That was a question I was asked in yesterday’s comments. It needed a bigger reply than another comment would allow, so here goes.

Differentiating yourself as a digital publisher can be broken down into five steps :

1. Find a niche that works.
2. Build credibility.
3. Give away a lot — except the inner secrets.
4. Genuinely have inner secrets.
5. Always be exceptional.

#1. Finding a niche that works is harder than you might think. Most of the niches that work are now maxed out with major operators. Therefore a niche that does work may turn out to be a niche that did work, but no longer does.

Take the biggest online niche of all : Making Money Online. This was the first Big Thing on the internet. Remember all those email newsletters and the never ending surge of autoresponder emails urging you to sign up — “hit ‘em seven times to win a customer”? It was all built on affiliate income and the numbers game of playing with percentages.

It seems so dated now, yet the basic principles still work because they resonate with human nature — which changes only very slowly over geological time.

Problogging is the modern equivalent : creating content for Adsense clicks. Again, it’s a numbers game and the niche is important. It’s the old methodology but with a fresh lick of paint for the New Media generation.

To find a niche that works, I apply the TLA test. Some sites (blogs, if you like) sell out on text link ads very quickly. Others, with the same or more traffic don’t. It’s the best indicator I know of whether a niche will work online or not. Try it on 10 ideas, each with a different site. Get PR, submit to the TLA site, stand back and watch the winners and losers. Eliminate the losers.

#2. Building credibility as a writer and publisher is essential if you’re going to sell digital products. That product may be blog posts to attract advertising, or ebooks that sell direct. Let’s concentrate on the ebooks as the blog/Adsense thing has been more than adequately covered.

If you want to sell an ebook that you’re writing yourself, you first have to establish yourself as an author; as a dispenser of accurate information; and as a reliable picker of techniques that no-one else can match.

That’s a tall order, but what did you expect? Only 5 percent of aspirants ever succeed in any enterprise. They do because they have talent — why would you choose to be a digital publisher if you didn’t? And they have grit — they are prepared to stick to the task until they succeed.

You build credibility the slow way, using the old publishers’ dictum : show don’t tell.

Don’t keep telling everyone how wonderful you are — show them. Write something that arrests their attention. Keep writing something that continues to arrest their attention. Nothing else matters but that.

#3. In other words, give away a lot, freely and without flinching. Look at Darren Rowse at Problogger.net. He pours forth his bounty with great abandon every day, and it’s all the product of having actually done the job himself. His readers know that, so they give him the benefit of the doubt and stay attached.

Imagine if Darren released an ebook : The Definitive Problogger — All the Inner Secrets of Making Money Online and From Your Blog. It may only contain what he has written many times before but is now diffused all over his site. But people won’t see it that way. It would sell.

The most recent legend is the 37Signals ebook which took over $30,000 on its first day. They had established their reputation as providers of simple, small-scale software solutions that worked. They had the credibility. They offered access to the inner sanctum.

Giving away a lot of your experience is the only way to establish that kind of credibility. But always keep a little back — what in the publishing trade is known as The Killer Fact.

#4. Inner Secrets or Killer Facts are rarely as potent as they sound. But you must have a few, especially if you give the impression that they’re there in the inner sanctum.

For example, in my forthcoming book, The Syntagma Story, there are 37 killer facts, each one bigger than the one before.

See what I mean, you’re reaching for your credit card before I can get these words onto the screen.

#5. Always be exceptional. Never follow the trend or the crowd.

A farmer I knew once complained that European Union subsidies were useless because once they were announced for a particular crop, every farmer in Western Europe would start growing them, and in two years there would be a massive glut. At that stage the loss from the crop would greatly exceed the cash subsidy.

Think long-term, avoid the Gadarene rush to The Next Big Thing.

* Build credibility.
* Discharge your inner secrets in your commercial products.
* Do a great job.
* Always be exceptional.