About two miles from where I am sitting right now, there sits a small building at the end of a dead-end road.

Two decades ago, I would spend my evenings in that building, practicing my oration skills and spinning records. 

"WBBZ, 1230 AM. Ponca City. Next up is a song from the 'Eyes Wide Shut' movie soundtrack. Here is 'Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing,' by Chris Isaak."

That song was so good. It made me break the stations rules. It wasn't in the stations "song rotation," but I had to listen to it every day. After a couple months of me playing that song, the station manager finally relented and put it into the actual rotation. :)

I spun records from 1998 to 2000.

The guy who owned the radio station also owned the local newspaper and local ISP. I always had my laptop at the radio station while I was on the air. While songs were playing, I was researching and writing.

I had a good thing going on there. I was getting paid to write, before people were actually paying for what I had written.

It was acceptable to do that. The weekend guys would bring their homework to the radio station and do it while spinning records. Of course, we weren't actually spinning records, because all music was on CD's by that time...

The station owner noticed that I was always working on the laptop when he came by to check on things. 

One day in January of 2000, he came by the station. He pointed out that he "noticed that I was very fluent with the computer," so he offered me a job at the newspaper. He even promised a healthy raise if I took his offer. 

Dumbass me... I said yes... I should have asked more questions... LOL

My new job at the newspaper was retyping and formatting the weekly sermon, retyping and formatting the minutes of the county and city meetings, typing up city briefs, typing up classified ads, and handling any miscellaneous typing jobs that came down the pike. 

My new job was a huge let-down. It wasn't at all what I expected. 

The worse part was that my "healthy raise" was a whole nickel an hour!

It is the only promotion I ever received when I had a job that I later regretted taking. In fact, about eight weeks after going to work at the newspaper, I quit. The whole thing was just a real kick in the gut.

The two things that really annoyed me about it was that the job I was put into was so far below my actual skill sets, AND a "healthy nickel raise."

Now, I am not telling you this story because I want to brag about a job I had two decades ago. 

Nope. The reason I am sharing this with you is that we had a running joke at the radio station...

The joke was that we actually only had four listeners... The station manager... The station owner... That little old lady who had been listening to the station since she was a kid... And that guy who always called to bitch about the high school coaches...

One night, I was on the air... It was election night, and the station manager was calling in with voting results... I was supposed to port his phone call to the control panel for broadcasting purposes... I clicked the wrong button and put that guy on the air who was complaining about the high school coaching staff... The station manager was livid when he realized what I had done... LOL

"Sorry, I clicked the wrong button," only infuriated him even more... LOL

Guilty as charged... 

Sometimes I tell long-winded stories that serve as an analogy for an idea that I would like to share with you... :)

At the radio station, we had four listeners... That was the entire point of the story...

I felt it was an important concept to share with you, because often times, we are only able to scrounge four readers for our books... I hate when that happens...

At the radio station, we didn't know... We simply assumed, tongue-in-cheek, that we only had four listeners...

It is far more obvious for our books sometimes, because we can log into our Amazon author control panel and see that only four people - or fewer people - have purchased our book.

I often talk to people who try to explain to me that "my book sucked," or that "no one liked my book."

I always ask, "How do you know?"

I do that for a reason, because the answer is almost always the same, "No one is buying my book."

It is a kick in the gut that people take personally. 

This is my cue to advise people of the reality of the situation...

If no one has read your book, your book is not the problem. The problem is one of two things, most likely, both of the following items:

1. No one has found your book yet; and
2. No one has been convinced that they would want to read your book.


How can your book be the problem, if no one has read your book yet?

It does suck to have spent so much time writing a book that you can be proud to tell others you have written, only to see it collect virtual dust on Amazon when no one buys it...

About 15 years ago, I was reading a lot on the topic of how to use Google Adwords to grow my sales.

One particular fellow I was reading put it like this...

He said, one of the best ways to measure how big your audience would be for a particular offer was to look at the people running ads currently on your target keywords...

He said that lots of people advertising on a particular search keyword phrase is a clear indication that there is money to be made using those keywords, and that keyword phrase was likely profitable, because people were continuing to spend money for placement on those keywords.

He said that if our keyword had no Google ads, it was likely because advertisers had tried it and it wasn't profitable for them to keep those ads running. 

The purpose of looking at ads on Google searches was to determine if there was a large audience of consumers willing to spend money to learn about the topic.

This is key...

We need to find out if there is a large audience of consumers willing to spend money to learn about the topic we are writing - if we write nonfiction...

Let me try to put this in perspective for you...

Suppose your target keywords are "free giveaways."

Sure. There are a lot of people probably looking for that kind of information, BUT are they willing to spend money to find out how they can get stuff for free?

Unless you can figure out how to make money by giving away stuff for free, it is kind of pointless to spend money on advertising to get the attention of those consumers...

In most cases, people who are looking for stuff they can get for free don't have any money to spend... So, why would you want to spend your money getting the attention of those people?

There are two things we should be looking at when we are trying to pick a topic for our nonfiction books...

1. Is there a substantial number of people interested in this topic?
2. Are those people willing to spend money to get the answers they want?


In a nutshell, this is how we successfully pick good topics on which to write our books...

This is very literally a dot-to-dot process for making money as a nonfiction book author...

1. Discover a subject that lots of people are interested in learning more about.
2. Figure out if those people are willing to spend money to learn about the topic.
3. Give people the ability to find your books, by using the right kind of keywords - and optionally, advertising - to help them locate your book listing.
4. Provide people a compelling reason to purchase our books, so they can get the answers they want.
5. Make sure our books will actually deliver on our promises to readers.


Step 5 is your book. The first four steps are the process of leading people to purchase your book.

Today, I would like to tell you about Mike Nielsen's "Connect the Dots Nonfiction" training... :)

This training is dedicated to helping you steer your way through Step 1 of the above-mentioned five-step process.

The training is delivered in a 25-minute video. He has included a written transcript of his video, for those of you who prefer to read. Also included is Mike's Nonfiction Book Template that he uses to write most of his nonfiction books. 

This training also includes a 17-page PDF that picks up where the video ends. The video part of the training will outline for you the general principles of Mike's approach to nonfiction writing. The PDF takes the foundational materials shared in the video and goes much deeper into the subject material. 

Now, you could completely skip the video and go straight to the 17-page PDF, but I do encourage you to at least read the transcript of the video, before diving deep into the primary PDF included in this training. 

You may have noticed... I am a big fan of Mike's training... I promote a lot of his stuff...

But I really do like this training... Probably because I use many of the prescribed strategies myself... :)

I also need to mention that there are two up-sells available with this offer:

1. "Nonfiction - A True Story" ($17) describes how to use the principles of fiction story telling to improve your nonfiction writing skills.

2. "Nonfiction Elite Package"($37) contains three individual training products for nonfiction authors. 

    i. "Book-A-Day Nonfiction" shows you a brilliant method to create software training guides.
   ii. "Book-A-Day Problem Busters" shows you how to identify the people who will want to buy your books and how you can really get their attention so they can buy your books.
  iii. "How To Write Engaging Nonfiction" demonstrates a writing system you can use to connect with your readers on a deep, personal level.


I personally don't think there is a bad apple in this bunch of products. 

I have gone through all of these products, and I like them all. 

My advice is that if you can afford to do so, you should get the main offer and both up-sells. You will be glad you did.

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