We come to Week 13 of Partnership to Success.  This is a big week, the one where you start writing your own product to sell. Here is where you put all your hours of research and learning into something concrete that will hopefully help someone else accomplish a goal in their life.

The idea is not only to be able to make some money for yourself but to answer a need and help others to improve their own situation.  I have a head start in this area because, as mentioned before, I took a previous course and started to create my own product then.  Unfortunately it got put aside and nearly forgotten.  Thank goodness it is on my computer and I do not have to remember where it is.  So I will take it off the virtual shelf, dust it off and see if I can actually complete it this time.

With the passing of time I have learned more in the area that I am writing about and once again realize how difficult it is to stay on track and keep your goals and resolutions.  I am writing a product in the weight loss area and I am well aware of how difficult it can be to lose weight, keep it off, and change your lifestyle to stick with it.  I have also spoken with many others in the same boat and know lots about what works and what does not.

Enough of being sidetracked.  Back to writing your product for marketing.  John Thornhill recommends that you create a folder on your computer to keep everything in one place.  In this folder you would put your mind map, your graphics, your written product (or what you have written so far), your sales page, any worksheets, videos or audios, etc.

The next big thing to remember is to save it in more than one place.  Imagine how you would feel if your computer crashed or you accidentally deleted instead of saving your work.  Don’t laugh, I can easily see something like that happening to me.  John suggests a minimum of three different places.  I am thinking I will use my desktop, my husband’s laptop and a memory stick.

I find that writing is not my best talent but I think as I do more it will become easier and maybe even better quality.  A suggestion was made that if you really, really do not think you can write your own product that you could outsource it but I feel that it will mean a lot more to you and to your customer if you can do it yourself.  Maybe I will feel differently if I get too stuck while trying to write my own.

Here’s to product creation for online marketing and a helpful relationship with others.

Jenny Wren

So a few months later and I am back to product creation with Partnership to Success.  Weeks 11 and 12 introduce you to mind mapping.  To me, this is a more organized way to approach compiling your thoughts and ideas for your product.

You start out with an idea and branch out to general topics to cover within that idea and then again each topic can be branched out to more specifics.  I have written out outlines and ideas on paper and that works as well but I think for me, doing it on the computer will help keep me a little more organized.  And couldn’t most of us use a little more organization in our lives?

I tried using one of the sites mentioned in the lesson.  This site is called ‘Free Mind’ .  As the name implies, the site is free and seems to be easy enough to use, at least for basics.  There are a lot of different options in the toolbar that I have not tried yet but the early basic use is easy enough, even for someone mostly technologically illiterate like me.

If you own and ipad, it is suggested you might want to get ‘iThoughts HD’ to use as your mind mapping program.  I can certainly see the usefulness of having a tablet to use for mind mapping.  It is portable and easy to keep with you but then there could be the issue of misplacing it.  It would probably be a good idea to keep a copy of your mind map on your desktop as well.

I had already started a product and have gone beyond the mind mapping stage but have a couple of other ideas rolling around in my brain and put one of them down on the mind map.  This will be good so that when I have additional thoughts about it I can just add them to the mind map and not worry about losing the piece of paper that I might have jotted it down on.

My husband tells me I should make lists and write things down so I have been trying to do so.  Unfortunately I seldom can find where I wrote it down so I think using the computer to mind map will be a good thing for me.  I haven’t yet lost or forgotten where the computer is!

Happy mind mapping,  Jenny Wren

Why do some people succeed at making an income online while others fail miserably and many others just bring in a few dollars a month at best?  Is it talent?, knowledge?, courage? persistence? or what?

I have been working on the Partnership to Success program with John Thornhill and it has been very easy to follow.  Up until I got to the product creation.  At this point I have become stuck and have been practicing procrastination in a big way.  The idea is to create a product in the ‘online marketing’ field and then he would help you market it.  My problem is that I do not feel like I know enough or have enough experience to create such a product.  I am failing at getting more than a little chimp change from monetization and as of now, do not even have a list to offer a freebie to.

I recently saw a Hewlitt Packard (HP) add that had the statement: “If you’re going to do something, make it matter”!.  This statement hit home and caused me to stop and think about a lot of things.  One being, what am I trying to accomplish with online marketing?  If I am going write an ebook that matters, then it should probably matter to me as well.

I previously took the One Month Mentor program, again with John Thornhill and got ‘stuck’ at the same spot.  Though I did get underway with a product but not one in the area of online marketing.  It is a health related product, which I feel much more at home writing about.  I have decided that this getting ‘stuck’ is going to become a habit if I do not do something soon.

I think the best choice is to finish my first product, though it is not about marketing.  It at least will be a start.  I will have actually created a product I can try to sell and can learn from it and then maybe use that experience to build on and even transfer to the online marketing area.  I have way more knowledge and experience at trying to lose weight and become healthy.

I think this will be a good start and this is something that matters to me a lot and hopefully to others as well.

Jenny Wren