Over 2 million digital information products were downloaded in 2005 from just one major distribution site. These figures were gathered from a single download site out of hundreds, and certainly do not take into account the millions of other info products that were accessed from independent sources.

According to the Pew Research Center, roughly 90% of all Internet users search the web for some type of information. Based on the average annual growth of global Internet use, it is estimated that the already enormous demand for digital information will be increased by 99,445,365 new information seekers during 2006.

Millions of dollars will be made as a direct result of information marketing this year. Info Product Mania is in full swing with no end in sight.

So how can you get a piece of all this action? There are several effective ways to leverage the popularity of information products.

But first, what exactly is an information product?

A digital information product is a well-organized piece of content that is placed into an easily downloadable, electronic format. Examples of this type of product include PDF e-books and manuals, audio tutorials, videos, and even specialized email courses.

What makes information marketing an attractive and lucrative field to enter? Great question!

And here are three great answers:

1. With info products, you can offer your customers instant access to your goods by way of digital download. There is no physical inventory to handle, and your overhead costs will be minimal. Info Product Marketing is a business where you can achieve close to a 100% profit margin!

2. With a little set-up work you can create an ongoing, automated income with info product marketing. It’s a great feeling to wake up in the morning with payment notifications in your inbox, and to profit from sales that are made while you are out enjoying the day with your friends and family.

3. Creating and marketing your own information products is a fantastic way to build a name for yourself and establish a strong presence in your chosen niche. Knowledgeable individuals in any field are sought after and held in high esteem.

In today’s internet, it is not unusual to hear of someone who gets started online one day and has his first sale the next day. What is even more common is someone who has been online for awhile, learns what works and what doesn’t, and starts a brand new site, does everything right, and makes a lot of money online in just a few weeks.

So, how do they do it?

1) You must have your own web site. Not a free site with advertising and pop-ups and everything else that comes with free. You must have your very own web site, where you control all the content. You must also be able to look at web traffic statistics to know what is working when and how. If you do not know how to program (and most people getting started online today do not) there are plenty of good site builder type programs out there that literally allow you to type in what you want to appear online, click once or twice, and you are online.

2) You must have a lead collection system on your web site. Use an auto responder to send these leads a welcome message and a series of ‘get to know you’ messages in the days following. Treat these leads like they are gold. They are---you will develop a long term relationship with the people on your list, teaching them what you know about your field, sending them useful information, and they in turn, will send you money to purchase your products. Know that this is a give and take area. You must give them information first, then they will order your products. They will not order your products blind.

3) Once you have a lead collection system in place, you must send traffic to your site. Some people like pay per click campaigns like Overture, Adsense, or MSN’s new one. You basically pay a bidded amount each time someone clicks on your site. Others still like to buy banner ads or other targeted ads. The key with those is to send large amounts of traffic to your site and expect low returns. Personally, I like to write articles and submit them to the various article directories. They promote my articles for free, and the readers who click through to my site are already pre-qualified---they like my style or they probably wouldn’t have read through my article!

4) After you begin developing a list, you must develop a relationship with the people on the list. Send them useful information. Do not send sales messages. Simply send them useful information and a link to your site. If they like your information they will pay for your products. If they do not get anything from your letters, they will not buy from you.

5) At this point, I am assuming that you have already identified a product to sell. If you do not, consider affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you promote another person’s product and they send you a commission when they sell something to one of your referrals.

6) Get started! If you haven’t already started the process of developing a business online, you must simply start somewhere. Start with the information you already have. Subscribe to my Ecourse and learn more about marketing online. Learn as you go. But get started. Once you get started, it will be easy to rearrange how you do things, or add in new things, or even delete things you don’t like. But you must get started.

So, after much research, you have figured out what niche market you want to target with your home based business. Now, you aren't sure what product you want to sell. The truth is, the answer is easier to arrive at, and much less expensive to implement than you would imagine. Let's learn the secrets gurus use when creating a product.

In case you are wracking your brain trying to figure this out, relax. In fact, you probably have already guessed it. It's the dreaded ebook! The moaning and groaning is beginning now, but ebooks really aren't that bad! Ebooks have been around for years, but most people in your niche likely will have had only limited experience with them.

