ultimate guide

How to Write Ultimate Guides Like Neil Patel

Do you want to know how to write an Ultimate Guide that attracts 361,494 website visitors and 8,421 email subscribers to your website?

Just imagine, how would that impact your business?

How much would your website traffic increase?
How much would your email list grow?
How many more products and services could you sell?

In this post, I’ll show you exactly how to do that – with expert tips from an expert in writing Ultimate Guides, Neil Patel.

Neil Patel is the co-founder of companies like Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics, and is one of the top SEO and online marketing experts out there.

He has also published 12+ Ultimate Guides on his website, attracting up to 361,494 website visitors and 8,421 email subscribers per guide.

Last week I had a chance to jump on a Q & A call with Neil, thanks to our mutual friend Chris Winfield.

I’ve been wanting to talk to Neil about his experience with writing Ultimate Guides, so when the chance presented itself, I took it.

Neil Patel’s 6 Tips on Writing Ultimate Guides

During the Q & A session, I asked Neil the following question:

“Besides choosing an advanced topic, investing in design and splitting an Ultimate Guide into multiple chapters, what are the 1-3 most important things you should pay attention to when writing an Ultimate Guide? Also, what are the 1-3 things people THINK are important, but actually aren’t?”

I already read all of the posts on his website from 2013-2014 where he talks about writing Ultimate Guides and I didn’t want him to just tell me what I already knew. I wanted an answer that’s relevant to 2018.

I loved Neil’s responses so much I turned them into a blog post, which you’ll see below.

The first 3 tips are the common myths, and the second 3 tips are the things that you really need to pay attention to to write a successful Ultimate Guide in 2018.

Let’s dive in!

Tip #1: Don’t write long guides. Write thorough guides.

“Other people think that length is important. With these Ultimate Guides yes, you do want them to be thorough, but length doesn’t matter as much as thoroughness. If you can get the same message across in 7,000 words instead of 20,000, you should keep it at 7,000.”

I agree – just writing a long guide won’t necessarily make it good.

But write a guide that’s more thorough than 99% of the other content out there, and you have a winner.

So how do you actually write a “thorough guide?”

My advice: Use the “BIG SIX” outlining technique

You can create an extremely thorough guide by creating an extremely thorough outline.

In Ultimate Guide System, I teach a 6-step technique for outlining Ultimate Guides that I call I call the “BIG SIX” outlining technique:

Shitty First Draft: Start by writing down all the things YOU think you should include in your guide, without worrying about flow, structure or grammar. This stage is messy.
Research: Add the questions and problems from your audience that you want to solve to your outline. You can do this by going through your research notes and by analyzing other content out there. This stage is still messy.
Clarity: Organize your notes into chapters, and move them into a sequence that makes sense. Turn any jargon or notes to self into plain english language that your audience would understand.
Feedback: Show your outline to 5-10 people in your audience (IDEALLY you’d do this in person or via Skype) and ask them what’s missing from outline, what’s confusing and what you should throw out / expand on. Then improve your outline.
Power ups: Add “power ups” to your outline that make it easier for your readers to turn your advice into action. This could be examples, case studies, scripts, videos, templates, spreadsheets, infographics, frameworks…
Copy: Finally, turn the outline into the table of contents – something you’re comfortable with including in the beginning of your guide.

Go through these six steps (especially #2, #4 and #5), and you’ll write a guide more thorough than 99% of other guides out there.

You can also read my Ultimate Guide Checklist for more tips on writing a really thorough Ultimate Guide.

Tip #2: Don’t spend too much money on design

“Most people think that when you’re doing design, it has to be really pretty and amazing and visually appealing with a lot of graphics. That helps a little bit, but not much, and what you’ll find is that updating the content where there’re too many graphics is a pain, takes too long to update, and when the guides become updated people stop linking to them and sharing them.”

I’ve found this tip from Neil surprising given that he specifically recommended investing in premium design in the past:

Many people that spent that kind of money on Ultimate Guide design echoed Neil’s new advice and told me that that investing in premium design wasn’t worth it.

Especially if you’re just starting out, don’t worry about spending thousands of dollars on design.

Instead, just make sure that you get these three things right:

My advice: The only 3 design elements you need

There are really only 3 things you need to worry about when designing your Ultimate Guide:

PDF: I highly recommend creating a PDF version of your Ultimate Guide to accompany the blog post version of your guide. This will allow you to The simplest way to do this is to write your guide in Google Docs and export it into a PDF. If you want to take it a step further you could get a designer to design it, through ROI of that is questionable.
Opt-in Boxes: The most important part of Ultimate Guide design is to have “opt-in boxes” throughout your guide that allow you to turn your readers into e-mail subscribers. I recommend including opt-in boxes after your outline, at the end of your guide, in the sidebar and as a pop up.
Sharable Cover: If you want your guide to be shared on social media, it’s a good idea to create a cover for it. You might want to create a vertical cover that you use as the PDF cover, but you should also create a horizontal cover with sharable dimensions and set it as a featured image for your blog so it shows up nicely on social media.

You can see a great example of all of the above in my Ultimate Guide to Attending Conferences.

It includes a PDF version of the guide:

It includes multiple opt-in boxes:

It has a horizontal cover:

As well as a shareable cover:

Tip #3: Find a unique angle for your Ultimate Guide

“A lot of people think that just because you create an Ultimate Guide about a major topic, it will get a lot of traffic, and that is completely false. It used to be that way 5-6 years ago, but nowadays you just cannot write a guide about any played out topic, you need to have a unique angle to it. There are already Ultimate Guides for everything, like SEO, PR, you name it. You need to figure out a unique angle to make your content better.”

It’s true that writing an Ultimate Guide isn’t as easy as it was 5 or 6 years ago.

The good news is that you’ll still get much better results from Ultimate Guides today than you’ll get from regular blog posts (as more people than ever are blogging, but relatively few people are writing Ultimate Guides).

If you want to hit a jackpot and attract thousands of email subscribers through your Ultimate Guide, you’ll definitely want to find a unique angle for it.

My advice: Use the Uniqueness Scorecard

To find out how unique your Ultimate Guide idea is, answer the following questions and rate your answers on a scale of 0-3 (0 = NOT TRUE, 3 = VERY TRUE).

I’m targeting a very specific audience with this guide.
I’m covering a very specific topic with this guide.
I am solving a problem with this guide that nobody else is solving for my audience.
I am serving an audience that nobody else is serving well.
There aren’t any good Ultimate Guides on this topic out there yet.

You can go through this exercise by doing a quick google search.

Make sure you google around your guide topic to see how many people are doing the same thing, and how many existing guides are out there.

The max. score you can score here is 15.

Your uniqueness score is 10-15: As long as there is actual demand for this topic, chances are you’ve hit a home-run!
Your uniqueness score is 5-9: You’ll have some competition, but if you put in the work to write the best guide out there it can still be a huge success for you.
Your uniqueness score is 0-4: Your guide isn’t unique enough. You’ll want to pick a more specific audience, a more specific topic or a different audience / topic that nobody is addressing well yet.

Once you complete this exercise, leave a comment below this post and let me know what your guide is and what the uniqueness score for it was!

Tip #4: Link to your Ultimate Guides in your sidebar

“My Ultimate Guides rank really well because I link to them in the sidebar, on almost every page. That helps with ranking. It takes over a year to see results by just adding those links in the sidebar but it works.”

Here’s how Neil links to his Ultimate Guides from his sidebar:

Not only will linking to your guides help you rank higher on Google, it will also help more people see your Ultimate Guides, especially once they get pushed back from the first page of your blog.

My advice: 12 easy ways to drive more traffic to your Ultimate Guide

The sidebar is just one of the places from where you can link to your Ultimate Guide.

