Yeah, I’m going to go ahead and give in to an ebook that turned out to be a total disaster. It’s been a little over two years since I last published an eBook…and again, it was and still is horrible. I rushed this ebook to market without completing the vital step of market research and thus learned a HARD lesson about business success: the market DEMANDS and smart business owners and entrepreneurs LISTEN!

UNDERSTAND THE WEAK POINTS OF THE TARGET AUDIENCE

When creating the structure of this eBook, I made a very costly mistake that you should avoid. Honestly, it’s the second time I’ve done it: instead of listening, looking and understanding what the market wanted, I decided what I wanted to write about. BIG MISTAKE! A fundamental foundation of business success is providing products and/or services that the market REALLY WANTS… not what I think they want. How do you go about achieving this? Here are several points of direction to prevent you from avoiding this error and thus costing you precious time and resources:

• Use free online resources for market research, such as Amazon, YouTube, online forums, Facebook groups, magazines, newspapers, Google Keyword Tool
• Select a strong market with a medium to high level of competitive activity plus something you are passionate about.
• Set a firm deadline (minimum 3 days to no more than 5 days) for creating the eBook outline

Once you’re confident in the market research you conducted and the eBook schematic you generated, it’s time to do more testing. I recommend that you write a minimum of 3 articles (150-200 words per article) on the subject of the eBook and publish it on various e-zine sites, in addition to creating a YouTube video with a screencast of at least 5 slides. about a section in the eBook. Now sit back and wait a minimum of 5 days. On the sixth day, check and analyze the number of views generated for both the articles and the YouTube video. Based on the results, go ahead and finish the eBook or revise it based on the feedback provided. Another great testing tool is the use of Google AdWords.

OFFER RELEVANT AND VALUABLE SOLUTIONS

Another clear penalty I am guilty of writing Business Loan Packaging Made Easy was that my communication of providing relevant and valuable solutions to pain points was not clear. This came as a result of the first BIG MISTAKE of not really knowing the pain points of the target audience. I guess you could say he had ‘blinders’ on. I have read and witnessed that the best salespeople are those who not only understand their customer pain points, but also come up with practical solutions that provide their products and/or services to help eliminate customer pain points. How do you go about creating and offering practical solutions to your client’s pain points? It all comes down to understanding the “need” of your customers. Understanding takes time and effort, which is why it’s important that you spend the necessary time investing in market research.