May 2020 – The Entrepreneurial Writer

9 Types Of Digital Products You Can Create In A Day Or Two

Posted on May 28, 2020 by wmhousouer

Perfect for introverts!

As an Entrepreneurial Writer, you want to make an ongoing passive income. You can do this with your writing. What writers usually think of is writing books and blogging. But there is so much more out there that you can create. Things that don’t take a long time to do and will continue to bring you income for years to come. I’m talking about digital products.

Why digital products?

Digital products are the easiest products to create. All it takes is a little time and knowledge. You don’t even need any money upfront to create them. This means that it is all 80–90% profit. Even if you price your digital products on the low in $20 or less you will still make quite a bit money.

What expenses are there in selling these products?

If you sell them on sites like Etsy it is a good way to build a digital product store. They take a percentage of each sale. Amazon’s KDP is the same.

If you want to sell digital photos and videos you can use places like shutterstock.com. They pay you a certain amount per photo or video.

If you have a membership site like patreon and substack they have a payment fee and processing fee. They charge you this fee each time they process a payment from one of your subscribers. The site deducts the fees from their payment and you receive the balance.

Then there are fees like marketing ads on Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook. There are editing fees and cover design fees. These fees are not mandatory. If you do all the work yourself you can save the expense.

The downside to this is that it makes more work for you and your marketing efforts will be slower. Unless you have a growing list.

Resources needed to create your digital products.

Try using canva for making your printables and digital marketing products.
Word and Excel are great for templates, workbooks, and worksheets.
You can create an Etsy store to sell your digital products.
Pixabay and unsplash are great for free photos.

What types of products are there that you can create?

E-books

E-books that can teach and inform are great products to sell. You can put them on Amazon, Smashwords, or even Draft2Digital.

When you create an email course you can automate it to send on autopilot. You do this through your email service provider. All you have to do is write out each of your email lessons and then set up the automation sequence.

Stock Photos

Creating these can be fun if you love taking photos. You can sell them on places like Shutterstock. People always need photos for their blog posts and book covers. So they go to these websites to get one when they need it.

A membership site

By creating a membership you can earn a reliable monthly income from your members. This is a great way to be able to move towards quitting your main job if that is one of your goals.

Another benefit is people will begin to see you as a respected source of information in your niche. The more respected you become, the more followers and members you will earn.

By building this type of site, your building a community with your members. People usually like being a part of a great community. When they find one they believe in and love being a part of they will tell others. Then those others join and tell others. Word of mouth is a very powerful marketing tool that is free.

Email course

Then when someone buys your course you start the sequence for them. This can take all 2 minutes and you’re done. Most people who sell email courses use PayPal to process the payments. So it would be a good idea to set up an account with PayPal.

PDF guide

What’s the difference between the PDF guide and an e-book? The number of pages is how I would categorize the difference. E-books are usually at least 26 pages or more. A PDF guide can be 25 pages or less. You can give these away for free or you can sell them at a good price.

When you sell a PDF you don’t have to go through Amazon or anyone else. This means your profit is larger. Someone buys your PDF and you email it right to them yourself. From point A to point B. No middle man. Then it’s 100% profit.

Printables

You can create printable sheets for people to buy and download. These can help people keep track of all different things in their careers and personal lives. Some examples of printables include:

Budget tracker spreadsheets
Income tracker spreadsheets
Worksheets workbooks
Shopping lists
Weight tracker spreadsheets
Calendars
Lesson plans
Planner pages

Audiobooks

Audiobooks are not as hard to create as some of the others. You can create them in one of 2 ways. Either way, it is another version of your published books. Here are the two ways you can do this:

You can record your book audio and create the audiobook yourself.
You can hire someone else to record the audio. Then you can publish the audio version yourself.

Which option you choose depends on your skills and budget to get the job done. If you want to know more about how to create an audiobook check out this webpage:

Click here

Note… I am not an affiliate of this site.

Customizable marketing materials

Customizable marketing materials are great products to create and give away. What are they? Well, there are several different things you can create. for instance:

Infographics
Photographs
Swipe files
Checklists
Discount coupon
Testimonials
Product or service comparison sheets.

You can use these in your marketing strategies to sell your digital products. Or you can offer to create these products for other business owners. For their ow marketing campaigns. Or as a third option, you can do both.

