Do You Have An Audience?
Most of us do it backward. We create a product, write a book, and then try to sell it. What we find is that selling our book is difficult. Finding or creating interest in our books is hard. Tracking down all the people who could be our audience or market is a tough thing to do. And if there isn’t a market out there, then trying to educate people on why they should want our book is borderline troubling. And probably a lot more than we should be attempting.
We’re going to have to market like crazy whether we want to or not. But by putting a product or book out there first and then trying to make it work through just marketing is a monumental task. Now, listen. We all have to get better at marketing. We all have to market more. But to solely rely on just marketing to sell our book is a tough way to go. And to tell you the truth. I don’t think we should try to do it that way.
A wiser way would be to create a product or write a book that people want right now. And then just let them know that the product or the book and/or service now exist. Now, we’re still going to have to market and continually learn how to sell better. But if we have created a product that people really want, then the marketing is going to be so much easier because the book is going to practically sell itself.
Sometimes we have to go slow to go fast. I know we all want to rush our products or books to the market. After all, what’s better than being a published author of an awesome book or even books? But if we self-publishing indie authors are going to take our game to the next level of being an authorpreneur, then we need to have a game-plan. And planning takes a little more time than just running full steam ahead, right? So, slow down. Find out what people want. Then plan accordingly. After we’ve done this prep work, then we can go full steam ahead in our writing.
Now it may seem like others got a head start on us in writing their book. And perhaps they are even almost done with their book while we’re just beginning ours. But don’t sweat this. We’re going to make a lot of time up in the backend when they’re spending a crazy amount of time and effort marketing while we’re not. At this point, they’re going to wonder how come we’re selling so many books, and they’re not. Moving forward, we’ll repeat the process, and they’ll still be stuck on trying to market and sell their first book. But, for us to get this leg up on our competition, we have to do our homework upfront and find out what kind of book people want before we begin writing it.
Listen, to tell you the truth, as authorpreneurs we don’t have the time or money to create an audience. So already having an audience or market if vital. Thus, the next thing we should be asking is how do we find out if there is a market for our idea.
Well, we can go on Amazon and see if there are any books yet on our idea. If there aren’t any, or if there is one, but it isn’t selling, then the world isn’t ready; however, for our revolutionary book. We can also go on the web. Check out social media. Go into chat rooms. Engage people and see what they say about our idea. If we are finding people who are very enthused about our concept, maybe we have a market. If not, perhaps we need to wait a little while on that idea.
It’s usually not a good idea to be the first one to rush into a specific domain. Yes, we do need trailblazers in this world. But often, the ones who closely follow the trailblazers do it better and capitalize more. And again, as authorpreneurs, we don’t have an unlimited budget nor time. So we have to be strategic on how we run our authoring business.
Ask. Ask. Ask people what they think. The world will let you know if you have a good product or not. They’ll tell you if you need to pivot to something slightly different or even entirely new. The magical synergy of your audience can give you amazing ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of on your own.
Okay, listen up. I want to give you an advanced tip. One time-consuming way to find out if you have an audience or market for your idea is to let people know you’re doing a webinar on your concept. Ask people to sign up for it early. If you get a lot of people signing up for your webinar, then maybe you’re onto something really good. So now, go ahead and create that webinar. Be sure to have a Q&A at the end that could help you refine your thinking for a book and services on the same topic.
Now, if there isn’t much interest in your webinar. Then don’t waste your time creating it. The two or three people who signed up for it will understand if you cancel it due to a lack of interest. Hey, don’t frown. This is a great way to test your ideas. You found out that there wasn’t a market yet for your ideas. So you didn’t waste a couple days of your time creating the webinar.
And even better, you didn’t waste a couple years of your time writing a book and then trying to market it to an audience that wasn’t ready for it. Could you imagine how much time and effort you would have wasted if you didn’t do your homework upfront to find out if you had an audience? Imagine how much frustration and alcohol consumption you just saved yourself.
Now, go out and find a winner by doing your due diligence. And then write that book, create those services and run a successful authorpreneurshihp business around your idea, you creative genius.
*Watch this FREE video lesson on this chapter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQoZ0clQkfY&list=PL_-39bUXJitwL8cHUpiZ5mO0-JJuaPOVl&index=34
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