Dirty Little Secrets 2 - The Investigation
April 29, 2008
The most time consuming aspect of writing an ebook or information product is the research. And if you’re going to produce something useful, you’ll need to immerse yourself in your topic. So it makes sense to choose a subject you already enjoy, or something you’re keen to learn about.
Choosing a Topic
1) Make a list of all the subjects you enjoy and all the ones you’d like to learn about.
2) Highlight the topics in your list that would be easy to get started on because you have knowledge, experience or access to specific information.
3) Out of those highlighted, choose the one that appeals to you most and make a list of possible sub-topics. For example, if your chosen topic is Caribbean travel, you might come up with the following: Caribbean travel on a shoestring, island hopping in the caribbean, live and work in the caribbean, dangers to avoid in the caribbean, luxury travel in the caribbean.
Make sure your topic is in demand:
1) Check out Amazon to ensure there’s at least a couple of books on your broad topic - Caribbean travel in this case.
2) Visit and participate in discussion forums. What sort of questions are people asking? What sort of information are they looking for? This will help you to choose a sub-topic. And don’t just limit yourself to forums that cover the broad topic. In the case of the Caribbean travel - you could also look at budget travel forums, moving abroad, luxury travel, working overseas etc.
3) Discover how many people are searching your subject online. There’s a few tools you can use to do this. I prefer Wordtracker, as it will give you hundreds of different keyword searches for particular phrases. You can get a free trial of Wordtracker here.
Related Reading: The Dirty Little Secrets Of An Informer
How To Write And Publish Your Own Ebook In As Little As 7 Days
This is a series post. If you’re interested in writing and selling an ebook or information product, click here to subscribe in a reader and make sure you don’t miss the remaining articles in the series.
Do you read ebooks yourself? What makes you choose an ebook over one that is published traditionally? Do you usually find that the information in ebooks and information products is of lower quality? Or is it more up to date than the info that can be found in traditional books?
Fab Quotes Of The Week: Week 3
April 27, 2008
Loving what you do, no matter how great at it or how bad at it you are, is the sum of being yourself. James of Men With Pens.
Whoever said that money doesn’t buy happiness was either broke, or they were a miserable person who won the lottery and allowed the money to magnify their misery. Christine O’Kelly of Self Made Chick.
Persistence Is Having The Same Goal Over And Over. Seth Godin.
I’m launching an anti-crap campaign. I want you to say “NO” to buying crap. I can’t think of a better way to improve one’s wealth, health, and self than to kick the crap habit. Squawkfox.
As you fight your way through the next year, spare a thought for how the chaps in charge – the government - are feeling. Then find one of them to throw bricks at. Drayton Bird
Fab People Of The Week
April 26, 2008
I’d like to apologise to those of you who thought I was dead or ill last week. I was actually away on a course and had no Internet or phone access.
Fab Quotes of The Week: I didn’t run the Fab Quotes feature last weekend, as I wasn’t around to discover any, but Fab Quotes will return to tomorrow.
Fab People of The Week: Since returning - I’ve barely had time to read a thing. But I did come across a handful of interesting and amazing posts. The first was this interview with Jemi, by Kelly at She-Power. If you’ve never heard of Jemi - she’s one of the most inspirational and positive people on the Internet. Why not check out her blog, In My Heels.
Kelly has also written some wonderful posts recently and I’m a keen follower of her weekly fiction series. You can read it here.
I saw a blog comment by some guy who claimed to be one of the most famous marketers on the Internet. I’d never heard of him and to me, some of the stuff he said came across as foolish and arrogant. Straight after I wound up on Liz Strauss’s blog and found this excellent post: Internet Fame, Leaps of Faith and The Truth From Guy. Liz says that Internet famous isn’t really famous at all and a blog just isn’t a business. She includes some great viewpoints from Guy Kawasaki and Tim Bourquin. If you know someone who’s Internet ego has grown to the size of Amazon, you may want to forward them this post.
