Creating Profitable E-Books With Craig Ballantyne
Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to interview my friend Craig Ballantyne about how he develops and markets his tremendously successful Turbulence Training e-book. If you've ever considered producing your own e-book, you have to read what Craig had to say.
1. How did you get started writing e-books?
Pat, essentially what I was doing was writing the same program over and over for my friends. Each of them was asking the same question - as it was about the end of University when my friends were starting jobs and wanted to get fit and lose some of the fat they had gained in University. So after a while I got smart and starting compiling all of the information into a manual - keeping what worked and dropping what didn't work. Eventually I had my first complete manual, which I called Get Lean. From there, I modified the workouts and re-branded the system as Turbulence Training.The take-home point from my experiences is that you must leverage everything you do. From writing programs to answering emails, I try to use the information as much as possible. So a good program will become one of my monthly workouts that I offer on http://www.workoutmanuals.com, and a client email q'n'a will become something I use in my newsletters.By leveraging your work, you decrease the amount of work you need to do for future projects, plus it makes writing an e-book much less intimidating if you have all that info stockpiled.
2. Who is your target market?
My specific target market is the 35 year old man with kids that has a long commute to work and a long work day. He's tired, he's busy, and he's stressed, but he needs to lose body fat and he want to gain muscle. He also needs exercise to give him more energy. However, he's not afraid of hard work, and wants a short, but intense workout. But he has to be able to do it at home, either in the morning before the kids get up or at night after the kids go to sleep. My target market is the typical Men's Health reader. From that description, you should be able to think of one, if not several people that you know. And for everyone out there reading this, I think you need to get that detailed with your target market. You should be able to describe him to this level, and beyond. If you are able to do that, not only will you prepare a great e-book for the client, but just as importantly, you'll be able to write good sales copy that appeals to the problems and emotions that your target market has. My business coach Tom Venuto helped me through this process. And as a result, we came up with a good site and great ad copy. We even designed the look and logo of http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com to look relatively similar to Men's Health magazine. Clean background, shot of a model's abs, and similar colors. That said, it's not only my target market that buys the book, nor is it only my target market that will benefit from the book. But when putting together your product and site, it is important to be specific.I've had men and women from age 18 to age 80 use this program. Single, married, or divorced, kids or nokids, the majority of men and women need to lose fat fast. So while my program is designed for a bit of a niche market, it's a niche market that is big and has mass market appeal.
3. What type of impact on your business has writing e-books had? (Freedom, Passive Income, Reduced Client Load, etc.)
It's had a significant impact on all of the above. But writing e-books is not something I stumbled into. I've been writing for years for the magazines, and I was working on my manual before I even knew that the opportunity to make a living by selling e-books existed.I put in my time in terms of both researching the book (university) and perfecting the application (training people for over 10 years), so now I've cut back and while I still work 60 hours a week, the composition of those hours has changed. At present, I only train people that allow me to learn and perfect the programs, and develop new manuals for my websites.
4. Where would someone begin if they wanted to develop their own e-book?
See my points above on leveraging your current writing. From there, go with what you know. For example, if you've been training 50-year old male executives for 10 years, don't write a book about helping women lose fat after their first kid. You won't have the experience or testimonials to back up and prove your sales copy. Once you have your topic and your niche market picked out, simply start with an outline. I recommend a book called "Info Millions" written by Bob Serling. Bob goes over step by step guide to writing a product. One thing to note is that my e-book doesn't contain a lot of chapters filled with written theory. I just sell a workout plan. My audience doesn't have time to read why this, that, and the other thing happen in your body. They just want to be told what to do so that they can get results fast.Another way to put together a book fast is to joint venture with other trainers or experts...exactly like you did Pat, with Fitness Riches.
5. How would they identify a target market?
Again, go with what you know. If you've been servicing stay-at-home moms, don't choose the niche of young athletes.Once you have your niche and you want to break it down even more, you might consider using this keyword selector tool:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Enter your keyword or keyword phrase, and this tool will tell you how many times the keywords have been searched on Overture in the last month.Fred Gleek, an information marketer who I have studied, suggests picking only niches having over 5000 searches per month. Otherwise, Fred believes the niche is not economically viable.Too many people tell me about their e-book idea that would only be of interest to about 1000 people in the entire world. You can't pigeonhole yourself. But at the same time, going too mass market and writing a book for everyone is not the best move either. Become an expert in an area, develop a hook, and go with that. NOTE: This will work for anything. So even if you (or someone you know) want to write a book on a topic outside of fitness, that's fine. Just follow the system. It's worked for thousands of people in dozens of industries.
