What is an information product?
Q: You keep talking about information products. What are they?
A: Information products, at least as we'll talk about them here in the discussion of Internet marketing as a whole, are products created by entreprenurs with the end goal of providing information to the consumer. They run the gamut of available topics, from cooking to video gaming to - oddly enough - Internet marketing and all points in between. They're a huge target in Internet marketing right now, and they're also a primary focus for many work-at-home business opportunities.
They come in several different forms. Most come as PDF files, sometimes referred to as e-books, which (for the sake of completion and for those of you who live under rocks) are files that are read using Adobe Reader and appear very much like a book on your computer screen. With PDF files, anyone can write a book and publish themselves with extremely minimal costs and no worries about over or under stocking the book.
The huge advantage to PDF e-books are also their greatest weakness: anyone can write and sell them. This is a great thing, because it gives minds who might not otherwise get a chance the ability to get their theories and ideas out "in print," which often gives us absolute gems of information. It also allows the market to be flooded with e-books about all manner of different topics and of varying levels of quality.
The two most notable of the other methods of information product delivery are audio and video. MP3 files or video, either downloadable or streaming, will be delivered to accomplish the same thing as the PDF file. These are sometimes sold as stand-alone products, but often are included as part of a package as a suppliment to a PDF offering.