You’ve thought about creating your own products, like a video course or a home study course. You’ve made your market research and found out what your market is buying, so you already have an idea what your prospects’ want.
Your objective is to build something better than what your competitor is offering.
Step 1: Organize your ideas.
If you’ve done your market research, you probably know what topics were involved in the products of your competitor. But if you don’t, just check their products’ table of contents.
Add all these topics, plus the topics that your competitors’ products are missing. In short, you’ll want to create a much better version of the product from the one that are out on the market.
The most basic thing you need to make a good product is to start with a detailed outline. Be sure not to just outline the main chapters but also the subtopics and the points you’d want to add for each subtopic.
Example: If your book is about blogging, the part on acquiring a domain name and hosting can look like this:
A: Website setup
1. Purchase domain name
1a. Guidelines in selecting a good domain name (.com. brandable,catchy,short and precise match for SEO uses.)
1b. Where to acquire a domain name.
2. Purchase web hosting.
2a. What are the features that you need (bandwidth, how much space, number of domains on account, type of control panel, etc)
2b. Where to acquire hosting.
This area might be short – maybe about 1000 words total only – but it should consist of a very detailed outline. By making this outline very detailed and brief, it will be easy for you to manage and create the product. With this, you can do a series of short articles with only 300 to 100 words long and it’s more psychologically comfortable for people, compared to writing a 25,000 page report or a much longer ebook.
Step 2: Topic Research
Next thing you need to do is research on each topic on your outline. Here are more three tips:
1. Use various trustworthy sources. Meaning, you have to get your information from authority sources (such as known experts, university sites, news sites, etc).
2. Read as much as possible to know more about the topic. This way, it will be much easier for you to write about your topic without so much need to check on any of your sources.
3. Interview experts. If you need more information to create your product and you can’t find it elsewhere, then look for experts to help you. Ask them questions that will help you in finding out the “secret” information. You will act like a journalist trying to get the “scoop” before your competitors do.
Step 3: Write Quick… and Then Edit
This is the final step when you create your product. Type it, or use a speech-to-text tool like Dragon Naturally Speaking.
You can do either way; the main point here is for you to act fast and create your product without stopping to edit, proofread or second-guess your work.
Once you’re done with your product, that’s the time you go back to proofread, revise, edit and polish your work. You may want to ask someone to check it for you, or hire a professional to proofread before you release your product.
To create your own products shouldn’t be overwhelming or too complicated. The three steps above can help you break down your work into convenient pieces. Then you will be able to create your first product with more ease.