Why ebooks? They continue to be cool, and are viewed as cutting edge. They also are easy to create, inexpensive, can be developed quickly, and can be bought while you sleep. It doesn't get much better than that!

Now, the real secret to ebooks is . . . . Drum roll please! DON'T CREATE THEM! Now, if you are a professional writer or just love to write, then this article isn't for you. The rest of you, hang in here! The truth is there are much easier ways to create an ebook than trying to do it yourself. They are:

1. Have someone else do it for you or,

2. Legally steal someone else's book.

There are sites where you can post your projects, and where freelance writers can take a look, and make bids on your projects.

Tips to remember when you go to post your projects include the following:

1. Give as much detail as possible so that freelance writers know exactly what you want. Some writers will be so eager for your project that they will write up a sample chapter based on your information just to get your business. Make sure you also ask the bidder to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This information can be found on the site. You always must register, as well. Buyers can register for free.

2. Always ask bidders for writing examples; otherwise, who knows what fluff you might end up with!

3. Don't ever pay anyone until you have completely reviewed the final product.

With these tips in mind, now on to the second way to create an inexpensive ebook. If you remember, the second secret given was to legally steal someone else's book. How can this be done? The secret is using public domain materials. Anything published before 1923 in the United States is considered public domain. This means that no one owns the copyright of the material, and therefore, anybody can use it.

It gets even better than this. Some books published between 1923 and 1963 may be public domain material if the copyright was not renewed by the 28th year. To be on the safe side, it always advisable to consult a copyright attorney before publishing any work you might find. That said, there are membership sites on the web that have done all the work for you! You just pay a small monthly fee and get lots of great public domain material.

After you get your original book, you will want to have it scanned in digital format. When looking for a company to do this for you, keep these important points in mind:

1. Make sure they do not destroy the original book. The book needs to be returned to you.

2. The company needs to do more than just scan the book. The work has to be editable so you can add your own introduction.

3. There needs to be a week's turn around.

4. Work is kept confidential.

5. The fees are not unreasonable. Examples of approximate prices are:

1-100 pages-$100 101-300 pages-$150 301-500 pages-$200 501+Pages-$250

Now you know the secrets the gurus use to create low cost products for their niche markets. Your home based business can now explode!

Antique copper cabinet knobs add that special finishing touch to your cabinet project. Whether you remodeled an older cabinet or built new ones, these copper cabinet knobs add an elegant finish. And although they are antique, they can work well with any look, even the most modern of designs.

When choosing your antique cabinet knobs, there are a few things to look for. First, are they antique-looking or truly antique? This is an important distinction because real antiques vs. antique replicas can vary in price. Prices can also vary depending on how well-known the designer of the knob is.

Another thing to look for when choosing your copper cabinet knobs is its design. Antique copper cabinet knobs can come in various styles. There are copper cabinet knobs with intricate designs such as floral-inspired styles. Others are modeled after styles seen in different periods such as the Victorian Era. It is helpful to understand what you want to achieve with your design. Are you going for a specific look or simply trusting your sense of what looks and feels good? These are questions to answer in deciding which knobs work best for you.

Once you have chosen your antique cabinet knobs, you will ether need to install them or have someone else do it for you. If you had someone install and build your cabinets, then they can be the ones to put in your new knobs. You can either purchase cabinet knobs through them, or buy them yourself and give it to them to install.

Antique copper cabinet knobs offer a touch of beauty and elegance to your cabinets. You can either find replicas or the real thing. Styles vary depending on the whim of the designer or the era of the piece in inspired by. When you do find that perfect design, you will have a set of cabinets that best reflect your personal style.

Antique oriental rugs often display a characteristic that one never finds on rugs made after the invention of synthetic dyes. Antique oriental rugs frequently have abrash. Abrash is the name given to the hue or color change that can be observed when viewing older rugs from multiple angles. Abrash results from either inconsistent dyeing or the introduction of new wool before a given rug has been completed.

Scholars who study antique oriental rugs have long puzzled over how the ancient rug makers gave their products such deep, rich colors. Recently, two such scholars, Jack Haldane and Nest Rubio, have attempted to replicate the ancient dyeing process they envisage it. These studies have focused on the ability of yarn to absorb the red color from the natural madder root.

