This person entered into a situation full of hope. They held their breath for a moment before clicking “Buy Now” and thought, “Maybe this time it’s for real.”
Naomi Dunford – IttyBiz

Naomi could be describing me: it’s exactly how I feel when considering a new information product or course. I am full of hope, that this time I’ll find the one little thing that will bring about success. Surely someone out there really does have the answer?

Anatomy of an Information Product

The sales format is easy to recognise:

• A bold statement to grab your attention e.g. ‘I made $3,000 this month and you can too!’
• The backstory which tells you how many other things they’ve tried before they stumbled onto success.
• A description of what their method will teach you and how it will make you successful, but without saying exactly what it is. That makes sense; why would you buy it otherwise?
• A list of the benefits that will be yours when you buy this product e.g. great traffic numbers, 1,000 new email subscribers etc.
• A reminder of the failure if you don’t take up this offer now e.g. your blog will wither and die, you’ll never make the breakthrough, you’ll never be successful and so on.
• A call to avoid the failure that is certainly waiting for you by buying this product, which will make all the difference to your online success.

It’s not that the sales format is sleazy; it isn’t and it does work, which is why people employ it as a method to sell their products. It’s not that the person is dishonest (usually, although there are always exceptions) because they have used this method and it has brought them success and they genuinely want to share that with you.

It’s that word ‘maybe’. Maybe this time it’s real. Maybe this time it will work. Maybe this time I’ll ‘get it’ and it will all fall into place.

I’m not talking here of the first product we buy; that was a while ago and just like Naomi says, we were full of hope. We launched ourselves into it, followed the advice but the success we expected fails to materialize.

We buy a second product, and we’re still full of hope that this will be ‘the one that changes everything’ for us. Once we get into it we realize that a good quantity of the information it holds we already know from our earlier product. We have our first disappointment.

But we’re still hopeful, and the process begins again, until we have gigabytes of information products and videos and then we realize that we’re no further forward.

That’s an accurate description of my journey so far; am I alone, or do you feel the same?

Why does it all go wrong?

There are as many reasons for thinking a product has failed us as there are people who buy it. Everyone’s expectation and experience is different, and I’m not going to tell you that you were wrong in some way.

I looked at my own experience and came to the following conclusions, some of which may strike a chord with you:

• I start each product with great enthusiasm, but halfway through something else catches my interest and I leave it unfinished. It’s not the product that is lacking, it’s my approach.
• I jump into the next product with the same enthusiasm, until I come across a section I already know a lot about, and their information is outdated. Now I’m disappointed because the writer isn’t telling me anything I don’t know, and I paid money to find that out. Anything else of interest they may have to say I don’t see because now I’m moving on to the next product. Yes, the product should be updated if things have moved on since it was written, but also I am at fault again because I wrote off the whole product based on one section.
• By now I am skipping all over the internet, trying products and devouring posts to find the answers to success. There’s no depth to it though; I skim through articles picking out bits of advice but I never tie them together. One day I’m speed-learning SEO techniques and the next I’m grappling with social media; I don’t stay long enough on one subject to have the knowledge become part of me. I have to go back and read about SEO because five days on I’ve forgotten that cool tip that explains it all.
• Now I’m ripe for any product that promises to pull all the disparate advice into one place, making it easy for me to follow. It costs a lot but it will be worth it, because this really will work.

Can the dream and the reality co-exist?

Not while we’re waiting for this perfect information product to pull it altogether into a success formula that will work for everyone.

We need to be honest: the people we see as successful have worked hard to reach that point. They tell us that quite clearly, and yet it doesn’t sink in. We’re in a culture of ‘I want it now!’ and I believe that’s encouraged somewhat by all the information that is thrown at us daily.

How many blogs do you read that post daily? I might read around 10 blogs each day; they have all written about a different topic, there is excellent information in each post that I will find incredibly useful. But there’s 10 articles, and I just pick out odd pieces of information because I can’t devote the time to study each of the 10 in turn. Tomorrow another 10 posts will be published, again full of quality information that I’ll skim over, and so on.

We don’t succeed because we never give ourselves the chance.

We really are Information Junkies, taking it all in, looking for that next fix of ‘new’ information that will change us. We’re not really learning anything because it never has time to take root.

Substitute information for food and we’re overeating, stuffing ourselves to the brim each and every day. We’re piling on weight, becoming sluggish and it’s not long before we’re out of breath walking up the stairs. Still we’re eating, we can’t bear to leave anything on the table without trying it.

Well, we can see where that analogy is going. As I write this I look at myself in disbelief; I have been sabotaging my dream, no one else, me. I’ve learned so much, but how little I truly know.

I am certain that if I keep travelling the same path nothing will change, success (whatever that means) will never be mine and I’ll live my life full of disappointment. Surprisingly, I’m not upset by this revelation, I am encouraged. I can see my mistake, and I am giving some time to think about a way forward that breaks the cycle of hope-disappointment experience.