Right before I canceled my Amazon Prime account (because I was buying too much stuff), I ordered 15 books I wanted to read this year. One of them was Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick.
This is me publicly going through the process.
What the book will be
A book for niche site operators to step their website game up by manufacturing authority to diversify income, increase shareability, and get backlinks easier.
It seems simple, but this book will be needed as long as guys create joeskettlebellreviews.com and not joefitness.com.
Defining a scope
In chapter 2, Rob talks about defining what you want your book to be about and what you don’t want your book to be about.
Scope = Promise + Reader Profile + Who It’s Not For + What It Won’t Cover
The first two points are no-brainers, but I like those last two points the most. It will stop a lot of the fluff anticipated in these kinds of books: how to set up WordPress, which hosting to use, what plugins to use, the basics of SEO, etc.
The promise is what I wrote below What the book will be or: how to improve existing or create websites that make it easier to diversify income and garner backlinks.
The reader profile is an experienced website creator trying to improve their existing website or launch a new site.
Who it’s not for is someone who’s never made a dollar online. Someone just getting started who doesn’t know how to buy a domain name or is scared to one-click install WordPress.
And what it won’t cover is technical website stuff, SEO basics (or advanced tactics, really), signing up for Amazon associates, or any other stuff that can be found on every how-to-make-money-with-niche-websites blog post since 1996.
With the overall scope reading something like
If you’re a niche site operator struggling to diversify income and get backlinks, this book will help you understand how to manufacture authority for your site while not having any.
Why I’m doing this
I think we’ve all picked up a recommended read or something we stumble upon and found it’s just an endless brochure filled with calls to action and no actual, actionable advice.
Hell, here’s a review from 2016 for one of those exact types of books. THESE THOUGHTS AREN’T NEW!
And it didn’t stop then; new books are still being published doing the same thing.
What I want to make is something that’s standalone. That does exactly what it promises: it solves a specific problem for a specific group. Even if it only gets one sale a month, great. I want that one buyer to take the action items and apply them within days and get a ridiculous return on their investment.
I’m not trying to build an email list. I am not trying to get people back to this site and not pimp affiliate links in it.
(I wouldn’t say I like marketing to marketers [I’m not good enough for it])
Additionally, I want to put the whole process out into the world. All the prep will be published here. Once it’s time to write, I’ll be recording myself running my suck and putting those online for the raw-diobook version.
There are two reasons for that:
- Sounds like a good idea right now.
- So you MFers know I’m not AI’n it up.
I probably just need to brain-dump.