After making a blog post about my default ebook layout, the number of downloads has risen dramatically from 211 to 494. See this screen grab from my Aweber account:-
You can see it’s really hit a chord with people. I’m amazed at how useful everybody is finding this tiny little product I’ve done. It seems that by accident, I’ve stumbled upon something big.
It’s a simple idea, and the surprising thing is that no-one’s ever done it before. But isn’t that the way with a lot of the really good ideas? They’re just simple things that are useful to people.
I’m only just now realising what it is that I have here, and so I might just have to follow up with this myself. I’ll wait 30 days and if no-one contacts me to say they’ve done a pack of default ebook layouts, then I’ll do my own.
My guess is no-one will.
On a side note, if you’ve been struggling to find that one idea for a product, why don’t you think about what it is that you need yourself, and see if it’s been done before? Even if it has, I think you’ll find it either isn’t good enough or doesn’t give you quite what it is you’re after.
Once you know what you need to do, create your own version, and use it as your first product.
If you want further product ideas from me, make sure you’re signed up to new blog notifications as I’ll be password protecting future ideas so that only my blog readers will get them. You can sign up on the main page.
-Frank Haywood.
Hello Frank!
I downloaded your Default eBook Layout program as soon as you made it available, and I have been using it to write my very first eBook.
A great little program, Frank.
You are always coming up with very useful stuff!
Thank you for “Helping me to Help Myself”
Best regards,
Jan
Frank,
I really found your default layout extremely useful. The brilliant thing about this is that you really didn’t need to “create” a product from scratch at all.
You took a product “Open Office”, which many people know about…but made a not so common “how-to” manual to show people how to use it more effectively.
I knew about Open Office but the things you discussed in your information product opened my eyes to some short cuts that would have taken me weeks to figure out on my own. In fact, I may not have NEVER thought about finding the shortcuts that you effortlessly displayed.
This has been a great lesson in product creation. It fact it’s brilliant. You showed me how easy it is to piece together a report with something that has been under my nose the whole time.
The lesson here is that INFORMATION is the key. You don’t necessarily need to create a script like SmartDD or any other complicated software to give people what they want…
You can find popular existing products and give them the tutorials needed to make it easier to use these products.
Great work Frank.
I’m using your templates to create my User’s Manual for new software that I’m releasing this month. Because of your tutorial, I’m cranking out this manual in half the time it would have taken me before.