Posted by: Charlie Byrne
May 29, 2008
Issue #428

Here’s a Good Idea:
Profit From The Next Wave
of Info-Publishing

“I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it, and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon.” – William F. Buckley (1925-2008)

Right now, there’s no better business in the world than information publishing.

Whether you are marketing e-books, newsletters, or any other electronically distributed product, the advantages over most other businesses are enormous …

There’s no inventory or warehouses. No spoilage. With the Internet, distribution is virtually free. You can work from practically anywhere, anytime. Because of near-zero overhead, profit margins can range from very good to incredible.

There’s just one problem.

You can’t really be successful selling information.

We’ve said it before in Early to Rise (ETR). These days, no one needs more information. What people are looking for is advice … expert guidance … trusted opinions.

Just think about today’s most popular media personalities. The days of solemn "fact-reciting" talking heads such as Walter Cronkite and Harry Reasoner are long gone. The new stars are brash and opinionated. Howard Stern … Rush Limbaugh … Chris Matthews … Jim Cramer … Anderson Cooper … Keith Olbermann … Bill O’Reilly … and on and on.

In The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman explains how the data collection of straight journalism has been largely outsourced to low-paid stringers. The value is added later, when it’s filtered and interpreted in "opinion and analysis" pieces.

So here’s a thought. Maybe instead of Information Publishing, we should start calling what we do Idea Publishing! Because when you give people advice and ideas, they’ll listen … and pay for the privilege.

Rodale Inc. reported revenue of $632 million last year, primarily from marketing dozens of advice publications such as Prevention, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Organic Gardening, Runner’s World, and others. Agora Inc. had sales of over $300 million in 2007 through newsletter publishing. And thousands of individual publishing entrepreneurs on the Web today are pulling in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

So let’s say you’re interested in getting into this field. (And why wouldn’t you be?)

One of the first problems you’ll have to overcome is very common. Here’s how ETR reader Liby Nel put it in a recent letter to us:

"My biggest challenge at the moment is to learn how to write down powerful ideas that can be used as headlines, attention-grabbers, and concept-originators. Conceptualizing is something I really have to push. So, any pointers, advice, or sources that you can provide on these subjects and on stimulating creative thinking in general will be lapped up, I think, by many ETR readers. After all, brilliant ideas and original concepts presented perfectly is what everyone is after."

Liby is correct. You won’t become wealthy or successful publishing boring, unoriginal ideas and advice.

Your readers or customers will pay for unique, interesting, useful, actionable, and cutting-edge ideas. They will pay more for ideas that can help solve their biggest problems.

But how do you, as an aspiring "Idea Publisher," get such ideas?

I’ve looked into this challenge myself, and through research and personal experience, I’ve discovered five distinct stages:

Stage 1: Preparation

You should always be gathering raw material for ideas. Do this by becoming an information junkie. Explore new areas. Be active. Do stuff. John Locke said that "all valid knowledge comes through experience." You’ll probably get lots of little ideas during this stage. They won’t seem especially interesting, but "hold that thought" … because they’ll be back soon.

Stage 2: Mastication

Here’s where you take the problem you’re trying to solve and chew it over … toss it around … think it over for a while. Start mixing in the little ideas, the fodder, and see if anything happens. Usually it won’t. Not right away, anyway. That’s why you need …

Stage 3: Disassociation

Take a nap. Go for a workout. Do something else for a day. Free your mind of the details. This is a key step, and it’s why I’m not a big believer in "brainstorming" sessions as the be-all and end-all of idea generation.

Brainstorming is really the mastication step done in a group setting. Yes, sometimes good ideas will come up here. But if that’s where you stop working on them, you’re going to miss out on some far better ones.

Stage 4: The Aha Moment

Out of nowhere, there it is. You don’t know why, but you’re lying in bed … taking a shower … driving the car. And suddenly, BAM! You’ve got it! This is what you’ve been hoping for.

What you’ve got to do now is get it on paper, tape recorder, or computer as soon as possible. At this moment, you’re going to be filled with energy and the details will be gushing out of your neurons. You have to capture that immediately or you’ll lose the magic and power of the idea.

"When it comes to getting brilliant innovations actualized, time is your enemy," says Michael Masterson. In Ready, Fire, Aim, he explains: "Time fogs the memory, erases important details, and eventually dissolves all great ideas. The faster you can get a great idea out of the realm of the conceptual and into action, the better your chances of preserving its original brilliance."