6. How could they market their e-book?
You'll need to use a multiple-pronged approach, but think of yourself as just like any author promoting a book. The only difference is that most promotion should be Internet based. The reason I say that is because people are much more likely to go to your site if they get a link handed to them. The percentage (from our tests) of having people go from print media to a website is less than 4%.So you'll want to do Internet Radio shows, teleseminars, and conference calls. Do anything that gets your link in front of people while they listen to you.You'll also want to get an army of salespeople (affiliates) working for you. So send your e-book to people with big lists and see if you can write for their site/newsletter or do an interview. I find that when people interview me about my e-book, it makes for a great sales conversion rate - so if you want to interview me for your newsletter, just let me know.In addition, you can submit your articles through various article directories so that other websites can pick up your content and provide a backlink to your site.The lists are the key. So you simply want to get your website link, your name, and your product in as many targeted lists as possible. With all of the promo methods mentioned above, you should get some traffic and you can start building your own list - where you can continue to market your e-book.
7. What is your biggest "success secret" for developing and selling successful e-books?
Aside from the obvious, having a great product, the most important factor is getting your name in front of a lot of people.It's simply a numbers game.So you want to write lots of articles, get lots of content on your site, and get lots of other people posting your stuff and promoting your product. All of this will drive traffic to your sales page. On your sales page, you'll need a great headline (the headline is sometimes said to be responsible for 90% of your sales), good copy, and a great offer. If you have everything in place, then it's simply a matter of getting more people to your site.After that, great customer service and a back-end offer (like I have with my TT Membership) will ensure you have a long-term customer that you can sell to again and again.
If you're serious about launching your own highly profitable e-book, I'd suggest you study Craig's sales copy and pick upyour own copy of Turbulence Training at:http://www.fitnessconsultinggroup.com/turbulence.html
1. How did you get started writing e-books?
Pat, essentially what I was doing was writing the same program over and over for my friends. Each of them was asking the same question - as it was about the end of University when my friends were starting jobs and wanted to get fit and lose some of the fat they had gained in University. So after a while I got smart and starting compiling all of the information into a manual - keeping what worked and dropping what didn't work. Eventually I had my first complete manual, which I called Get Lean. From there, I modified the workouts and re-branded the system as Turbulence Training.The take-home point from my experiences is that you must leverage everything you do. From writing programs to answering emails, I try to use the information as much as possible. So a good program will become one of my monthly workouts that I offer on http://www.workoutmanuals.com, and a client email q'n'a will become something I use in my newsletters.By leveraging your work, you decrease the amount of work you need to do for future projects, plus it makes writing an e-book much less intimidating if you have all that info stockpiled.
2. Who is your target market?
My specific target market is the 35 year old man with kids that has a long commute to work and a long work day. He's tired, he's busy, and he's stressed, but he needs to lose body fat and he want to gain muscle. He also needs exercise to give him more energy. However, he's not afraid of hard work, and wants a short, but intense workout. But he has to be able to do it at home, either in the morning before the kids get up or at night after the kids go to sleep. My target market is the typical Men's Health reader. From that description, you should be able to think of one, if not several people that you know. And for everyone out there reading this, I think you need to get that detailed with your target market. You should be able to describe him to this level, and beyond. If you are able to do that, not only will you prepare a great e-book for the client, but just as importantly, you'll be able to write good sales copy that appeals to the problems and emotions that your target market has. My business coach Tom Venuto helped me through this process. And as a result, we came up with a good site and great ad copy. We even designed the look and logo of http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com to look relatively similar to Men's Health magazine. Clean background, shot of a model's abs, and similar colors. That said, it's not only my target market that buys the book, nor is it only my target market that will benefit from the book. But when putting together your product and site, it is important to be specific.I've had men and women from age 18 to age 80 use this program. Single, married, or divorced, kids or nokids, the majority of men and women need to lose fat fast. So while my program is designed for a bit of a niche market, it's a niche market that is big and has mass market appeal.
