The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job (9 page)

order Part Number __ from www.________________.com.” That way you can fil in the

blanks later and not disrupt the thought you were getting down.

5. Just Start, No Matter What

If you sit down and simply cannot get started with any good ideas you’l laugh at this wel -

known principle among writers—you just start to write, “I don’t know what to write. I don’t

know what to write. I don’t know what to write. . . . ” By about the tenth time you write that,

your brain wil unclog and you’l begin to have thoughts somewhat more useful like: “Wel ,

I know the calibration process for the water filter involves something like 11 steps and

they are the unpacking, then the. . . . ”

If you are patient, pretty soon the words become more descriptive and helpful. Again,

do not censor yourself, because you must get the raw material on paper at first, no

matter what it takes.

Some people have good success with first writing down what something wil not be.

For instance: “This guide is not going to be the typical ‘how to’ book about quilting

because by my count there are more than 130 quilting books. Instead, I’m going to

assume that you’ve quilted al your life and want to discover little-known and real y

uncommon materials you can use. . . . ”

6. Make an Outline

Once you realize the power of writing using an outline, you’l never go back. We were al

taught boring outlining in English class in school. The schoolmarm might have said,

“Children, be sure to outline in just the way I have shown you.” No doubt that method

involved arbitrary rules about how an outline should be constructed. It’s no wonder that

you may not have done an outline since fourth grade.

Forget those rules. Think of an outline as simply a way to organize ideas, sentences,

or even fragments. First, it al ows you to slop down information in whatever order it

appears in your brain. Then, it’s a quick process to group ideas under main headings or

subheadings. After a short period of outlining, your thoughts begin to take on a structure

that you may not have anticipated. Depending on the information you’ve captured, there

wil be logical groupings. As one area grows too large it wil become clear how to break

it into smal er units.

By using an outline, your actual information wil drive the structure rather than an

arbitrary initial plan driving it. Then, as you write it becomes a simple matter of fol owing

your outline and writing about each smal fragment. Because the whole document is in

logical outline format before you write, you can be fairly confident that the finished

product wil hang together.

Do not interpret what I just said to mean that you must have a finished outline before

you write. The process of writing a book or a smal er info product is
iterative
—you

research, then outline, then write, then adjust your outline, then research some more, and

so on. Use it like a flexible tool and not some rigid framework.

Microsoft Word has a pretty handy outlining tool that ships right inside the normal

software—nothing new to buy. You can access it by going to the View tab and then look

for Outline. I’l tel you right now that it takes perhaps 20 minutes to fumble around with the

controls and interface before you get the hang of it.

That means, if you give up before 20 minutes are over, you’ve given up too soon. The

payoff is definitely worth the effort.

Another very good tool is the
MindManager
software program from www.mindjet.com.

It’s not free or even cheap software but is quite useful. It wil create not only outlines but

mind maps. Those are graphical maps of information, which can also contain pictures,

web pages, and other content.

I use the MindManager tool to organize my thoughts about a project, but then I usual y

move to Microsoft Word to create the detailed outline from which I write. (This book is

the result of just that process, by the way.)

Now that we’ve covered the standard way of getting content—writing it down—let’s

look at other excel ent methods.

Method Two: Have a Conversation

I unscientifical y estimate that a minority of people find it easy to sit down and write, but

that most people have no trouble carrying on a conversation. If you’re in that latter group

and not the former, do not consider it a handicap at al .

It’s my recommendation to go out and buy a digital audio recorder. My favorite is the

Olympus DS-40 Digital Voice Recorder. It’s about a hundred bucks, though you can get

other models and brands for significantly less or more money. You don’t need lots of

features but you do need good sound quality.

I like this Olympus model because it’s smal , holds many hours of recordings, has very

good sound quality, and the controls are intuitive. It also runs on readily available AAA

batteries.

Another option is to record on the phone. I real y like my Plantronics Encore H91N

Monaural Headset with Noise Canceling Microphone, which attaches to a Plantronics

MX-10
Amplifier. Headsets are wonderful for when you’re at the computer and talking

with someone. This particular setup al ows me to raise or lower the volume and also to

mute someone. I can plug the Olympus recorder right into the amplifier and capture

everything said on the cal . I’ve recorded hundreds of hours of phone conversations that

way and turned them into info products.

You can just put the recorder on the table and talk away. If you’re comfortable simply

talking out loud to yourself, that’s great. It’s often more comfortable to have a true

conversation with someone on the phone. If that person knows something about the area

you’re going to focus on, that’s al the more content you’l be capturing, but let’s assume

that only you know about the topic. I suggest you create a short list of topics you want to

talk about and just dive in.

As with the writing process, do not censor yourself in the conversation. You’re merely

getting al that content out into the open. If you need to restate something better, then do

it. You may end up cutting out whole sections of what you said and that’s fine. Just try to

get on a rol and let your thoughts roam over the topic.

