« Day 9 - Google Trends Redux | Home | How I Do My Flawless Screen Captures »
Getting Stuck For Ideas?
By Mike Mindel | August 10, 2007
Dan Raine posted a couple of useful articles from the Immediate Edge for free:
Download and read the first article
Download and read the second article
Below I’ll briefly summarise the resources, pick out what I considered to be the most useful content & show some screen shots.
This is no substitute for reading the articles & this is Dan Raine’s content not mine. Use this page for reference purposes only and as a launchpad to the resources themselves.
Getting Out of the House
You really need to get out of the house to help your idea generation process.
Many successful products have come from spotting something interesting walking around a mall, grocery shopping, or just on a day out.
Always Carry a Notebook
Personally I use my Treo phone memopad. But a paper notebook will do just fine. If you are out shopping and spot a potential niche and don’t write it down you will forget.
Magazines
The greatest sources of ideas and inspiration for the Info Product marketer. If there’s a magazine on a topic then there is a pretty good market out there too.
Magazines only get started if enough ads can be sold, and people only buy ads if there is an audience.
The real meat is in the advertising. Look at everything being sold, especially those products and services which have nothing to do with the actual topic. Advertisers spend a lot of money testing their markets and you should piggyback off their research.
Example: Gambling Magazines
Gambling magazines pop up every week to meet the insatiable demand for information, strategies, tips etc. in nearly every field of betting.
Here are some potential niches:
- How to beat the sports book
- Taking hold of texas holdem
- Card and chip flourishes
- Learn to deal like a pro
- How to win at blackjack
- Setting up a tip line
- Stay in Vegas for free
- How to be a high roller without spending a dime
Example: Holiday, Travel & Foreign Property Magazines
There are a stack of magazines which fall under this banner from holiday planning and travel guides to purchasing holiday homes and moving abroad.
Potential niches include:
- How to finance a holiday home with nothing down
- Profiting from a foreign property
- Finding a job in Austrlia
- Gap year travel guide
- Luxury travel for under $30 a day
Make sure you write everything down. Most will be duds. But in that stream of consciousness, you are almost definitely going to uncover a little nugget of gold.
Yahoo Answers
Can be found at http://answers.yahoo.com.
This came up in day 2 - the getting of ideas.
But in summary, it is a site run by Yahoo where people can post questions and the community as a whole can offer up suggestions and advice.
Topics are sorted by category & there are usually some good questions that could form the basis of an info product.
I just came across a great question
You might want to do an info product on animal psychology. Or how to communicate with animals.
Some other good questions from Wordtracker include
- How to get rid of stretch marks (59 searches a day)
- How can I get rid of facial hair?
- What causes dandruff?
- How can I prepare my child for pre-school?
43 Things
43 Things can be found at http://www.43things.com.
43 Things is a site where you put down a list of goals and share your success stories with other people who can also join in on your goal. There’s a lot of great ideas for info product shere e.g.
- how to drive stick shift
- learn french
- get more sleep
- meditate daily
- become a worthy scrabble opponent
That was just from the front page.
Ehow
eHow can be found at http://www.ehow.com.
eHow is another gold mine of problems and solutions.
There is so much content here. Often the answers have quite a bit of detail and can be used as crib notes to pass to an author to create a full blown product.
Or you can take the step by step instructions and convert those to a video tutorial - and you have a product!
Here’s one on How to Impersonate Elvis Presley:
WikiHow
WikiHow can be found at http://www.wikihow.com.
WikiHow is similar to eHow but it is a collaborative writing effort. Some of the articles are huge and provide a massive amount of detail.
See this one on How to Talk to a Human when Calling a Business
Brilliant!
HowToDoThings
HowToDoThings can be found at http://www.howtodothings.com.
Again, very similar to the previous two and very useful for ideas and inspiration.
Launch Pad
Just right click on each of the following links, select open in a new tab to open up each resource in a separate tab in your browser.
-Mike
Technorati Tags: dan raine, immediate edge, get out of the house, always carry a notebook, treo memos, magazines, gambling magazines, how to beat the sports book, taking hold of texas holdem, card and chip flourishes, learn to deal like a pro, how to win at blackjack, setting up a tip line, stay in vegas for free, how to be a high roller, don’t spend a dime, holiday travel, foreign property magazines, yahoo answers, does a dog know it’s a dog, 43 things, animal psychology, ehow, wikihow, impersonate elvis, how to do things, launch pad
Powered by ScribeFire.
Topics: Tips |
August 10th, 2007 at 3:10 am
Hey Mike,
Do you have any tips on generating Technorati Tags? I noticed you always have a good list.
~Shannon
August 10th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Yes. In ScribeFire click ‘Publishing Options’. Then add your Technorati tags by scrolling through the article and picking out keywords that may help people find you.
Then click add Tags to Post and ScribeFire adds them to the bottom of the post automagically.
You can also post your Trackback Urls there which is why you see my trackbacks all over the place. You can enter multipe Trackbacks separated by spaces.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
[…] Getting Stuck For Ideas? […]
August 12th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
That’s Mike.
~Shannon
August 31st, 2007 at 2:01 am
[…] Dan Raine - Getting Stuck For Ideas? […]