[spoiler]Hey, guys. What’s up? Zach Even-Esh here, UndergroundBizJournal.com here at my parent’s house. I just got done walking Arnold. It’s what I do every morning. There’s my guy. Hey, dude. Chilling out right there and had this thing on my mind for a while and it actually came up inside a private form area that I have for my underground strength coaches, those peeps that have been through the www.UndergroundStrengthCoachCertification.com. Shameless plug. What’s up?
OK. Here’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about ebooks, when you should put out an ebook. Do you sell it? Do you give it away? So here are a couple of things. One of the guys on there was talking about you don’t sell an ebook until you train 50 to 250 people. He had this other – I can’t remember what the stuff was. Train 50 to 250 people. It has to be something that nobody has ever thought of or nobody has done before and a couple of other factors coming in.
The bottom line is that on the most part, he was actually wrong. I like the part of training. I don’t know what the 50 to 250 people is. I don’t know how you come up with that variance but you should be somebody that’s in the trenches training and what me and my boy Paul Reddick talked about is called boots on the ground. You’re actually in the trenches doing it. That way, you can talk about it from a real world experience and I also think you develop a lot more trust doing that. I think you look at like Joe DeFranco stuff. The trust is there because people see video footage of him training athletes, all kinds of different athletes so the trust factor is there.
Now, here’s what I would do. If you don’t have a lot of people on your email list and you’re new at doing something but you have a lot of great information, you know it’s amazing information, then you know what? Do what’s called move the free line. Give it away for free and wow people with it. Let them actually use this ebook that you’ve given away for free and when they start using it and getting results, then the good vibes are going to come back to you. Perhaps you get testimonials but in essence, many things will happen and this is what’s called going viral.
They start telling other people about it. They start sharing it. They post messages to your Facebook wall, to your Twitter saying, “Hey John Smith, that ebook that you did on mobility or increasing my bench press or getting six-pack abs or how to diet and my nutrition,” whatever your ebook is on, they start giving you great feedback on it.
I think in the beginning, the very important thing to do is you give it away for free. Give away an awesome ebook. If you go to www.ZachEven-Esh.com, I say this is my blood, sweat and tears. The ebook Freak Strength was something that I edited and re-edited and re-edited many times, constantly updated it and upgraded it and that’s my blood, sweat and tears.
Then I put in a smaller ebook on Bodyweight Bodybuilding, giving them just some of my favorite bodyweight bodybuilding exercises but it’s something they could use immediately, something they don’t have to scrounge for or try to figure out. They could put it to use immediately and start getting the results and that’s what true marketing is. It’s something that you have a passion for, something that you deeply care about and something that will help improve the lives of other people greatly and it has to add value.
Joe Polish from ILoveMarketing.com always says you got to be a value adder, not a value extractor or a battery drainer and that’s something extremely important.
Now let’s talk about when to sell an ebook and this is a pretty interesting one because I just released an ebook called www.BodyweightBodybuildingSecrets.com. Now, is this the first bodyweight training program, ebook, manual or what not that has been out? There have been bodyweight programs, as far as I know, in book form since the 1800s. I’ve got a bodyweight book from the late 1800s. I have many from the early 1900s. Is it the first? No. Was it a new twist on body weight training? Yes. I never saw anybody put a twist on the bodyweight training as far as the program design method that I used. That’s number one.
Number two. You want to do three things. You need to solve a problem so you need a solution. You need a story. There must be a story behind why this program was created and you need a star. So with Bodyweight Bodybuilding Secrets, I was getting injured a lot, had a lot of injuries and that was my story in a nutshell but the story negatively impacted my life.
It was messing with my ability to play with my kids, just to be a good family man. My health was really going down, many things like that. I had a solution to getting injured and avoiding injuries and then the star – not to be arrogant but the star was me. It was me. It was how I was able to pull myself out from many injuries, poor health and something that was negatively affecting my life and came out from it.
So you need a story. You need a solution and there needs to be a star. When you put those three together, then you’ve got something important. But when should you create an ebook or any program for that matter? Don’t create anything until a lot of people tell you that they want it from you.
When Joe DeFranco – his first product was on the Football Combine. He was getting tons and tons of inquiries, phone calls and emails about how to prepare for the NFL Combine. Boom! That’s what inspired him to do that. So he had many stars. He had a solution and he also had many stories. So that’s very important.
Same thing with his program Built Like a Badass. He was test running that program on guys that were very busy but he was still able to modify his training program and help them get built like a badass. It was that simple.
Mike Geary, Truth about Abs. The guy was always, always, always getting emails from people asking him about how to get six-pack abs, how to burn fat, things of that nature. So he created it and he just gave extreme value to people, changed their lives.
Bill Phillips, all the time being asked by people how to transform their bodies and now he’s all about transformation because he knows if you transform somebody’s health, you will transform their life and that in turn transforms the lives of all the people around the person who went through that health transformation.
That’s the kind of powerful product you need. It has to transcend beyond impacting one person. It has to be a life-changer. That’s at least the way I look at it. Am I right? Am I wrong? Totally up to you. It has worked for me. Bodyweight Bodybuilding Secrets was only created because tons of people were telling me that they were getting injured from traditional training programs.
They wanted to find out how I came out and bounced back from all these injuries, saved myself time, saved myself from getting even more down the downward spiral of poor health. So I was able to give them something that I used but I didn’t create it because that’s what I wanted to create. They kept telling me that’s what they wanted. So very important stuff to think about.
I’m Zach Even-Esh, www.UndergroundBizJournal.com and that’s it dudes. Take care. Comb your hair. Peace out. Say bye, Arnold. Bye, dude. Say bye. Right here. Look at the cam. Oh, that’s the guy right there. That’s the dude. Peace, guys.[/spoiler]
Zach Even – Esh
UndergroundBizJournal.com