How To Take Charge of Your Product Creation Problem

You know you’ve got a product creation problem.

You start, then stop, then start …. then wonder if you have the right topic.

You decide to read and research a bit more, may be think about purchasing a course about product creation.

Meanwhile, a few more weeks go by, and you’re still no further ahead in your digital assets empire building.

It’s not easy to buckle down to create a product of value.  Actually, it’s not easy to create your first product at all – regardless of its perceived value.  The majority of us get stuck at the starting point.

Today, I submitted my first ‘proper’ product to Amazon’s KDP – Kindle Direct Publishing – and in a few hours, my ebook should be up for sale worldwide.

[Update: The book is now live, and you can get it here or click on the book image above.]

I’m filled with pride and relief in equal measure, because I know that the first product is the hardest.

Now, I would like to share how I got there and the making of “How To Build A Profitable Niche Blog”.

First, I walked my talk, and spent the bulk of my moonpreneur time over the past week almost exclusively on this project.   Second, I decided that for this first one, I would re-purpose content I have already written, updating it as required.

I used the Anthologize plugin to combine several posts into a draft ebook.  I then re-wrote some parts and edited over three separate sessions to bring the material up to date.  Specifically, I wanted to address the recent Penguin Google update to the search engine algorithm.

One strategy that helped me is that I resolved to separate editing from creating new content.  While I was editing, if I came across a piece that needed a major re-write or some additional content, I just marked the spot and moved on.  In other words, I explicitly wore two different hats, and made sure I didn’t mix the roles.  I’m pretty sure it helped take the pressure off and get it done faster and with better focus and quality.

Finally, I gave myself a couple of hours to browse image libraries to decide on a cover.  I found an image and font I liked, and and just like that, the final draft was ready – ready to be formatted for Kindle.

Making the transition from Word to Kindle format took a little while as well, as Word tends to add a lot of extra and totally unnecessary HTML tags.  Said tags have unpredictable results when they go over to Kindle.  I ended up converting the final draft to plain text, then using an HTML editor to add back the headers and simple formatting that works well with Kindle.

Once submitted to KDP, the book goes under review and publishing by Amazon, and it takes anywhere from 12 to 72 hours.  I’m expecting it to be live in the next 24, and will update this post with the link.

What I’m trying to say is that one sure fire way of solving your product creation problem is to re-purpose some content you have already produced.  Using that as a foundation will give you the momentum you need to get over the blank page syndrome.   Add as much or as little new material as you like, and you will have a great first draft.

With the bulk of the content production thus taken care of, you can focus on the mechanics of packaging your product and putting it up for sale, following through with promotion.

I’ve opted to go with Amazon Kindle for this version.  For the next version, I’m considering adding audio and/or video as a premium package.

Let me leave you with this thought: every day that passes and you don’t have a product on the market is another day of lost opportunity to help others and get paid for it.  In a scalable way.

What content do you already have that you can re-purpose for your next product?