Find More Problems and Create More Solutions You Can Sell

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Once you’ve solved one problem for free, the people on your list will then welcome with open arms your intentions to help them solve more problems in the future. Keep coming up with new product ideas and you keep learning and growing in your chosen niche. Don’t try to broaden your scope too far, but rather stay tightly focused on the niche you’re passionate about.

There are at least four kinds of products you can now develop and sell to the people on your list:

Products you develop and make yourself: which are obviously the best because you get to keep all the money they generate when sold.

Products anybody can sell: which are available from websites like www.clickbank.com. You can market other people’s products to your list and keep a cut of the revenue or register your products there for other marketers to sell for you.

Products you acquire through joint-venture arrangements: where you either sell products to the people on your list or sell your own products through the lists owned by others. Joint ventures can take all kinds of shapes and forms but should ultimately serve to strengthen your relationship with the people on your list, not weaken it.

Products you purchase the resale rights to: where people allow you to buy their products, rebrand them and then sell them as your own. These arrangements are negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

Information products generally come in three forms:

An e-book consisting of an Acrobat PDE file.

In audio format, often using MP3 files.

In video format, either on DVD or downloadable.

As a rule of thumb, video can be used to augment the value of your e-book and audio information products. The rapid success of video sharing sites like YouTube suggests that video will be huge in the future, and it’s likely that more and more information products will move to this format over the longer term.

The real trick in creating good solid information products of your own is not to get too bogged down. Instead of spending years developing a great product, consider what kind of viable products you can put together in an hour. You can then make another and another until ultimately you have a series that encapsulates everything you know.

When you look around with fresh eyes, you’ll see product ideas all over the place:

Write a “how to” expose that sets out the insider secrets from professionals in your niche.

Have a conversation with an expert and turn that conversation into an e-book or an audio product.

Hang out at forums, note the questions being asked, approach pros for their answers and write an e-book that pulls together those recommendations.

Invite other people in your field write a chapter each and publish the compilation as an e-book.

Make a list and write a chapter about each point on the list.

The more information products you come up with the better, because they will create multiple streams of income for you.

Contact List Owners to Give Your Solution away

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Once you’ve created a great solution to a common problem you’re prepared to give away, you then start contacting other people who already have lists and offer your solution to them. The more list owners you can get giving away your solution, the better it will be for you. In effect, you ride on their coattails in order to establish your own list of subscribers.

Long-term, your objective is to have a list of people who like you and trust you so much they are prepared to buy what you offer in the future. To get to that point, you should do all you can to respectfully harness the relationships others have already established with those same customers. The smart way to do this to approach other list owners and let them share what you have to offer with their list. In this way, you graft their list into yours and come up with a bigger list again.

The beat way to earn their trust is by communicating with them in several different ways:

By periodic and regular e-mails.

By writing a blog that gives the inside picture.

By consistently providing a high quality product.

Through your website materials.

One of the main determinants of the quality of your materials will be your copywriting skills. Imagine you’ve just seen a movie you loved and you’re trying to convince your best friend to go see it. The sales spiel you’d give for that movie is a great example of copywriting in action. You want to aspire to write material that is just as genuine as genuine and passionate.

Well-written materials have seven components:

The headline: which draws people away from other things and into your sales copy.

Bullet points: which are used to draw attention to benefits, especially for those who just skin what you’ve written.

Subheads: which break copy down into manageable chunks and grab readers and keep their attention.

The body: the meat and potatoes where you identify the reader’s pain and provide them with the solution.

The guarantee: the means by which any risk of disappointment is transferred from the purchaser to you.

The close: where you ask for the sale and invite people to take action immediately.

The P.S.: where you convince the reader to retrace his or her steps and buy what is on offer.

The whole key to good copywriting is to be at least in the shoes and hopefully in the mind of each of your readers. Know exactly what causes them pain and then convince them that you can alleviate that pain and smooth their way forward towards greater success in the future.

The people who are going to read your sales copy are caught up in the drama of their own lives. Everybody is in a trance. People are living inside their heads. Your mission, should you accept it, is to know exactly who you’re writing to, and walk a few thousand miles in their shoes. Get inside mind. Find the pain, and then frame the solution to soothe their pain. I’ve seen grown men cry as they sat at their desks, visualizing their readers and their readers’ lives. That’s the big secret.

–Pat O’Bryan

Create a Solution You Give away for Names and E-mail Addresses

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Once you have identified a compelling problem, come up with a practical solution that you can give away to anyone who is interested. By doing this, you can build a list with the names and e-mail addresses of like-minded people. You can monetize your list at a later stage, so don’t try to make a sale in one step. Build the relationship first.

What you’re trying to achieve by building your list is to gather together a large group of people who are interested in your niche topic. You’re attempting to match a group of people with a topic. Naturally the larger that group becomes, the more it will be worth in the future, so you should be prepared to invest in establishing that relationship by giving them something of value right at the outset.

The way you do this is straightforward:

Create a simple website where people can opt-in to receive your solution to their problem by giving you their name and e-mail address.

Once people enter their name, forward them a Web page where they can download the solution immediately.

Work at building the relationship by continuing to send the people on your list more information at regular intervals.

Try to e-mail something of value to the people on your list every week or more often if feasible.

