Monthly archives for February, 2010

I was too late ….

Feb26
2010 3 Comments

Written by Help Desk

Oh darn, I didn’t catch my post on Wednesday …

You see, I didn’t actually want to post it. Why? Because on Wednesday I published a blog post on a different blog!

Yup … go to OurLittleBooks.com and check out my article.

We’ve made arrangements with a publisher (Our Little Books) and a marketer to share posts. So over the next couple of months you’ll see articles on publishing and on marketing your book appear in this column. And you’ll see articles on why you need to write “how to” books and how to write “how to” books (and other non-fiction) appear in their columns.

All for you, to help you become a better entrepreneur.

(For those of you looking forward to my series … we return to the regularly scheduled series on Monday … check back and enjoy!)

Posted in Announcements, Building an eBiz - Tagged article, blog, entrepreneur, non fiction

Set up your office to write “how to” books! #3

Feb24
2010 5 Comments

Written by Help Desk

In the last post I talked about the most important item in your office. This post will be about the second most important item. And just as in the last post it is a key to your future comfort.

The second most important item in your office is the computer monitor.

While your monitor won’t cause physical problems like your chair could. It can cause headaches and other issues which are almost as debilitating. Fortunately, the cost for even a great monitor is much lower than that of the chair.

The key again is to chose the monitor that is best for your needs.

One way to choose is to select the largest LCD monitor you can afford, then buy one size down from that. Why? Because even with LCD monitors there is a loss of sharpness as the screen size increases.

However, a much better method is to view various monitors from the same position and the same angle (and under the same lighting conditions) as you will have in your office. Then select the one that is the sharpest and easiest on the eyes.

In any case, you want to select an LCD monitor which is sharp at the distance you will be reading it. And you want the monitor which makes reading the easiest.

Again, you’ll be spending 4 hours a day (at least) looking at this monitor. Your eyes will thank you if you pick the right monitor.

Posted in Building an eBiz, Creating Information Products, Write a "how to" book - Tagged how to, lcd monitors, office, Use, Write, write how to book

Set up your office to write “how to” books! #2

Feb22
2010 1 Comment

Written by Help Desk

So last time, I said that we would talk about the most important item in your office.

Now I could be silly and say that’s you.

Well, not so silly because it’s true you are the most important item in your office. In fact, you are so important to your office that it has to take its direction from your lead. After all it exists to make your job simpler.

However, I’m actually talking about the reason I haven’t been able to write for the last week.

The chair. Yup the lowly chair. You wouldn’t think that a place to plunk your a** would be that important. But it is.

The chair is the most important element in your office as far as productivity is concerned. After all you are going to be spending 4 hours a day in that chair while you write your how to book. Maybe more if you chose to work for the rest of the day. Even taking into account the work for 3/4 hr and then change for 1/4 hour pattern which occupational therapists recommend, you will be spending a great deal of time in your chair.

So when setting up your office don’t stint on your chair. Simply put you want the best chair you can afford. The chair needs to be ergonomic (of course) and adjustable. But it also needs to be comfortable and fit you.

Even though chairs are adjustable they still have a range of people that they fit. And one chair may just feel better than another. So when you pick your chair don’t shop over the internet. You must try the chair. Try the adjustments. Check the padding. And to do that you need to physically sit in the chair and pick the one that suits you best. Then once you’ve picked the chair, if you want to shop online — go ahead.

But be prepared, a good chair will cost. They aren’t cheap. But your back (and your book) will never forgive you if you buy anything less than the best!

Posted in Building an eBiz, Creating Information Products, Write a "how to" book - Tagged chairs, ergonomic, how to, office, productivity, set, work, Write, write how to book

Sorry Folks!

Feb19
2010 4 Comments

Written by Help Desk

S**t happens… turns out my back is so bad that 4 days of writing has ended in the round filing cabinet.

No post today … check back on Monday. Hopefully better able to write then.

Posted in Announcements, Building an eBiz

Set up your office to write “how to” books!

Feb17
2010 Leave a Comment

Written by Help Desk

Oh what the hey … I’m in PAIN!!!!!!

You see I’ve been working so hard and so long lately that my poor back is killing me!

And that lead me to write a new series on how to set up your office to write a how to book.

You see, one of the things that people forget when they are about to write a how to book is that they need to have a place to write. The same thing goes for creating information products in general.

