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Finding the right niche market can make the difference if you are profitable or not. It could be the life blood of your online business if done properly. It makes no sense to spin your wheels in a niche that doesn’t spend money nor has very little traffic. Conversely, it makes no sense to sell to a market that is too big and undefined.

In my experience, the more narrow the niche the more profitable the venture. People want to solve a specific problem, not everything under the sun. For example: if your dog has a problem with going potty in the house (yes…we have a new dog and yes, he goes potty in the house -:) you don’t want to purchase an ebook on total dog training and read through 200 pages only to find five pages of information at the back of the book on the BIG issue at hand?

I don’t need to know the history of dog training or the evolution of the Whoodle to solve my issue. As a customer, I want to find out how to stop the dog from messing up my living room carpet every day, not enhance my knowledge on how dogs came about. For you, this is where the profit comes in.

The more focused your product is, the more profitable it will be. Say you wrote that ebook on dog training referenced above. You might retail it for $47 or maybe $67 which would be a nice sale. People do this every day and hit a large market of people interested in the general market of dog training.

This type of product has good background information to “set the table” for you to have a better understanding of why the training will be helpful. It serves its purpose and there is nothing wrong with this, except, they are leaving a ton of money on the table. Humor me for a minute while I show you how to make more money by tightening your niche. “Niche it for Riches”.

Now let’s take that same book and niche it down a bit and see what we get. First separate each of the four categories in the book. Let’s assume each category is about 50 pages. Next, turn each one into an ebook on a more specific topic of dog training and sell each for $27 (which is a good price for a 50 page ebook). You now have FOUR ebooks which total $108 and you could bundle them for $97. It book will have a separate niche market and the market will respond better due to the problem being addressed is exactly what they want solved.

More profit, faster read, better results, happier customers. Does that sound like something you could build a business around? I have and know you can too!

Writing a good call to action takes guts! After putting all your efforts into writing a great sales letter, make sure you ask for the sale! A “call to action” is what creates customer action and that is what the entire sales process is about. Don’t make the horrible mistake of thinking your readers will recognize what to do next. Map it out for them step by step. Tell them exactly where to go or what to do next!

I don’t have exact figures on how many sales are lost due to a missing “call to action” but I am certain the streets would be littered with them if we had an accurate count. Unfortunately, after everything is complete some people make the dreaded mistake of second guessing themselves and the value of their product.

Thus, they are “afraid” to ask for the order or a proper price for their product or service. This is a surefire way to kill sales or never even get them off the ground.

A call to action can be as simple as giving them a link and telling them to click it. While they KNOW you want them to click the link, the chances of them actually doing it will improve if you give them instruction to do so. You set off a mental trigger when you actually tell them what to do and this leads to more action. Without that communication they are left to figure out what to do next and that always leads to fewer sales almost without fail.

Your email or sales page should flow like a story and good stories always lead you in the direction they want you to go. Could you imagine a story that sucks you in and then doesn’t give you an ending? (that is a topic all by itself) There is no doubt where they want to take you, that is stated right up front, but as they take you through the story the author tells you exactly what to do.

This is the same principal that you must use in your email and sales text. Ask for the order or tell them what to do next! Don’t be shy about it, just come right out and say it. Something like” After all this I am sure you would agree this product is worth its weight in gold. But since we don’t accept gold it will only cost you $$$. If you do this it will dramatically improve your sales.

The purpose of your sales letter is to grab and keep the attention of your reader. Once you have accomplished that step the next step is to get them to take immediate action. One way to accomplish this is by engaging your reader in a good story without finishing it. After starting the story, pause in the middle to tell them you will complete the story in a minute… but first you would like to tell them about _____.

For example, you may use something comparable to this:

“The next day Jack was shocked when he looked in the mirror. In just a moment I’ll tell you what he saw – you’ll be just as shocked as Jack. But first…”

Once again, you use curiosity to compel the reader to keep reading. But the other reason he’ll keep reading is for the same reason people watch movies all the way through – namely, they have to find out what happens. You can use that curiosity and desire to leave no loose ends to your advantage.