Haldane and Rubio reasoned that the makers of antique oriental rugs did not want to waste valuable fuel to heat the water that was used to dye the wool for the rugs. They reasoned that the absorption or the madder dyes must have taken place over an extended period of time, and at temperatures about equal to those used for making yogurt. The reasoning of Haldane and Rubio showed an excellent understanding of the mind-set of the ancient rug makers. They did not do things in a hurry.

The information gleaned from those studies underlines the simplicity of the process used to dye the wool for the antique oriental rugs. The wool would probably soak for up to 30 days in a mixture that resembled a water solution with 25% Alum. Then it would soak for 3 to 7 days in a mixture that was one part water and one part madder root. What resulted from all that soaking were antique oriental rugs with lovely pinks, vivid reds and striking deep Burgundies.

For some reason some people seem to think that all they have to do is build a site and the customers will come running. Well I hate to burst anyone's bubble but online marketing is not "Field of Dreams". You can't just throw up a site selling anything you want and expect hungry buyers to come like crazy. You've got to decide who you're going to sell to and what you're going to sell to them and you must do research on these to things.

If people aren't searching for the product you want to sell then all of your efforts will be in vain, not to mention wasted money. So how do you find out if people are searching for the product you have? Simple, just go over to http://inventory.overture.com and type something in. However, you'll have even more success if you first decide who you're going to sell to and then decide on an in demand product. For instance, I might decide that I want to sell to stay at home mothers. From there I've got several options and niche product to choose from.

Also, it's very important that you don't expect to be the next online Wal-Mart. If you think you're going to sell anything and everything on one site then I can say without a doubt that you're dreams of online success will come to a quick end. Why? Several reasons, first you probably don't have millions of dollars to spend in advertising like the mega stores. Second people who are shopping online have different expectations than when they go to a mega store like Wal-Mart.

When you're selling in a certain niche it gives the impression that you know more about you're product and deliver better quality than the guy who sells everything from hairbrushes to garbage bags. So how do you find possible niches? Well it's going to take some time and research but if you really want to succeed online then I know you won't give up. Here are four techniques that you can use to find a ton of possibilities.

First I recommend that you have a brainstorming session, get your spouse or a friend involved too. Think of everything that interests you or anything that you have knowledge about. Don’t limit yourself when thinking about these things. Don’t say, “Oh no one is interested in that”, you don’t know yet. Just write down anything and everything that comes to your head.

Second I recommend that you go to Yahoo Shopping http://shopping.yahoo.com. On the left side at the top you should see "popular categories". The links in that area are exactly what the heading says the popular categories if you sell something that's related to one of these categories you got a really good chance of being successful.

And believe it or not you can sell an information product is related to one of these categories. So when you're looking in this area don't think you have to be limited to selling a hard good product and one of these categories. Here's an example: one of the popular categories towards the bottom is called, "home and garden". You could sell a number of e-books related to successful gardening tips or something like that.

Just like it says these are the categories that are the most popular. Look carefully through all of those categories and the different things that are being sold. If you can sell a product that’s falls within one of those popular categories (weather it be a physical product or information product) then you’ve got a pretty good chance at success.

Third I recommend you go to the Clickbank website http://www.clickbank.com and browse through the site. Click on the “Promote Products” link. Remember Clickbank has two types of products, ebooks and downloadable software type products. Also remember, Clickbank doesn’t sell anything, they are a marketplace that people sell through. The products are listed starting with the most popular in each category.

Fourth got to http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html and click on the, “Hot Items by Category” Link. Even though we’re not talking about selling on eBay this can still give you some preliminary ideas for both physical and information products that are in demand.

If you follow these four suggestions you should have ideas coming out your ears. Now what you want to do is take all the ideas you have and go back to the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, http://inventory.overture.com and start plugin in your ideas. I suggest that if something has less than 10,000 searches per month that you move on to something else, but that's just my opinion. I would narrow all my ideas down to 5 or 10 and then go to Google to check out what the competition is like. Good luck and whatever you do don't give up. Who knows how many people gave up just before they struck gold at internet marketing.