So I’m going to share my experiences over the next two weeks or so on different issues related to the physical act of writing how to books.

However, I want to be clear right off the top that these are my experiences. Every one of us is different and you really need to think about your choices and why you are making them. So feel free to comment and disagree.

(BTW … I’ll be interrupting this series for a special announcement … so keep checking in even if you aren’t interested in setting up your office).

So what am I going to write about:

The most important item in your office
The second most important item in your office
Where do you need to be?
Paper, Paper everywhere … not any more.
Sunshine came softly over my office today …

Sorry folks, I think I need to go take another back pain pill …

As always, if there is something special you want me to include just ASK!

Posted in Building an eBiz, Creating Information Products, Write a "how to" book - Tagged Creating Information Products, how to, information, information product, writing how to books

On the importance of family ….

Feb15
2010 Leave a Comment

Written by Help Desk

Today is Family Day here in Ontario (actually it’s Valentines and this better be short or I’m dead meat).

It’s a day to spend with your family and close friends and celebrate the importance of being close. Which is appropriate given that yesterday (uhh, today) is Valentine’s – a day for celebrating love and the one closest to you.

So today (uh, yesterday – Valentine’s this is getting confusing ) I’m going to spend with my family … so I apologize in advance if there’s no post today (Family Day)

My Son and I

and if the posts for the rest of the week are short and weak.

So stop reading – go spend your time with the important people in your life – go stop surfing NOW.

After all that’s really why you’re doing this here business thang, isn’t it?

Posted in Announcements, Building an eBiz

Why You NEED A System To Write How To Book or other Non-Fiction Books

Feb12
2010 5 Comments

Written by Help Desk

Sorry about the title … somehow I’ve messed up my SEO so I need to fix it So I apologize if the following blog entry uses some pretty iffy grammar and spelling! The good news is that I’m still not going to write anything whether how to book or blog entry or article without providing you some useful information! So there mighty Gods of Traffic!

Anyway, a question that often comes up is “Why do I NEED a system in order to write a how to or non-fiction book? After all, I write articles and blog pieces all the time.”

Having to write a non-fiction blog entry is entirely different from having to write a how to book. With a blog entry, my own excepted, it isn’t usually necessary to spend a lot of time organizing one’s thoughts. After all, in 200-400 words you really can’t write a great deal of how-to information. Just knowing what you want to say in general terms is good enough to fill in 2 to 4 paragraphs. After all, you only need an opening, 2 to 3 points you want to make and a closing. And boom, you’ve got 400 words with just a little bit of writing. For 200 words you only need one point!

Not so when you write a how-to book!

To write a small how to book (such as a non-fiction eBook), you need roughly 60 pages or 15,000 words. That’s roughly, 150 paragraphs to write a non-fiction book.

That’s at least 150 points that you need to make in order to write a small how to book. And given that we have a cognitive limit of 5 to 9 that makes the chance of organizing the points to write a non-fiction book entirely in our heads highly unlikely. Like no chance!

Secondly, to write a how to book is a long task (even our system doesn’t change that) and whenever you are doing a long task it makes sense to break it into controllable chunks. Why? Because then you can look for ways to improve it, and manage it, and understand it. And most importantly, so you don’t waste any time when you write your how to book.

And any system you choose to write a how to book should have these features in order to give you the benefits. A system to write a non-fiction book should

help you to organize writing your how to book before putting words to paper.
help you to write your non-fiction book quickly without wasting time going off into unprofitable directions.

After all if a system can’t do it’s basic functions it isn’t a very good system!

Posted in Write a "how to" book - Tagged book, ebook, fiction book, fiction ebook, how to, non fiction, traffic, Write, Write a "how to" book

Creating Information Products But Which One? Part 8 – Deciding

Feb10
2010 6 Comments

Written by Help Desk

When I started writing this series I didn’t expect it to go to 8 blog articles! I guess that’ll teach me.

Today is the final entry in this series.

So let’s do a quick review of what was discussed:

And today we’ll bring it all together to make a decision.

If you remember back to the introduction (personally I looked it up ) … I said that there are 6 questions you need to answer when deciding what form your information product needs to take:

What forms am I capable of doing?
What forms am I most comfortable with?
How much will this content cost (in time or money)?
Can I create multiple forms from one?
How important is this to my reputation?
How much will customers pay for (value) this form

So how do we start the decision ….