You can create these products for other business owners. You can create several or all these and put them together into a marketing kit(see below). Your clients can use this kit to grow their business and you make money from the sale.

A kit

A kit is easy to put together if you have several different digital products. What is a kit? A kit is when you combine 2 or more digital products together to create a package deal.

For instance, you have 10 digital products and 4 of them are of similar content and you can put them together into a kit. This then gives you 11 different products. 10 different products and one kit with 4 different products bundled together.

Key takeaway:

In this article, I discussed 9 different types of digital products you can create and sell. You may want to create your own website or an Etsy store to sell them on. Then you can use PayPal for accepting payments. Some of these products you can earn 100% of profit and some are only a royalty percentage as a profit. But, either way, there is a large potential for earning extra money in this income stream. It is always good to have many income streams. In fact, a famous saying has always been:

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!

So are you ready to spend a weekend or two to create some digital products? Products that you can sell as another income stream? If you are, then have some fun with it. I know you can do it.

So what now?

Go forth and create!

Going On A Writers Retreat!

Posted on May 26, 2020 by wmhousouer

And how to plan your own.

There’s nothing more exciting than going on a writer’s retreat. Going on a writer’s retreat has several benefits to them. They offer a great chance to relax and get away from your normal everyday life. It gives you a chance to get some extra writing done that you normally wouldn’t when at home. It gives you a chance to learn more about different topics in the writing industry. And finely, it can offer you a great opportunity for networking with other writers. Writers around the area or country.

Being a writer is a lonely business. When writing you are usually in your home holed up in a small office or kitchen table. You are so focused on your writing that even if you are in a public place you’re not talking to anyone.

There are two types of writers retreats you can attend:

A full writers event and retreat

This is where you go away for a few days or up to a week. You will be around other writers and attend workshops and other writing events. Your even able to get some writing done while you’re at one of these retreats.

A DIY writers retreat.

This is where you can go away by yourself to do some writing that you can’t get done while at home. In this type, you are not around anyone but yourself. You don’t have to go far to have one of these events.

It is good to go somewhere other than your own home. The point of the retreat is to get away so you can concentrate on your writing. No household chores. No cooking for the family. No caring for the family instead of writing. No distractions whatsoever.

But what if you can’t afford to pay for a trip to a writer’s retreat in another state or part of the world?

The travel expenses and the expense of joining the retreat can be pretty costly. But it doesn’t have to be. There are ways to have a good retreat with a limited budget.

Even if you plan a small DIY retreat of yourself, there are ways to incorporate everything in a regular retreat into your small one. In this article, I will talk about how to set up both types of retreats. Keep reading and I will tell you how to plan your own retreat. Both an elaborate one and a small DIY one.

Planning your own full writers retreat so other writers can join you at it:

This one can take a lot of planning and organizing to get it set up for people to attend. It can also take a lot of time to get it going. It could be as much as a year to get it all planned out and organized.

There is lodging to set up, and meals to plan. You have people to contact to give presentations. Materials and gifts to print up. And advertising to deal with.

There are a few costs involved when planning your retreats expenses. Some of them are:

Welcome bags and tee shirts

You hand out one of these to each guest. It can include things like

an itinerary of events for the weekend or week
An Amazon gift card for resources on writing.
Menus to the local restaurants
A tee-shirt with a literary quote
Information about the books that are available for sale during the event
A disposable camera to take pictures during the retreat.
A note pad and pen to take notes during the lectures.

These are a few examples of what you can include in your welcome bags.

Lodging and conference room

You need to plan where everyone will stay and where the retreat will take place. Is it going to be a big event or a small one? You want to be sure everyone stays at the same hotel. You also need to be sure the place you are going to be staying at has a conference room. This is for all the presentations that will be taking place.

Program materials

These are any and all handouts that will go with each of the presentations that will go on during the event.

Speaker fees and travel expenses

If you are having speakers giving presentations at your retreat you will need to pay their fees. You will also have to pay any of their travel expenses they may incur. These can be professional authors, publishing agents, or marketers as an example.

Event promoting expense

You want to promote your retreat for people to join. What good is planning a major writers retreat if no one knows about it and signs up for it?

