I am guilty, probably like many other marketers because I should be making information products for larger markets. This is a great direct mail marketing copywriter, named after Gary Halbert, who would tell a great story about how to sell to a hungry crowd.

You want to make products and sell them to people who are starving for what you have to sell.

If you only did that first in your marketing, it will make your marketing life a lot easier. But, my ego may get in the way or people like me just love creating different products, and they can guess this is going to be a hot market. They ignore that phase of investigation. That’s why it probably makes a lot of sense to pay someone to do your research for you.

There are people who thought they had great ideas and had spent tens of millions of dollars on great ideas, but found that there was no desire for the product in the marketplace.

So, I wanted to start by saying, do your research. I made mistakes and tried to create and develop products for which I thought there was a market that failed.

But, I would say that it depends on the type of interview I am doing, and I divided my interviews into a few categories. I call one category, “money interviews,” another category, “traffic interviews,” another category, “book promotion interviews,” and then “product content interviews.” These categories, there could be two of these categories with each interview.

I will give you an example. A money interview would be if I was interviewing an expert, and I have a joint venture with him or I signed up for his affiliate program. So, for example, John Carlton, is a well-known copywriter. I would call that a money interview, and it has a lot of notoriety. So what kind of research would you do to prepare for that interview? That particular one I used in an Ask campaign.

I emailed my list and said, “Hey, I’ll interview John Carlton here. If you have any questions for him, I’ll ask them on your behalf, send them.” So was that interview.

Another way you can do that interview is to go to your website and depending on the product you are promoting, you are a great copywriter, you can see all of your bullets. You have done your research and your sales letter to match your sales letter with your potential prospects. You could take their bullets and part of their sales letter copy and turn them into questions. Therefore, you can use them as interview questions.

A traffic interview could be a big name like Ted Nicholas. Even though I signed up as an affiliate for him, and that was one of the ways I got the interview, he’s not a very big name and I would interview him for free, even if he didn’t have an affiliate program. The name Ted Nicholas within our little market is well known, and being able to say it on my website, I have an interview with Ted Nicholas. That increases the credibility of my website.

I would consider it a fairly large fish on the market. Having your name on the site can be really beneficial for search engine optimization and getting traffic back to your site. We can talk more about that.

Then there is the content interview. Let’s say I have a product that is selling, but I want to increase its value and I need to add more content. I can find an expert on a certain topic. Let’s say I have a referral marketing product and I already have three or four referral marketing interviews.

If I want three or four more interviews, I will find three or four referral marketing experts. I’ll interview them, and that research, they may have a book on Amazon, or I can find them through Google. That would be the type of interview you want just for additional content. I am not using it to promote. I am using it as content to provide in a product after someone buys a product.

So these are some of the different types of interviews. I was wondering, “What is my goal with the interview? What am I doing? Am I using it to make money? Am I using it to return traffic to my website? Am I using it to increase my online status, my Credibility? Am I using it to develop more value in my existing information product, or am I using it to promote someone else? “