Internet Marketing for beginners: Building E-Books

So you want to create your very own digital product. Good! I believe it's a huge step in achieving success online. It's a big deal though, right? A ton of work! Daunting...Relax... it's going to be much easier than you think! Before you can create your product you need to do a little research: find out what other people are doing, find out what's hot, and what will work well. Select a topic that is marketable. This can be a tough chore because many people have unique interests that they are emotionally attached to, and therefore want to do an information product on. While this is admirable, and in theory a good idea, in the competitive information product market it will not work. You must find a topic that people want to read, better yet, a topic people must read. The more you fiddle with topic ideas the more clear it will become that a lot of topics will not be very marketable for many different reasons. For instance, perhaps there isn’t really any interest in it or perhaps there is so much interest that the topic is saturated. Saturated markets are difficult at best to break into and you should ask yourself if it’s worth the frustration when there are so many good niche areas available to you. So where to begin, how do you find a topic that will sell like hotcakes and how do you know a hot one when you think of it?I typically do all my research at either Ebay or Amazon. These are two great starting points for researching practically any product. You can research a topic you have in mind (to gauge the popularity of it), or you can use these websites to discover new niche topics.Let’s use the example "Crocheting".If you go to Ebay and do a search for “Crocheting” you’ll see currently there are over 8,000 items listed. Also, you’ll see on the left hand side, sub-categories in that topic area: crochet patterns, crochet thread, crochet hooks, etc. etc.This tells me that there is a good amount of interest in this subject... and also tells me that I stand a good chance of finding affiliate programs that sell Crochet stuff that I can make a commission on!Once you have 4-5 good “niches” take that short list to Google and do some deeper research around to see what you can find.How popular is the topic? Look at the number of results.How much competition is there? Again: check out the number of results returned.Is there any money in it? If there are four or more paid ads within the results, then it’s likely at least somewhat profitable.Now click on some of the results and check out some forums, websites, and blogs related to your topic. You’ll get some more free advise on what to include in your E-book. You see where I’m going with this? I’ll spend a fair bit of time going through these steps looking for further information that’ll help me determine the content of my product. I take notes, writing down the questions and responses and other related topics (as these can influence the chapters to cover in your book). Through using these methods it should be pretty easy to come up with a Title and a Chapter list for your new E-Book.Once you have done your research it's time to get writing. You basically have two options:Option #1: Hire someone to do it. You will still have to do the research but there are companies that specialize in this sort of thing:• Do a Google search for "EBook Ghostwriting" to find companies that offer these services.• You can also post a thread (for free) over at the Warrior Forum.• Another good place to post a thread (for free) might be at ELance. Simply post a description of what you are looking for, what the topic is, roughly how many pages you would like it to be... and watch as the bids come pouring in!It should cost you roughly $8-$10 bucks per page for good content: so a 30-page E-Book might cost you roughly $300 bucks to have created.Make sure that you ask for examples so that you can verify the quality of the work, and make sure to not pay the entire cost until you have the finished product!Option #2: Do it yourself! Think way back to high school. Did you ever write a book report? Okay... now think about all the free information available through the Internet! All you really need to do is write an outline and fill in the blanks!