How could a lucrative social network be built around book recommendations within specific niches? In this post you can read how I would do it!
The topic here is “free-to-use new business ideas that I came up with but don’t have the time and resources to make into reality at the moment”. As always, if you want to take an idea and do it yourself, please tell me first! Maybe we could create a joint venture?
The problem
Self-help and personal development is a huge book category and one that I’m fairly familiar with, so let’s start there. I know many, many people who love picking up inspirational literature. They have a challenge (or several of them) in their life, and the book title promises them that all their problems will be solved. Then they read through them just to get that warm fuzzy feeling… and then not DO very much in the way of changing their life.
This of course leads to the challenge remaining unchanged, and then they see the next book with an alluring title and front cover… and the cycle continues. In short, we need to create some kind of feedback loop that motivates people to take action on the good information they consume in good books. And no, this is not only relevant to the self-help genre…
The solution
A community for reading and writing book reviews – but with a twist: All books are actionable “how-to” books and all reviews are submitted by filling in a form with pre-defined fields where the reader shares their measurable and quantified result thanks to the book and their personal story of how it “changed their life”.
The portal can carry all segments of instructional books: Life success, relationships, finances, technical skills, etc. The goal is to create an inspiration engine that kicks people into action and life improvement.
The site is monetized through affiliate links for book sales, most obviously. Also ads catering to each respective segment. Will get massive link love by building community with book bloggers/forums. (When I got the idea my plan was to start testing and building content/community on the Swedish market, then duplicate in English for global domination.)
That’s it, folks. Have you ever read a great, inspiring book that felt life-changing? Could you go back and figure out what it was that made you take action and create a result? Do you think other people would appreciate reading your story about reading the book?
