My formula for eBook success By The IMC Team | Posted January 7th, 2008
Nearly every time I speak at a seminar or event, I’m approached by someone who tells me, "I’ve got a great idea for an eBook that I want to write and sell online."
My response? "So what?"
Now, that may sound harsh, but my response is meant to help. As I see it, anyone who thinks they can dream up an idea that’s guaranteed to make money online is doing just that – dreaming!
Sure, there are a few dreamers out there who hit the jackpot with an inspired idea that catches the world’s attention and skyrockets to fame. But for every one of those fortunate success stories, there are literally THOUSANDS of entrepreneurs toiling away at an idea that’s just plain doomed to fail!
Why am I telling you this? Because I don’t want you to be one of those tragic failures.
The good news is, it doesn’t have to be that way! In fact, I truly believe that with the right plan, anyone can create an eBook that’s guaranteed to sell.
Ready to get started? Keep reading!
1. Identify your skills and interests
Before you start developing your eBook, or even considering any specific topics, you should make a list of your own skills and interests. As you’ll learn, this list will drive the process of finding a profitable market for your eBook – and it will also ensure that the business you create is one that you’ll enjoy managing and growing for years to come.
You’ll be much more passionate about creating your eBook if it is based on something you love. Plus, you’ll find that with a business founded on your own skills and interests, you’ll end up having a lot in common with your future customers – which is a big advantage for both of you!
That’s why – before you even begin brainstorming possible topics for your eBook – you need to seriously consider the following:
- What are you interested in?
- What are you passionate about?
- What subject or topic do you know a lot about?
- What are people always coming to you for advice about?
Whether it’s expertise you picked up on the job, skills you developed through a hobby, or interest in a subject you have long wanted to explore, just about every single skill or interest you have is something that can become the foundation for a successful eBook.
And if you choose a topic for your eBook that you’re already familiar with, you’ll be building on your existing knowledge base – which means you’ll avoid the steep learning curve and research involved in writing about a topic you don’t already know about.
Time and time again we hear people say, "I can’t develop my own information product! I don’t have any skills or knowledge that people would be willing to pay money for."
If you honestly believe you have no valuable skills or knowledge, you’re selling yourself short. We’re absolutely certain that every single person has some kind of knowledge or skill that could be the foundation of a successful eBook.
You simply need to stop and think about your life experiences. Create a list of all the jobs you’ve ever had… all the hobbies you’ve ever pursued… any volunteer work you’ve ever done… and all the things you’re interested in or think you’re good at. Carefully consider your own interests, hobbies, and areas of expertise, and write down anything that comes to mind.
Once you’ve done that, arrange your list of potential topics from "Most Passionate" to "Least Passionate."
Finally, get rid of everything except the top three items on your list. You now have three potential subject areas that you can use as the foundation for your information product!
2. Look for a problem to solve
Now that you’ve identified your top skills, interests, and passions, you’re ready to start looking for a problem that needs to be solved.
The key to succeeding with your eBook is to find a group of people who share a problem, then come up with an idea that will help solve that problem.
To start, you’ll identify potential target markets for your solution, then identify the problems that those markets are facing. Let’s take a look at your potential target markets first – the people who will be your potential customers.
You will need to do some research to find potential markets that are related to your skills and interests. For instance, if one of your interests is gardening, you need to identify markets that relate to gardening. These could be casual indoor gardeners, organic gardeners, professional landscapers, gardening store owners, etc.
Once you’ve brainstormed a list of general markets for your potential topics, get on the Internet and see what kind of online presence these markets have. When conducting research online, use the major search engines to look for businesses that are already selling to your market.
Pay attention to how existing businesses are talking to these market segments. Take a look at how much competition there is in a particular market segment. For example: Are there tons of sites catering to organic gardeners already? Are they giving away information? Selling information? Selling products?
Other good places to find information about your target market are newsgroups, discussion boards, and chat rooms. You’ll get a good idea of what your potential customers are actively talking about, what they like or dislike, and most of all, what questions they are most desperate to have answered.
The longer you hang out in these areas, the more you will begin to notice that certain questions appear over and over again.
Remember, only a small percentage of the online community participates in forums and discussion groups. So if a question is popular among these people, there are very likely hundreds, possibly even thousands, of people out there wondering the exact same thing!
A good place to start looking for discussion boards and newsgroups related to your area of interest is Google Groups at http://groups.google.com.
