Change The World With Words

If there’s one piece of advice I wish I’d listened to a little earlier in my writing career it’s the advice to create multiple income streams. It’s great to get paid to write. It never fails to make me happy when I see that ‘You’ve Got Money” email from Paypal or get a check in the mail for an article or story I’ve written. But once you’ve got your writing career underway, there are other opportunities to start generating income that’s linked to your writing but not a direct result of it.

I consider ‘direct’ writing income to be a payment that is made to me in return for a piece of writing I’ve produced. This could be an article for a magazine, website content or PR material for a corporate client, or a short story for an anthology, magazine or contest.

But once I set up my own blog I realized I also had an opportunity to create another income stream, AND help my readers and subscribers at the same time. By offering my readers high quality writing related products I can put writers in touch with great writing resources and create some extra income via commissions. This is generally known as affiliate marketing, and unfortunately, it doesn’t have the best reputation.

Too many affiliate marketers are aggressive, in-your-face sales people. They email you every five minutes with new offers or cold call you during dinner or network with you online and then bombard you on Twitter and Facebook with sales pitches.

Good marketers are subtle, valuable providers of useful high-quality products, and they always offer a lot more than a sales pitch.

My tips for writers who want to create an affiliate marketing income stream.

The product comes first.

Always promote something you love, don’t look for something to promote. So whenever you read a book or ebook (or take a course) and you think it will be of use to your readers, check if it has an affiliate program, and if it does sign up. Then you can mention the product or service to your readers and include an affiliate link. You can (and should) spread the word about anything that you think might be of interest to your readers. If there’s no affiliate program, go ahead and talk about it anyway, but if there is one, it’s perfectly OK to take a cut of the profits.

Disclose

I have a simple disclosure page here at CTWWW. You should always let readers know if you’re earning commissions from sales you make. If you’re recommending or endorsing a product, you can be on shaky legal ground if you don’t disclose this fact. See FTC guidelines for online advertisers here.

Marketing is about finding an audience, not selling a product.

I like the J A Konrath quote:

 “Selling isn’t about forcing people to buy something they don’t want; it’s about finding the people who are interested in your product.”

So find an audience of people who are trying to do what you’re trying to do (for example, make money from writing, or self-publish a book) and when you find a product that helps you, you know that it will probably help your readers too. (Or it may not. I decided early on to try and find products that offer a money back guarantee so that if a reader buys something through me that’s not a good fit, they should always be able to get a refund.) The trick of successful marketing is to find potential customers for what you have to sell. Believe it or not, that’s a whole lot easier than trying to sell to people who don’t want or need your product.

Serve your readers (all of them)

You’re a writer, first and foremost, and people read your articles, blog posts and social media streams because they’re interested in what you have to say. Always bear that in mind.

Some of your readers are at a stage in their writing career where they’re ready to spend money on a course, ebook or other product. Others aren’t. I try really hard to serve both. That’s why I like to offer my readers freebies, and I like to work with affiliate programs that are willing to do that too. I picked up a lot of advice from websites, blogs, free newsletters and free ebooks before I started investing money in my writing career. I like to serve readers who are at that stage by offering lots of free advice, as well as highlighting high quality paid products for those who want to take their writing further by investing in themselves and their writing.

I wrote about my two favorite affiliate programs for writers and authors in a previous post. Find out why I use them and why I think they offer a great service to both affiliates and buyers, right here.

This year I’m partnering with a couple of cool organisations to bring you some useful resources for writers and authors. Some of them are free, some of them aren’t. If you’re at a stage in your writing career where you want to start investing in yourself, you can choose to buy through me and support this site at the same time (see what that means here).

If you’re not, that’s fine too. All articles here at Change The World With Words are free and always will be. (I also get a real kick out of sharing other free resources I find, and I seem to find a lot – maybe it’s Karma sending me free writing goodies because I always pay them forwards. Feel free to subscribe if you want to know about new free writing resources as I find them.)

If you’re a writer looking for affiliate programs to join in order to offer your readers valuable resources and create an extra income stream for yourself, I recommend these programs.