Here are 12 easy ways to drive more traffic to your Ultimate Guide:

Sidebar: You can create an “Ultimate Guides” section on your sidebar that shows all of your guides alongside every blog post.
Navigation Menu: You can create a “Free Guides” item in the navigation menu of your website and list your Ultimate Guides underneath.
Homepage: You can link to your Ultimate Guides from your homepage (or include an opt-in box that offers access to the PDF version of your guide).
Welcome Email Sequence: You can email your Ultimate Guides to your new email subscribers as part of your welcome sequence.
Thank You Pages: You can include links to your guides on your thank you pages (that get displayed after someone subscribes to your email list).
Blog Posts: You can link to your Ultimate Guides from your blog posts (and include PDFs as opt-in offers below them).
Facebook Groups: If you run your own Facebook group, you can link to your guides from the group description.
Online Courses: If you have an online course, you can link to your guides from your course membership area.
Social Media Profiles: You can link to your guide from your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media profiles.
Media Bios: You can link to your Ultimate Guides from your media bios after any media profiles, guest posts or interviews you do.
Facebook LIVEs: You can link to your Ultimate Guides in the description or the comments section of a Facebook LIVE.
Email Signature: You can link to your most popular guides in the bottom of each email you send by creating a custom email signature.

The more of these you use, the more eyeballs you’ll get on your guide.

If you want to work through these in more detail, read my posts on 10 quick & easy ways to drive more traffic to your best blog posts and SEO for Ultimate Guides – you’ll love them!

Tip #5: Send your guide to everyone you know

“You need to get the word out there for the guide to do well, and this indirectly helps you get more links to your guide. You want to send your guides to everyone you’re connecting with on the social web. I’m not talking about just posting them on Facebook and LinkedIn, I’m talking about direct messaging every single person you know and saying ‘Hey so and so, thank you for being a friend, I just wrote this guide, feel free to go here and check it out.’ That drives a lot of the traffic when the guide first comes out.”

If you spend weeks and weeks creating an Ultimate Guide, it’s your responsibility to share your guide with as many people as possible.

But how can you do that in a non-spammy and authentic way?

The one thing I would NOT do is reach out to your network and ask everyone to share the guide by saying “Hey, I wrote this guide, can you please share it on social media?!?!?”, especially if you don’t have a strong relationship with someone.

People don’t like it when you only reach out to them when you want something from them, and they’ll feel weird if you constantly ask them to promote your work.

My advice: Use this email script

Instead, you can send your guide to your whole network in a much more authentic way by using the following script:

“Hey NAME,

[Insert Personal Message]

Over the past few months I wrote this super detailed [Ultimate Guide Title] – and I thought I’d send it your way because you might enjoy it (or know someone who does).

Have a great week!

-Your NAME”

Here’s an example of an email like this I’ve sent out:

It’s simple, not spammy at all, and very effective.

Tip #6: Email your guide to your email list

“Make sure you send out your guide to your list. If you don’t do this it won’t do as well. If you’re not collecting emails yet, make sure you start doing that.”

Emailing your guide to email list is one of the first things you should do once you write it.

Your email list is also one of the places where it’s totally ok to ask your loyal readers to spread the word about your guide:

But there’s a way to take this strategy a step further, and get even more out of your Ultimate Guide:

My advice: Treat your Ultimate Guide as a product

If you really want to “squeeze the lemon” and get everything you can out of your Ultimate Guide, you should treat your Ultimate Guide the same way you would treat an online product.

Don’t just send out a single email to your list to launch your guide – write the whole launch sequence!

You could write a 5-day email sequence to successfully launch your guide:

The Problem: Talk about the problem your guide is solving, and why it’s important for you to solve. Hint at the release of a new amazing resource.
Sneak Peek: Share a “preview” of your guide by sharing one punchy technique from the guide. Announce that the big announcement of the guide is coming tomorrow.
Big Announcement: Share the full guide with your readers, and ask them to help you spread the word about it.
Epic Bonus: Remind your readers that they can get access to an epic bonus that you created for them that will help them put the guide into action (a checklist or a worksheet).
Reader Responses: Share the response from your readers about the guide, and link the readers to your guide one last time.

For example, for my Ultimate Guide to Attending Conferences, I could write this email sequence:

The Problem: “3 things you NEVER want to do at a business conference”
Sneak Peek: “The best way to connect with speakers at conferences”
Big Announcement: “The Ultimate Guide to Attending Conferences is Here!”
Epic Bonus: “How to prepare for your next conference in 24 hours”
Reader Responses: “3 reasons why you should read my latest guide (if you haven’t done it yet)”

You can get creative here and tweak the sequence to make it your own. Just make sure you give your guide a big push for a big chance of success.

Want to get started with writing your first Ultimate Guide?

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably interested in writing an Ultimate Guide yourself.

You’ll love my Ultimate Guide Checklist, my free 13,000-word e-book on writing Ultimate Guides.

You’ll learn:

How writing my first Ultimate Guide helped me go from 0 to $38,000 in coaching revenue in an industry where nobody knew me yet.
How I used Ultimate Guides to build an email list of 2,200+ email subscribers within my first year of starting my blog.
How one of my Ultimate Guides lead to a $36,381 product launch and helped me establish myself as an expert in a new niche.

I’ll also show you the exact 9-step checklist you can use to start writing your first Ultimate Guide TODAY!

To download your free e-book, simply leave your name and email in the box below and I’ll send it your way!

-Primoz

P.S. I’d love to know which tip you loved the most – leave a comment below to let me know!

How I Started a 5-Figure Coaching Business With Ultimate Guides

By Primoz Bozic 1 Comment

In my first year of running an online business, I made $38k from scratch.

I had no former business education.

No rich parents or connections.

Not even a website.

All I did to do is used ONE key strategy that I’ll reveal in this post (and I’ll show you EXACTLY how I used it to get my business off the ground).

Let’s dive in!

I went through 2 failed business ideas until I found a great one

A few years ago, I was studying computer science at the university and working in a cubicle as a software developer.

I was sick of working for someone else and loved the idea of becoming my own boss, so I invested $1,000 into Ramit Sethi’s Earn1k course that taught me how to start a freelance business.

Unfortunately, things weren’t as easy as they might sound when you take an online course. It took me 7 months to actually find a great business idea since purchasing the course.

Even though I went through the course and put it into action, my first two business ideas didn’t work out.

My first business idea was to create websites for companies in Slovenia, which I spent quite a few months on.

There were two problems with that idea.

The first problem was that I was working on it with a team that wasn’t as motivated as I was, so while I would do the work, they wouldn’t and would find countless excuses to not make anything happen.

The second problem was that I just wasn’t very good at making websites, so it was hard for me to pursue this idea on my own.

After a few months I moved to another idea, which I hoped would be more promising.

Since I read a lot of books about productivity, I had an idea to work with companies and help their employees become more productive.

I spent another month on that idea and came close to making my first sale with it, but then a few days before we were supposed to start working together, the company let me know that they couldn’t hire me.

I was discouraged that another one of my ideas bit the dust, and for the next few months or so I didn’t really focus on starting a business.

The crazy idea that turned into my first successful online business

Then, one morning, I woke up at 6am morning and had this crazy idea that I could teach online poker players how to be more productive.

I used to play online poker myself and was pretty active in a community, and since I stopped playing it I learned how to become a lot more productive myself.

I connected the dots, and realized that if I could help poker players become more productive and focused, they could make more money while playing poker, and pay me to help them do that.

That’s how the idea about productivity coaching for online poker players was born.

I wasn’t sure if my idea was going to work out. I was afraid that people would make fun of me.

Like, “who is this guy? He’s never made millions with poker, so how can he teach me about productivity? And I don’t need anyone to teach me how to be more productive… That’s for losers”.

Still, I decided to give it a shot. So in my dark room in my parent’s apartment, at 6am in the morning, I decided to write an article and publish it on the poker forum that I’ve been active in in the past. I gathered all the information I could from various sites, like Six of the best, to make my article as authentic as possible.