Meals, Snacks, and drinks

Everyone will need to eat while at the retreat. Most hotels provide free complimentary breakfast for each night you stay. But you still have to plan lunches and dinners for the guests. Or you can charge a smaller price of attending by having your guests provide their own meals. This is one reason to include a list of local restaurants. You also want to include directions to them, and menus in the guest’s welcome pack. You can even note which ones offer delivery.

Once you have the costs figured out you can then decided what to charge each participant for your retreat. You will want to charge a little more than the cost of expenses. This can have 2 benefits for you. It can cover the expense of your own attendance. And second, it can help cover some of your own writing or promotion expenses for your own books.

How to plan your one small DIY retreat.

As stated above a DIY retreat is one where you are the only participant. To plan one you can plan 2 or 3 days in a motel room. What kind of expenses will you have for this type of event? I talk about them below.

Expenses:

Your only expense is the cost of the room and food while you are there. These are the mandatory expenses. Optional expenses can include online courses. Ones dealing with things you want to learn in your writing business.

What do you do when you go on a DIY retreat?

There are many different activities that you can do during one of these types of retreats. The point is that you relax. You can do this while still accomplishing quite a bit of writing and related activities. Some ideas can include:

Take a course on writing, marketing, and running your writing business.
Read blog articles on writing
Listen to podcasts or webinars about writing
And of course, write on your current or new project

Final thoughts:

Getting away to a writer’s retreat has many advantages as mentioned above in this article. So whether you go on an all-out retreat with other writers, or you go on a DIY retreat it is a valuable experience. This is something you don’t want to miss.

When coming up with the money to go on a DIY retreat try stashing $10 a week. At the end of a year, you can go on a retreat. Or maybe you get a good tax check back that you can use part of it. You can then stash a couple hundred back and plan your retreat.

Hi,
Are you ready to begin email marketing but not exactly how to go about it? Well, you can join me in my free 7-day Email Marketing course.

I will take you through the steps of picking your niche and building your list. I will also talk about creating email campaigns and marketing to your list.

I will also talk about what types of emails you can send and when to send them.

So if your ready to take your business to the next level come and join me in my 7-day email marketing class.

All you have to do is to click here!

Marketing 30 Minutes A Day!

Posted on May 23, 2020May 21, 2020 by wmhousouer

What are your options?

Most writers I have seen are no good at marketing or scared of it. They are the type of person who wants to write. Writing is what they are passionate about. It’s all they want to do.

But the problem is, no matter what they write, or how much they write, no one is going to see it if they don’t market it to people.

For example, look at J.K. Rowling. She wrote the fabulous Harry Potter series. What do you think would have happened if she did not market any of her books? Or her publishers didn’t do any marketing campaigns to get the word out about her books either?

No one would know anything about them.
No one would have read and fallen in love with them.
None of them would have turned into a movie.
No merchandise would exist.
And as for J.K. Rowling herself, she would still be poor.

This is a sad thought. Luckily for her and the whole world, they did market to spread the word about these fantastic stories.

There was a famous line in a movie that said:

Build it and they will come!

This concept doesn’t work when writing. How can they come to read what you have written when they don’t know that it exists? They can’t. You have to let them know about it. Once you have informed people that you have written something and what it is about, then they will come and read it.

There are thousands of methods of marketing your writing. There are some paid marketing strategies. Then there are free marketing strategies. Which ones should you use?

Well, it will depend. It depends on how much money you have to spend on your marketing. When a person starts their writing career, they don’t have much money to put into their marketing budget.

If your one of these people, then you will want to follow the free strategies. At least until you get the money to use the paid. This is a slower process. It takes longer. But when you don’t have money to throw at this then this is your best option.

This is how I am doing it right now. Because I don’t have any money to put towards my marketing budget. This may change when I get my income taxes back.

So what kind of marketing is there that I can do in 30 minutes?

Well, there is a lot of different methods. In this article, I will cover some of them. Some are free and some paid.

Social media marketing

This option is where I am at right now. There are 2 ways you can do this. There paid ads and there are free ways you can do it. Right now as I said, I am doing the free options.

The paid ads way — You go to the advertising section on your social media sites and buy your ads. Thay will run until you have reached your budget threshold. You pay per click.
The free version — you join groups that relate to your niche. Then you post in them and on your main timeline Be sure when you post in your groups you follow their rules. You don’t want to get kicked out for spam.