In 2012 I’ll be working with an organisation called My Help Hub.

Why?

They have really high quality products for writers, mainly ebooks and online courses, that cover different types of writing and other skills related to writing and getting your work published.

Their paid products are reasonably priced, often come with bonuses and offer a money-back guarantee.

They have a good mix of products that will appeal to different readers (we’re an eclectic mix here at CTWWW), from The Wealthy Writer online course to their Writer’s Block CD to the Novel in a Month course. Perhaps my favourite E-product purchased last year was their excellent How To Write A Children’s Book.

Like me, they like to be generous. They offer a huge selection of free resources for writers through Writers Giveaway, that you can start downloading right now if you want (click here).

If you’re a writer with your own blog or site and you’d like to partner with My Help Hub to offer some of their products to your readers and followers, check out their affiliate program here.

I’ll also be working with the lovely Shelley Hitz from Self-Publishing-Coach.com.

Why?

Shelley also offers great products, albeit in a narrower range. Most of her products are aimed at helping writers develop specific skills in the area of self-publishing and book marketing, though her book marketing and promotion resources are also excellent for traditionally published authors looking to build their brand and sell more books.

These products are very affordable. Shelley is known for over-delivering and offering far more (including bonuses) than you would expect for the price she charges.

The range of products covers almost everything new and aspiring authors need to know (and lots of things more experienced authors should know but don’t). Products include Ebook Publishing Success, Get Your Kindle Ebook Done, and Twitter 101 For Authors.

Shelley also loves a freebie. You can pick up over 200 free tools for authors over at her site Self-Publishing-Coach.com or download a couple of her free reports, Book Marketing on a Shoestring Budget: YouTube Strategies for Authors and Book Marketing on a Shoestring Budget: Guest Blogging for Success right here at CTWWW.
 

If you’re looking to invest in yourself in 2012, please consider some of the products mentioned above or listed on the resources page (or check out the reading list and online book store for good-value books about writing and publishing). And if not, go ahead and download the freebies mentioned above.

If you haven’t already seen our Win an iPad2 or Kindle Fire contest, you might want to check it out. You’ll need something to read your new Ebooks and online course materials on:)

Whether you self-publish or go the traditional publishing route, it’s likely that you won’t have a huge publicity budget for your first book (or first few books). This may not be a bad thing (read on to find out how you can potentially damage your writing career by spending too much money and time on publicity). There are hundreds of cost effective ways to promote your book. Here are just a few.

A Writer’s Website

This can be a very simple site that you put together yourself. The best domain name is obviously YourName.com (You can have a site for each book that is NameOfTheBook.com, but we’re on a budget here).

If money is really tight you could even use a free blogging platform such as Blogger or WordPress.com (in which case the domain name will be YourName.blogspot/wordpress.com).

 If you have a traditional publisher that allows you control over an “author page” at their site you could consider developing and promoting that as your author site. If you already have a blog, you can add a page entitled “my book” as a promotional tool. In an ideal world these options would be in addition to a “proper” author site, but the world of writing and publishing isn’t always ideal for new, cash-strapped authors.

A giveaway

You will doubtless have some “free’ copies of your book to give away (remember there is no such thing as a free book – that is valuable merchandise you hold in your hand. Use it wisely).

If you decide to do a promotional giveaway (perhaps a signed copy of your book) decide what your objectives are. What do you want the potential readers of your book to do? Sign up for your monthly newsletter so you can market this and other books to them in the future? “Like” your book’s Facebook page so that they spread the word to their friends, their friend’s friends and so on? Whatever you want them to do, make this a way to enter the giveaway.

Free reads

Even cheaper than a giveaway – simply make something related to your book available for free download. An excerpt from the book itself is popular, preferably the first chapter. A perfect first chapter is compelling and exciting, portrays fascinating characters in an intriguing, believable world/setting, introduces a high stakes problem to be overcome, raises questions the reader can’t wait to have answered and ends with a hook (your opening chapter does do all this, doesn’t it?). Generally people will want to buy the book if they loved the first chapter.

