Cementing Your Future
Lotta work to do here, but it's not nearly as taxing as the last section.
First, get your detailed outline. Break down your outline into roughly hourly segments – meaning content that will occupy your members for 1 hour.
Now, write down at least 5 questions that you'll ANSWER during that hour. Do that for each hour of each module of your course.
***** IF YOU'RE IN A REAL HURRY *****
If you're trying to get your site up ASAP, you can just do this exercise for the first module you'll be delivering. That'll get you through this much quicker and you can do the remaining modules as your members progress.
When you've got your questions, then review them and ask yourself:
Will my answer to these questions keep my members actively involved and interested for 1 hour?
For example, if you're delivering your content as an audio broadcast, would someone interviewing you (or you interviewing someone else) and asking these questions result in an interesting, informative, and engaging interview?
If so, you're done with that hour so move on to the next.
If not, you may need to do one, two, or all three of these: ask more questions ask different questions come up with better, more informative, more exciting answers
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Showing posts with label collecting ideas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collecting ideas. Show all posts
Monday, 15 March 2010
Cementing Ideas
Paying Your Dues
Now that you have a detailed outline, we're about to start the REALLY hard work – at least it's hard mentally. This is the part of your membership site setup where you pay your dues, your penance. Where you offer up your intellectual sweat for the right to earn a profitable income online.
What you have to do in this section is take your detailed outline, the specifics of what you expect to offer your members, and infuse each section with concepts and ideals embodied by your hook and your “sizzle”.
Take each “end point” of your detailed outline and ask yourself:
What pain will this help my member avoid?
What's the pleasure that this offers my members?
What interesting tips could a true “guide” give (as opposed to a map maker)?
Unfortunately, there's no objective way for you to know when you've finished. Just try to do a good job with every topic. In all likelihood, you'll look at this a few days from now and find ways to improve on it – which is great.
Here's my first cut using just the first module of my “photography studio equipment” detailed outline from above. Its not perfect, but it's moving in the right direction.
Week #1: Intro and Overview
I. Why a Studio?
A) Why a properly equipped studio means less hassle and more time to create
B) The right studio equipment can take your photography to a new level.
C) Invest in your equipment and it will pay you back in spades
D) Once your studio is properly equipped – you won't have any excuses left for not being GREAT
II. What Type of Photography (Portrait or Commercial)
A) Ever seen portraits with no “personality”. Studio equipment that keeps customers smiling
B) Those gorgeous, commercial shots aren't taken, they're made. Learn the equipment you'll need to make images like a pro
III. Cameras
A) Types
1. DSLR
a) Most Digital SLRs will do the job. How to make sure yours has all the features you need.
b) What a Digital SLR will do that other cameras can't
c) 3 Things you shouldn't expect of your Digital SLR and why
2. DigiCam
a) You can use your consumer digicam as a studio camera if you just follow these guidelines
b) 3 Things your consumer digicam can do that most of their big brothers can't
c) 4 Reasons why consumer digicams may not be the best choice for your studio
3. Film
a) Your old film camera still does a mean studio shoot
b) Why many professionals still shoot film – should you?
c) 6 Big reasons why digital trumps film and what ignoring them can cost you
B) Accessories for Studio Work
1. How seeing things from a different perspective can enhance your studio work
2. This under $20 accessory often gets overlooked – until you really need it.
3. Don't throw away your investment! How to keep your equipment organized and protected
IV. Lenses
A) Focal Lengths for Studio Work
1. Do you really need a “Normal” lens?
2. Make your studio space seem larger
3. How to photograph “graphically” for product shots
4. Fast lenses and why you probably need them – even when your subjects are standing still
B) Other Lens Considerations
V. Equipment Your DON'T Need
So, give it your best shot. Go through your list and make the changes. Put the list away and grab a snack, then come back and, for each item, ask yourself the three questions again. If you think you've handled them, move on. If not, try to improve it as much as you can.
Don't worry if you don't hit the bullseye. You've got your target (the three questions). Just take aim and get as close as you can.
Free Membership Site Software
Now that you have a detailed outline, we're about to start the REALLY hard work – at least it's hard mentally. This is the part of your membership site setup where you pay your dues, your penance. Where you offer up your intellectual sweat for the right to earn a profitable income online.
What you have to do in this section is take your detailed outline, the specifics of what you expect to offer your members, and infuse each section with concepts and ideals embodied by your hook and your “sizzle”.
Take each “end point” of your detailed outline and ask yourself:
What pain will this help my member avoid?
What's the pleasure that this offers my members?
What interesting tips could a true “guide” give (as opposed to a map maker)?
Unfortunately, there's no objective way for you to know when you've finished. Just try to do a good job with every topic. In all likelihood, you'll look at this a few days from now and find ways to improve on it – which is great.