I suggest that you begin with the first two questions … Capability and comfort. To use a real life example, my partner Paul and I were initially intending that TrainingNOW was to be a company for live seminars and training consulting. However, Paul’s disability became much worse over the period we were creating the company and it’s assets. As a result we no longer do live seminars. And our consulting has been transferred to LearningCreators.ca primarily as internet facilitated and to LearningCreators.com as eLearning/Train the trainer. Although I do a little live consulting for training our concentration is now elearning and remote consulting.

As for video, again Paul’s disability has limited him to doing webinars and similar types of voice over (audio) presentations (at least that’s his claim ).

One of the things I’ve learned through this experiment in internet marketing is that live and video are completely different. I’m quite comfortable doing live presentations. I’m used to doing them. I like doing them. Video, on the other hand, has proven to be a pain in the pitootie … a camera just doesn’t give you the energy back that a real audience does. And somehow I become hyper-aware of every mistake.

In short, like anything, it takes practice to appear either live or in front of a camera or in voice over. And the practice in one doesn’t help with the others. (This is in addition to the practice for the presentation itself).

You may find that you are not comfortable creating certain types of information products. While practice will improve comfort levels there is a limit.

So both your ability and your comfort may remove certain formats from the list of options.

The next question is how important to your reputation is this information product. Sometimes, the whole reason for doing an information product is to build reputation. In this case, all other factors may be irrelevant.

Should this be the case, there is only one choice. A proper, well written, well organized, well edited and professionally published traditional book is required. The best, of course, is to have a traditional publisher publish the book, however, today’s self-published books are a close second. This book should be written as a stand-a-lone product using traditional methods rather than repurposing methods. If you decide to create another format as well, you should treat this as a different decision.

Once you’ve decided that reputation is not a driver then you are able to make a decision based on the mix:

suitability (training value)
cost
price

When making this decision keep in mind the different repurposing options available. You will often find that the best solution is to create all formats from a video. Typically, video is the first format that is dropped because it is the most expensive to do well. However, don’t underestimate that ability of modern camera. A $150 HD camera can produce a product which is amazingly professional as a raw product. And editing is now done using PCs and software which is generally available and often free (check out Jahshaka if you need a full editing program).

Like any other business decision, you want to maximize your profit while keeping your cost within your budget limits.

Posted in Creating Information Products - Tagged Creating Information Products, disability, information product, internet marketing, reputation, seminars, train the trainer, training consulting

Creating Information Products But Which One? Part 7 – Price

Feb08
2010 2 Comments

Written by Help Desk

Okay, we’re almost finished.

So far we’ve covered the cost of producing different types of information product, we’ve covered the reputation value and we’ve covered the training value.

Today we’re going to discuss a type of value we as internet marketers like to discuss … money. Bucks, dollars, lira, pounds, pesos … $$$$$$$ (got the pic?)

So how much is a customer willing to pay for a product?

Frankly, that’s a question that has stumped many a marketer. The answer is typically “more than you thought!”. And there are a number of factors involved. Like, how good your sales copy is, did you position your information product as a system or just a book, are you targetting the affluent or the rest of us … and so forth.

However, once you’ve established a price you should get a relative price that looks along these lines (for comparable amounts of information, well presented and professional in appearance):

Live
Video
Written
Audio

So for example (and these numbers are made up but reasonable), a multi-DVD set which has been repurposed into a book and into an audio set might sell for:

Live Seminar (1 day) $1500
Video (4 DVDs) $297
Audio (4 CDs) $97
Book (200 pgs) $49

Did the relationship surprise you?

It should have … and to be honest it was a bit of a cheat. You see the relationship between live, video and audio is reasonably stable (and in that order). This corresponds to our previous discussion of value in terms of training quality.

However, books have an established market. And the price needs to correspond to that price point which your customer has established in their mind. That’s why the ending dollar amount of $7 is not as key. People are used to the $9 ending point.

So if I redo the prices (still being reasonable and still providing the same information) I might get the following:

Live Seminar (2 hrs) – $250
Video (1 DVD) – $97
Book (60 pages) – $19
Audio (1 CD) – $7

Notice that the relationship between book and audio switch places. Why? Because people expect a book to have a minimum cost which is higher than that of the audio.

Now how much is your information product worth?