Alternatively you could post something exclusive for download. I recently saw an author site where the author had posted a short story that was actually a prequel to the book. A good tool for getting new readers hooked on the story, but also interesting for readers who have read the book, loved it and decided to check out the author site.

Guest posting

Beware: guest posting can be time consuming, but a few well placed guest posts about the publishing process on popular writing/publishing related blogs (with a link to your own author site and somewhere to buy the book) can bring in extra sales. Remember blog readers don’t want to read a sales blurb for your book. They want to learn something about what you learned during the process. You have to be quite skilful to provide this and work in enough detail about the book that people want to buy it. Of course, if you do a series of guest posts on different blogs, all highlighting your book launch, what you’re actually doing is a virtual book tour (see below).

A Virtual Book Tour

IMPORTANT TIP: A real book tour can cost you money AND your future as an author. Unless your publisher is paying for it (and unless you’re a well-known author, he isn’t) your book tour will cost you money (your traveling costs). It is extremely unlikely that you’ll sell enough books to cover costs and you’ll be using time you could use to be writing the next book.

Dean Wesley Smith  addresses this issue in Write Good or Die (highly recommended and available for free download from Amazon). He points out that a new author can easily spend about $5000 on a three week self-funded book tour, and he can reasonably expect to earn about $250 in royalties on extra books sold during that time. As if that’s not bad enough, he goes on to point out:

“Here’s the worst part. Remember, publishing is bottom-line focused. Let’s assume that’s the author’s fist book for Bantam and he doesn’t do the exact same thing for book number two. What would happen? The second book sales will decline from book number one. The sales trend will be DOWN on the accounting sheets. Not a good thing in publishing and he won’t sell book number three.”

In terms of book tours whatever you do for your first book should be sustainable for your second and third, and so on (until you’re so famous your book sells itself).

A virtual book tour (being interviewed or guest blogging about your book on websites and blogs frequented by the book buying public) may not sell the same amount of copies, but it is a lot less time consuming and more cost effective. You can contact blogging buddies or the owners of sites and blogs you read regularly and ask them about an interview or a guest post. Or you can consider using a site like Savvy Authors. They have a program that puts authors who want to do a virtual book tour in touch with bloggers who want to host them. Shelley Hitz from self-publishing-coach.com publishes a great guide for authors planning a virtual book tour. You can check it out here.

A Facebook Fan Page

It’s free and surprisingly simple to set up.  You can post news about any events (online interviews, author talks, giveaways etc) there. As mentioned above, you can make liking the Facebook page (and perhaps leaving a comment) a way to enter a book giveaway, pulling in fans and activity, which will show up in the newsfeeds of the friends of people who liked your book.

We’ll be returning to the subject of cost-effective book promotion here at Change The World With Words on a regular basis. If you’re interested in hearing more, consider subscribing to the newsletter.

If you’re currently on the book promotion trail (and on a budget) you might want to consider the following books:

Promote Your Book: Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author and

 1001 Ways to Market Your Book. 

Or check out the ‘publishing’ section of the brand new Change The World With Words Online Book Store. (This is my first attempt at putting together an online Amazon store, so I’m on a steep learning curve. Feedback and constructive criticism welcome, but please be gentle.)

Image by Bill Longshaw at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
 

Once upon a time marketing tips for writers were not necessary. Every large publishing house had a well funded marketing department. Magazines had skilled marketing managers and generous promotions budgets. The only writers who had to worry about selling their books were those who had been silly enough to fall for a vanity publishing scam. All writers had to do was write.

Those days are over. Get used to it.

Now your book proposal to a traditional publisher is supposed to include a whole section about how you’ve already created an online presence and built your platform.

Possibly the fastest growing form of publishing is self-publishing, and once you self publish you are no longer ‘just a writer’ but also a publisher and therefore (if you want to sell books) a marketer.

I’ve found recently that websites looking for regular writers want a link to your blog and even your Twitter profile (presumably to check out how many subscribers/followers you’ll be promoting your articles to once they are published on their site).

