This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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Infopreneuring. It’s a great way to build your brand and generate addtional revenue at the same time. One great information product is downloadable audio programs – teleclasses, interviews with experts, books-on-audio, etc. Anything that can be recorded and has value to your audience.
Step 1: Get a recording device – I just picked up the Olympus 8-Hour Digital Voice Recorder with PC Link from my local Radio Shack for about $99.00. It has a USB port and cable that makes it easy to connect to your computer, as well as software to download the sound files to your computer.
With this neat little gadget, you can record phone calls, teleclasses, in-person talks or whatever you want. With the right software, you can also make your own CDs to offer when you do a speaking enagement or attend a networking event. You can sell them or give them away.
Next on the list of necessities is a device to connect your recorder to your telephone. This will allow you to record teleclassess/teleconferences/interviews with experts, etc (check the laws in your state/country that pertain to recording telephone calls). This is the one I use. Again, I picked it up from Radio Shack for about $25.00.
Step 2 – Download sound file to computer – After you make a recording with your digital voice recorder, you’ll connect it to your computer via the USB cable. The software will save the file as a .wav file. You’ll want to convert the file to an MP3 file, which will allow folks to download the file to the iPod or other MP3 player. You’ll also need a way to load your files onto CDs (assuming you have a CD-RW in computer) that you can offer for sale or as give-aways.
My suggestion is to head over to Jetaudio, and buy the JetAudio Multimedia Player 6 ($29.00). Or as they call it, an "Integrated multimedia player to replay & convert Audio CD, MIDI, digital video and so forth." They offer a free version, but you’ll need some of the advanced features that come with the $29.00 version. There are other software programs available, and if you want to research a bit, go over to CNET’s download site and do a search.
That should be just about all you need to start your career as an AudioInfopreneur. Later, we’ll talk about what kind of material you might want to offer to your clients.