Nowadays, with the growing presence of the internet in the average person’s life, opportunities which most people had never even thought of before have emerged through the idea of an internet business. All that is needed is a domain name, a basic website and a server which will host your website for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The growing demand for web hosting has become huge and many individuals have pounced on this opportunity and created small internet businesses around hosting other people’s websites. As a website owner, you depend completely on the reliability and capability of the server that you are hosted on.

There are a few huge web hosting companies such as HostGator and NetFirms, but the majority of websites out there on the internet are hosted by small, independent companies or individuals who are out there looking for a quick bit of money. Now the vast majority of these small individual companies are very capable and will host your website for a fraction of the price of the biggest web hosting companies and believe it or not with a better web hosting deal too with no problems. However, there are a small percentage of web hosters who are not reliable or capable at all and will end your internet business dreams by having such minimal up-time that your website will never be seen. The bottom line is, if your website isn’t seen, then your website can never be successful.

However, like I said before, most small, independent web hosting businesses will give you no problems at all and will give you a better web hosting deal. For example, at HostGator for $6.95 per month you can get 3.5 GB of web space and 50 GB of monthly data transfer, whereas at many smaller web hosters you could be getting unlimited web space and unlimited monthly data transfer for only $0.99 a month. When you’re starting up an internet business you want to keep your costs as low as possible and so this will seem like a much more attractive option.

There are various criteria which you should look for so that you can guarantee that you will get a reliable and efficient web host –

- Look for a good support service. This is essential if you’re trying to maintain a good website. You want to be able to ask questions and get immediate replies so that you can fix problems or improve features efficiently for the benefit of yourself and your customers.

- Look for server uptime. This is the percentage of time that the server is active and displaying websites to the internet. If the web hosting service you are looking at has a server uptime of less than 99.9% then forget it, its just not worth losing visitors due to the failure of your web host.

- Look for a money back guarantee. This way you can be absolutely sure that you will get what you want. If you don’t like the web host or it doesn’t go well with the type of website that you are running then you’ll want to be able to get your money back and move on.

- Try to find a web host that will host multiple domains on one account if you are looking to be running more than one website on the internet at a time. It will be a huge convenience for you and will help you organise and manage your businesses.

Having good, capable and reliable web hosting is an extremely important part of running a successful website. When you choose to entrust someone with hosting your website you are depending fully on them to host your website effectively with little or no downtime and fast connectivity so that your visitors can benefit most from what your website has to offer. A bad web host will lead to little up-time so that your website is not always available to see, and slow loading time of your pages, in some cases so much so that your visitor will become so frustrated and bored that he or she will click off your page without looking.

All websites are different and you need to think carefully about what type of website you are trying to run. Is it a website which requires a large amount of web space and monthly data transfer (bandwidth)? Does your website require the use of programming languages such as PHP and CGI/Perl? You need to think carefully about what requirements your website needs, and if you do not know, then find out by doing some research or asking the advice of a professional.

However, there are certain attributes that a web hosting provider should have so that you get the most out of your website and have as little problems as possible. Before considering buying web hosting, make sure the web host has these features.

- A good online support system. Check that the company you are looking to host with will reply to your questions promptly, because particularly if you are new to the internet, you will have many questions to ask and you’ll want answers quickly so that you can progress quickly and efficiently. Additionally, in the event of a problem with your website, you need it to be fixed quickly because 3 days of down-time on your website could lead to missed visitors and sales.

- A 100% money back guarantee. This is important because often a web hosting deal can look great from the outside, but when you actually buy the hosting it disappoints you and does not work efficiently with your website. With a money back guarantee, you can easily reclaim your money and look somewhere else without any financial loss.

- Good server up-time (the percentage of time the server is active and displaying websites onto the internet). This is extremely important. Always look for server uptime of 99.9% and nothing less, because server downtime leads to missing visitors, hassle, and losing profits.

Here are some other things you should be thinking about when choosing your web hosting provider –

- Does that web hosting provider support the necessary internet languages your website’s needs. If your website has any complicated scripts, such as ecommerce systems then make sure that your web hosting provider supports PHP and CGI/Perl.

- If your website requires the use of PHP then you will probably need access to a number of MySQL databases so make sure that your web hosting provider gives you plenty with your package.

- If you are running multiple domain names on the internet at the same time then think about choosing a web hosting provider which will host all your domains in one account. This will make your businesses and websites a lot more efficient and less time consuming.