Finding Your Niche
Audience Over and
Over Again
In order to write information products that sell – eBooks that people will flock to your web site to buy, you are going to have to go by the wisdom – or wit – of popular radio and television comedian Red Skelton. “Give the people what they want, and they will come.” This sage sentence has been changed by many an eBook writer to go something like this – “If you write it, they won’t necessarily come and buy it.”
Truer words were never spoken! You may think you have got to do a little research and decide on a niche, or target audience. The audience is the group of people who you will be addressing in your eBook. But you somewhat limit yourself by writing only to a target audience. Many eBook writers would question this theory and think it was a rather radical thing to say, but I think that you need to provide information products that do not fit into one single category.
Let’s suppose you decided that your target audience was going to be quilters. You write a smashing eBook about your own easy quilting method and include several original patterns you designed. You place this information product on a web site you created for the express purpose of selling it, and your sales go pretty well; for a while, anyway. Then, it seems like all of your sales potential has dried up and blown away.
Why did you all of a sudden stop selling your eBook at a fairly brisk rate? You’re down to just a few sales a month now!
Your sales have slowed to a crawl for one simple reason. You exhausted the market for quilting. Not everyone is a quilter, or even knows a quilter to buy your eBook as a gift for. Someone who is interested in Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, or how to arrange flowers, or how to give a great baby shower, is not going to buy your eBook about quilting!
Or suppose you are just passionate about healthy eating. Everyone has to eat, you reason. And so, you write an eBook extolling the virtues of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, design a web page for it, and sit back and wait for the orders to start rolling in.
You sell 15 or 20 copies before the orders start to slow down, and then grind to a halt. Yes, everyone has to eat, but some people are not going to give up their junk food diets, no matter how persuasive your eBook may be.
So much of the advice available for would-be eBook writers urges them to write about what they love, or what they know best. Sometimes, eBooks like this will do quite well. And sometimes, their authors are very disappointed in their sales.
Why Do Ebooks Fail?
The reasons that most people fail at being a successful online eBook distributors are threefold.
So, how do you write eBooks that everyone will be interested in at some time or another? Your eBook has to have something different from the general “how to” eBooks that are being sold all over the Internet. You may well be writing about the same topics, but you are going to have a bit of “Bait” in your book that is going to make your potential customers jump like a fish jumps for a baited hook. What topics are there that every person on earth will have a need for at some point in their life?
Writing For a Desperate Audience
There’s not a soul on this earth who hasn’t had some sort of problem to overcome. Problems, big and small, are in our lives on a daily basis, whether we want them there or not. Yet somehow, we are able to overcome most, if not all of them. We learn from our mistakes and move on.
Sometimes, the solutions to the problems I have faced have been pretty simple. But, it took me quite a while to figure out just exactly what the solution was, and how I would implement it.
It’s that way for most people. They are desperate to solve life’s little and big problems, and yet it seems to take forever to figure out the steps needed to do so. That’s where you are going to step into the picture.
These people will be the best eBook audience you could ever hope to have. They have problems, and they want solutions… now!
What sort of problems that are common among people would be suitable for an eBook?
1. People who are having financial difficulties, such as facing bankruptcy, poor credit, bad credit, foreclosure. These people are pretty desperate. They would be extremely willing to pay for information that could help them.
2. People who have rowdy pets who need training. Dogs who bark all night long or won’t come when called. Cats that refuse to use the litter box, or scratch up the furniture. That sort of thing will have people combing the internet for a solution that you can supply.
3. People who are looking for a way to lose weight. This is always going to be a hot topic, because it’s always going to be a problem that people want to solve. There are a lot of different diets, and a lot of reasons why people are willing to do almost anything to take off the pounds. You can mix and match the diets and ideas and come up with a real winner of an eBook.
4. People who want to save money. EBooks about saving on your energy bill, spending less at the grocery store, finding the best online shopping discounts, living frugally how to budget– all of these are issues that some people must face often, and each would make a compelling eBook that would help many people out of a tight situation.
5. People who want to get started selling on Amazon.com,
Amazon’s new Kindle store has made a lot of people rich in both the Fiction and Non-Fiction markets. Any vital tips and tricks to help them reach that goal can make big bucks for YOU.
6. People who are having legal issues. It may be someone who is trying to collect child support. Perhaps it is someone who is facing a court trial and is desperately seeking information about what to expect. Or maybe it is someone who was arrested for no reason and wants to represent himself in court. The law is vast and varied, and there are many topics that you could write about that could save someone a lot of time and trouble.
7. People who are looking for information on how to improve their luck in the stock market. New investors are especially eager for all the information they can get.
8. People who are having trouble with their love life. You’d be amazed at how many people get online searching for ways to revive a lost love, start a new relationship, keep their present relationship from crumbling, or improve a so-so relationship.
They would snatch up an eBook written with them in mind.
9. People who want to quit smoking, clear up their acne, tame their frizzy hair, or solve other personal problems. There are a ton of these that would make great eBooks that people would be thrilled to buy.
This is but a tiny sampling of all the topics that are what people want to know about. Also consider that different age groups want to know about different things. Teen boys are looking for help with video games. Teen girls want beauty hints and relationship helps.
Young working people would pay dearly for eBooks on how to conquer stress on the job, move up the corporate ladder, or even how to go into business for themselves. Young parents would eagerly purchase books on how to care for their colicky newborn. Baby boomers worried about retirement would welcome eBooks on preparation for that time in their lives.
There is definitely a need for this information! When you write about topics that people just have an interest in, they may or may not be motivated to buy an eBook that tells them about it. But, when you have written something that details a way to help them solve a problem that has been keeping them up all night with worry, you can bet that most people are going to be very interested indeed!
Interested enough to buy your eBook!
Come on – haven’t you yourself Googled a problem you are in the midst of to see if you could find an answer? I know I certainly have, and so have a lot of other people. But many of them will give up out of frustration or lack of time after looking at a couple of web sites.
These people are the ones you want to reach with your eBook. All the information that they need will be gathered together in one easy-to-read format that they can refer to over and over again, online or offline if they take the time to print it out – which they more than likely will!
I know what you are asking yourself right about now. You’re wondering how you are going to be able to get the information to write about problems other than your own. While your own problems can be a good place to start, it wouldn’t hurt to do some research to try and pinpoint the types of problems that are most common for people in today’s world. One way to get data to use is to –