I came from a public relations background and now I feel like I’m going back there. If I want to be a successful freelance writer, promoting myself and my work is just another necessary task on my to-do list.

So here are my top marketing tips for writers (and everybody else). If you don’t agree with them, take it up with me in the comments section.

Be subtle.

Nobody likes marketers, but as Chris Guillebeau pointed out in his controversial post Why people hate marketers,

 “…marketers are people too, and most people are marketers of one kind or another.” 

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say nobody likes aggressive, intrusive in-your-face marketing. Chris Guillebeau is one of the least aggressive marketers I’ve seen on the net, yet he claims his products convert to sales at way above average percentages. He’s simply found a tribe of like minded people, and built a high level of trust with them. Now when he launches a new product, they buy it. What a surprise. Which brings me to my next point.

Find your audience.

Or as J.A. Konrath put it:

 “Selling isn’t about forcing people to buy something they don’t want; it’s about finding the people who are interested in your product.”

Build a following of people who are interested in buying what you have to sell, and you make your marketing tasks a lot easier. You can even create products specifically for your audience by asking them what they need to know and creating a book or writing class that teaches them that.  But remember what Henry Ford said:

“If I’d asked people what they wanted, they’d have said faster horses.”

You can probably be a lot more innovative than your potential customers can!

Build a relationship.

It’s an overused phrase and is starting to lose meaning. But it basically refers to the fact that people buy from sources they know and trust. It’s why creating a brand is so important and why you should never promise anything you can’t deliver. If you promise an upcoming blog post on great new markets, or tweet that you have a great new resource for writers, or state on your blog that you respond to emails or comments, make sure that you keep those promises. Respond to your readers. Interact with them. Treat them as friends. Remember it’s better to have a few hundred subscribers or followers who know who you are than several thousand who don’t even know they follow you.

Give freely.

The internet has made free information the norm, and sharing free content via a blog or website has become an essential part of the average writers marketing strategy. We’re luckier than most I guess. We love to write, so posting to a blog is easier for us than for many other entrepreneurs.  Even writing a free ecourse, ebook or report is probably easier. If you want people to return to your site and buy whatever you have to sell, give something away first.

Use social media wisely.

Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook should always be used to direct people to a site with interesting free content. Never suck people in with a headline that promises free content then send them to a sales page. If anyone does this I leave the page and stop following them. If they do it all the time (without sharing any valuable content) I put a curse on them and all their family. (Kidding….. sort of )

When sharing through social media always post a link to valuable free content and THEN ask people to buy your book/ebook/writing classes/ any other product or service you have to sell. Even if I love you as a writer and actively want to buy your new book I don’t want you to announce it and send me straight to a sales page. I want a blog post where you share the trials and tribulations of the launch and tell me something you learned from the process. Then I’ll buy your book (I promise).

I recently came across a great resource: 40 Ways to Market your Writing, free when you subscribe to the valuable content over at Make A Living Writing. Did you see what I did there? A freebie. One day I’ll try and sell you my new book and you’ll remember that … Maybe

Image by Renjith Krishnan via FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Today’s post is a guest post by the original Writer Mama, (also author of the recent ebook, Author Mama) Christina Katz.

Your “platform” refers to what you do in the world with your professional expertise that makes you visible and influential in the world. Having friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter is not your platform, unless the majority of those people know who you are, what you do, and are enthusiastic about your work.

I thought I would offer some advice about how to slowly and steadily establish a lasting platform. You may note the lack of fanaticism in this advice and the emphasis on enduring success instead. I’m a mother and a wife, a freelancer, a speaker, a teacher, and a blogger, so aiming for balance is the only way I can afford to work if I plan on sticking around for the long haul.