I called it “The Quick Guide to Skyrocketing Your Poker and Life Productivity”:

How a “short article” accidentally turned into a 26,000+ word Ultimate Guide

I wrote just a few paragraphs about how important it is to have a clear vision and goals if you want to be successful, and went back to sleep as I was finished at 7:10am:

At 11:38am, I woke up and immediately checked my post to see that there were 3 encouraging responses to it:

This wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to gain some momentum and confidence to keep writing more (at least my worst nightmare of people hating my content didn’t come true).

After that, I consistently kept writing more and more chapters for the guide, every 1-3 days:

Some of these chapters were shorter, others were longer. I kept writing about what I felt was important, and also addressed the questions I would get along the way in the comments that I got on the guide (here’s a comment that made me write a whole chapter on sleep):

With every chapter, the “short article” grew bigger and bigger… And eventually it became a 26,000 word Ultimate Guide – the most detailed and comprehensive piece of content about productivity for online poker players.

Writing the guide wasn’t always easy.

In fact, it took me more than 6 months to finish the guide.

For the first two months, I was able to get a new chapter of the guide out every 1-3 days. Then, as other opportunities came to me because of writing the guide (more on that shortly), I got distracted and fell off track.

It was harder and harder for me to get back on track, so it took me a week to write the next chapter, then two weeks, then a whole month… Until I finally finished the guide in November (I began writing it in April).

The important thing is that I finished it though (the final version of the guide had over 26,000 words), so it wasn’t this thing that would keep nagging me in the back of my mind any more.

How my guide went viral and got 223,000+ views

Because of a combination of reasons, the guide was getting more and more attention in the poker community:

There was nobody else talking to poker players about productivity. I was the only serious person doing it, and I created content that was 1000x better than anything else out there. And I kept creating more and more of it.
Because I posted the guide in an online forum that was visited by thousands of people each day, there was plenty of new traffic coming to the guide as long as it was on the front page of the sub-forum it was in.
I made sure I frequently updated the guide and responded to the questions in the guide. This helped me build the relationships with the readers, add more value to them, but also bumped up the guide frequently so it was constantly on the first page.
Because the guide was so much better than any of the other content out there and there was a real need and demand for it, it was featured in the news section of the forum, and a lot of people kept linking to it from their forum posts, sharing it with others, etc.

Over time, the guide got more and more views. I was excited when it hit 1,000 views. Then 10,000 views. Then 100,000 views. The guide was more popular than I ever imagined it being.

Ultimately, the guide got over 223,000 views and over 452 comments:

When your guide is incredible, people will go out of their way to share it

Because the forum I posted the guide in had multiple non-english communities (German, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese…) who were very engaged, certain members of these communities voluntarily translated the guide into 7 different languages because they liked it so much.

This allowed the guide to reach even more people – for example, the German version of the guide got over 37,000 views and 129 comments:

And to this day it’s by far the most detailed and known piece of content on the internet about productivity for online poker players.

All of the 6 months that I spent on the guide were paying off. When you put in the work to create something incredible that nobody has put together before, people notice. And they talk about it and spread the word about it for you, without you even asking them to do it.

Together with all of the translations, my Ultimate Guide was seen by over 300,000 people. That’s 1.5 times the population of the capital of Slovenia where I live in!

How I made my first sale with my Ultimate Guide

Because the guide was so popular, a couple of interesting things happened.

The first thing that happened as I wrote the guide was that a few poker players reached out to me to work with me 1on1 on helping them become more productive, which is how I made my first 50EUR online (around $50):

Shortly after that, the owners of the poker forum that I wrote the guide on got in touch with me and asked me if I wanted to create monthly educational videos and host weekly live coaching classes where I would work continue to build on the concepts that I shared in my guide:

I made a total of 40 videos, and each of them got between 5,000 and 10,000 views (sometimes more). This means that all of my videos were seen about 300,000 times.

I also had regular 2 hour long live coaching calls, which had around 50-100 people on the call each week.

Helping so many people make a difference in their life at such a young age (I was around 22-24 at the time I did this) felt incredible. It also helped that I was able to create these videos on a recurring basis and have a reliable, sustainable source of income.

I got paid around $50/hour for my live coaching calls and around $200/video, which took me a few hours to create:

I wasn’t making crazy money in the beginning, but earning $500-$1,000/month doing something I loved on a consistent basis was a lot of money for me since I was still living with my parents and had no real expenses besides renting the office that I worked from.

To me, it was more important to see that I CAN do this. That I can be my own boss. Work on my own terms. Make peoples’ lives better.

That I didn’t need to rely on my boss while programming in a cubicle to decide what I’d get paid, that I could work from home, when I wanted to, on what I wanted to.

Knowing this allowed me to keep consistently making progress in my business and ultimately get me to where I am today.

From $50/hour to $38k in a year

Since I was able to record more and more videos and have more and more live coaching calls, the consistent revenue from my freelance work quickly added up.

40 videos at $200 each brought in around $8,000 in revenue. A similar amount of live coaching calls over time brought in another $4,000, bringing the total revenues from my guide to $12,000.

The videos and the live coaching calls were a nice, consistent stream of income, but they weren’t the biggest source of income for me.

As so many people saw my guide, the live coaching calls and the videos, more and more people wanted to start working with me. I went from charging $50/h for 1on1 coaching to up to $400/h.

This meant that the $50 invoices turned into $5,000 invoices:

The number of coaching clients varied – one month I would get 5 new clients, and the other month I’d get none – but as I gradually increased my rates from $50/h to $75/h to $100/h, $125/h, $250/h and finally $400/h, the revenues added up.

Within the first year of starting my business, I brought in an additional $20,000 in coaching revenues, bringing the total revenues from my guide to $32,000.

As I got more and more coaching clients, I was working with 13 different clients ad one point, which was great money-wise, but I was slowly starting to burn out.

I wanted to help more people while investing less time, so I started a month-long group coaching program together with another poker mindset coach.

40+ people signed up for the program and we each got $150 per client, so this program brought in additional $6,000 in a month – bringing the final revenues to $38,000 in a year.

All of this was the result of just ONE Ultimate Guide that I wrote.

BONUS: How I got 278,958+ website visitors, 6,150+ email subscribers and made $300k+ in revenue

Writing my first Ultimate Guide was just the beginning of my online business.

Since that point, I’ve written multiple Ultimate Guides that have helped bring 278,958+ website visitors, 6,150+ email subscribers and $300k+ in revenue to my online business.

Want to know EXACTLY how I did it (and how you can too)?

I’ll tell you ALL about it in my FREE 13,000+ word Ultimate Guide Checklist.

All you need to do is enter your name and email below, and I’ll send it straight to your inbox!

Learn how I attracted 337,838+ visitors to my blog

Download my free 13,000+ word Ultimate Guide Checklist and learn how I used Ultimate Guides to drive 337,838+ visitors to my blog!

I’ll see you on the other side :).

-Primoz

How Nick Earned $3,049 (And Got a JOB OFFER) Within Days of Publishing His Ultimate Guide

By Primoz Bozic Leave a Comment

Here’s a question I get a lot…

“Can I actually make money with an Ultimate Guide?”

The answer is yes. HELL YES.

Today I’m thrilled to introduce you to Ultimate Guide System graduate Nick, who used his Ultimate Guide to bring in 4 consulting clients (worth $3,094) AND a job offer within days of publishing his Ultimate Guide.

Meet Nick Wolny:

Nick is known for two things:

Eating peanut butter & scrambled eggs for breakfast during the Ultimate Guide System live calls
He’s establishing himself as the go-to expert in Facebook Advertising and Digital Marketing for local fitness and yoga businesses

A few months ago, Nick was still working as a general business coach for fitness businesses. He saw some initial success with his business idea as he got the first few clients through his network, but then the things slowed down.

He exhausted his network and knew that he needed to build an audience.

He knew that in order to do that, he would need to stand out and find a more specific niche. He decided to pivot to digital marketing consulting, as he saw a gap in the market when he worked with his first few clients.