As referenced above, another effective way to guarantee to keep your reader engaged is to bring out their emotion For example:

• You can gently remind a person who stutters what it felt like to get laughed at in school.
• You may gently remind an overweight person how embarrassing it is not to fit in an airplane seat, and how humiliating it is to go shopping for clothing.
• You can gently remind a person how it feels to be stressed out all the time at work.

Notice I said “gently” in each case. You want to get your point across but with a great deal of sensitivity. You want them to realize you feel their pain and you sympathize with them. A good way to do this is to say something, “I used to feel my cheeks get hot every time someone laughed at me when I stuttered”.

The purpose is to make them relive the problem in their mind and create a sense of urgency to solve the problem. Then, highlight the positive benefits they will experience after purchasing your product. If you take your prospects through this process they will be much more likely to purchase from you more often.

It’s one thing to create great content; it is a totally different thing to create buzz or interaction. If you want to take your business to the next level and “really” drive traffic to your site you need to interact with your customers. Provoke discussion if you have to but make them interact. Once you unveil this super ninja technique its lights out, “bolt the door Katie” cause here comes the flood of traffic!

Seriously, you can really increase the interest level and engagement of your visitors or email list when you ask for their opinions or input and involve them in conversation. This conversation, or feedback, can even be used to guide, tweak, or even create your product or marketing.

It is amazing what people will tell you when you ask them their opinion. It just opens the door to many different areas of information sharing and gathering. Using this information in your marketing can make it seem like shooting fish in a barrel.

Many times we think of the time we take to interact as “wasted”. Nothing could be further from the truth! Interaction does three things, at minimum.

They are:

• Creates Trust
• Builds Credibility
• Makes Price Less Relevant

People trust people they know more about and talk with on a regular basis. The more you have a two way conversation rather than a one way conversation the better off you will be.

Credibility is something you earn and you can’t earn it unless you are engaged. Every email, video, letter, and ad builds your credibility so take it seriously.

Another benefit of interaction is you reduce the relevance of price. People are willing to pay more for a product if they know you and are comfortable with you.

Some of the interactive tools you can use are polls, blogs or a forum. These are the most common but use your imagination to create interactive tools. You can use a whole host of other ideas to get people to interact with you. The key takeaway, interaction creates trust and credibility which in turn boosts sales. People would much rather buy from someone they have talked with (or emailed) and trust than a complete stranger.

Have you ever wondered how difficult (or easy) if would be to write an ebook? If you are planning on selling a product then an ebook is the easiest way to get started. Let me show you how.

To create an ebook you should first have a topic. Topics should be focused as narrowly as possible so you can supply as much targeted information as possible. A good way to come up with a title for your topic is to  think of one word that would best describe the ebook and try to include it in your title. By narrowing your ebook subject benefit to one word you are creating a good keyword for when you start to promote it.

After you decide on a narrow topic you then want to create an outline to make writing easy. This step is very important because it lays out the framework for your ebook. Take some time on this to get all your pieces in place. It will make writing much easier if this is done correctly.

Lets say we want to write a 60 page ebook. First, you pick a topic, then come up with six broad subtopics. The more broad subtopics you come up with to longer your ebook will be so go over this section carefully. For illustration purposes lets use a 60 page ebook with 6 broad subtopics. Each of these broad subtopics will be about 10 pages of content so keep the subtopics broad as possible.

Next we want to go through each broad subtopic and create five ultra targeted subtopics. These ultra targeted subtopics will consist of one to two pages of ultra targeted information. The first paragraph or two can consist of an overview of the ultra targeted information then you really drill down into your subject matter. Get into the nuts an bolts of what it is you are teaching the reader. You should have no trouble coming up with a page and a half (remember, the first paragraph or two is an overview) of content when you “deep dive” into each of your ultra targeted subtopics.

And that is pretty much it. Give yourself a goal of writing about an ultra targeted subtopic each day. This will give you ine to two pages of content per day. Each week you will have completed a broad subtopic and in six weeks you will have your first ebook.

Of course, if you want to ramp it up a bit you can set a goal of writing about two ultra targeted subtopics per day and your ebook will be finished in three weeks instead of six. The important part is you now have a structure to writing your ebooks and this will make it easier to start and easier to finish.

Will this information help you start your first ebook? Please leave me a comment below.