Treat your people with respect.

The great thing about the Internet is that you can automate the management of your list quite readily. The natural way to do this is to use an online software program called an autoresponder. An autoresponder allows you to store a series of e-mails online and then have them delivered to the people on your list at predetermined intervals, even if you’re away on vacation or doing something else. Autoresponders can handle every step in the process without your personal involvement.

More than likely, the solution you give away to start building the relationship will be an e-book. Don’t be intimidated by the title–e-books are very simple and inexpensive to create. You can create an e-book:

By starting with a list of ways to solve the problem and then adding a little bit of detail to each point on the list.

By describing your solution to a friend on the phone and recording your call and then having someone transcribe your conversation.

By giving a seminar to a group of friends and committing your presentation notes into written format.

Most Internet marketers are of the opinion that their list is their most valuable asset. Why? Because if you’ve got a list, you can sell solutions. You can trade digital products for money. You’ve got a Portable Empire.

–Pat O’Bryan

Identify a Pressing Problem within Your Niche

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The key to making money from your niche is to identify some existing problems that need solutions. If you can identify a problem that really hurts people, this will become your entrance point into your niche.

By definition, your niche will be something you’re knowledgeable and passionate about. That means you will probably already know what the most pressing problems are in that field. If you don’t, or if you want to validate your gut feelings, there are several ways to research problems:

As mentioned, spend time in online forums where like-minded people communicate with each other. Watch and observe.

Interview an expert in the industry.

Read trade magazines or journals that cover this industry.

Get some hands-on personal experience.

Most times, identifying pressing problems won’t be hard. You’ll probably be able to come up with a decent list of potential problems in an hour or less if you know your niche inside and out.

If you’re having trouble putting your finger on the most pressing problems in your niche, consider forming a small mastermind group to help you work through things. Ideally, this type of group should have five or six people, each of whom you know you know and respect. Get the people in your mastermind group to look at the niche with fresh eyes. Their outsider’s perspective may be able to help you uncover problems that are sitting right in front of you but that you cannot see for one reason or another.

Don’t be put off if there already seem to be a lot of people who are offering their solutions to some clear problem in your niche. That simply validates the fact that a sizable market opportunity exists. If you can create some kind of solution that tells your solution in your voice, it will stand out because people will recognize it as genuine rather than contrived.

Whatever you do, keep things simple:

Identify an obvious and pressing problem.

Develop a solution that is genuine and authentic.

Find ways to tell people about your solution.

Don’t try to develop products that will impress the experts in your field. They aren’t going to buy what you have to offer because they have their own ideas about how to put together a solution. Instead, develop products that will appeal directly to the non-specialists.

Don’t let the quest for perfection stand in the way of building your Portable Empire. Even if you don’t have anything new to say, the fact that you’re saying it in your voice is going to make it interesting. As long as you’re telling your story honestly, people are going to want to hear it. The only mistake you can make is to not start now.

–Pat O’Bryan

There’s no need to try and reinvent the wheel. You can just see what’s working for other people and innovate. That’s much better way to do things. Find your topic and then ask yourself, ‘What do I know’ or ‘Who do I know that knows something about this topic? ‘Solve those problems and sell the solutions.

–Craig Perrine

Choose a Niche You Are Passionate about Personally

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It’s impossible to try and be an expert on everything there is. That’s too broad and too ambitious a goal. Instead, you need to identify your niche–the one area of specialization you know a lot about. Identify a subject you feel passionate about and start there.

Finding your niche is quite simple. Ask yourself a few questions:

“What do I have fun doing?”

“What do I like to play around with in my spare time?”

“What am I passionate about?”

“What am I knowledgeable about?”

“What problem do I most like to solve?”

“What subjects do I consider to be intensely interesting?”

Your answers to these questions will then point you in the right direction when it comes to identifying your own particular niche. Choosing a niche is usually straightforward because it is the kind of things you already have fun doing.

If you’re having trouble thinking about the niche that’s just right for you, try this exercise:

Take two blank pieces of paper.

Head one piece of paper with: “The 10 Things I Am Most Knowledgeable About.” Then go through and list the 10 items you have deep knowledge of and expertise in.

Head the second piece of paper with: “Some drivers put bumper stickers on their cars that say ‘I’ d rather be fishing,’ In a similar vein, fill in the blank: ‘I’d rather be_______.’

To identify your niche, look for an item that crops up on both lists.

The 10 Things I Am Most Passionate About
Fill in the blank: “I’d rather be_______.”

Once you’ve come up with some suggestions for your niche, do some online research:

Do a Web search (using Google or a similar site) and try to find out who is already marketing to your future customers.

If your search shows there is nobody else who is trying to market to that niche, it suggests you’ve probably identified a hobby rather than a niche.

Don’t be discouraged if it’s clear that loads of companies are already marketing to your potential customers. This is good–it means the market size is viable. All of these companies are potential joint-venture partners for you.

See if there are any forums where your potential customers hang out or kick around ideas. If there are, visit those forums and lurk. Find out what kinds of problems people are striking in your niche. This kind of information will be a goldmine if handled correctly.

Every problem is a product. Find the problem and sell the solution.

–Pat O’Bryan

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you’re doing, you will be successful.

–Albert Schweitzer

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