As he did that, he had a huge imposter syndrome when he thought about writing about digital marketing, as he felt like he was competing with companies like Digital Marketer. Those people had 10+ years of experience, while he acquired his skills just over a year ago. Why would anyone listen to him?

Still, he put himself out there. He started writing. He tried to create truly remarkable content.

And that’s where he got stuck.

He knew he needed to create remarkable content to cut through the noise, but didn’t know HOW to do it.

He didn’t know how to create remarkable, meaty content that people would find insanely valuable and want to work with him after reading it.

“The content i created wasn’t research driven, and wasn’t rigorous (which makes the difference in content). I tried to be too charming in my writing. I tried to wriggle my way into creating valuable content by making people laugh. But the content I created wasn’t deep and valuable. It was charming surface level content, and that was it. There was no meat in my content.

My email subscribers responded to my emails with responses like “LOL”, and not with detailed emails about how they’d implement my strategies in their businesses. I wasn’t attracting clients that wanted to do the work. I attracted readers that wanted to be entertained.

Every time I tried to write a post longer than 1,500 words, I failed. I couldn’t deliver a long, valuable piece of content. I didn’t know how to do it, what to talk about or how to structure it. There were so many tripwires where I got stuck and never finished my writing. From coming up with a title, to validating the idea with my market, to creating a table of contents… I was never able to finish my pieces.”

That’s when Nick joined Ultimate Guide System. In fact, he was the first person to sign up for it.

“I wanted a system that would help me get email subscribers that didn’t feel like sh*t”

“I noticed how I behaved through Ramit Sethi’s Ultimate Guides. Whenever I saw one, I stopped everything I was doing and read them. I wanted to get every single bonus with the guide. I wanted to read everything. There’s just something magnetic about Ultimate Guides. I wanted to do that for my audience too.

I wanted a system that would help me get email subscribers that didn’t feel like shit. I didn’t want to do things like 5 day challenges or messenger bots. I wanted to focus on ONE QUALITY way of getting email subscribers. I knew writing an Ultimate Guide would force me to focus on one thing that works. It would put guard rails around what I’m doing, and allow me to go really deep on a topic.

I really just wanted to say “hey, I’m Nick, I’m going to offer this super valuable thing to these people who think just like me, and see what happens”.”

Nick ended up successfully writing his first Ultimate Guide with Ultimate Guide System:

The Complete Beginner’s Guide To Monetizing Facebook Live For Your Fitness Or Yoga Business

Just a few weeks into the program, as he was doing the research with his Ultimate Guide, Nick not only got one, but TWO paying clients:

Nick sharing his wins in the UGS community

Nick’s first client with his Ultimate Guide

This essentially paid for the whole course within WEEKS of joining it.

So how did it happen?

“Two people reached out to me when they saw me do the market research validation on my Facebook wall. We sat down, talked about what they needed, and they signed up with me as consulting clients. I made my full investment for the course back within weeks of joining it.”

Once he published his guide, he got 2 more consulting clients from it that reached out to him:

A potential client reaching out to Nick after he published his Ultimate Guide

Nick’s $1,500 3-month retainer client

This brought the total revenues from his guide to $3,094 within a few days of publishing his first guide.

But here’s the best part of Nick’s story.

Shortly after publishing his guide, a CEO of a company reached out to him to offer him a job interview for a marketing director position because of his guide:

Since then, Nick has made it to the 5th round of interviews over the past 5 weeks, and he might very well be getting a new job because of his Ultimate Guide. Even I never expected that something like that would happen through an Ultimate Guide. That’s absolutely insane.

“People now perceive me as an expert. They want to work with me because I know what they need, even if they don’t.”

Here’s what Nick loved the most about his new clients:

“With all of my 4 clients, they came to me and said “I’m not sure what I need, but I’m ready to pay – just name the price.” This was super interesting to me and SO AWESOME, because I was never good at sales, pitching or cold calling.

I didn’t need to “sell” these people, they were already sold. For them to come to me and for that to happen multiple times, and to say “I’m not sure what I need but I want to pay you because you know what I need”, that’s incredible. It feels like people perceive me as an expert. They want to work with someone who will know what they need, even if they don’t, and that person is now me.”

“More and more cool things are happening to me because of my guide”

“After I published my guide, Leadpages reached out to me and wanted to interview me about my guide. They’re planning on featuring me as an expert in their next Ultimate Guide that’s coming out later this week.

Another cool thing that happened was that some of my idols and heroes from the online business world that I followed for a while signed up to my email list. Now I know I really gotta bring it. I need to keep my email list engaged, and I’m expected to bring my A-game.”

No more “LOL!” email responses!

And guess what? He’s no longer getting “LOL!” email responses, but actual detailed emails with questions from his potential clients instead:

“Now it’s EASY for me to consistently create remarkable content”

Remember how Nick struggled with creating remarkable content?

Well, over the past few months, he:

Successfully published his first 13,000+ word Ultimate Guide
Wrote 3 Huffington Post articles that were between 1,500-2,000 words long
Is 6,000+ words into writing his second Ultimate Guide

Nick’s new Huffington Post articles

“Now I’m confident from start to finish what creating remarkable content looks like. One of the biggest confidence markers is that I wrote my Ultimate Guide in the time frame of the course. Now I know that writing a new blog post won’t last for 6 months or 10 months.

I’ve written 3 pieces for Huffington Post in the last month. I’m building a digital footprint and writing regularly. I reached out to a few gyms, wrote about them in Huffington Post, which allowed me to connect with the local gyms, they’re sending me contacts, and creating buzz for me.

I’ve had the opportunity to post on Huffington Post since September, but never did it. Now I’m creating 2k word rigorous blog posts ON THE SIDE, and it’s not a big deal to do it.”

“I’m coming from a position of power, not force”

“I’m increasingly confident about building my business with power, not force. I’m not saying hurry the fuck on my list and i’ll take your money like a lot of people in my industry do. You want to join my list because we have a similar mindset, and I’ll show you a quality approach to digital marketing for your business.

In the marketing space there is an abundance of join now, buy now. For me, less is more. I know there’s people out there that are looking for solid information, without being sold to like crazy. I want to help those people.”

Nick’s future: from $3,000 online courses to becoming a Forbes contributor

“I eventually want to create a high end group program, with a live call approach like in Ultimate Guide System, with a community for a period of time, where I work together with fitness business owners on their marketing. I know that to have a 6-month semi-personalized experience at $3,000 is a steal for them.

I also want to become a Forbes contributor that talks about the intersection of fitness and capitalism. A lot of people are tapped into how people want to feel and look. It’s a multi billion dollar business. There’s a business conversation to be had around that, and also exercising together, working out together, talking about community, and the transformation that comes with it.

Fitness is leadership, needs to be talked about, and in a platform like Forbes, people will take it seriously. Now I’m working on building my digital footprint to be able to get there.

Now I’m more savvy than before. I want to get media attention about my work, not about me. I don’t want to be quoted in Time, I want to write an article for Time. I don’t want to be mentioned in media to put a logo on my site. I want to write a killer guest post that people will actually find valuable.”

3 Changes that Nick made to his online business with Ultimate Guide System

Let’s talk about some things that worked really well for Nick, that you too can use to grow your own online business.

1. He gets feedback on his writing early

“One of the big things I learned from Ultimate Guide System is to get feedback on my work early. It’s so powerful.
In the course I asked for feedback on everything. My title, my table of contents, my writing. Even when it wasn’t great yet. It helped me get things right and move forward.

Now I always ask for feedback if I’m not behaving the way I want to behave. I know that if I wrote just 500 words in 3 days that some feels off, and I need to go talk to someone about it to figure out what’s going on.”

This is a great habit of high performing entrepreneurs. They get feedback on their writing earlier rather than later, which helps them move forward whenever they see they might be getting stuck, and keep the momentum going.

2. He writes daily (for the last 70+ days)

“When I started Ultimate Guide System I did this thing where I would write 1,000 words/day each day to finish my guide on time. I streamed it on Facebook Live from a coffee shop every morning.