In real terms you’ll need to estimate that based on your knowledge of the market. And don’t forget that some products will be worth more to you without a dollar figure. HUH???????

Remember that even FREE live seminar can sometimes make you more money than one you charge for! So when you are predicting the price for the purposes of determining what formats to use for your information products, don’t forget to figure in giveaways. For example, by providing a FREE live seminar you may get a large, interested and active audience (you might not but that’s another issue). Just perfect for background to create a DVD set for you to sell at the back of the room. In this case, the dollar values are all messed up because you traded dollars today for dollars tomorrow.

Similarly, books are often given out as free samples (e.g. opt-in and bonuses) as are MP3s. Once an audio is given out for free, the physical version (a CD) has little if any value. But of course, building a list is often of far more value than the audio.

Despite the difficulty of identifying a price point, the price is a major component of the decision to create an information product in one format or another.

We’ve now finished the discussion of the various elements involved in the decision. It’s now time to discuss the decision itself. Which we’ll do in the next web entry.

Posted in Creating Information Products - Tagged amount, Audio, Building an eBiz, course, Creating Information Products, information product, internet marketers, relationship, reputation, seminar workshop, training, Write a "how to" book

Creating Information Products But Which One? Part 6 – Value

Feb05
2010 5 Comments

Written by Help Desk

Man this series has turned into a real book all on its own!

So far we’ve covered the cost of creating your information product, and we’ve covered the reputation value of each type of information product. The next item in our triumvarate of decision is actually two related items. One which we’ll deal with today and one which we’ll deal with next week.

Today we’ll deal with the real value to the customer … or to be more precise the suitability of the media to the job.

There are two old sayings that matter for today’s discussion.

“Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I’ll remember today. Let me do it and I’ll remember forever”

“I hear what you said.”, “I see what you mean”, “I understand what we did” .

Both of these sayings are correct.

There are three basic learning modes Visual, Verbal, Active. The first two are part of our hardwiring and will change from individual to individual. Most people are visual. They need to see it to understand it. The best way to teach these people is with diagrams.

However, a much lower percentage of people are Verbal. They need words to understand the subject. Frequently, these words need to be on paper in order to be properly understood.

Finally, we all internalize the information when we use it actively.

However, even if we ignore our cognitive biases, as a group, we will learn more when we are shown what to do than if we are told what to do. If we then do it, we will learn and retain the most.

Combine that with the fact that as our participation in the learning process increases our understanding and retention increase.

These latter two points are why our typical breakdown of training is lecture, seminar, workshop.

In a lecture, you have a talking head speaking at the audience who sits back and listens. Information is basically one way. This is good for initial training and basic information.

In a seminar, questions are asked of the audience and a back and forth exploration of the topic occurs (hopefully). Information is two way, and examination and application is encouraged. This is good for developing understanding around the information.

A workshop consists, usually, of hands on application of the information provided in the lecture and the concepts developed in the seminar. It is in this type of instruction that the greatest learning takes place.

Okay, so what does all that have to do with information products?

Basically, it means that you have two types of people. The first group will learn best by seeing diagrams. They will learn best if they have a chance to see you talking especially if they are shown diagrams. The second group (a much smaller group) learn best by reading. For these people books are ideal. However, all of us learn best by doing. So whatever media is used, practice is a key to learning.

So to put it into context …. the best media for training is:

Live workshops
Live seminars
Live speeches (e.g. keynotes) and lectures
Video
Webinars
Books
Audio

Interestingly, Frank Kern posted a blog entry discussing a survey he did on what media people want to be taught in. And his results of what people want is very close to the list above (his survey was simpler than my list).

One of the things we need to do when using one of the non-live techniques is to include some participation. It will increase retention immensely. HOWEVER, in VERY big letters, don’t ask the audience to write this down! It sounds made up and chinzy. Better to say something along the line of “Get out your pen and notepad, ’cause you’ll be getting lots of information and will want to make notes as we go.” No pressure, no phoney fill out this form because I think it will make you stay awake. Having said that, a better technique is to ask the audience to stop the video for a moment and answer a question. Questions such as “What will this get you?” and “How could you use this?” are good for this.

When you design your learning content then the best format for the information product will fall out. Keep in mind however, that there is nothing stopping you from repurposing the information product to create other products either to include with the original or to be sold (usually as a downgrade to the original) or given away as a bonus.

Next up, we’ll talk about the value the customer assigns to the media.