Hidden Gems at Problogger.net—Launching the 31 DBBB Ebook

Note: While this post is older, Problogger continues to be one of my most favorite blogging resources. (Editor's Note 09/2015)

One of my favorite blogs to read is Darren Rowse's Problogger.net. I envy him not only because he's one of the top bloggers in the world, because he has over 100k RSS readers, because he's published several blogging books, and because he has a cool Australian accent, but also because lately he's had some really helpful information on his blog that I'd like to bring to your attention.

I'm not going to talk about his posts, which are all really helpful. Here are a few of my favorites:

• 13 Tips for Marketing Your Business With Your Blog
• 5 Ways to Systemize Your Blogging
• One Blog or Many? [VIDEO]
• How to Write Great Blog Content
• How to Write Your About Me Page

If you're a blogger, I bet you're dying to click on those links. Darren has a special way of enticing readers even before they start reading the post—just with words in the title.

Anyways, as I had  said, I'm not going to talk about his blog posts. I want to discuss the launch of his recent book, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Each day for an entire month, he wrote a blog post that defined a particular task that any blogger could do to help improve his or her blog. He started off by saying: “Give me 31 Days and I'll Give You a Better Blog…Guaranteed.”

During the month of posts, he gave tips and tricks related to planning, content creation, promotion, building relationships and much more. The works! After all 31 posts were finished, he compiled the information into a book that has since sold over 16,000 copies….in less than a month.

I've said this before and I'm saying it again (because this proves it), you can use the content on your existing blog to create and sell an ebook! This is exactly what Darren has done, and it's ALSO exactly what I did on my LEED website to create my ebook. People will pay for content that already exists on your website. To give you an idea from my own experience, out of the 4000+ customers I've served with my ebook, only 2 people have asked me for a refund because it contained the same material on my website.

I believe this works because the information in the ebook is well organized, helpful, and purposeful.

When I say purposeful, I mean it has value because it will help someone accomplish a certain task. For example, Darren's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog will obviously help people make their blogs better (guaranteed! he says, and I believe it). For me, my material helps people pass a test. The more you are able to help people perform a specific task or reach a certain goal, the better. As I mentioned in my previous post, if you go too broad in your subject matter, you'll have less readers, followers and ultimately customers.

In Addition

Darren uses some great tactics to help promote his book and increase his conversion rates:

• A Sweet Tagline: “Give me 31 Days and I’ll Give You a Dramatically Better Blog… Guaranteed.” Pretty good if you ask me.
• A “Nothing Fancy” Sales Page: You can view it for yourself, but he basically says who it's for, what's inside, and how to use it.
• A Money-Back Guarantee: Always a good thing to have. Even though you may have to issue some refunds because of it, you'll make much more than you lose from the guarantee.
• Proof: He has a small bio about 3 of his blogs and explicity mentions: “These three sites reach a combined audience of over 3 million a month.” So based on this…you can tell he knows his stuff.

Very cool stuff, and these are techniques that I've talked about before that you can use for yourself!

In my personal opinion, I think he's missing two crucial items: testimonials and the “magic button.”

He does have some comments about his workbook in another blog post, but I think one or two “awesome” testimonials on his sales page would help his conversion rates even more, especially if they had numbers in them (everyone loves numbers, like: earnings, or traffic…things people (especially bloggers) can relate to).

Regarding his “add to cart button,” I think it's a little small. It has been proven that the magic button does indeed increase conversion rates, bigtime.

Again, if you're interested in his sales page and his brand new ebook, you can check it out by clicking here. (full disclosure – I earn a commission if you purchase)

My 10-Part “How to Write an Ebook” Series

As you may be aware of, I have a 10-part series on How to Write an Ebook here on the SPI blog. [Editor's Note: This series has been turned into Ebooks the Smart Way, a free ebook. Download it today!] You're probably wondering why I don't do the same thing. I could, but I have other plans for it at the moment. I'll let you know what they are once things get finalized, but to give you a heads up, I did indeed create an ebook out of the series and I will be using it as a bonus for another product that will be out fairly shortly.

Anyways, has anyone else noticed how Darren so smoothly launched his ebook recently? Pretty awesome stuff to see it all happen. Will you be next?