I’m still doing it to this day, for 70 days, and I’m going to do it for a year. I have this Facebook page where I go live every day. This is where the rigor comes in. I do it every day. I’m doing this, I’m here. Even if I feel like shit and I’m on my couch, I’ll write for at least 15 minutes.”

“When I do it for a year, I’m going to document my experience and share it, and how it changed my business. I already know there’ll be 50 ways in which I could talk about it. How my attitude changed. What changed in my business.

And I know I’ll be able to create more remarkable content and Ultimate Guides consistently this way.”

You don’t have to write for a year, write 1,000 words/day or stream yourself to the world like Nick – but there’s a lesson to be learned here.

If you commit to writing every single day (at least during the week) before you go to work, even if you write just a little bit, writing can become a habit, and creating remarkable content consistently gets easier.

The more uninterrupted time you block off for writing, the more writing you’ll get done.

3. He committed to attending every call and completing the course on time

“When I joined Ultimate Guide System I said to myself I would come to every call and make sure I finish my guide on time. I made it to all but one call. I asked for feedback whenever I could. And I finished the course on time. It took a lot of time, and more than just 3 hours a week, but Primoz told me that right off the bat when I asked him how long it would take. So I was ready.

I loved the live format of the course. I feel like it’s really the best structure out there, to have a lot of concentrated work in the beginning and then support for a long period of time. There’s just SO much value in having the opportunity to work with someone live. But you have to do the work. You have to come to calls, ask questions in slack, get feedback and move forward. And if you do that, it just works.”

This is something that I noticed with my students. The more calls they attended / watched, and the more active they were in the Slack (our chat community), the more they got out of the course and the faster they wrote their guides.

If you really dedicate the time to go through the course as planned, and use the community and all resources available to help you out, you WILL have an Ultimate Guide written by the end of it.

Writing an Ultimate Guide on your own is hard unless you’re the type of person that can write 10,000 words like nothing by themselves, and having a community to support you and to turn to for help is a big piece of consistently creating incredible content.

Here’s what Nick said about Ultimate Guide System:

“Ultimate Guide System was the BEST online course I’ve ever been in. I feel like a schmuck for stealing from Primoz.”

“I’ve learned so many things in Ultimate Guide System. How to methodically define and validate a piece of content before you start writing. I’ve written things that didn’t go anywhere because I missed that step in the past. Now I’m more clear than ever that the first step is the most important.

I now have really strong tools that I can use and leverage to write really remarkable content. It’s getting harder and harder to do it as more people come into the space, but I’m confident I can stand out from them and continue to grow my business.

It was cool to have a list of places in the course where people historically got stuck, so I could pay attention to it and avoid it. Primoz always told us “this is where my 1on1 clients got stuck, this is what might happen, this is how you avoid it”. He was always keeping an eye out for us.

It was great to have a community of 30+ people, writing their guides, each in a slightly different way. Some of them spent more time designing these gorgeous guides. Others like me just wanted to keep moving. Now I know that there’s no one way to create remarkable content, you need to find your own way. This course was really different than any other course out there.

It’s a joke, it’s so cheap. Compared to other things I spent this kind of money on, I feel like a schmuck for being in this course. I got exactly what I wanted out of the course. My guide wasn’t even published and I already made back my investment. And I know that this is just the beginning for me.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed Nick’s story, and I have more stories of our students coming your way in the future, plus exclusive resources that will make writing your first Ultimate Guide easier than ever before.

To make sure you receive those exclusive resources (I’ll only share them with my email subscribers), and be the first to know when Ultimate Guide System opens again, download your free copy of the Ultimate Guide Checklist.

You can use it to get started with writing your Ultimate Guide, and learn all about how you too can use Ultimate Guides to get your online business off the ground (or take it to the next level).

Download your free copy of the Ultimate Guide Checklist.

Source: 1daybanner.com

How Top Experts, Companies and Entrepreneurs Grow Their Businesses With Ultimate Guides

By Primoz Bozic Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, Ramit Sethi released his new e-book called “Your Move: The Underdog’s Guide to Building a Business.”

Since he published it, the book has become a huge success.

Tens of thousands of people have bought the book. It hit the #1 best seller in many categories on Amazon. It got hundreds of raving reviews:

It even hit the #1 place of non-fiction books on Wall Street Journal:

I’ve read the book an it’s phenomenal. It’s easily the best e-book you’ll ever find for $3.65 online. If you haven’t done so yet, make sure you pick up your copy!

So what do I love about the e-book most?

Surprisingly, it’s not that my story is mentioned in it (even though that’s REALLY cool).

What I love about it the most is that it’s not just an e-book… It’s an undercover Ultimate Guide that’s marketed as an e-book.

It’s not called an Ultimate Guide, but an “Underdog’s Guide”, but that’s ok – not all Ultimate Guides actually have “Ultimate Guide” in the name.

You have Ultimate Guides that are called “Beginner’s Guides”, “Essential Guides”, “Complete Guides”, “Advanced Guides”, “Parent’s Guides”, and so on and so on.

The name doesn’t matter as much as what an Ultimate Guide actually is – the most detailed piece of content on the internet on a specific topic (that usually comes with plenty of stories, examples, and a table of contents).

And that’s exactly what Ramit’s new e-book is. It’s by far the best, most comprehensive and detailed piece of content out there for underdogs who want to build a business.

It’s not a book as there’s no publisher or a physical copy. It also didn’t take Ramit years to create like his first book – it was completed in months instead.

Why did Ramit publish his e-book on Amazon instead of his blog?

It’s interesting that the guide was published on Amazon rather than on the website – and Ramit explained his decision in one of the emails to his readers.

He essentially said that he didn’t just want to rely on Google to drive more traffic to his website and that he wanted to get more readers through Amazon, which was an untapped market for him.

I think that at his stage of the business, with a huge audience that he’s already built, that absolutely makes sense. He can use the existing audience to get the 124 incredible reviews and propel the guide to the #1 spot on Amazon where it will stay for years to come. It also makes sense as he’s already getting a ton of traffic from Google and other sources.

Would I publish an Ultimate Guide on Amazon rather than on your own website when just starting out and don’t have a big audience?

Probably not, at least not exclusively. It’s unlikely you’d be able to replicate Ramit’s results when starting out.

Instead I would start with publishing it on your website, and THEN if your guide becomes a huge success you can think about putting it on Amazon as well, to create another stream of traffic to your website through it.

That’s actually something we’ll look into with some of our Ultimate Guide System students that have written 25,000+ world Ultimate Guides… As they are essentially small books already, and republishing them on Amazon might be a great way to spread the word about them.

That’s the beauty of creating an incredible piece of content like an Ultimate Guide.

Once you write a piece of content that’s 10x better than anything else out there on the topic you’re writing about, you can use it in many different ways to grow your online business:

You can publish it on your blog and bring more traffic to your website for years to come
You can use a PDF of it as a free gift for your email subscribers, and convert more of your new and existing readers into raving fans
You can use an Ultimate Guide to kick off your product launch, establish yourself as the go-to expert on the topic you’re talking about, add massive value to your existing readers and boost your launch revenues

Or, you can even republish it on Amazon, create an audiobook out of it… There’re endless options in which you can use an Ultimate Guide to grow your online business.

A lot of online business experts know how powerful Ultimate Guides are, which is why many of them create them.

For example, Ramit has written Ultimate Guides about social skills, starting an online business, finding a profitable business idea, creating remarkable content, personal finance and others:

And as he says himself, “this is hands-down the most popular content on his website”.

Ramit isn’t the only online business expert that understands the value of Ultimate Guides.

Selena Soo has written an Ultimate Guide to Meeting People at Events which she used to kick off her INFLUENCE product launch:

Her guide got featured in Business Insider (3 times!), Inc magazine, Huffington Post and I Will Teach You to be Rich which helped her reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and bring in thousands of high quality email subscribers.