While I was away Caroline Middlebrook launched her free Stumble Rush course. If you’d like to learn how to use Stumble Upon to drive traffic to your website, you should sign up now.
Brett Legree always has something interesting to say. And today he explains Why Blogging For Profit Is Like Collecting Underpants. And Ian Denny is telling us to Deliberately Displease People For Better Results.
Do you want to learn how to customise your own Wordpress theme? Elizabeth is going to be showing readers how to do this in a step by step guide. If you’d like to learn, visit her blog and sign up to her RSS.
Are you in a bad relationship? You might want to check out Alex Shalman’s post: 4 Signs That Your Spouse Is Slowly Ruining Your Life.
Tired of your day job? Brad Brown always makes me laugh and now he is showing us: Seven Ways To Become A Better Burglar.
Are You A Manager Or A Leader?
April 24, 2008
Guest post by Tim Brownson of A Daring Adventure
If you employ people, manage people or intend to do either in the future what are your plans to be great at what you do?
I can remember several years ago after being taken on by a huge sales organization being taken into an office by my new manager. He hadn’t interviewed me for the job because he was new to the role and literally started the same day as I did, so we’d never even met. He sat me down and the first question he posed me was “Tim, how do you like to be managed?” After I picked myself up of the floor closed my gaping jaw and recovered the ability to speak I gave him my answer. “I like to be hands-off most of the time and I respond to encouragement and not threats. To say I was somewhat cynical about whether he would actually take any of that onboard would be like saying Britney Spears isn’t quite on her ‘A’ game at the moment. I was skeptical, dubious and suspicious of any manager asking ME how I wanted handling. Surely this was a cunning ruse to get me to do something I didn’t want to do, like go out and actually visit clients or something else equally sinister.
Over the following months however, he proved good to his word by treating me exactly the way I wanted to be treated. He was encouraging when I was successful and helpful and supportive when I had barren spells. He made me believe that he wanted to see me succeed as much as I did, and he did that because it was true. In fact he helped me to smash every sales target that was put in front of me
What he managed to do was get to know me. Not my performance stats, what my time keeping was like and whether I could hold a sales meeting, but what I liked to do, what motivated me and what engaged me. He knew me as a person not a sales person and he understood my values and what really made me tick. He knew that a volley of abuse or threat of objectives would have little beneficial effect on me, so he didn’t bother resorting to those tactics. I now look back on him as one of the 2 best people I ever worked for and he remains a friend many years later.
I don’t like the title manager. I held it for a number of years and at the time thought it looked cool on my business cards, but it was purely an ego thing. The word itself manage, gives off a vibe of organizing or worse still, coping. It’s not a word that inspires, not in the same way that being a leader does.
The fact is that great managers are also great leaders. They get the people that work for them to feel like they are working with them. They get to know the people directly under them as individuals and they manage the person according to their values and personality. Everybody is different and if I tried to operate as a Life Coach by having a regimented script and treating everybody the same way, I wouldn’t have many clients.
Imagine if you were given a managers post but instead of saying manager it said Sales Leader or Office Leader on your business cards and all the other relevant paraphernalia. What difference do you think that would make to how you viewed your roll within the organization? How would it change the expectations of those around you? Suddenly you’re not there to manage you’re there to lead people, how cool would that be?
If you want to really make a difference (I know, I’ve slipped into cliché corner but I don’t know how else to describe it) at what you do, start to be a leader. It doesn’t matter if you don’t actually have the title yet, that will come when others recognize your abilities. Lead by being solution driven rather than problem orientated, lead by volunteering for stuff you’d rather not do, lead by helping others, lead by sharing information, lead by smiling when things get tough, lead by listening, lead by asking questions and most of all lead by being the person that you aspire to be.
Tim Brownson is a UK born Life Coach and NLP Master Practitioner now living in Orlando, Florida. He coaches people one-to-one either face-to-face or via the telephone. If you have enjoyed this article you can read his blog at A Daring Adventure.
