default ebook layout

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.

I’ve just recently had a very nice comment from Jason Anderson about my free default ebook layout:-

Oh, forgot to mention, I’m using your ebook format to write the user’s manual. That was a nice video tutorial and a well written user guide. Glad you put that together, it really opened my eyes to the power of Open Office.

Open Office used to be the “poor man’s” system. Now it’s really robust and I use it more than MS Word.

Well thanks Jason! I’ve gone and used it as a testimonial on the home page for the default ebook layout – remember my post a few days ago about the power of social proof?

I’ve just checked and there have been 211 downloads of the layout so far in the short time it’s been up, and I’ve had I think about 4 or 5 comments about it, so I know it’s hit a spot with people. I created it because I needed it myself, so I spent a few hours a while back fiddling with Open Office Writer until I got it to work just the way I wanted it to.

Now if you think about this, I created it to fulfill my own need, but when I did my “7 Products In 7 Days” exercise (detailed elsewhere on this blog), I had the bright idea of using it as one of my products.

So I did a video to show how it worked, and created a short document to go with it. Including setting up the web page, autoresponders etc, it probably took me about 5 hours to set it all up, not including all the time I spent fiddling with the format in the first place earlier last year.

But now, after about a month, not only do I have a product page that’s pulling in a moderate amount of interest, I also have some market research that tells me there’s a real interest in this kind of product (211 downloads with little real promotion).

So what if I put together a number of other default ebook formats using colour, graphics, different sizes etc. and then offered that package for sale? How much could I charge for that?

Maybe I won’t do it at all, or maybe I won’t do it for several months, I have a lot of other ideas in motion. So, if you want to go do it before me, there’s the idea, go right ahead. I wouldn’t expect a cut of the money, but a link to this internet business blog would be nice. 😉

It’s still free at the moment, so go grab the default ebook layout before I start charging!

-Frank Haywood.