Selena shared her whole story of:

Why and how she created her Ultimate Guide
How she used it to bring in thousands of high quality email subscribers
Why she things Ultimate Guides are one of the best ways to start an online business

In this interview we did together:

You can watch the whole interview here.

Another example of an expert using an Ultimate Guide to grow their online business is Bushra Azshar from The Persuasion Revolution.

Bushra rapidly built a 7-figure online business over the last few years, and recently created her Ultimate Guide to Persuasion:

She’s using her Ultimate Guide all over her website to capture more email subscribers (and blow them away once they sign up for it), and sell more of her Mass Persuasion Method program.

If you ever even remotely looked into SEO to grow your online business, you’ve probably heard about Neil Patel.

Neil is considered one of the top SEO experts out there (and he consistently gets well over 100,000 visits to his website), and that’s not an accident.

Neil has created his own library of 12 Ultimate Guides on his Quick Sprout blog that established him as the go-to expert on SEO and more or less everything related to it:

Whenever I want to look something up regarding SEO, his guides are the first place I look at. And whenever someone asks me about SEO, his guides are the first thing I point them to.

Neil was actually the person that made writing detailed guides popular back in 2014. In the past he wrote about why created 10+ Ultimate Guides and how he got 361,494+ visitors and 8,421 email opt-ins with one Ultimate Guide.

He also wrote this EPIC data-driven post about why 3,000+ word blog posts get more traffic than shorter ones. If you want to learn more about WHY Ultimate Guides rank really high on Google and take off, I’d definitely read that post.

Now I might not necessarily agree with everything that Neil shares about sharing Ultimate Guides. I don’t think you should blow $5k-$20k on a design of an Ultimate Guide when just starting out. I don’t think you should ask people to share your guides before you’ve built a solid relationship with them (and even then it might come off as needy).

I know that creating Ultimate Guides is about a lot more than just numbers and SEO, although that is a part of it (we talk more about how to create incredible Ultimate Guides in Ultimate Guide System that’s opening soon).

The point is – Ultimate Guides work. And they work REALLY well. How often do you see someone say that they got 361,494 visitors or 8,421 email subscribers from ONE post on their website? Pretty much never.

So far we’ve only talked about online business experts that create Ultimate Guides. But they aren’t the only people creating them and reaping the benefits of them.

Software companies use Ultimate Guides to sell more of their software.

Leadpages (one of the leading companies that offers landing pages whose software I personally use as well) recently wrote the Ultimate Guide to Landing Pages:

I absolutely love their guide and there’s many innovative techniques they used to create it that we break down in the Ultimate Guide System.

Their Ultimate Guide is ranking as the #1 result on Google for “Landing pages guide” and makes it to the first page of google for searches like “landing pages” or “how to create landing pages”:

In such a competitive field as landing pages, that’s pretty awesome. I’ve also heard that Leadpages is working on their next Ultimate Guide already, which just goes to show how valuable Ultimate Guides can be, even for software companies.

Another software company that uses Ultimate Guides to bring in more sales for their business is called Zapier. If you haven’t heard of it yet, Zapier helps you connect different apps (like gmail and Evernote) and automate your every day tasks to make your life a lot easier and save you a ton of time.

Zapier has written tens of different Ultimate guides, covering topics from using Google Sheets to Customer Support to eCommerce:

And of course, many of these rank as the #1 result on google for their topic:

What Zapier is doing here is super smart. They’re taking different audiences (like the customer support people) and different tools (like Google Sheets) that Zapier works well with, and writing the best pieces of content on the internet around them.

As the readers read their Ultimate Guides, they constantly see different case studies, ways in which Zapier makes their work easier, and so on – and they see signing up to Zapier as the next step after reading the guide. Brilliant.

Now you might be wondering… What if I’m not an online business expert or a big software company? Can I still use Ultimate Guides to grow my online business?

I’m so glad you asked. The answer is HELL YES. In fact, Ultimate Guides are ESPECIALLY useful for you if you’re not an established expert in your niche as they are the best way to become one.

So let’s look at some examples of how new business owners just like you used Ultimate Guides to make a name out of themselves and kick-started their online businesses.

First, there’s Peter Nguyen from Essential Man. Peter used to work as a leather jacket designer and wanted to build an online business around helping successful men dress better (or, as he would say it, look really f*cking good).

He wrote Ultimate Guides about things like buying a leather jacket, a beginner’s style guide, a summer style guide and others to jump start his online business:

The result? Peter built a following of thousands of email subscribers, doubled his traffic with Ultimate Guides, and created a consistent stream of sales for his Essential Wardrobe online course.

A few years ago, nobody knew about Peter. Now even Ramit Sethi is linking to his website when his students ask him what to wear to his events!

How powerful is that? How would YOU feel if an expert like Ramit endorsed your website?

I actually love Peter’s story so much that I asked him how he writes 1-2 of his Ultimate Guides / months, and he’ll be sharing all of his systems, strategies and results with you guys very soon – so stay tuned!

Then we have Ultimate Guide System student Nick who is rapidly establishing as the go-to expert on Facebook advertising for fitness & yoga studies with his Ultimate Guides.

He just published his Complete Beginner’s Guide to Monetizing Facebook Live For Your Fitness or Yoga Business:

Nick has been absolutely crushing it with his Ultimate Guide.

When he was just doing the research for his guide within the first few weeks of joining Ultimate Guide System, he scored two 1-on-1 coaching clients:

But when he released his guide, opportunities just started flying his way.

First, a major software company saw his Ultimate Guide and wanted to feature him as an expert in their upcoming Ultimate Guide:

First, he got a POTENTIAL JOB OFFER because of his Ultimate Guide:

How crazy is THAT?

And it was just the tip of the iceberg.

Shortly, Nick told me that a few of his 7-figure heroes opted into his email list:

And another person reached out to Nick for 1-on-1 consulting:

And did I mention that this guide was Nick’s FIRST post on his website? He got all of those opportunities WITHOUT having a following beforehand. And now he’s already working on his second Ultimate Guide.

I’ll write more about Nick’s story and how he developed his Ultimate Guide over the next few days too – so you’ll be able to hear all the juicy details of it.

Next up we have another Ultimate Guide System student Diana, who helps online entrepreneurs create and manage profitable online communities.

She just published her Ultimate Guide to Building a Profitable Online Community From Scratch:

Diana’s guide is one of the best and most detailed guides I’ve ever read. She worked her ass putting it together, and it shows.

Like Nick, this is Diana’s first post on her new website, and she already got 40 email subscribers within the first week (and she’s just getting started with spreading the word about it).

Selena Soo loved Diana’s guide so much that she shared it with her audience:

She’s getting raving emails from her email subscribers about her guide:

And even the top experts in the industry are now reaching out to her to get feedback on their communities.

Before she worked on her Ultimate Guide, not many people considered the go-to expert on creating profitable online communities – but over the next few months and years they definitely will.

And as you might have guessed, I’ll also be sharing Diana’s story (plus a few other stories) of how she wrote her guide with you over the next few days.

There’s also other Ultimate Guides that my readers and clients have written that you can check out, about a variety of different topics:

Some of these guides helped my readers get hundreds of email subscribers, others helped them get new paying clients, and all of them helped them get a consistent stream of new high quality readers to their websites.

And we have plenty of new Ultimate Guides in the works – from guides about traveling, to songwriting, to teaching your kids about money.

As you can see, a lot of people see that there’s a huge opportunity in creating Ultimate Guides.

From top experts to software companies to driven entrepreneurs who want to make a name out of themselves and get their online businesses off the ground.

So WHY do they do it?

There’re many ways in which you can use Ultimate Guides to grow your online business (I cover 9 of them in my Ultimate Guide Checklist, and I’ll share more of them in the near future).

But the MOST important reason for creating Ultimate Guides is simple.

Ultimate Guides are the best and fastest way to establish yourself as the go-to expert in your niche.

