If you’re in business on-line long enough you eventually become convinced that to really succeed you need your own product or service. Having your own product or service:
– Means that your promotional efforts are promoting your business. Your efforts are branding your domain name rather than someone else’s domain. Your efforts are creating more links pointing to your site.
– Means you can create an affiliate network and have thousands of others promoting your product, and that you only have to pay for results. That’s much better than any pay-per-click campaign.
– Means you earn more money because you get a percentage from more individual sales. You also generally get a larger percentage from each sale.
– Means you can follow up on your sales with other products of your own, or offers for affiliate products, later, if you choose. Backend sales ARE one of the BIG SECRETS. Once you’vevattracted a customer and know his needs you can offer him additional products that meet that need. It is critical that your follow-up campaign be structured so that it’s not construed as SPAM. For example, you can offer useful tips for getting the most use out of a product and introduce a suggested add-on.
For the above reasons and more, you want to create your own product or service. Two of the easiest to produce quickly and to market easily are ebooks and software. Today, let’s focus on the ebook.
In frequenting the discussion boards, I “listen in” on a lot of brainstorming. Many people throw out ideas for ebooks. They are taking an informal survey of the potential market. They are looking for suggestions and critiques of ideas. This is the perfect place for doing this. This type of brainstorming very frequently “fleshes out” an idea. It’s how I’ve firmed up the concept for 2 different ebooks.
But how do you decide what general topic to write on? You write about something that you either know a lot about or that you NEED to know a lot about. If you are an expert on a topic and there aren’t already too many ebooks out there on the topic, then you know what to write about (if anybody else is interested in the topic). If you already have the information within you or on your computer, writing the ebook is little more than organizing your ideas and then just doing it.
But what if there is already a lot written about a topic? Ask yourself if there is honestly room for another ebook. For example, there are thousand of great cookbooks out there, yet I decided to write another one. Looking around me, I saw that there was an insatiable demand for cookbooks. Bookstores and my local supermarket book rack (near the cash register) confirmed this. I noted that everybody eats and people are always looking for new and exciting ways to prepare food for themselves or to impress that special guest (or mother-in-law). So I created an ebook centered around recipes I grew up with. Just because a topic is already written about does not mean that you can’t carve off a piece of the pie 🙂
If you find yourself having difficulty finding information on a topic or discovering exactly how to do something, you can be fairly certain others are having trouble finding the same information. Therein lies proof of a need for that product. Then your question becomes “is there a sufficient need for that product?” You don’t want to spend a lot of time creating a product that will sell only a few copies. Each product you create will not be a $10,000 a month income earner. That’s ok. Maybe it’s better to create 5 different products that each initially only generate $2000 a month in profits. You get the same end results and by diversifying, you better endure times when demand for one of your products experiences a slump.
Writing about a subject that you are not already an expert on means doing a lot of research and then organizing your notes. You noticed a lack of readily available experts on the subject, so you BECAME the expert. This takes a lot of effort. You don’t want to create a shoddy product. Do this and you severely hamper the success of your future products too. Spend the time becoming the expert and creating a product that demonstrates you are the expert. You’ve just positioned yourself, and if you did it properly you will dominate that market.
One argument you will hear against creating another ebook is that there are already too many worthless ebooks out there. This is true. Too many people have thrown together collections of rehashed, outdated and even inaccurate material and then promoted them as something exciting and new. When your market buys a few of these products and are disappointed they soon become disillusioned or cynical. However, if your ebook is truly different… truly full of really valuable information the word will spread very fast. Your affiliates will write review telling what’s so great about your ebook. People will discuss it on forums and in personal emails. The word will get around and your ebook will be a big success.
I’ve just given you the key to creating a great in-demand ebook. If you still have trouble coming up with an idea visit discussion boards and read books and article on brainstorming. One of my favorite books is written by my friend Jeff Smith. Jeff offers so many ways to come up with great information product ideas that reading his ebook ALWAYS shifts my imagination into high gear. Grab a copy of Jeff’s ebook today at: http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/tk.cgi?jeffsmith
If you’d like to check out my cookbook study the page at: http://chitterlings.com/cookbook.html A visit to this page also provides you with lessons in using testimonials, guarantees and bonuses. This cookbook will sell well over $100,000 worth this year… and this is a very ordinary product. The site is intentionally plain to make the visitor feel more at home. As an added note, I offer both hardcopy and ebook formats. Many customers told me that they wanted hardcopy. I listened and this opened up the possibilities of back-ending other products through package inserts. But that’s getting off-track.
Spend some time today really thinking and researching possibilities for your next ebook. This really is one of the ways true internet fortunes are made!
Willie Crawford has been teaching Internet marketing for
over 9 years. Take advantage of his uncanny insights and
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