Stage 5: Refinement

But wait just a second. You need a reality check here to make sure your good idea is not really a stinker. How will you know? Michael advises that you define what "good" actually means. For example, if it is a product idea, does that mean it’s better than the competition? Or that the market needs it? And in what quantity?

Be humble. Don’t assume the world is dying for your idea. Make sure there’s already an unmet need for it.

So now that you know the five stages of developing good, marketable ideas, here’s some practical advice for generating those ideas:

* Read and Absorb Life Like a Sponge - ETR’s good friend and business futurist Rich Schefren says he starts the day with one goal: Learn one new, useful, interesting thing. Just one.

As I mentioned, exciting new ideas rarely appear out of nowhere. They need plenty of fodder - the little ideas you get from reading and observing and learning new things.

* Get Pissed Off - Television infomercial genius A.J. Khubani is always on the alert for little annoyances in his life that are likely to be irritating to many other people. And then he thinks of ways to eliminate them. AdAge.com tells this story …

"When Khubani went to fix a fuse in his house a few years back, he found himself on the dark side of his basement. ‘I said, "When we built this house, we really should have put a light bulb here,"’ he recalls. ‘And that was it.’ Light bulb! He invented a battery-operated light that looks like an ordinary incandescent. Its holder sticks to the wall, but the bulb can be removed and carried around. It made its debut in September 2006. More than 5 million have been sold - so far."

* Recombine - Take existing ideas and try fitting them into different places and spaces. In ETR’s program Think Inside the Box, David Deutsch has tons of unusual suggestions for getting results this way. For example: Do the Opposite (flip it or reverse it) … Divide It Up (split it into pieces) … and Take Something Out (extract, isolate, or highlight one part).

* Zone Out - At Rich Schefren’s recent "New Beginnings" conference, Product Launch guru Jeff Walker was asked how he comes up with good ideas. I was a little bit annoyed when Jeff "stole" what I considered MY best practice …

"When I’m trying to solve a tough problem, I go for a run," said Jeff. "Chances are better than not that I’ll come up with a great solution by the time I’m home."

I’d say at least 75 percent of my best ideas come to me when I’m out running. I strongly suspect there’s some kind of chemical change that kicks in and actually triggers something upstairs. Sometimes I’ll get one idea. Sometimes all sorts of stuff starts popping up. What fun! More than once, I’ve come home from a run and had to scramble for a sheet of paper to write down the ideas before I forgot them.

Kellogg School of Management professor Andrew Razeghi agrees with Jeff and me. "Encounters with extraneous and apparently irrelevant bits of information appear to be common precursors to moments of creative insight," he writes in his just-released book The Riddle - Where Ideas Come From and How to Have Better Ones. "Write down the problem or question you have. Then do something else for a while. When you come back to it, see what new ideas may have emerged."

Try out this physical approach to mental inspiration and see if it doesn’t work for you!

* Travel and Network - Here at Early to Rise, we’re big believers in getting frequent exposure to new ideas from outside the office.

I’d estimate ETR’s Customer Service Manager Sharika Kellogg attends an outside conference at least 4 times a year. Inevitably she returns bursting with ideas for how to improve ETR’s customer service - and even our marketing.

ETR’s Publisher, MaryEllen Tribby, always seems to be flying around the country to attend various events. In fact, she spoke at Rich Schefren’s big summit in Orlando just recently. She explained to over 200 attendees that ETR’s success has come largely from being an idea publisher rather just a marketing company. "If you’re just trying to sell the next hot product, you’re going to be spinning your wheels and working too hard," she told the crowd. "But a single good idea can explode into multiple marketing ideas, multiple content ideas, and multiple product ideas."

And in early March, I went to the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW), where I heard from cutting-edge idea generators like MIT professor and futurist Henry Jenkins, Mark Zuckerberg (23-year-old founder of Facebook), Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Workweek), Frank Warren (of the viral "My Secret" postcard phenomenon), and dozens more.

Start thinking today about how you can integrate the "idea factory" steps I’ve given you into your life … and how they might help you become the next multimillion-dollar "Idea Publisher."

You know the old saying: When you can invent a better mousetrap (or light bulb or social-networking website …), the world will beat a path to your door.