If you write an Ultimate Guide for your audience that’s 10x better than any other resource out there on the same topic, then your Ultimate Guide becomes the go-to resource for anyone who wants to learn more about the topic.

And when you create something that’s 10x better than anything else out there, people notice that. They’ll notice you. They’ll read whatever you write for them. They’ll help you spread the word about it. They’ll want to talk to you, connect with you and work with you.

Ultimate Guides are your opportunity to stand out in a crowded market (like Peter did in the style world), transition into a new niche (like Diana did – she was in a completely different niche before), or even get your online business off the ground (like Nick did).

Once you create content that’s 10x better than anything else out there, you’ll automatically be different than anyone else.

You won’t need to worry about a crowded market, you’ll actually be able to use it to your advantage and bring in all the people that are interested in your topic.

It’s hard to do that with regular blog posts or an occasional guest post. There’s far too many of those out there nowadays, and it feels like everyone can have a blog nowadays given how easy it is to start one.

But I bet that very few people are creating REALLY good content like Ultimate Guides in your niche, and this is your opportunity to make a name out of yourself and become an industry leader.

As you do that, the rest will come:

You’ll have more and more website visitors (like Peter who doubled his traffic by writing less blog posts and more Ultimate Guides)
You’ll be able to grow your email list (like Neil who got 8,421 email subscribers from one guide)
You’ll be able to get your first few paying clients (like Nick who got 3 paying clients and a job offer with his guide)

And the best part? You’ll be able to grow your online business with Ultimate Guides over and over again.

Remember how Ramit, Neil, Peter and Zapier wrote multiple (often 10+) Ultimate Guides to continue growing their online businesses?

You can do the exact same thing.

You don’t have to worry about regular blog posts, guest posting, Facebook ads, SEO, Facebook challenges, and other tactics to grow your online business.

You can pursue them if you want to of course… But you know you won’t NEED them to grow your online business.

You can just create more Ultimate Guides down the line, and you’ll KNOW that with each Ultimate Guide you publish, your business will grow more and more – for years to come.

And the thing is, while anyone can write blog posts or use Facebook ads for their business, not anyone can, wants to, or is willing to write Ultimate Guides.

The barrier to entry with them is way higher, as they require weeks (and sometimes months) of work to complete.

There will always only be a few people in each industry who are willing to put in the work to make them come to life, and reap the benefits of them. And you can be one of those people.

Get started with creating your first Ultimate Guide TODAY

If you want to start working on your first Ultimate Guide, I invite you to check out my FREE 13,000+ word Ultimate Guide Checklist to get started.

It’s by far the BEST, most comprehensive and detailed FREE resource you’ll find online on creating Ultimate Guides.

Here’s what you’ll learn in it:

The biggest mistakes people make when creating Ultimate Guides (and how to avoid them)
9 Ways in which you can use Ultimate Guides to grow your online business (whether you’re an established business owner or just starting out)
My never-before-seen checklist for creating Ultimate Guides (with real life examples and secrets I’ve discovered over 5+ years of creating them)

…and a lot more.

I’ll also be releasing another awesome resource to my email subscribers shortly that will make writing Ultimate Guides easier than ever before – and to make sure you get an email with it too, make sure you get your free copy of the Ultimate Guide Checklist.

-Primoz

7 Mistakes to Avoid While Writing Your First Ultimate Guide

By Primoz Bozic 1 Comment

Writing an Ultimate Guide isn’t easy.

Even with the right support, it can take MONTHS to get one written – and many people get stuck in their perfectionism and never finish it.

Over the past few months, I worked with my 1on1 client Matej on creating his Ultimate Guide about “How to Find More Time and Energy to Start an Online Business”.

I’m super proud of all the work that he’s put into the guide, and it’s a really incredible piece of content.

After he finished writing the guide, Matej reached out to me and shared with me a few key lessons that he learned from writing his first guide, that he will use to write his next Ultimate Guide in half the time.

I absolutely loved these lessons because they show the other side of writing really exceptional content that very few people talk about.

I loved how Matej openly shared the mistakes that he made, as well as the specific ways in which he will avoid them next time – so I decided to share them on my blog.

If you’re thinking about (or in the process of) writing your first Ultimate Guide, this is a must read.

Matej, take it away :).

Matej’s mistakes and key takeaways from writing his first 25k word ultimate guide

In late December 2016 I started working on a bigger project for my side business – writing an ultimate guide “How to Find More Time and Energy to Start an Online Business”.

I knew it does not have to necessarily be a huge project lasting for months. However, I wanted to make it great, highly valuable for my readers for the years to come so I wanted to put a lot of effort into it.

With the demanding full-time job and two small kids at home (2 and 5 year old) I knew it’s going to be a challenge but exciting one. I wanted to write an Ultimate Guide for months but was always avoiding it.

Suddenly, my mentor Primoz Bozic shifted his business to helping people writing Ultimate Guides and I’ve become one of his first 1on1 clients. So we started working together.

Expected time frame for publishing the guide was 2-3 months.

I was very excited to make it happen.

Looking back, it has been 5 months until I finally published my Ultimate Guide.

I know I could have published my guide a lot faster, and now I know exactly how to write and publish my next Ultimate Guide in half the time.

Today I want to share with you the biggest mistakes I’ve made while writing my first Ultimate Guide and the key takeaways from the process that you can use to successfully write your first Ultimate Guide without spending 5 months on it like I did.

Mistake #1: I tried to make the Table of Contents too perfect

When Primoz and I started working together, things went really well. I had a lot of my free time since there was a Christmas holiday, and I didn’t need to go to work.

I spent most of that time jumping on calls with a few of my readers and friends to narrow down and validate my idea for the Ultimate Guide.

Validating my business idea by talking to people had always been tough for me, but finally I’ve managed to do it and it was actually a ton of fun.

Not only did those calls help me with my idea, but I’ve also aimed to add massive value to those people as well.

Every time I jumped on a call with someone to help me with the idea, I also offered to help them out with any questions they would have about finding more time and energy to work on their side business.

As I did that, one of the readers loved my help so much that he wanted to work with me.

That’s how I landed my first ever client from my side business:

Once I was confident about the idea I’ve started working on the Table of Contents.

The first draft was done pretty fast, but then I hit a roadblock.

I was not sure if it’s great enough. And because I wanted to make it perfect I was tweaking the Table of Contents for about two weeks.

I went back to the people that helped me validate the idea for my guide and asked them to give me feedback on my Table of Contents.

The problem was that I needed to wait for them to get back to me, then incorporate their feedback, and repeat the process over and over again.

This lead me to procrastinating on my guide because I did not feel like working on it again and again. There were quite a few days when I was not working on it at all because I did not feel like it.

Luckily, Primoz stopped me from further procrastination and told me that my Table of Contents was good enough to move forward.

I spent just one more day polishing the final version of the Table of Contents by jumping on Skype calls with two friends who helped me finalize it right on the spot in the way I was confident that it’s great.

Here’s what the final version of the Table of Contents looked like:

What I’ll do differently next time:

After writing the first draft of the Table of Contents, I’ll get on a call with 1-3 of my ideal readers and go through it live together.

It’s much easier and faster for both parties than waiting for people to leave you comments in the google doc. It’s also much better talking through what they think about the guide and how they feel about it.

Together, we can easily tweak some of the headlines to make them more compelling and find the right order of the chapters so the guide flows well.

I won’t spend more than one week on the Table of Contents because I know it will lead to procrastination and doubts if it’s great or not.

I’ll spend a week on it, make it good enough, and then make further changes as I’m writing the guide if I need to.

Mistake #2: I bit off more than I could chew

As soon as I completed my Table of Contents, I knew that the guide would be huge.

I knew that because I always write very long posts where I try to explain everything in detail to give as much value to my readers as possible.

I thought that was OK since I wanted my guide to be really great, and the best piece of content on the internet on that topic.

However, looking back and seeing that this was my first ever Ultimate Guide, I would probably split the guide into a few smaller topics.