Here's my first cut using just the first module of my “photography studio equipment” detailed outline from above. Its not perfect, but it's moving in the right direction.
Week #1: Intro and Overview
I. Why a Studio?
A) Why a properly equipped studio means less hassle and more time to create
B) The right studio equipment can take your photography to a new level.
C) Invest in your equipment and it will pay you back in spades
D) Once your studio is properly equipped – you won't have any excuses left for not being GREAT
II. What Type of Photography (Portrait or Commercial)
A) Ever seen portraits with no “personality”. Studio equipment that keeps customers smiling
B) Those gorgeous, commercial shots aren't taken, they're made. Learn the equipment you'll need to make images like a pro
III. Cameras
A) Types
1. DSLR
a) Most Digital SLRs will do the job. How to make sure yours has all the features you need.
b) What a Digital SLR will do that other cameras can't
c) 3 Things you shouldn't expect of your Digital SLR and why
2. DigiCam
a) You can use your consumer digicam as a studio camera if you just follow these guidelines
b) 3 Things your consumer digicam can do that most of their big brothers can't
c) 4 Reasons why consumer digicams may not be the best choice for your studio
3. Film
a) Your old film camera still does a mean studio shoot
b) Why many professionals still shoot film – should you?
c) 6 Big reasons why digital trumps film and what ignoring them can cost you
B) Accessories for Studio Work
1. How seeing things from a different perspective can enhance your studio work
2. This under $20 accessory often gets overlooked – until you really need it.
3. Don't throw away your investment! How to keep your equipment organized and protected
IV. Lenses
A) Focal Lengths for Studio Work
1. Do you really need a “Normal” lens?
2. Make your studio space seem larger
3. How to photograph “graphically” for product shots
4. Fast lenses and why you probably need them – even when your subjects are standing still
B) Other Lens Considerations
V. Equipment Your DON'T Need
So, give it your best shot. Go through your list and make the changes. Put the list away and grab a snack, then come back and, for each item, ask yourself the three questions again. If you think you've handled them, move on. If not, try to improve it as much as you can.
Don't worry if you don't hit the bullseye. You've got your target (the three questions). Just take aim and get as close as you can.
Free Membership Site Software
Friday, 19 February 2010
Collecting Ideas (Part 3)
Forums
You can also find more specialized info by performing a forum search in Google for your niche. This will bring up all the forums to do with your niche so if you are looking for some more in depth info you can find it there here is what you do to do a forum search.
Simply type “[your topic] forums” into your Google search box and you'll uncover any number of forums that specifically address your topic.
For example, “photography studio equipment forums” returned:
As you can see there is 1,350,000 results which should be plenty enough for every module of my Photography Studio Equipment membership site!
You can also use forums if you need a specific answer to a problem that you cannot find anywhere else. All you need to do is sign up as a member of the forum and ask your question and you will get plenty of answers.
When you complete this exercise, you should have a really good handle on what your membership site will be offering and the kind of headlines that attract readers.
That means you're ready for the next step!
You can also find more specialized info by performing a forum search in Google for your niche. This will bring up all the forums to do with your niche so if you are looking for some more in depth info you can find it there here is what you do to do a forum search.
Simply type “[your topic] forums” into your Google search box and you'll uncover any number of forums that specifically address your topic.
For example, “photography studio equipment forums” returned:
As you can see there is 1,350,000 results which should be plenty enough for every module of my Photography Studio Equipment membership site!
You can also use forums if you need a specific answer to a problem that you cannot find anywhere else. All you need to do is sign up as a member of the forum and ask your question and you will get plenty of answers.
When you complete this exercise, you should have a really good handle on what your membership site will be offering and the kind of headlines that attract readers.
That means you're ready for the next step!
Friday, 12 February 2010
Collecting Ideas (Part 3)
Amazon
Check to see if books have been written on your topic. If they have been written, they can be used as sources of content for your membership site. If they've been written and are selling, then you know your site's chance of making money using that topic is pretty good.
How do you tell if a book is selling? Actually, Amazon makes that kind of tough. You can use the Amazon.com Sales Rank but you must keep in mind that the number doesn't accurately reflect actual book sales – especially for books with rankings over 100,000.
Look for books that cover the same information you'll be providing on your site. Check the Amazon.com Sales Rank for the book. If it has a rank of less than 200,000, you know that it's making sales. If the rank is less than 100,000, the book is making frequent sales. If the ranking is less than 10,000 – then sales for the book are pretty hot.
To find the Amazon.com Sales Rank, open up the listing for the book you're interested in, then scroll down the page until you find the Product Details section which looks like:
Near the bottom of this section you can see that this book has an Amazon.com Sales Rank of 64,312 which means the book selling fairly well.
Use Amazon to not only find out if the information is selling, but also to get some great ideas for your membership site.
