I have a great idea for a small report but how do I market it?

[carlos123]

I've recently been reading some stuff on how writing small reports can be very profitable but as usual I am left wondering how I can take a great idea (writing small reports) and make it real or practical with respect to how to market it.

The idea of a small report that I have been toying with is How to Live Cheaply in San Diego or some such.

I have not always had a lot of money in my life and since coming to San Diego I have been able to live very cheaply. Now I can't take all the credit for this. As a comitted Christian I believe God opened doors for me that might not have opened otherwise but still...the lessons I have been learning about how to live cheaply in San Diego might be of general interest to many.

For example for a long time I lived in a really nice fifth wheel trailer that I only paid $200 a month to rent. Presently I am living in a nice home in one of the richest towns sorrounding San Diego without paying any money at all! I am trading web development work for the rent of $600 a month. At my usual rate of $25 per hour. That works out to only 24 hours of work per month.

I have my own large bedroom, my own huge bathroom, a pool in the backyard...and live in a place that few could afford to even rent at.

My landlord is great and it's just me and him and his dog in a huge ranch style home where his bedroom is on one end of the house and I am on the other end.

When I first arrived in San Diego I rented a room cheaply in a foreclosed property.

I could go on but suffice it to say that I could write up a really good report on using strategies I have used to help me live very, very cheaply in San Diego.

Writing the report is no problem and San Diego anything is somewhat hot as a search phrase item but how does one market such a thing?

Do I create a web site just around this report and try to get a high search engine ranking for it. That would take a month or more to achieve I think...assuming I could get a high rank for this site.

How do I market it quicker so as to generate income quicker without neccessarily waiting on the search engines.

As usual the breakdown in my thinking on this is how to do it practically. I mean the idea, like so many internet marketing ideas is great but a bit lacking in the practicals.

If anybody has any suggestions or ideas on the practical side of how I would market such a report and whether I could sell it and for how much I would appreciate hearing about it.

I don't need much of any input on how to write it or that type of thing. Just how to market it.

Thanks.

Carlos

PS. I just noticed that I am now a Super Active Member and that my post count is up to 110. Unreal. I had no idea that I had been that active on this forum. I usually don't pay attention to my post count or what I am called on forums :D

[KathleenGageSpeaker]

Before writing the report it is a good idea to see what the level of interest is. One way is to do a simple google search.

For example, with your idea on How to Live Cheaply in San Diego put in Living in San Diego forums. I just did that and a few came up. Not very many members so the topic may not be the best. However, without more research it is hard to say.

From there, you could survey people in the forum and ask them what they would like to learn about living cheaply in San Diego. If you get one or two responses you likely need to consider another topic.

However, once you do find a marketable topic you can do blog postings with portions of the report and a link back to the report landing page. You can also share a story around the report topic.

If you have an opt in list you can send them the same information you put in the posting with a link back to the landing page.

Other methods are:

Wall posting announcing the report on FB
Tweet about it
Get known in the forum specific to the topic and add the info to your sig file.

Hope this helps. I recently did all of this and more on two of my reports and sold quite a bit.

Kathleen

[David Jackson]

Before writing the report it is a good idea to see what the level of interest is. One way is to do a simple google search.

For example, with your idea on How to Live Cheaply in San Diego put in Living in San Diego forums. I just did that and a few came up. Not very many members so the topic may not be the best. However, without more research it is hard to say.

Kathleen, that's very sage advice. I agree with you completely. Writing anything begins with thorough research. I especially like what you said about testing topic ideas in forums. I test many of my articles that way.

David Jackson

[KathleenGageSpeaker]

I test my mentoring courses in a similar fashion before investing time and money developing them.

Step 1 - Survey my subscribers, FB friends, Twitter followers, forum buds, etc., to see level of interest in a topic.
Step 2 - Evaluate responses.
Step 3 - Host a free teleseminar on the topic the mentoring course will be on.
Step 4 - Promote the free call
Step 5 - Have sales page complete by date of free call with whatever the up-sell offer is.
Step 6 - Sell
Step 7 - Based on whether or not someone goes from free to fee will determine if full program gets developed.

[carlos123]

It dawned on me earlier along with what you all said (great advice...thank you) that a signature link to a report topic in forum posts could be an excellent way to generate some traffic to a landing page where the report is sold.

So for example I could go find forums dealing with moving to San Diego, participate in them (as long as I could add true value through my posts) and use a captivating signature link to my report landing page.

Completely apart from search engines.

While I won't neccessarily make a fortune that way (writing posts at various forums is a lot of work and time consuming) it will...without a doubt get me some traffic to what I want to point traffic to.

Kathleen...am I to understand that this is how you sold two reports lately? Would you mind elaborating a bit more on what you did and what the reports were on (even just the general topic area if you don't want to say the specific report names)?

Carlos