What Is A Product?

Sometimes the questions I get from my subscribers just make me slap my head and say "Doh!" Like this email I received from Kati which said, in part, "I WANT to be an internet wizard…but I don’t even know what a PRODUCT is!!""

"I know you can’t believe that….I always hear "Squidooo your product…do a campaign" but on what??? What is a product??? something I sell? And how would I find that out? I have a brain, a desire, I am a total people person….but I am stumped!! Product, product…what product?? Help!!"

Kati, the reason I’m slapping my head and making Homer Simpson sounds is because I should have addressed this question long ago.  It’s the same question I asked when I first started reading internet marketing material. "What is a product?" And keep in mind, at the time I was working as a freelance product designer and developer!

I was creating all sorts of things, from books for print publishers to craft kits for manufacturers. I was designing boxes, doing photography for magazine ads, writing books and magazine articles. I was a product-creation-machine! But when it came to the world of internet marketing and all those emails and sales pages telling me, "The real money is in owning your own product!" I got totally confused.

What did they mean when they used the word "product"? It was clear they didn’t use that word the way I did. In my line of work, a product was a piece of hard goods that could be manufactured, boxed and shipped. It was sold wholesale and then retail. And it took a team of talented professional people to get it made and marketed. It was a PRODUCT.

But everything I read from internet marketing gurus referred to people "slapping a product together in two hours" and making millions overnight. They talked about people with no experience in book publishing  "knocking out an ebook in four hours" and then "throwing up a web site" to instantly make $100,000.Meanwhile, I was freelancing for small print publishers who’d be very happy to make $10,000 off a single title.

If there was one thing I knew, it was product design and development and no part of that process involved slapping things together, throwing them up and knocking them out. So surely, surely there was some definition of "product" that was used in the world of internet marketing that I simply did not grasp. And that left me struggling with the question, "What is a product?"

I answered my question by buying an ebook. And that first purchase left me speechless. After making payment, I was sent to a web page where I downloaded a simple pdf file which, when printed, was a "report" all of 8 pages long. Four of those pages were filler, like a disclaimer and ads for other "products."

I was flabbergasted. Was this what all those internt marketing experts meant when they said "product"? I couldn’t believe it.

eSo I bought more books. They were all crap. Then I bought some audios. The sound quality was so bad I couldn’t understand half of what was being said. At the time, I was in production on a television commercial, struggling with thousands of dollars worth of gear to produce broadcast-worthy audio, and here were people "slapping together and kicking out" what they called an "audio product" with no concern whatsoever for quality controls.

And they dared to call what they were making "products."

I found it insulting ….and also mystifying. It took me a long time to bridge the gap between those two very different worlds and put them into perspective. Here’s what I came to understand:

Most everything that is sold can be assigned to one of two categories: goods or services.

Services are things that people do for one another, like cleaning houses, trimming trees, making cabinets and providing medical care.

Goods are things like apples, tools, birdcages and books. Goods are "products." An apple is a product produced by an apple farmer. A rotary saw is a product produced by a manufacturer. A book is a product produced by a publishing house.

An ebook is a product. There are profound differences between ebooks, their quality and value, depending on who produced them. An ebook may be produced by someone who comes to it with vast experience in writing and publishing, or it may be produced by someone with no related experience.

These differences do not mitigate the fact that an ebook, any ebook, is a product.

Other examples of products often sold by internet marketers include audio products, such as recording a conversation between experts on a topic, and video products, such as recording a seminar. But internet marketers are not the end all and be all of the world of ecommerce. Step outside their corner of the web and you’ll find a vast universe of people selling all sorts of goods, all sorts of products.

In my own business, I create products ranging from hard goods like t-shirts, mugs and clocks to digital products like ebooks and videos.

I still create box designs for products like DVDs. I create these designs in an image editor and deliver them to a printer by email. In my hands, they are an entirely digital product.  But once the printer receives the files, he prints my designs on paper or cardboard. In his hands, they are a physical product.

I have a product– an ebook in pdf format titled Tapping Into Trends– that contains examples of more than 50 products I make and sell across the internet, both as hard goods and digital goods. It explains where I get the idea for a product and where I sell it. If you’re creative and have artistic skills or writing skills you can do the same. Then you’ll be a product developer just like me. Because a product, after all, is just something people make and sell.

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Bonnie Boots is the publisher of The Internet Wizards Magazine where she brings together decades of experience in writing, product design and marketing. Register for a subscription in the upper right-hand corner to explore the magic of making stuff and marketing it on the internet.

If you want to spread your creative wings and make stuff to market on the web, her book, "Tapping Into Trends To Create An Endless Stream Of High-Profit Products"will inspire you to be your most creative, successful  self by showing you just some of the many ways I use the internet to make creative cash.

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