This advice has worked consistently for my students over the past several years. I think you will find that a grounded, step-by-step approach works just as well for you if you choose to follow it:

1. Develop a platform topic that you love and can work on tirelessly for the next few years. Your passion of the moment should come in second to the topic you could delve into deeply for a good, long time. Prior professional education and a depth of personal experience are going to be a boon to your platform if you have an eye on a future book deal.
2. Hang back from establishing a blog on your topic until you have cultivated a wealth of content and experience working with others on specialty-related activities that lend credibility and trust to your name. Others will tell you to start blogging immediately, but don’t, if you want to be efficient with your time and money.
3. Instead, gain authority by seeking publication in established, highly visible publications both in print and online that serve your target audience. Avoid the kind of publishing that anyone can accomplish, like posting on article sites, and work on your professional communication skills instead. By all means, avoid the content mills offering writers slave wages with the promise of future earnings.
4. Don’t begin any kind of marketing campaign for any product or service offerings until you have established yourself as a go-to person on your topic, again saving you time and money. Before you look at ways to serve others directly, channel your expertise into the best service methods possible based on your strengths and weaknesses. This is a meaty topic that is covered in-depth in my book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books 2008).
5. Then, develop a product or service that can become one of several multiple income streams over time that will support your goal of becoming a published author. For example, teaching classes over the years has allowed me to re-invest more of the money I earn from writing books back into book marketing. Make sure any offerings you produce are released conscientiously and are integrated into the professional writing you already do. Otherwise, you will seem like you are all over the place and just trying to score a buck.
6. Don’t expect your platform to support you financially for at least one or two years, as you micro-invest in it, re-invest in it as it grows, and expand your visibility.
7. Once you have a professional publication track record in your niche topic, then it’s time to hang your online shingle. I’ve seen this accomplished in as little as six months by exceptionally focused students. Take a portion of the money you’ve earned writing and invest it in a professional quality online presence.
8. A low-cost way to do this is to purchase your name as a URL and use a hosting site like GoDaddy.com to host a WordPress.org blog. I use the Thesis Theme, which you can see in action at my blog. In this way, a blog can also serve as your website where you post your published clips, offerings and bio. If you don’t have a ton of money to invest in the look of your site, you can always pay a designer later.
9. Delay partnering with others on joint ventures until you have a clear idea of your own strengths and weaknesses in and around your topic. And when you do partner with others be extremely discriminating. Make sure the partnership is going to be win-win-win for everyone involved.
10. Start an e-mail newsletter or e-zine with those who are most interested in your topic. Build your list by invitation and then grow it into a permission-based following over time. Create an expected, ongoing dialogue that is mutually beneficial to everyone involved and your list will grow.
11. Now you are ready to start blogging. And yes, I mean while you continue to do all the things we’ve already discussed. Be sure to zoom-focus your blog on what you have to add to the conversation that is already going on about your topic. Don’t just share information; make an impact. Make your blog a go-to, up-to-date resource for your audience.
12. Partner selectively with others who serve the same general audience that you do with integrity and humility. Spend time getting to know folks before you decide to partner with them. You can’t afford to taint the reputation you have worked so hard to establish by partnering with just anyone.
13. Now that you have an established niche and audience, definitely participate in social networking. I like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn because they all offer something unique. The best way to learn is to jump in, spend an hour online each week until you are up and running. Follow the instructions for getting started provided by social media expert Meryl K. Evans.

This start-up plan for a writer platform will eventually blossom into an author platform. From start to finish, implementing a solid platform following this advice should take you about a year. By the end of that year, you will have established yourself as a serious contender in both professional and online circles, without killing yourself for some huckster’s promise of overnight success.

Have a plan. Leave a legacy in words, connections and professional influence. If you are consistent, by the time the year is done, you will have made effective use of your time and money in 2010.  I wish you the best of luck in your platform-building efforts!

Christina Katz is the author of Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform and Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids for Writer’s Digest Books. She has written hundreds of articles for national, regional, and online publications, presents at literary and publishing events around the country, and is a monthly columnist for the Willamette Writer. Katz publishes a weekly e-zine, The Prosperous Writer, and hosts The Northwest Author Series. She holds an MFA in writing from Columbia College Chicago and a BA from Dartmouth College. A “gentle taskmaster” to her hundred or so students each year, Katz channels over a decade of professional writing experience into success strategies that help writers get on track and get published. Learn more at ChristinaKatz.com.