I did a consultation with a DBO reader today.

He was stumped.

Stumped because he’d followed the DBO criteria to a tee – but try as he might, he was having a doozy of a time generating sales. He even split tested giving away a part of the e-book, and selling the other half. Still nothing.

I told him that I would relay the advice I gave him (leaving out the actual topic) because I thought it would be of interest to other DBO readers.

The reader – let’s call him “Phil” – was targeting a well-known niche. A niche that had received A LOT of offline publicity over the past 5 years. I’m talking heavy rotation on everything from your local morning news to CNN and everything in between.

Needless to say, we (as in every reader of this blog) would recognize this problem if I mentioned it.

Anyway, Phil had been in this worrisome situation. He stressed and sweated through it. And in the end he came out okay. So what did Phil do?

He packaged his experiences and decided to sell his intimate knowledge on how to solve this desperate problem.

Seems Ideal, Huh?

Aaaaaah… a niche with lots of media publicity. Everybody knows the problem is in fact a problem. Easy sell, right?

Wrong. And that’s why Phil and I were exchanging pleasantries at 9:30am this morning.

The Problem (I Told Phil)…

Was that the niche had been exploited SO MUCH over the past several years that more people were looking to prevent the problem, rather than solve it.

When I ran the traffic numbers through Google, it was like 5,000 searches a month for solving the problem – but 1 million searches for preventing it.

In all actuality, I would target a niche that had 5K searches a month because I realize a lot of low performance e-books can add up to big numbers over the years.

But Phil Had Another Strike Against Him

The media had done such a good job at educating the general public, that most sufferers of the problem already had a built in Pavlovian response to solving the problem. In other words, if you had this problem, there are a whole series of steps you’d most likely undertake BEFORE getting online.

My guess is that most people wouldn’t care that much about looking online to solve the problem because they equated the solution with offline actions.

However Just Because the Niche Had Been Super-Publicized, Didn’t Mean it was Dead

On the contrary.

What I suggested to Phil was that he could still target the niche. But instead of selling a solution to the problem, he should focus on selling prevention to people who were most desperate to prevent the problem.

In this situation, I found that the problem was affecting children now. (This hadn’t been the case a few years ago.) Your 3-year old could have this problem, and it could be extremely harmful for them in the long run.

Now it’s one thing if I have a problem. I’m an adult. I can take care of myself.

But it’s an entirely different ball of wax when your kid is at the receiving end of the unsanctioned whipping post. As a parent it’s your job to prevent your child from being harmed. And if you’re truly about your job, you’re going to do your darndest to prevent your child from being hurt.

Parents are inherently desperate people.

And that desperation level can go from 10 to 100, depending on the risk involved. That’s a good thing, in a DBO kind-of-way.

You Don’t Necessarily Have to Solve an Existing Problem. You Can Also Show People with Naturally Desperate Tendencies How to PREVENT a Problem.

For example, competitive body builders have naturally desperate tendencies. If you’re an amateur and you want to go pro, you don’t want to get any injuries that are going to stop you from competing.

And if you know that 50% of amateur bodybuilders get an injury that halts their career, you’re going to eat 100 eggs in 10 seconds to learn the secrets for preventing that injury. You have naturally desperate tendencies. And you’re RIPE for selling to.

Can you think of anyone with naturally desperate tendencies?

Will that be in the next DBO?

Perhaps.

I was sitting here this evening counting down the days for my daughters return to school. She attended art camp for a good part of the summer. However for the past couple of weeks, she has been at home with me.

In between cooking, cleaning, going to the zoo, school shopping, grocery shopping, and taking my 83-year old neighbor out to dinner, my days are FULL.

I normally like to begin my work day at 8:30pm. But lately I haven’t been able to get started until midnight at the earliest. That only gives me 4 hours of work time a day.

My only saving grace is that I have trained myself in a writing skill that ALL WRITERS (yes, even you seasoned pro’s) need to covet.

Four hours doesn’t look like a lot of time to get any sort of serious writing done.

But if you have a game plan for writing fast, you can get A LOT done in only four hours.

Let’s say you can crank out 1,200 words an hour.

In four hours that’s 4,800 words.

A 25,000 word manual (around 80-90 pages) would only take you 7 days – if you factor in writing, research time and bathroom breaks.

And that’s the point of today’s blog post. Learning how to write faster is a skill that will empower you beyond your wildest beliefs.

If you can DOUBLE your writing speed, you open yourself up to far more profit opportunities.

You already know that I create information products for a living.

But I bet you didn’t know that for a while (this year, in fact) I actually moonlighted as a SEO content creator.

