Now That’s Niche Marketing!

I’m heading out of town tomorrow morning – going to Pennsylvania for a family wedding and I’m not bringing my laptop.  I could use a 4 day break to recharge my batteries.

I was just reading an article about a company called Mascot Books.  They write and publish kids books about sports team mascots.  It started in 2002 when Aimee, Naren, and their 2 year old daughter, Anna Aryai, went to a college football game.  Afterwards, little Anna requested a book about the mascot so they visited the college bookstore.  They couldn’t find such a book anywhere.  Lots of people would say, “Gosh darn, sorry honey,” but Aimee Aryai decided to go ahead and write one for her. 

Aimee and Naren’s entreprenerial wheels started turning as they realized they had found an undiscovered niche!  They started writing books about other college mascots and then branched into the pros.  They didn’t stop at football, but hit other sports too.  One strategy they’ve used is to get retired baseball players and even a professional basketball team owner to write some of these books.  That’s like Yanik Silver sharing his list with me!  Great strategy!

So far they’ve sold over 500,000 books and expect to hit up to $12 million annually by 2010.  All that came from fixing a tiny problem! 

It’s time for me to start looking at tiny problems and try to figure out solutions, instead of whining about them.  It’s a whole different way of thinking, isn’t it?

Ebook Covers Done Easy

Pinch me, I must be dreaming.

Outsourcing an ebook cover was incredibly easy!  I simply went to http://planet-divinity.com, on Randy Smith’s recommendation.  It cost me only $14 and saved me from myself.  Even if I had taken hours to figure out how to do it, my DIY book cover would have been plain and amateurish.

Anyway, Planet-Divinity had a simple form for me to fill out with the title and what I wanted on it; like what kind of graphics, colors, and anything else I could think of.  The form also asked me to tell them what the ebook is about.

I sent them my $ and request this morning, and I got it back this afternoon!  And I must say, it looks pretty cool.

I didn’t know it could be this easy!  I can tell you that I’ll be using them for some website headers in the future.

Opt-In Report – Plan of Attack

As I was researching affiliate marketing (see previous post), I realized that should not be my priority right now.  While I am waiting for the last internet marketer to get back to me regarding my opt-in report, I should be getting everything else set in place for the report:

1.  Have my autoresponder  totally set up; the opt-in form for my website, the double opt-in message, the thank you message, and the thank you page that gives the PDF download link.  Did I forget anything there?  I’ve got it mostly ready, but I need to reword a few things and spiffy it up.  If I’m really efficient, I’ll have a second opt-in form ready to go for split-testing.

2.  Get the squeeze page set up.  I’ve got a real rough draft, but it has a long way to go.  I’ve spent part of today learning about opt-in squeeze pages and downloading good ones.  They’re scattered all around me.  I think I’ll take the scissors and cut out the parts I like from each of them and rearrange them on a blank paper.   Why reinvent the wheel, eh?  I want it to be short and sweet, but I also want people to opt-in!  The report has some great information and I want people to have it -  a win-win for us.

3. Make sure I totally understand how to create the PDF and that the questions I still have are answered beforehand.

4.  Ask for 1 or 2 testimonials to put on the squeeze page.  Can’t do this until the report is done. 

5.  Get an eBook cover made.

6.  Ask the Warrior Forum and Copywritersboard.com to critique the sqeeze page and then do what I need to make it better.

7.  Figure out my plan of attack on getting the report out there.  Let’s see, put the link in my signature line so it gets seen, and then comment in all my favorite forums, write and post a few articles to drive traffic to the squeeze page, ask people to send it out to their lists as it’s free content.  That’s a start. 

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s what’s on my list right now.  I’m not having an OTO or backsell or upsell or whatever.  Some would say that’s stupid, but I want to start off by giving free information.

Battling Information Overload

I’ve only just begun to explore the vast wealth of information on the Warrior Forum.  What a place!  Why didn’t I know about it sooner?  Well, I actually did, but I’m on constant information overload and forgot to go back and check it out. 

To battle information overload, I’ve decided on an approach of sorts.  I will keep taking action, and as I need to learn how to do something I’ve come up against, I will research how to do it at that time.  I know I can find out about the information I need as I’ve got a kazillion downloads on every subject of interest to internet marketers.   Plus, I know how to beg for answers.

So today I wanted to learn about PDFs and how to download whatever it was that I needed to present my opt-in report in PDF fashion.  I read some info on PDF and downloaded some free software from http://pdf995.com per Paula Brett’s eBook, Mailing Lists From Start to Finish.  As I was trying to figure it out, I noticed an option on my computer to download their version.  Woo hoo!  It was already on my computer, was easy to download, and it worked the first time I tried it.  That’s a first for me and technology!

Now I’m putting this new approach to work again.  I posed the question of where to go and what to do to the helpful people at the Warrior Forum, and they told me to get started in affiliate marketing while I’m working up my own product.   I’m off now to do some in-depth research on affiliate marketing.  If you have any great links with good info on that subject, please let me know!

 Thanks,
Peggy

Great Info on Article Writing

While I’m sitting here trying to buy World Series tickets online (Go Denver Rockies!), I thought I’d tell you about an ebook that I have really gotten some good kernels out of.  It’s free if you want to get all 26 chapters, one at a time, in your in-bin.  I started out that way, afterall – free is good, but then decided to just go ahead and plop down the $7 so I could just download it all at once.  I’d gotten to chapter 7 and decided it was a keeper. 

It’s called Writing Articles, An Internet Marketing Strategy, by Steve Gillman at http://999articles.com.  This guy has over 840 articles on Ezinearticles.com and makes his living through Adsense, so I guess he knows a thing or two.  He’s not slick though, if you know what I mean.

If you’re interested, go get it for free or $7.  I don’t make anything off of this, it’s just a heads-up in this crazy internet marketing world where so much info is not much info.

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