I’ve heard a lot about this ebook around the web. For many high profile marketing gurus, this eBook about eBooks appears to be the recommended choice. However, as a starter in all of this, I obviously had to think around the price - Desperate Buyers Only sells for $77. That’s it. There’s no reduction, it’s not an ebook which you see peppered over the internet, and available for various prices or in those huge ebook packages which come with reseller rites either. It doesn’t even come with another free ebook thrown in, or some bonus info products or mailing list signups. You can only get Desperate Buyers Only from the one place, and at the one price. It comes with a 30 minute teleconsultation with the author only.
It’s not necessarily defined just towards eBooks either - DBO provides equally appropriate information towards a new Blogger looking at niche markets or other info products. It’s a How To Book for Ebooks, Info Products and Web Businesses. Still, the price seemed a bit daunting for me initially given the page quantity and my own budget. Could it be worth it in content, I wondered?
So, if I were to take this whole thing seriously, and keep away from where many thousands of others have fallen, I knew that I needed to invest in my own education and learning towards the entire ebook industry. So today I found that $77 and downloaded the ebook itself.
Written in 2006 by Alexis Dawes, Desperate Buyers Only contains over 90 pages of sense. There are other websites, blogs, reports, eBooks, mail lists and people saying the same thing, but this ebook is convincing, and rings true to the soul of any wannabe eBook writer like myself who realises just how saturated the internet is with eBooks out there, many on the same few topics. And many not making their writers the riches that the great Ebook Dream told them it would.
The book stopped me at Page 7 with the following -
How to Choose Topics That Attract Buyers Like Bee’s to Honey - (It has NOTHING to
do with “Doing What You Love”)
Online infopreneurs fail for 3 main reasons–
1) They focus on general topics.
2) They focus on so-called ‘hot’ niche topics.
3) They follow the all-time favorite, and frequently quoted, adage, “Do
what you love and the money will follow.
Do I agree whole-heartedly with what Alexis says? Hmm, I’m of the “Do What I Love” school. Being a wannabe writer first and foremost, I want to enjoy what I write about (and possibly live in the distant hope that somebody else might to?). Alexis also maintains an opportunistic slant on choosing topics. She favours writing about anything that has a desperation around it - and not sticking to the one or two niches where you might become an expert at. This initially may grate against those sensitive writers like myself.
But then, I happen to have lived virtually in a hobby community for many years, and in which I could easily write eBooks for, with a lot of love, knowledge and passion. But would I have any hope of selling them to that community? Nope, not on your life! My hobby is full of community boards, women and websites which not only expect to get their information free, but also has hundreds of volunteers across the world working on those boards and blogsites who are giving away that information for free, and who are doing it for no pay also. Now, that’s love, but not exactly a profitable topic for me to spend my time writing for, and expecting a buyer to somehow materialise from the niche when they can find out all they want for free.
My example above would have Alexis explaining this as the difference between an interest (or want) and a genuine and desperate need for information. And that’s a difference which will, well, make all the difference in finding the correct topic.
The premise of Desperate Buyers Only is therefore to give anyone who needs to locate a profitable topic for their eBooks the tools to do so. This is obviously centred around locating topics which are so sought after by desperate buyers out there willing to whip out their credit cards as soon as you give them the product. And those buyers know how to find it also. Alexis’ methodology goes roughly like this (for “audience”, you can also substitute “topic”)-
- Choose an Audience - the section has 13 different types of audience bases listed (and most of them you have probably heard of all over the net).
- Find the websites for your chosen audience - where do they hang out. DBO suggests methods of how to outsource this. Personally, I’d prefer to know what they’re talking about, so that I do…
- Study the audience habits and terminology. Steps 2 and 3 are about the Who, What, When, Where and How of your topic.
- Isolate the audience’s most pressing problems - what questions keep popping up for them.
- Understand the psychology around those problems - what pains (niches) are they feeling
- The Dealbreaker - methods to work out if potential buyers are searching for a solution to these problems.This is more than following standard traffic-driving marketing guff, it’s understanding how people go about searching for their own solutions.
- Assess the competition - this sounds a bit obvious, but Alexis gives us methods to differentiate our product from that of any competitive product.
The Book itself is broken into sections, and I very much enjoyed the writing style within. Alexis writes creatively, and provides some interesting stories and personal examples which personifies the entire thing. She doesn’t pull punches however, including details which makes it obvious that this isn’t a get-rich-quick promise. The eBook acknowledges that choosing the right topic, researching this, and writing it is hard work, as is the marketing needed to allow your targeted audience to find your product. Alexis also gives details on how much marketing money she spends to earn the income she does get from her best-selling reports. And she packages all of this information into a succinct and reasonably small package (at 99 pages) with only four main sections.
The list above comes from the first section on choosing a topic. Other sections are listed in my own words below -
Choosing a Topic
Quick Content Creation - some simple methods for writing short quick reports
Taking on Competitors - an excellent section on how to create great sales letters
Websites - and generating traffic
The Sales letter / copywriting section in Desperate Buyers Only is good enough to have sold me the book in itself. As my own first venture into the thick of internet marketing and into a world with terminology I have little knowledge about, I had a few strange ideas (and abject dislikings) for those sales letter pages I constantly come across on the internet. Alexis’ Five Point Fish Hook, describing in no uncertain terms how to annihilate the competition, began to frighten me - until I saw the same details become an exciting sales letter - and one which would entice me personally (as your pathological reluctant viewer of such webpages).
Each section ends in some defined actions. The book itself would work well as a workbook for students, and gives copious details and methods in everything from the sales letter copywriting I spoke about earlier, to keyword searching, and affiliate marketing. Page 93 is a tabulated checklist which can be printed out when working through the selection of topics for a winning and successful info product. There are plenty of other websites and books out there dealing with the same areas, but having everything so detailed and packaged into common sense means this book is a winner for me.
I will re-read this ebook often, I am sure. Although the whole emphasis on making money from desperate buyers is a little off-putting to my own naive thinkings, I still understand that the information inside contains workable methods for my own writings and marketing. I have a fresh understanding from this eBook over how to find topics (even within my own passionate niches where I would ideally love to write for) and topics which will be profitable for me to spend time and energy within. The author has introduced me to methods which will allow me to get to know my potential customers, and build an expert reputation with them.
For my first Review on a product advising on eBooks, I am surprised to find that I’ve purchased a keeper and one I would definitely recommend to anyone wanting to write and publish eBooks. Desperate Buyers Only gives you the tools to find the topics within the something you love, or other desperate markets, and locate areas where buyers are willing to spend money on your problem-solvers for them.
The book should be read by beginners in the field before they go out and write that eBook (blog, or other information product) they always had in them, then come crashing down because they can’t make money out of it. But it has also received good reviews from experienced infopreneurs and internet marketers out there on the web.
This eBook should be on all of our reference library e-shelves, and is a genuine go-to Report for your collections. Without any doubt I will be referring to Desperate Buyers Only often. It won’t just gather pixel-dust on the hard-drive.
Recommended reading : Desperate Buyers Only (5 out of 5)
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Juiced On
Many people may have heard about or read Hugh MacCleod’s free report / manifesto, How to Be Creative. But it’s worth passing on again, if you happen to have missed it. Hugh’s blog, Gaping Void, is one of those uber-blogs which has a lot of power out there on the web, and it makes for a good read also. The subtitle for this blog is “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards” and the blog itself does have a lot of pencil drawing images in it - as does the Creative manifesto.
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