This way, I’d cover just one specific topic in great detail (like how to find the energy to work on your side business after you come home from work), and write a guide that’s about 10k words long instead of going for that 25k beast:

Doing this would help me create the guide two or three times faster, and I’m sure it would also be easier to keep the momentum while writing my guide.

What I’ll do differently next time:

The next guide I’ll create will be about a smaller, more specific topic.

I’ll aim for something like 7-12k words with it, and focus on getting it out there faster.

If you’re planning on writing your first guide, I encourage you to start small too.

You want to test how Ultimate Guides resonate with your audience andlearn how to create them while having fun.

You don’t want to spend months figuring things out or getting lost in the process, especially if you do not have anybody to hold your hand along the way.

I also encourage you to take into account what kind of a writer you are.

If you don’t have a problem with writing long posts, then it’s OK to create a longer guide. But if you tend to write shorter posts and struggle with writing really long ones, pick a guide that’s shorter and create a longer guide down the road when you’re more comfortable with it.

Mistake #3: I wrote about topics I was not too confident about

If you do a lot of research for your Ultimate Guide in the beginning, you will get a lot of feedback on what you should include in the guide.

This can be good and bad.

When I started writing my guide, I knew that mindset issues plays a huge role in our performance and achieving the results especially with business on the side.

From the feedback I’ve gotten, I saw that other people would want to learn more about solving them.

The problem for me was that I did not have proven solutions and experience with solving them. I have some good tactics which helped me, but I wasn’t too confident about giving too much advice on that topic.

However, because I really wanted to help my readers, I still wanted to write a chapter about those things to satisfy them. That’s what they told me that they want.

And we always tend to please people.

This lead me to a lot of procrastination on writing that chapter.

I did not want to start writing it because I did not have the best of ideas to write about.

Instead, I spent a lot of time researching the materials I could include in the guide. I was trying to learn more about those problems so I could better explain them in the post.

That was a big mistake, because this one chapter delayed writing the guide for a few extra weeks.

What I’ll do differently next time:

Whenever I won’t feel confident about writing about a topic that’s in my Table of contents, I’ll skip it.

I’ll remove it from the Table of Contents and perhaps revisit it down the line once I’m more confident in giving advice about it.

I know that there’s a lot more I can write about. Removing one chapter from my guide will not make or break it.

I encourage you to do the same.

As you’re writing your guide there will also be times when you’ll face the writers block or you will feel like you do not want to write about one section at the moment.

If you’ll still be confident you can write it it does not mean you have to remove it from your guide.

Just skip the chapter for a week or two and jump to the next exciting one. You can always come back later when the inspiration strikes you, or you remember those nice stories you wanted to cover in that chapter.

The most important thing when writing your Ultimate Guide is to keep your momentum going, and keep writing as much as possible in succession which will pretty much ensure that you won’t get stuck.

Mistake #4: I spent too much time editing my guide

I have to admit that my perfectionism prolonged the publishing of the guide by 2-3 months.

That’s because I wanted to make it the most epic guide which would stand out and stand the test of time.

Because I wanted to make sure this would really happen, I spent about 2 months editing the guide.

The guide has 25k words which took quite some time to go through.

As I edited the guide I was played too much with the content, grammar, styling the phrases.

Many times I’ve rewritten sentences more than 5 times to make them easier to read and more “compelling” as if I’d been writing a sales page.

There were also many sections which I thought were not good because I had written them during the sessions where I had lower energy.

I really saw the difference in the quality. And my mentality urged me to rewrite them completely.

And that’s what I did.

This added tens of hours into the process of getting the guide finished.

What I’ll do differently next time:

Next time I won’t spend so much time editing my guide.

I’ll do just one round of editing while focusing just on fixing only broken sections, things that are truly hard to understand, or things that do not fit well the guide as a whole.

I won’t try to make it perfect.

I know that the most important thing is to share my highly valuable advice with my readers.

One unclear sentence or paragraph here and there does not make a huge difference in this long piece of epic content.

What makes the true difference is the content itself.

Instead of making my next guide perfect, I’ll just focus on making it more 10x more epic than anything else out there.

Mistake #5: I tried to include every influencer I knew in the guide

I knew that I can add value to the influencers I wanted to build relationships with by mentioning them in the guide.

Especially by sharing their advice that I’ve implemented in my life. Mentioning the things that they taught that worked for me.

I wanted to spread the word about as many people as possible in my guide, and I created a huge list of people I wanted to include in it:

It was a good intention. But, it cost me many hours by browsing through the articles of influencers to find the best fit for my guide.

And while doing so I got often caught up with reading new articles and then thinking about new ideas. This took my focus away from writing the guide.

What I’ll do differently next time:

Next time, I’ll pick just a few influencers that I want to build relationships with whose advice is already a good fit for your guide.

I won’t try to include everyone, just the people who I already know and that have already helped me with their advice.

I’ll mention the influencers who made a difference in my life or life of my clients that are directly relevant to the topic I’m mentioning in the guide.

If I find myself browsing through their articles to find one that’s a good fit, I’ll skip the influencer and possibly talk about them in one of my future guides.

Mistake #6: Spending a month on my content upgrade

Working on my Ultimate Guide helped me get a lot of clarity around my business idea.

Because of that I decided to create an email course as a main opt-in carrot for my website. I would also use that free course as a content upgrade for the whole guide:

Initially, I thought it’d be easy and fast. I was really convinced and confident.

It turned out to be quite the opposite.

Again, I wanted to make it as best as possible, so it took me ton of time to write email sequence.

Not only writing it took me so much time, but setting everything up on my website and in the email service provider was a lot of work.

It was a whole new project which should have been done after publishing my guide.

This was another thing that delayed publishing my guide by another mont..

What I’ll do differently next time:

I know that creating a content upgrade is a great way to maximize my opt-ins from the ultimate guide.

However, next time I won’t spend a whole month on it and try to make it really big.

Instead I’ll create something crunchy for my readers. Something they could easily implement and will give them immediate results.

For example, I could create a quick cheat-sheet of the tactics from the guide, or a one-page worksheet that would help them implement my advice faster.

Mistake #7: I didn’t enjoy the process all the time

Probably the worst thing I was doing through this project was thinking about the outcomes of it.

I was super excited at the beginning and had a ton of fun working on my guide for the first few weeks.

But then it got into my head and I started to think about the number of subscribers, or even potential coaching clients I could get as a result of publishing the guide.

That’s why I wanted to make it perfect and was doing all of those mistakes mentioned above.

In the process I forgot to have fun with it, to enjoy those quiet early mornings, working sessions in my favorite coffee shop, or the late nights sipping the red wine.

I’ve lost the excitement because I was pushing myself to make it fast and perfect.

What I’ll do differently next time:

Next time I’ll focus on having a lot more fun with my Ultimate Guide. I’ll enjoy the process.

I’ll write about the topics that I like talking about with people. About the advice I give to my readers. And the things I thrive learning more about myself.

If you’re writing your first Ultimate Guide, the best piece of advice I can give you is to have fun with it.

You’ll learn a ton and also get a lot of experience throughout the whole project.

Don’t worry so much about the outcome, and focus on the fact that you are creating something amazing.

Want to get started with writing your first Ultimate Guide?

I hope you’ll be able to use some of this advice to successfully write your first Ultimate Guide.

If you do so, I’m sure it’ll help you create an amazing and very helpful piece of content for your readers.

While enjoying the process and having a lot of fun along.

If you want to take a look at the Ultimate Guide that I wrote, you can read the whole guide here:

How to Find More Time and Energy to Start an Online Business [The Ultimate Guide]

If you want to get access to the whole framework that Primoz and I used to help me write my first guide, make sure you read Primoz’s Ultimate Guide checklist below:

Get your FREE copy of the 13,000+ word Ultimate Guide Checklist

And if you’re guilty of making one of these mistakes yourself, share which one it is with us in the comments below.

To your success!

-Matej