Canville Communications: Article
You may have heard that selling information products, such as eBooks, is a good way to make money online, but the task may seem daunting, especially if you’ve never written one before. You may have heard of people who wrote an eBook in a week or even a day. Faced with such a challenge, you might think there’s no way you could ever finish an eBook. Many people will give up before even trying. However, that should not be the case for you!
For your first eBook, put aside the thoughts of finishing it in a day. If you can do it, go ahead! But, don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by a short time constraint if it’s not absolutely necessary. You’ll likely be able to manage it much better if you just focus on a little bit at a time.
Writing an eBook may seem—and be!—time-consuming, but you can break it down into more manageable pieces. The key though is to always be creating! That is, whenever you set aside time to work on your project, you should should be sure to create content for it.
Creating Your Information Product
It is all too easy to fall into the trap of saying you’re doing “research” by reading different things online, such as how to write your eBook, or chatting with potential customers about what are the hot topics in your niche, and so on. But, are you really doing anything productive? Obviously, it is important to learn things about your niche and eBook creation and so on, but there comes a point where, while you think you are making good use of your time “learning,” your “learning” has really reached the point of being redundant and you’re not really learning as much as you are procrastinating.
At that point, it’s easy to get frustrated and think that you will never finish your eBook because you don’t have time, or there is so much to learn, and so on with the list of excuses. But, the reality is, you haven’t really been investing your time in creating your eBook so much as you have been just frittering away the hours.
So, set a minimum goal for yourself when working on your project. For example, if you are able to set aside time daily to work on your project, set a daily goal. Can you write 250 words a day? 500 words a day? 1000 words a day? Whatever it is, set an amount you can comfortably do.
If you have in mind creating a 20,000 word eBook, it will take you 80 days to complete at a rate of 250 words per day. At 500 words per day, it will take you about five weeks. At 1000 words per day, you’ll be done in under a month. And, if you can manage 1,500 words per day, you’ll be done in under two weeks.
Of course, the more you can write in a day, the faster you can be done. But, the most important thing to remember, once again, is to always be creating! Make sure that you are always adding some kind of content to your project.
Where Do You Begin?
While breaking something down into easily manageable chunks sounds like a good idea, it may be hard to get that far if you just aren’t certain where to start. What should go in your eBook? What content do you need? What topics do you need to cover?
Start with an outline. Let’s say you want to write an eBook on flying a kite. You might create an outline something like this:
Go Fly a Kite!
- Introduction
- History of Kite Flying
- Buying a Kite
- Building Your Own Kite
- Types of String
- Launching Your Kite
- Flying Techniques
- Kite Repair
- Summary
- Resources
From there, you can add subcategories, if needed.
If you’re still unsure about what to cover, there are several ways you can get ideas.
- Look at kite flying websites to see what topics they cover.
- Browse kite flying forums to see what’s being discussed. Look for frequently asked questions. And, don’t do that by just looking at a FAQ page, scroll through the forums as well to look through the types of questions that are being asked.
- Look at Yahoo! Answers to see what kinds of questions people are frequently asking about flying kites.
- Go to the library and look at kite flying books to see what topics they cover.
- Read other eBooks to see what information they are providing. Have you covered everything they cover? Are they falling short in areas, and can you improve upon their product by providing information they do not?
- See if you can find any PLR or RR/MRR kite flying books and study those eBooks and articles to see what they are covering.
- Are there any kite flying magazines you could purchase or browse online or at the library?
- Do you have a friend that’s a kite flying expert? What does he or she say that someone should know about kite flying? Do you have a friend that’s learning to fly a kite? What questions did he or she have when starting out? What does he or she think that people need to know about flying kites? Does he or she have any unanswered questions about kite flying?
Hopefully, this may give you some good ideas to start with, and maybe get you thinking about other possibilities you may have for finding out what information you need to include.
Silencing the Inner Editor
Another obstacle you may face—and it’s one that many aspiring writers face—is the “inner editor” holding you back from writing. It may be a little voice in the back of your head saying, “There’s a better way to say that” or “You can do better than that.”
It’s not a problem if it stops you once in a while and gets you thinking about what you really want to say. But, often, it’s a time killer. You may have had a flood of thoughts, but then you get held back trying to tweak a line to read just right. Once you get that sentence or two worded perfectly, you’ve forgotten the rest of what you were going to say.
If that’s the problem you’re running into, you need to practice ignoring that inner editor while you write. Just ignore that nagging little voice and keep writing. You can come back later and edit to the inner editor’s heart’s content!
But, why not just edit as you go? Wouldn’t that be more productive? As mentioned, that can slow you down and interrupt your flow of thought, which slows down your productivity. As much as the human brain is compared to a computer, we’re not at our best when we’re trying to do two things at a time, which is exactly what you’re doing when you try editing while writing at the same time!
Just write and keep on writing! Edit later.
Get It Done!
Keeping plugging away at it every day, chipping away at the sections that need to be completed for your information product. If you consistently work at it, you will finish it. There are few things more satisfying than holding a completed work in your hands (or even a virtual work you see only on-screen). Believe it or not, few would-be eBook authors make it that far!
Once finished, then you can start marketing your information product and, hopefully, sell it!
And, remember, always be creating!
“Day-by-Day Information Product Creation” is an original article by Dan C. Rinnert.
Originally published on February 1, 2009 on the Canville Business Community blog. Copyright
2009 by Canville Communications.
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Day-by-Day Information Product Creation
