The eBook Publishers Pre-Flight Checklist

Let’s jump in… The eBook Publishers Pre-Flight Checklist…

Step 1: Find out what your audience is already buying.

The #1 predictor of what your audience wants is to look at what they’re already buying. This holds true whether you’re creating a free piece of content or a paid product.

First, go to marketplaces and enter your niche keywords, e.g., “foreign adoption” or “raw food diet.” You’re looking for two things that are evidence of a healthy market:

• Bestsellers in your niche.
• Multiple products on the same topic.

Go to the following marketplaces and write down what you discover after doing your searches:

• Amazon.com
• Clickbank.com
• Udemy.com
• JVZoo.com

Step 2: See what marketers in your niche are advertising.

Now go to Google, enter your niche keywords, and check two things:

1. What are the top sites in your niche selling? NOTE: Look at what the site owner is promoting, as well as what their advertisers are promoting.

2. What are the marketers selling who are placing the sponsored ads (paid ads) on Google (these sponsored ads appear next to the regular search results)?

You can take this a step further and check offline publications as well. First, look if there are magazines or other offline publications in your niche (or the broader market). If so, that’s a sign of a healthy market.

Secondly, browse the ads in these publications to see what people are advertising.

And while you’re looking at these magazines, take note of the articles within them. Pay particular attention to the cover articles. An established magazine tends to invest money in researching what will help them sell their magazine, so if an article appears on the cover, you know that’s a hot topic. Write down your findings.

Step 3: Check what type of free content your audience is consuming.

Your next step is to look at what topics are popular across your niche. Take these steps:

• Go to the top blogs in your niche and take note of what topics are popular (e.g., they get a lot of comments, they get social media shares).

• Check niche pages on social media and see which topics get plenty of likes, shares, and comments.

• Go to Yahoo! Answers, Quora.com and JustAnswer.com to see what questions tend to come up repeatedly in your niche.

• Check forums in your niche to see which topics are popular (e.g., they come up repeatedly and they get a lot of discussion when they do).

• Join your competitors’ lists and see what sort of content they’re sending (not only in their newsletters, but also their lead magnets). NOTE: Also write down what sort of infoproducts your competitors are promoting from within their newsletters.

• List what sort of videos in your niche are popular on YouTube.

• Check SlideShare.net and look for presentations with plenty of likes, as well as multiple presentations on the same topic. List your findings.

Step 4: Use keyword tools.

Your next step is to use your favourite keyword tool (such as WordTracker.com) to see what your audience is searching for in the search engines. What topics interest them? List your findings.

Step 5: Ask your audience what they want.

You can survey your audience formally (using a tool like SurveyMonkey.com or any number of similar survey tools), or you can simply start a discussion on social media or on your blog and ask people what topics interest them. List your findings.

• Take note that public discussions tend to bias answers, as people are influenced by what others say.

• Don’t ever use surveying in isolation, especially if you’re trying to figure out what people will buy. That’s because people filling out surveys may say they are interested in some specific sort of topic/product, but their behaviour says differently (e.g., they don’t buy products on the topic).

Step 6: Test your audience.

There are a few different ways to test your audience to learn more about what they want. This is done to confirm what your other research revealed. Specifically:

1. Promote affiliate products on a topic and track how your audience responds. This is a good method when you’re wondering if your audience will buy a particular product, but you don’t want to invest a lot of time/money creating it to find out.

2. Create a lead magnet (such as a report) on a topic, and track how your audience responds.

3. Send out an article or other piece of short content, and track how your audience responds.

4. Create a sales letter for a product you want to create. The “order” button leads to a page saying the product isn’t ready yet, but people can join a notification list. This method lets you test a product idea without creating a product, and you get to build a list at the same time. You can get a sense of whether people will buy based on how many people click your “order” button (and an even better gauge is the number of people who join the notification list).

NOTE: This test can be skewed if you create a poor, low-converting sales letter. In other words, the audience may really, REALLY want the product you intend to create… but your faux sales letter test doesn’t show it, because people click away if the letter doesn’t hold their interest.

Bottom line: Yes, it takes some time upfront to do this research, but once it’s done, you’ll know exactly what your audience wants!

Want some additional help with your eBook project? Then be sure to take a look at: The eBook Action Plan.

So go ahead and get started, because the sooner you do, the sooner you can reap the rewards!

To Your Success!