September 28, 2007

How To Guarantee A Successful Ebook

Okay, okay, nothing in life is guaranteed and everyone's definition of success is different!

I accept all that but I think it’s a pretty catchy title!

Plus, like most of my articles and reviews, it is directed at the average man or woman who is fairly new to internet marketing and wants to learn a thing or two to help them make a good living online.

Last week I wrote about the top 10 benefits to writing or producing your own mini ebook.

It is a successful method to making money online that I highly recommend and is what brings me the most income.

The problem I see a lot of people have when deciding on what to write about, is what niche market to choose.

Too many people get hung up over the niche.

Forget about finding that hidden niche that is a goldmine waiting to be struck. They don’t exist anymore.

There is no niche market that hasn’t been tried. You have to accept that.

The second dilemma they face when choosing a niche subject is the amount of competition there is already there.

Our mindset is geared towards finding a hungry niche market without any competition and then writing an ebook to fulfill that demand.

What do you do when there isn’t a niche market without any competition?

There are 2 courses of action open to you:

1. Write the best ebook you can and go ‘head to head’ with all the other ebooks in the market and hope yours will do better.

2. Write an ebook that compliments the other ebooks rather than competes against them.

Can you see the advantages to the second choice?

Why not use all this extra competition to your advantage?

Simply write a mini ebook that the other website owners can recommend to their subscriber lists.

You will reach a much larger, more targeted audience in a much quicker time than you could ever do by marketing any other way.

Here’s an example of writing a mini ebook in a niche industry that is as saturated as it could get:

Dog Training

There are dozens and dozens of dog training ebooks being sold on the internet. Just a quick search on Google for the term ‘dog training’ revealed over 18 million related websites and 6 pages of Google paid ads.

Now that’s a market with some serious competition!

In todays market you would be very hard pushed to make much money if you wrote a mini ebook on 'dog training'.

However, all this competition can be used to your advantage. Instead of writing a competing ebook, why not write an ebook that compliments all these dog training websites?

For example you could do some research and write a mini ebook on ‘Common Dog Diseases and How To Treat Them Without The Need For Expensive Vet Bills’ (or some similar title).

Wouldn’t that information also appeal to all the dog owners searching on Google for dog training tips?

But better still, all the doggie website owners selling their dog training ebooks and building their subscriber lists would jump at the chance to promote such a book.

Some of these dog training sites have tens of thousands of subscribers. Just 1 promotion to one of the ‘big players’ in the industry could reap massive profits for you.

Let’s do the math:

Say you have your complimentary ‘Common Dog Diseases’ mini ebook that is 20 pages long and you price it at $9.97 (lets call it $10).

You have an affiliate program that pays out at 50% so every sell an affiliate makes, you will also make $5.

If you promote your mini ebook to someone that has a list of 10,000 subscribers, they might expect to sell to 5% of that list.

5% of 10,000 is 500 X $5=$2,500

That’s $2500 for a mini ebook that took you less than 7 days to write and virtually zero costs!

And that’s just 1 of the many doggie website owners selling their dog training ebooks and building their subscriber lists.

Some lists will be much higher and some will be lower.

Can you see the possibilities here?

Not only will you sell more ebooks, but you will also start building your own subscriber list which you can promote further back-end products to!

As long as your ebook contains some good quality information and your website looks professional and follows the standard 2 page website formula, you will have a very hard job not to make a lot of money this way.

If you do have a lot of success in your chosen market, see if it can be transferred to a related market. E.g. if your 'common dog diseases' ebook worked well, why not do the same with cats or rabbits or any other household pets?

You’ve already got the bones of the ebook, you just need to do the same research for a different animal/pet.

You’re whole business could very easily revolve around that 1 initial complimentary mini ebook. From then on you could have enough work and income to set you up for good.

Conclusion and Summary:

Instead of looking for niche markets that have zero competition, look for markets that have the most competition and come up with a mini ebook that compliments what is already being sold.