And with wallets wide open!

Contributed by Charlie Byrne
Guest Contributor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE™

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6 Comments »

1. Comment by Kevin Rogers — May 29, 2008 @ 11:41 am

   Great article, Charlie! Love your points about getting ideas outside the office and learning new things…
    
   Our own individual points of reference are part of what make us unique. Sometimes the cross-referencing of those experiences can lead to million dollar ideas.

   Joe Sugarman gives a relevant example about one of his biggest products…

   He was able to turn a potential flaw in the frequency setting of a walkie-talkie into it’s driving benefit by calling it, "The Pocket CB" and cashing in on the CB radio fad of the 70s.

   But, without his past experience as a ham radio operator, he might not have seen this potential.

   The demand to keep up with marketing trends can cause to develop tunnel vision. Which, ironically, is one of the problems we are hired by business owners to solve.

   It makes us better marketers to get out and touch the world… Thanks for the reminder.

   Great stuff!

   Kevin Rogers

2. Comment by Sarah Clachar — May 29, 2008 @ 12:05 pm

   Good article.

   I want to emphasize the disassociation theme.  It’s hard to come up with new ideas when you are enmeshed in all the information coming at you - reading 3 newspapers will give you lots of information, but will you really have time to think about the information, mull over it and come up with some new insight?

   If you go back to some great thinkers of our time - Jefferson, Franklin, Edison, Einstein - they weren’t busy reading everyone else’s ideas all the time (althought they did read).  They were observing people, nature - themselves - and letting observations coalesce into understandings and insights.

   If you’re looking for some new ideas, take a break from all the information absorption, work in the garden, really look at your kids playing and interacting, let some feelings sift up inside of you and notice them, go to the supermarket and just watch people shopping.  And give your brain time to sift through what you’ve noticed and make connections.

   People are indeed looking for good advice and guidance these days.  Information is a useful ingredient for generating this - but nothing replaces direct observation and mulling over what you’re seeing and experiencing.

   Sarah Clachar
   health copywriter

3. Comment by Blake — May 29, 2008 @ 12:31 pm

   Hey everybody. I’m just going through the audio program for Psycho Cybernetics. It covers a lot of the same material, but in hours of detail. If you want more on using these kinds of tactics you should check it out.

4. Comment by Linda Byam — May 29, 2008 @ 2:02 pm

   Bubble baths. Worked for me for years. It’s like the warm water is a creative womb from which one’s brain emerges new and clean and clear. Maybe it’s the nap in the tub. Whatever. Linda

5. Comment by Susan Connors — May 31, 2008 @ 3:37 am

   Excellent read! Too often is easy to become jaded and bored with our lives and work. Becoming complacent or letting the tonnes of information overload you, can be mind numbing. You end up a walking zombie - living dead they are called in my on-line games.

   Taking time out to relax, refresh and retreat can be hard. The guilt factor kicks and the negative monkey sitting on your shoulder, turns into a gorilla as you kick yourself.

   You need to remember to look after you. Not just the feed, bath etc, the real you. I found if I don’t treat myself as a friend, then I am pain the butt to be around. I get snappy, stroppy and stressful. This reflects in my work and family situation.

   Taking time out gives me a chance to chew, to reflect, revamp, revisit ideas. Life is hard enough at times without us making it harder for ourselves.

   Something I learnt a long time ago. It explains why I hated the old methods of sales I did when I did public relations, car sales and more. I didn’t believe in their approach. People are not fools. I couldn’t force myself to be pushy to con people. I even failed at telemarketing - ringing people on the phone from the telephone directory and selling stuff.

   Ideas can inspire and create, excite and invite. I no longer "sell" stuff, I am an ideas person and writer. I create pictures, help a person see a new possibility, that there ideas/products can be looked at differently in a positive light.

   Being an ideas person, is a great weight of shoulders! It is easier to create ideas, let a client grow with you and together create new possibilities.

   The pressure is taken off when creating ideas or showing a client possibilities.

   Thank you again for a being a positive light in my day.

6. Comment by Kevin Riley — June 18, 2008 @ 5:04 am

   Two things work very well for me. I’m an info junkie, so I read tons of stuff - usually a half dozen books going at one time, plus uncountable websites. Then, I go to the gym and pound the weights. In the middle of a workout I have to take a breather and quickly write down my ideas.