While you’re doing this research and learning about your potential market, there’s one thing in particular that you should be looking for: problem statements. A problem statement is just that – a statement that expresses a problem someone is experiencing.
Here are a few examples of problem statements you might find from a target market of gardeners:
- My back gets sore when I plant seeds
- I’m concerned about unnatural chemicals in plant fertilizer
- Why is good potting soil so expensive?
- My gardening gloves wear out after a couple of weeks
As you can see, a problem statement can be phrased as a statement OR a question. Make it your mission to collect a file of these statements – because each problem statement you find could literally be the map to finding an online gold mine!
3. Find a hungry niche market – BEFORE you decide what to sell
Why are problem statements so valuable to entrepreneurs? Because behind every problem statement is a potential customer… or possibly THOUSANDS of customers!
Remember the "dreamers" I mentioned earlier? They’re people who skip the step you’ve just learned about – gathering problem statements – and go straight to work developing a product to sell. And this is the reason the majority of Internet startups fail!
Most marketers make the mistake of looking for a "hot product" to sell when they’re first starting out online – and they end up choosing a product before they determine whether there’s a market for it.
The fact is, of all the people searching the Internet on any given day, most have NOT gone online looking to buy something. Why are they online? Most likely, for one of two reasons:
- They are looking for information
- They are trying to solve a problem
You need to do is find an untapped niche market: a group of people who are going online to solve a common problem, but aren’t having any luck finding a solution.
By doing some simple research, you can discover EXACTLY what these people are looking for – and then figure out a way to give it to them. That way, you’ll KNOW you have a market that’s eager to buy your product – before you even know what it is!
It’s time for you to dig deeper and start looking for a more targeted group of people within your larger market – people who share common characteristics and have the same problem. In other words, you need to find a niche market.
The term "niche market" is one that you’ll hear in just about every discussion about marketing – online or offline. But it’s important to note that everyone thinks of niche markets a little differently.
Traditional marketers, for example, may define a niche market as a large group of people sharing several characteristics (for example, men aged 30 to 40 earning between $50,000 and $75,000 per year).
However, when you’re selling online, you need to narrow the focus A LOT more than that!
A niche market is a group of people who are searching the Internet for a solution to a problem – and NOT finding many relevant search results.
Identifying a strong niche market is one of the keys to developing a profitable eBook, because it means you’ve found a group of people who are searching the Internet for a solution to their problem.
All you have to do now is create an eBook that supplies this niche market with an answer to their question. It is a well-known fact that, no matter what you’re selling, you’ll be most successful if you concentrate your efforts on a niche market.
Your goal should be to develop a narrowly focused, topic specific eBook that provides clear and concise solutions to one or two specific problems. Why? Because you are not trying to sell to everyone. You will be far better off, and far more successful, developing an eBook aimed at fulfilling a need or solving a problem of your niche market.
So logically, the next step will involve determining who your niche market is. By identifying your niche market before you start writing, you will be able to…
- Locate your potential customers before you even have a product to sell!
- Produce a publication that is custom-tailored to their needs!
This is an incredibly powerful strategy – because by locating your potential customers and then developing an eBook specifically geared to solving a problem they’re actively seeking a solution for, you are guaranteeing that they’ll be interested in your eBook the moment it comes out!
By defining your niche market in the early stages of developing your eBook, you will be able to efficiently focus both your time and your money on marketing to those people most likely to buy from you.
Through your research, you should already know where your niche market is and what they want. All you need to do now is put your product in front of that niche market and your sales will explode!
4. Create an eBook that laser-targets your niche market!
Now that you’ve identified your target market, your next step is to figure out how to position your eBook as the solution to the problem they’re trying to solve. In other words, you need to define your topic.
For example, let’s say you’ve been working as a realtor selling houses, and you want to write an eBook for sale on a topic related to your expertise in real estate. After doing some research online, you discover that a lot of homebuyers are using words and phrases like the following to describe their problems:
- Home inspector turned out to be a rip-off
- Is this house for sale too good to be true?
- Shady inspection services – beware!
- Not sure if I should be buying this house – help!
What common problem do these people share? They’re all shopping for houses, and they’re desperately looking for reliable home inspection services to make sure they don’t buy a "money pit"!
With your inside knowledge of the process of buying and selling homes, you could easily come up with an eBook that shares the secrets to finding a reputable, top-notch home inspection service that will guarantee buyers are purchasing a safe home for their family.
