Day 3
Good job so far! You've learned a lot and have started to put that knowledge into use. Hopefully, you've learned how to get ideas out of your mind and down onto paper, while at the same time, you’ve learned how to step back and take a look at an overview of what's actually being bought out there in the market.
Maybe, you’ve been smart enough to try the “Kumar Method” out on your market research. If you have, you’re really way ahead!
Last chapter, you found out ways to see what people are buying. The chapter before that, you learned about tapping your subconscious. Let's put those two techniques together for a moment and see what happens.
Do a little market research and come up with 5 keywords or phrases that apply to things that people are already buying … and buying a LOT of! You just learned about how to do this … check WordTracker, check eBay, check the best sellers … all of those things! Come up with a list of 5 potential keywords or items, or topics. ONLY 5!
Now, just study that list of 5 for a few minutes. Think about each keyword or phrase and then write down ideas about each one of them. As fast as you can…with no editing (you ARE using that pen, right?). That’s your conscious mind working. Now it’s time to get your subconscious kicked into gear!
Us the Kumar Method to focus your mind on those 5 items…the last 5 things you were thinking about. Relax like we talked about earlier and just let things flow out of your mind and onto the paper.
Do a 30 minute session. Most people find that after 30 minutes or so, it becomes more difficult to keep their minds focused on just the things they want to work on.
Again, you're going to end up with 2 lists … your conscious list and your subconscious list. Compare them like before and find which one of the 5 items comes out with the most things scribbled down about it. That's probably the one you should pick to write about for your first e-book!
That’s an important step you just took there whether you knew it or not. You did some good research, you put some quality conscious thought into it and then, you turned it over to your subconscious to work on. If you TRULY went through those steps, then you are definitely in the 5% of e-book authors (or soon-to-be authors!) who will turn out an excellent product … one that people will LOVE , get a LOT out of…AND, tell their friends about!
Pat yourself on the back and grab a cool refreshment, but, don’t close this chapter yet. We have more work to do today!
The very next thing you need to do is go out and find everything you can on your subject. Let's say you came up with “ diets for dachshunds” as your topic. You need to go out and find what’s already been written on that subject.
Here’s an excellent FREE way to do just that. Go to Google and type in your keyword or key phrase. Take a look at the statistics there, but don't worry too much about them right now. The important part for you, at this point, is the bottom part of that page … all of the website URLs you’ll see there.
Click on some of the top rated sites and see what information they have on there. See what they have to say…what they have to sell. See what price points they set for their products … if it IS their own product! See what affiliate products they're selling. If it's a popular product, don’t you think that people may be interested in learning how to best … or better … use that product? Or maybe take care of that product?
What you’re trying to do here is check out your competition…get the lay of the land … do some reconnaissance! Not with the idea of talking yourself OUT of writing a book about the topic, but with the idea of getting you excited about it!
While you’re searching, make sure you find some sites that have free articles about your chosen topic. Copy those articles into a folder on your desktop entitled, “Resources”…we’ll come back to them in just a bit.
Also, while you're searching, try to find forums that deal with your topic. That's easy to do. Just go to Google and type in forum: dogs or forum:dachshunds … you get the idea. These forums are a treasure trove of great information! Make sure you bookmark the ones that closely fit your topic … you WILL be coming back to them! Add them to your resource file.
Take a little time on each of the forums to read a few posts…see what questions people are asking…see what people are talking about. Find a forum topic that has a lot of responses and read through them. What you're doing here is getting a feel for your market … what they want to know … what they already know … what they buy … what they don’t buy…how they talk. This will help immeasurably when tomorrow rolls around and you start actually writing!
Now, let's get back to that file you put on your desktop. You should have quite a few articles in there by now if you’ve been copying and swiping. That’s why it’s called a swipe file! Everybody who’s really serious about marketing keeps one. If they see something that looks really cool or interesting or applicable, they just add it to their swipe file.
This is NOT a file to steal content from. That’s just plain dumb… and illegal! It’s pretty hard to make a decent living from the state pen! It’s your resource file. A resource