Not because I needed to. I wanted to test out my fast writing techniques to see if I could actually handle a deadlined work load (a deadline that wasn’t my own).

The fast writing techniques worked so well that I was clearing $25-$45 per 400-600 word article.

I got so busy that I had to stop accepting assignments.

All I was doing was writing article after article, all night long. I’d turn in 4 and get 8 more. Not a bad position to be in!

But I’ll be honest with you… my information publishing business is far more lucrative. So that’s what I chose to stick with.

Though I did learn a valuable lesson.

I learned that knowing how to write fast is an extremely underrated skill – especially if you’re a content creator, or you aspire to be one.

And you have even more at stake if you write books, e-books and reports for a living.

One e-book, (or even a simple report as DBO readers know from my own experience), can easily translate into $20K-$50K a year – if you choose your topic carefully.

Now imagine if you doubled or tripled your writing speed, and worked hard for 6 months to create as many information products as you possibly could. That could easily equal 2-4 new product A MONTH, if you’re working at an optimum speed.

You’d only need 3-4 of those products to become cash cows in order to take a mini-retirement over the next 6 months.

And that’s exactly what I do!

I hustle my butt off for 6 months. (Not always 6 consecutive months.) And then I spend the other 6 months fulfilling my spiritual needs, I do hospice volunteer work, I take up new hobbies to write about, I catch up on my reading, I take classes, and so on.

Of course I could be a helluva lot richer if I worked my butt off the entire year like most other information publishers.

Then again, I make no apologies for enjoying the fruits of my labor. I work hard, I play hard. The end.

And once again, that’s part of the hidden pleasure of increasing your writing speed. You’re not sitting at the keyboard for 6 long months slaving over a single e-book. When your output increases, you can afford to recharge more often.

My latest title – The Good and Fast Content Creation Formula – is a guidebook to the techniques I use for fast writing.

Though it’s not just about fast writing.

It’s also about choosing a topic, and researching the topic, and being able to put the research together to write your content quickly.

What I did was examine every part of the writing process to see where I was getting stuck. I asked many DBO readers about their writing issues during their free consultation sessions.

Then I went through each step to figure out what I could do to make the process go more smoothly.

That was one of the reasons why I created Rack and Write. I used to have a hard time coming up with article ideas when I wanted to use article marketing to promote my titles. Rack and Write simplifies that process, thus making the writing process go a lot faster.

And that’s only one of the tricks that I’ve been using to increase my writing speed.

Would you like to see the rest?

Get the full scoop on The Good and Fast Content Creation Formula …

Earlier this year I mentioned (here on the blog) that I had created hundreds of article idea templates.

I originally put them together for my own benefit because I sometimes found it difficult to come up with articles to promote my information products. (Remember, I do sell other information products besides the ones advertised here.)

Well after I put them together and got them into a usable interface, I began showing the templates to a few consulting clients. They were very well received, so I continued adding to the list.

Several of my initial beta testers asked how much I’d be selling this tool for. They were surprised when I said it would be free.

I Made it Free for One Reason…

I go away and come back, go away and come back, and I STILL have an incredibly loyal group of readers.

I appreciate that loyalty immensely.

And even though I can’t give away everything I write, I wanted to give you something that would benefit your information publishing business for years to come.

You’ll find that this tool is 100% evergreen. You’ll be able to use it today, next year, and ten years from now.

It’s ideal to use for most topics. And I’m always adding new templates to keep it fresh.

So What’s Behind the Curtain?

Some of you might’ve noticed the ad in the right hand side – “Generate 1,262 content ideas…”

Well if you click on that ad you’ll be lead to Rack and Write.

Rack and Write stands for, “Rack up ideas so you can write your content.”

See the graphical image of the interface below? You simply type in 8-11 keywords (nouns, verbs).

Rack and Write will insert those keywords into the idea templates. So if you fill out each box, you’ll receive over 1,200 idea templates.

However, depending on your keywords, you’ll notice that some of the templates don’t make sense. (When you use it you’ll see what I’m talking about.)

But that’s okay because I’m sure you’ll walk away with AT LEAST 100 article, book chapter, blog post or report ideas.

And that’s what makes Rack and Write such an exciting tool. By changing your keywords, your content idea base can grow by leaps and bounds.

So what are you waiting for?

Click on over to Rack and Write… watch the tutorial… and give it a spin. Remember, it’s free!

And when you’re done, I want you to do 2 things for me…

1. Come back here and leave some feedback. I’m always looking for ways to make it better.
2. Share it with other information publishers. They’ll love you for it.