with PLR is that it takes almost as long to rewrite as it does to start from scratch. I like your advise on outsourcing, I’m going to look into that as well.
Thanks, Reba
2 Thomas Krimi // Oct 31, 2008 at 3:58 am
That is pretty genius, with using open source, and creating your own product out of it. Any insight on how much you had to invest on oursourcing the work involved? It seems like that kind of work would require more than the less than $1000 dollars you said you invested in the whole project.
Great ideas! Happy Halloween!
3 Michael // Oct 31, 2008 at 8:53 am
Hi Reba – thanks for stopping by!
I agree it can take some time to re-write PLR ‘properly’. Rather than try to re-write what’s there, what I do is use PLR as outlines. I’ll break it into an outline format, in essence having it ‘do the research’ for me, then fill it back in using my own words.
4 Michael // Oct 31, 2008 at 8:55 am
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for the kind words!
I spent $650 having the Open Source screen-capture code re-written, plus another $200 having a new graphical interface created. Add another $100 for some website graphics, and the entire project cost me about $950 out-of-pocket.
5 Vincent Torres // Nov 18, 2008 at 7:42 am
Wow, I never knew that Creating Your Own Products. That’s pretty interesting…
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