If you find your first attempt less than satisfactory, don’t give up. Remember that you’re

experimenting with the best way to generate content and it may take weeks or even

months of trying different methods to find one that feels just right.

If you’re fol owing this spoken-conversation route, also experiment with different

conversation partners. Some people have a way of engaging and asking questions

that’s far more productive than other people who might as wel be potted plants.

You have three options for taking that recorded content and making it usable.

First, you can simply listen to it and write down the sections you find the most helpful.

I’m not a fan of that method but you may be.

Second, you can use a tool like Dragon Natural y Speaking to have the computer

transcribe your words. Speech-recognition software seems to be getting better by the

month. What formerly was a pretty cumbersome and inaccurate process of using

software to create transcripts has now become fairly workable. With the recent

generation of software, the more you train it to understand your voice the more accurate

it becomes.

Third, you can hire a person or company to create a transcript of your audio. It’s the

least amount of work for you and you’l end up with a highly accurate printed version of

what you covered. The cost is somewhere between one and two dol ars per minute of

recording. Prices vary depending on how many people are speaking on the audio,

whether they’re in a quiet or noisy setting, and how quickly you want the transcript.

I can refer you to a list of one or more companies that continue to do a good job. Go to

www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type the word “transcript” into the search box.

Method Three: Interview People

This is just a variation on the last method. Earlier in this chapter I suggested that you

might interview experts or even just frequent users of some product in order to get

material. Take your audio recorder along and come prepared with a series of questions.

You can use your judgment about how explicit you are concerning the topic you’l be

turning into an info product. Many experts are accustomed to being interviewed and are

unlikely to grab your idea—after al , they’re already established authorities in that field

with ongoing projects.

You should fol ow the same rules here as you would about not plagiarizing someone in

print. In other words, if Mary Jones gave you excel ent information, be sure either to

quote her or at least indicate that she was a contributor to your product. You might even

put her e-mail or web address in your material as a way of paying her back.

Frankly, the biggest danger with interviewing people is that you’re unlikely to use this

method at al for fear of someone stealing your idea. Could it happen? Of course. Can

you take the simple precautions I mentioned and minimize that possibility? Yes. But

remember how most people labor under their own versions of Uncle Moe and never get

around to creating a product for al the reasons we’ve discussed. You’re much more

likely to profit from col aborating with other people than you are to run up against them as

determined competitors.

Method Four: Record a Presentation

Let’s say you’re part of a model aircraft group and you’ve created a particularly long-

range control system. It’s not a secret but it’s also not widely known. You might at some

point deliver an informal presentation about your improvements. If you do, be sure to

record that presentation because it could be tailor-made for an info product. The same

goes for salespeople whose business is to deliver presentations about a new or

improved product or service.

I’m not suggesting that you covertly record someone else’s presentation and then sel

the information. I’m only saying that sometimes the information you’re after is not on

paper and you haven’t captured it through a conversation or an interview, but it does

exist in presentation form. If that’s the case, you may be in luck because often

presentations already have an order and logic to them, thus making your job to organize

it easier.

Method Five: Capture Screenshots

I’ve seen many info products that consist of a series of detailed pictures of computer

screens—known as screen
shots
—along with annotations.

With al the buttons and windows on a typical computer screen these days it’s often

cumbersome to describe to someone exactly where to go to accomplish a task. It’s

much easier for you—and less frustrating for the user—to see a picture of a computer

screen with arrows pointing to the exact spot under discussion.

Though many options exist for capturing those screenshots, the tool I use is cal ed

Snagit by www.techsmith.com. It’s not very expensive but can capture an amazing variety

of screens. For instance, let’s say you want to capture an entire web page but it’s a long

one, requiring you to scrol down for multiple pages. The Snagit tool can be set to grab

the entire web page. You can then annotate the page by adding arrows, text, and other

graphics.

Consumers love detailed screenshots like this because they are so self-explanatory.

You needn’t say “Now go to the upper left area of the screen, right under the little blue

box where it says ‘For More Information’, and then. . . . ” Your screenshot wil indicate

exactly where you mean. If your commentary is too large to fit on the actual screenshot

itself then the program easily al ows you to put a big red number or letter there. Then you

can refer to that number or letter in your accompanying text below the screenshot.

Method Six: Do a Video Capture of a Web Session

This is like a screenshot on steroids. You can set up your computer to record not only

your screen, but an entire session where you move from screen to screen. It wil make a

movie out of your navigating around the screen and can capture not only the web pages

themselves but al your mouse movements and your voice, too.

If you have not seen a web session captured before, you’re in for a treat. It can not only

save you an enormous amount of time in explaining a process to someone, but it wil

also spare that person a great deal of frustration. That’s another way to say that it’s

extremely valuable and people wil pay you for the information in your video capture.

Remember that Joomla story I told you before, where I paid a guy to find out how to set

up the Joomla software? That was just this sort of video capture technology.

Techsmith, the same company that creates the screenshot tool Snagit, also makes a