A self-employed professional needs to be a public speaker.
Giving away abundant, valuable information makes you the
person people think of first when they need help.

But speaking isn't enough. You need to create information
products. We used to say, "write a book," but there are
more ways to package information than that. If you hand
out free, promotional material, people will think nothing
of throwing it away. But if they pay for it, they will look
at it. If they find it valuable, they will keep it, and it
will remind them of you.

But when do you have the time to create these products?
Most of the work is already done if you record your
speeches. Here are seven ways you can use the audio
recording of your speech:

1. Sell it on CDs "back-of-the- room" at your public
speaking engagements. Some people listen to CDs during
their drive time for information, inspiration, or
motivation. A CD may be more valuable to them than a book.

2. Send it out for your CD-of-the-month club. Many people
who listen to CDs during their drive time will gladly pay
$20 a month to receive CD's. CD clubs are a good form of
"continuity income": they show an obvious benefit of
membership that arrives each month.

3. Sell the recording as a digital download. Digital
downloads have almost no cost other than processing the
credit cards.

4. Better yet, repackage them. Cut the recording into
parts, edit in a musical introduction, and use them as
podcasts. You can sell them, or give them away free as
promotions: Use them in your blog and ezine to attract
people to your web site.

5. Give the recording away as a bonus for purchasing
another product online. One way to get people to decide to
go ahead and make a purchase is to offer a collection of
premiums with high stated values.

6. Have the recording transcribed and use the material for
a book or articles. You can get an inexpensive transcript
over the web.

7. Put the recording with slides and create a digital slide
show to sell on DVDs or as a digital download. This is easy
to do, combining your slides and the recording in a free
movie editor. Unless you are a particularly dynamic speaker
slides are almost as good as seeing you, and a whole lot
cheaper than professional video production. Amateurish
video is a lot worse.