Guest Blogging

This is where you can contact blogs related to your niche. You ask them if you can write a guest post. If they say yes, then you write an article and add a link back to your website in your bio lines. When your guest blogging on someone else blog you need to read the guidelines for the site. You need to follow the rules. If you don’t your post won’t get published.

Online blog tour

This is where you go around to different blogs and do different things. On one blog you might write a guest post. On another, you might answer questions in an interview. In another, you will do something else.

The purpose of these tours is to promote your book. They usually last a week or two. If you don’t know how to set one up, you can pay for one to be set up for you. There are websites that will do this.

Email marketing to your list

This is one of the best types of marketing you can do. The first thing you will have to do is build a list. Once you build one you own it forever. The people on it already want to hear from you and will more than likely buy from you. This is the great thing about having a list

The only money it costs to send your email is the monthly subscription fee. Your email marketing provider Charges a fee every month for the use of their service. An example of these providers is MailChimp, sendlane, and Aweber.

These are a few that are out there. Some even have free subscription service. This usually depends on how many people are on your list.

Paid ads

As I said before one type of paid ad is social media ads. Like Facebook ads. Another is Google ads and affiliate ads.

Your affiliates create emails and promotions to send people to your sales page. They do the marketing. You pay them when someone buys from you through the affiliates link.

This is a win-win situation. You make money when someone buys what you are selling. The affiliate makes money. This is when a customer makes a sale through the affiliates link.

Trade ads with other authors lists

If you have a mailing list and or a website that receives lots of views you could try this option. Get together with others in your niche or genre. Offer to pass their ad to your customers while they do the same with their visitors and or list. It’s great when you can help each other out.

Take advantage of Amazon’s kindle up to 5 free days each 90 day period.

Now I haven’t had any luck with this option. I received a few sales, but not a lot. There have not yet been any reviews yet. But this is my own experience. everyone else has their own different experiences with this technique.

So, I am suggesting that you try it out for a year. If it doesn’t work then you don’t have to do it anymore. There have been many authors that use this and it works great for them. It boosts their sales and makes them even more money.

Conclusion:

These are a few strategies to get you started. Do the ones you think might be fun. Forget the ones that don’t interest you. Some are free and some paid. It is all up to you and how you want to go about doing this. The point is that you need to spend 15 to 30 minutes a day on marketing at least.

You don’t have to do everything I mentioned in this post every day. Pick one and do it. That is all I can do right now so that is all I do. I am on all my social media sites every day promoting my work and checking out other people’s work.

Running A Contest Or Sweepstakes To Build Your List!

Posted on May 21, 2020 by wmhousouer

This is a fast way to build it.

You don’t have an email list but want one. There is a way you can build one fast. Try setting up a contest or sweepstakes.

With a contest, the person signing up will have to complete a task to have a chance of winning. Sweepstakes are different. All they have to do is sign up and they are entered.

You can run it in one of two ways. You can run one either solo or team up with other people in the same business as you.

You don’t need an email list to run a contest or sweepstakes. But this is a great way to grow or boost your email list.

Your first step is to offer something your reader will want. For example: A kindle or a book bundle. You will want to give a prize that is relevant. It needs to be relevant to your brand product and niche.

You collect email addresses by offering people the chance to win your freebie prize. The contest must be free to enter. The only rule is to provide an email address. You should not ask for money. If you do, then it becomes a lottery. And this is illegal.

So how do you promote your contest? There are several places you will want to announce it. They include:

run your contest on your website
Share the contest on all your social media accounts. when you do, start the post with ‘giveaway alert’ or ‘contest alert’ in all caps
list on dozens or hundreds of giveaway/contest directories to get traffic.
Ask your contestants to share the contest with friends and family.

Your ultimate goal is to get a lot of entrants. This is how your building your list. After people sign up send them an email offering them a free copy of your book. Keep the ones who claim your free book. Then you will want to unsubscribe the ones who don’t. This gives you a better chance of getting a responsive list.

When you’re running a contest or sweepstakes you need to create urgency on your contest page. You might want to add a countdown timer for the last 7 days. Be sure you post your deadline. Also, post the date you will be awarding the prize to the winner.

List your contest rules on your ad. And be sure you make your rules clear. If you have a long list of rules, post them on your website. Then post a link to it in your ad.

When your contest is over you need to notify everyone that you have selected a winner. Then offer all the others who didn’t win a runner up prize.

