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.