Will Anyone Want Your Product?

By Bonnie Boots

As a writer and designer, I've been involved in product creation and marketing almost all my life. When I'm awake, I'm working on a product, or more likely several products at a time. And when I'm asleep, I'm often dreaming up ideas for new ones. Creating is my life, and in my life it has simply never occurred to me to ask the question "Who would want to buy what I make?”

Which is curious, because it's such a practical question. Certainly it's the first question any corporation asks before they embark on production. Before a project gets the green light, a marketing study is done to determine who the target market is, how many of a product are likely to be sold and what the profit potential is.

People learning about internet marketing are always being encouraged to do their own market studies before they put time and effort into creating a product. Cyberspace is filled with thousands of articles proclaiming the wisdom of researching keywords to find out what people are asking the search engines. If search engines are showing millions of hits on “dog + training,” the theory goes, then a book on how to train a dog is what you should immediately write.

This is good advice, as far as it goes. Doing a keyword search before creation does at least assure you that there are people looking for information on your topic before you expend time and effort producing a book about it.

But I part company with this theory when it comes to passion. Passion is what drives me to design. Passion is why I write. When something grabs my attention and my brain starts generating ideas, I get so fired up about what I want to create that it simply never occurs to me to ask, “Who will want to buy this?”

I know from experience that when I write and design around my own passions, my enthusiasm and energy communicate themselves through my work. And because people are naturally attracted to enthusiasm and energy, my work always finds an audience.

I do not have a passion for training dogs. If I relied on keyword searches alone and wrote a book on dog training just because it's a popular Google query, it would be a sorry, soulless sort of a book.

But if you have a passion for dog training, and you have as well a burning desire to share your passion with others, then your book will communicate to people much more than just dry knowledge about training tactics. It will communicate your love of dogs and your desire to help animal and people share better lives together. People lucky enough to read your book will find their own passions ignited by yours, and so your book will become a vehicle for passing on enthusiasm as well as information.

Product creation is an art. And passion is at the heart of all true art.

If you can match your passion to a popular keyword search, that's all the better. With good marketing, you're likely to have great sales.

But if you work without passion, the products you create will shortchange both you and the marketplace.  You will rob yourself of the joyful experience of creative expression of your true self. And you will rob the marketplace of an opportunity to be both inspired and informed by your true self.

If there's one thing the world does not need, it's yet another soulless product dropped into the marketplace like a hook into the ocean, with no purpose except to snag our wallets and no care other than to keep us from asking for a refund.

If there's one thing the world does need, it's the voice of people who have a passion. When you speak to the world with your passionate voice, you send what you love out into the world, and love in any form always inspires. Do what you love, pass on your passion, and you will never have to ask yourself “Who will buy my product?”

 About the Author

Bonnie Boots is the publisher/editor of The Internet Wizards Magazine for people who want to create their own products and market on the internet. Register for your free 1-year subscription at http://www.theinternetwizards.com .