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Check to see if books have been written on your topic. If they have been written, they can be used as sources of content for your membership site. If they've been written and are selling, then you know your site's chance of making money using that topic is pretty good.
How do you tell if a book is selling? Actually, Amazon makes that kind of tough. You can use the Amazon.com Sales Rank but you must keep in mind that the number doesn't accurately reflect actual book sales – especially for books with rankings over 100,000.
Look for books that cover the same information you'll be providing on your site. Check the Amazon.com Sales Rank for the book. If it has a rank of less than 200,000, you know that it's making sales. If the rank is less than 100,000, the book is making frequent sales. If the ranking is less than 10,000 – then sales for the book are pretty hot.
To find the Amazon.com Sales Rank, open up the listing for the book you're interested in, then scroll down the page until you find the Product Details section which looks like:
Near the bottom of this section you can see that this book has an Amazon.com Sales Rank of 64,312 which means the book selling fairly well.
Use Amazon to not only find out if the information is selling, but also to get some great ideas for your membership site.
Build Your Secure Member Area In Minutes For FREE!
Collecting Ideas (Part 3)
Yahoo Answers
By now you should have at least 1 topic that you know can be profitable. What we'll focus on now is how to create your final product – your membership site.
To do that, you'll need to know what people want answers to as it relates to your topic. There are any number of ways to figure this out. The first one we'll cover is Yahoo Answers.
http://answers.yahoo.com/
Yahoo Answers is an excellent resource to see what people are looking for answers to. That makes it an awesome tool to find out what the chapters or sections of your membership site should be.
So, type in the topic you have decided on into the search bar. For example, when I enter my “photography studio equipment” topic, here is what comes up for me:
From the example it may be hard to see, but there are 178 results for the phrase “photography studio equipment”. Not as many as there are for some topics, but the number is less relevant that the variety of questions. Scroll through the list to find out what problems people are looking for solutions to.
In my example, one of the topics that comes up a lot within “photography studio equipment” is the question “What equipment do I need to start a photography studio?” So, maybe I would think about labeling one of my modules “The 10 Pieces of Equipment You Must Have in Your Photography Studio”.
Actually, based on what I already know about photography, this could easily end up being 12 modules:
• an overview module that talks about all 10 pieces of equipment in detail
• 10 detail modules – 1 for each piece of equipment – that not only talks about why the equipment is essential but includes video demonstrating how to select good equipment and how to best utilize it.
• At least 1 follow-up or “bonus” module that discusses 1 – 3 pieces of equipment that, while not absolutely essential, can make a studio run more efficiently and profitably.
I could almost be done!
(The number of modules you'll create for your site depends on how much information you plan to deliver and how long (months) you'd like to keep your members occupied. A good starting number for the number of modules is 15. 15 weeks gives you about 3 months of content with a plus a 2 week initial trial period. More on this later.)
So, what you're looking for here are “problems” that people are having... problems that you can address and provide solutions to through the information and training you'll make available on your membership site.
Make Money With Your Own Free Secure Membership Site
By now you should have at least 1 topic that you know can be profitable. What we'll focus on now is how to create your final product – your membership site.
To do that, you'll need to know what people want answers to as it relates to your topic. There are any number of ways to figure this out. The first one we'll cover is Yahoo Answers.
http://answers.yahoo.com/
Yahoo Answers is an excellent resource to see what people are looking for answers to. That makes it an awesome tool to find out what the chapters or sections of your membership site should be.
So, type in the topic you have decided on into the search bar. For example, when I enter my “photography studio equipment” topic, here is what comes up for me:
From the example it may be hard to see, but there are 178 results for the phrase “photography studio equipment”. Not as many as there are for some topics, but the number is less relevant that the variety of questions. Scroll through the list to find out what problems people are looking for solutions to.
In my example, one of the topics that comes up a lot within “photography studio equipment” is the question “What equipment do I need to start a photography studio?” So, maybe I would think about labeling one of my modules “The 10 Pieces of Equipment You Must Have in Your Photography Studio”.
Actually, based on what I already know about photography, this could easily end up being 12 modules:
• an overview module that talks about all 10 pieces of equipment in detail
• 10 detail modules – 1 for each piece of equipment – that not only talks about why the equipment is essential but includes video demonstrating how to select good equipment and how to best utilize it.
• At least 1 follow-up or “bonus” module that discusses 1 – 3 pieces of equipment that, while not absolutely essential, can make a studio run more efficiently and profitably.
I could almost be done!
(The number of modules you'll create for your site depends on how much information you plan to deliver and how long (months) you'd like to keep your members occupied. A good starting number for the number of modules is 15. 15 weeks gives you about 3 months of content with a plus a 2 week initial trial period. More on this later.)
So, what you're looking for here are “problems” that people are having... problems that you can address and provide solutions to through the information and training you'll make available on your membership site.
Make Money With Your Own Free Secure Membership Site
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