3. What type of impact on your business has writing e-books had? (Freedom, Passive Income, Reduced Client Load, etc.)
It's had a significant impact on all of the above. But writing e-books is not something I stumbled into. I've been writing for years for the magazines, and I was working on my manual before I even knew that the opportunity to make a living by selling e-books existed.I put in my time in terms of both researching the book (university) and perfecting the application (training people for over 10 years), so now I've cut back and while I still work 60 hours a week, the composition of those hours has changed. At present, I only train people that allow me to learn and perfect the programs, and develop new manuals for my websites.
4. Where would someone begin if they wanted to develop their own e-book?
See my points above on leveraging your current writing. From there, go with what you know. For example, if you've been training 50-year old male executives for 10 years, don't write a book about helping women lose fat after their first kid. You won't have the experience or testimonials to back up and prove your sales copy. Once you have your topic and your niche market picked out, simply start with an outline. I recommend a book called "Info Millions" written by Bob Serling. Bob goes over step by step guide to writing a product. One thing to note is that my e-book doesn't contain a lot of chapters filled with written theory. I just sell a workout plan. My audience doesn't have time to read why this, that, and the other thing happen in your body. They just want to be told what to do so that they can get results fast.Another way to put together a book fast is to joint venture with other trainers or experts...exactly like you did Pat, with Fitness Riches.
5. How would they identify a target market?
Again, go with what you know. If you've been servicing stay-at-home moms, don't choose the niche of young athletes.Once you have your niche and you want to break it down even more, you might consider using this keyword selector tool:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Enter your keyword or keyword phrase, and this tool will tell you how many times the keywords have been searched on Overture in the last month.Fred Gleek, an information marketer who I have studied, suggests picking only niches having over 5000 searches per month. Otherwise, Fred believes the niche is not economically viable.Too many people tell me about their e-book idea that would only be of interest to about 1000 people in the entire world. You can't pigeonhole yourself. But at the same time, going too mass market and writing a book for everyone is not the best move either. Become an expert in an area, develop a hook, and go with that. NOTE: This will work for anything. So even if you (or someone you know) want to write a book on a topic outside of fitness, that's fine. Just follow the system. It's worked for thousands of people in dozens of industries.
6. How could they market their e-book?
You'll need to use a multiple-pronged approach, but think of yourself as just like any author promoting a book. The only difference is that most promotion should be Internet based. The reason I say that is because people are much more likely to go to your site if they get a link handed to them. The percentage (from our tests) of having people go from print media to a website is less than 4%.So you'll want to do Internet Radio shows, teleseminars, and conference calls. Do anything that gets your link in front of people while they listen to you.You'll also want to get an army of salespeople (affiliates) working for you. So send your e-book to people with big lists and see if you can write for their site/newsletter or do an interview. I find that when people interview me about my e-book, it makes for a great sales conversion rate - so if you want to interview me for your newsletter, just let me know.In addition, you can submit your articles through various article directories so that other websites can pick up your content and provide a backlink to your site.The lists are the key. So you simply want to get your website link, your name, and your product in as many targeted lists as possible. With all of the promo methods mentioned above, you should get some traffic and you can start building your own list - where you can continue to market your e-book.
7. What is your biggest "success secret" for developing and selling successful e-books?
Aside from the obvious, having a great product, the most important factor is getting your name in front of a lot of people.It's simply a numbers game.So you want to write lots of articles, get lots of content on your site, and get lots of other people posting your stuff and promoting your product. All of this will drive traffic to your sales page. On your sales page, you'll need a great headline (the headline is sometimes said to be responsible for 90% of your sales), good copy, and a great offer. If you have everything in place, then it's simply a matter of getting more people to your site.After that, great customer service and a back-end offer (like I have with my TT Membership) will ensure you have a long-term customer that you can sell to again and again.
If you're serious about launching your own highly profitable e-book, I'd suggest you study Craig's sales copy and pick upyour own copy of Turbulence Training at:http://www.fitnessconsultinggroup.com/turbulence.html
posted by Pat Rigsby at 6:07 PM
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