Once you’ve done that, you can simply put your eBook in front of these potential customers – and it will practically sell itself!
Remember: the key to having a successful eBook is to find a group of people who share a problem, then come up with an idea for an eBook that will help solve that problem. So not only do you need to choose a topic about which you are knowledgeable, but the information you provide also needs to be in demand… if you want people to pay for it, that is!
Most people go online to search for solutions to their problems. Once you identify a group of people with a common problem, you can then start to think about a topic for your eBook that provides a solution to that problem.
Once you’ve identified your topic, you’re ready to start writing your eBook. In the next lesson, we’ll look at how anyone can create an eBook… even if you’ve never written anything longer than an email in your life!
Final thoughts
Remember: If you "dream up" a topic for your eBook, there’s simply no way to guarantee that it will sell. Just because you’ve got an eBook for sale, it doesn’t mean people are going to buy it!
This is a common mistake many online businesspeople make… so make sure you avoid it!
You need to find a problem before you start trying to sell the solution! It’s much easier and more lucrative to find out what people are searching for, and then simply offer them what you KNOW they already want!
This means doing a lot of research, and keeping your eyes open for any possible eBook topics. So get on the Internet and explore sites that are geared to your potential markets. Get to know the people who belong to these markets by visiting the sites where they hang out – discussion forums, chat rooms, and newsgroups.
Finally, identify a niche market and generate eBook topics that can solve that market’s problems. The fact is, any successful eBook will be based upon two things: A viable market that has a problem, and an effective information product that offers a solution to that problem.
Got a topic? Okay, let’s get writing!
Comments (193 Comment)
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Clara,
If you don’t have a website, how are your buyers coming to you? By email? In that case email them the book back.
On the other hand, if you have an eBook (and you have done as Derek recommends and made sure that there IS a market for it) why ever don’t you set up a website to market it from?
Hi Clara,
I agree with Sandra. You should definitely look into setting up a website for your ebook. If you haven’t built a website before, check out BestWebsite.com for step-by-step instructions to building profitable websites.
Best Wishes for a Successful 2008!
I created a website to sell my e-book, which I loved writing. I was inspired long ago by your ideas. But it has been a very long road to market it. If you can share strategies on how to market an e-book efficiently, I would love to learn about them.
Right now I am writing short articles about the book topic and submitting one by one to websites that accept authors’ articles. This one-by-one approach is very time consuming and not very efficient it seems. I have tried Google adwords and their system seems to require buying e-books to understand Google marketing.
Thanks for any ideas you can share.
Mary
Hi Ernie,
I very quickly checked your site and was really impressed by your layout and choice of colours. It’s really simple but attractive. I really like the combination of elements you have included in your site the humour is fantastic.
I have been “thinking” about a website and an ebook for a while now and have just begun actively researching. The web is a huge experience and I find that it has been interesting, time consuming and daunting. It’s very easy to get distracted by all of the new beaut offerings out there.
I see that your book orders are thru Amazon. Do you build lists? Do you have a forum? Would it be possible to contact you personally via email? I won’t be offended if you say no, coz I realise you must be very busy.
Anyway, look forward to a response.
Cheers,
Robyn
Ernie, that is so right on. Giving away an eBook or parts of one is such an excellent way to get your word out there that you even exist on the Net. We are simultaneously cooperating and competing in such a unique manner as online marketers, but I too have found that the more you give the more you get. Karmic synchronicity at its best.
Ernie, kudos for you for bringing this up. Way cool, dude.
Doug Ellsworth
Proud Member of the Golden 25 Mastermind
Can we sell ebook to ebay without my own website?
Mary, you can get software that will streamline your article submission efforts. It’s not free, but what is your time worth in comparison.
I have one that works pretty well. I may be able to sell it to you at my cost. If interested, reply here, and I will get an email notice.
eBooks are often as loss leaders. They can be a really good way to build a list of people interested in back end products. Try this: use the core subject of your ebook to find a series of higher and higher value back end products that you can sell as an affiliate for commission.
Follow the bread crumb trail all the way back to your ebook. Who are your suspects (suspects are potential prospects interested in your subject with a problem to solve) that you encounter along the trail?
Sell, barter, or give your book away, with something extra thrown in to sweeten the deal. Build your list. That’s the gold mine. Never, never begin and end your effort with just the book.
I hope this hasn’t been said too many times here already.