There are many contest/giveaway sites you can use. Some of these sites are:

giveawayfrenzy.com
totallyfreestuff.com
mix.com
giveawaypromote.com
winasweepstakes.com
giveawaybase.com
sweepstake.com
bloggiveawaydirectory.com
giveawaymachine.com
giveawaymonkey.com

These are a few sites you can go to advertise your contest. For more sites to check out and advertise on try and Google: contest/giveaway sites.

When advertising your contest or sweepstakes on these sites do it on as many different ones you can. This will give you a further reach and get the information in front of thousands of people.

Final thoughts:

As stated earlier this is a great way to build or boost your email list. Normally, building a list takes time. But if you create a contest or sweepstakes follow the advice in this article. If you do, you can get hundreds if not thousands of email addresses. Be sure to tend to your list to build a relationship with them and keep them engaged and responsive.

Hi,

Are you ready to begin email marketing but not exactly how to go about it? Well, you can join me in my free 7-day Email Marketing course.

I will take you through the steps of picking your niche and building your list. I will also talk about creating email campaigns and marketing to your list.

I will also talk about what types of emails you can send and when to send them.
So if your ready to take your business to the next level come and join me in my 7-day email marketing class.

All you have to do is to click here!

What Is A Blog Tour? And Should I Invest In One?

Posted on May 15, 2020 by wmhousouer

According to penguin random house, a blog tour is:

“A blog tour is a set amount of time, usually a week or two, in which your book will be promoted across various websites and blogs. The dates are set in advance; each blog knows what material it will be posting, and the content should be unique to each blog.”

How does it work?

You contact several blogs at least 6 months in advance to see if they are willing to take part in your tour. Some may and some won’t.

You want to set the actual dates of the blog tour for the week before and the week after you release your book. You can make it longer or shorter than this. It all depends on how much you can commit to.

Keep notes about the dates, the content of each post. Is it a guest post? Is it a review or a Q&A or a giveaway? You also want to keep a list of what the giveaways are. Then don’t forget to include the name and contact information of each blogger.

Be sure to keep track of all your completed stops on your tour. Once it’s over send your thank you and any prizes for your giveaways.

Blog tour services:

Don’t have the time or knowledge on producing a book tour on your own? That’s ok I understand. It seems confusing to me as I was researching this topic.

Participating in the tour itself is time-consuming. So if you have to plan it all out, contact the blogs to set up with them on the tour. It is a lot harder and more time to do. Not everyone can do this.

But that’s ok. There is a solution to this. There are many different sites on the internet that offers their services to set up a blog tour for you. All you have to do is pay them to do it and then show up at each event on the tour.

Pricing varies depending on many factors. How long the tour will be and how many blog stops are on the tour. These are a couple of factors. If you want to know what companies are out there that you can get to do this for you then check this site out.

They have a comprehensive list of services. I have not tried any on the list. I have never actually been on a blog tour. And I am not an affiliate for this site.

You should go through the list and research the ones that sound promising. Then you can choose the one that fits your needs and budget.

How successful is it?

This is the question of the day. Well, I can’t say for sure one way or another. I have never participated in one. But I have read that they can be very useful and successful. Then I have heard of some have completely failed.

It depends on a few factors. How successful each blog is and the number of subscribers it has. Then it also depends on how good of a job the service does at setting it up. And then it depends on how much advertising you and the other blogs do about the tour.

Pros:

It gets the word out about your book.
It can boost your book sales.
It can improve your ranking on Amazon.
It can generate reviews for your book.
It can help boost the sales of your other books.

Cons:

It takes a lot of time and effort to put it together.
It takes a lot of time and effort to do the tour every day.
It can cost a lot of money to have one put together for you.
It can take a lot of time and effort to research how to do it all yourself.

Conclusion:

So now that you know more about what a blog tour is and how it works. Do you think you are ready to take part in one yourself? If you believe that you are, then go for it. When it is all over message me to tell me how it went, how you did it, and if you think it was worth it. I would love to know.

Hi,
Are you ready to begin email marketing but not exactly how to go about it? Well, you can join me in my free 7-day Email Marketing course.

I will take you through the steps of picking your niche and building your list. I will also talk about creating email campaigns and marketing to your list.

I will also talk about what types of emails you can send and when to send them.

So if your ready to take your business to the next level come and join me in my 7-day email marketing class.

All you have to do is to click here!