Talk to most people and they’ll tell you that they have a great idea for a book. And to be fair, any good book starts with an idea. However, an idea isn’t enough. Sure, when Robert Kiyosaki dreamed up his Rich Dad, Poor Dad book, it probably started as just a simple idea on how to teach people about money. But that, of course, isn’t enough for a book.
So how do you know you have enough information for a full book? Let’s take a look at how to transform a book idea into a published piece.
Do You Have the Information, Experience, and Knowledge to Write This Book?
Ideas come from all sorts of places. You might imagine writing a book about decorating your home or rebuilding a car. If you don’t have any experience or knowledge in either of those worlds, there will be a lot of extra work to do. That’s okay. It’s not the end of your book idea. However, it’s important to be realistic about your starting point. It may take more time and resources to create your ready-to-publish book.
What’s the Hook?
Why will people want to read your book? How is it different, interesting, and entertaining? What makes your information something that readers will value and want to buy? This may be the most difficult question to answer, because audiences are fickle. However, you need to have some idea before you start writing. If you’re not sure why it will be a good book, keep thinking about it until you know.
How Will You Write It?
A better way to ask this question is, “How much planning will you do before you begin to write?” Here are some points to consider.
* Do you have the ideas solidly in your mind so they remain consistent throughout? * Do you know how your book will provide value? * What is the USP or Unique Selling Point? * What’s the goal for writing a book? What do you hope to achieve? * Who is your audience and what information will they value?
Some writers know every detail before they sit down and begin to write their book. Others have a sketchy idea in their mind, or on paper, and they use that as a starting point. Some people write chapters as they come to them and then weave them together. Others create an elaborate outline and work from their storyboard or plan.
There’s no right or wrong way to approach your book idea. However, it is a good idea to think about how you want to approach it before you sit down to write. Don’t be surprised if you cannot see your entire book plan all at once. That’s okay. Plan what you can and go from there. Second drafts and revisions are where you’ll pull it all together. For now, start planning and begin writing. Don’t lose that great book idea.
Do This Next, If You Want to Make Living from Writing
WriterHelpWanted.com and EliteWritersLab.com co-founders, Ron Douglas and Alice Seba, recently got together to discuss the 5 obstacles that keep most writer from earning a good living from their writing.
Over the past week, we’ve provided a lot of ideas for creating content and using it to grow your business.
There are so manypossibilities and while you may not take advantage of each and every opportunity and idea, you can probably do a lot more than you think.
That’s the beauty of having your own team to help you manage your content marketing. While your team may start out small, the more efficiently and effectively you work together, the easier it is to expand.
And remember, when you have team in place, you have more time to strategize and plan your business growth…and that’s what brings you the time and financial freedom you need and deserve!
If you need a few ideas on how to bring people into your team, here are some for you.
Virtual Assistants
Virtual assistants should be one of the first sources of outside help that you consider when you’re looking to expand your business. A skilled virtual assistant can help you accomplish many of the important but lower value tasks that are an inevitable part of your business. After all, wouldn’t you rather spend your time generating new business and working on the things you enjoy most?
For example, you may want to promote your content through a number of different channels, including your blog or main business website, your Twitter account, your Facebook account, your Pinterest account and various other channels. A virtual assistant can handle these basic tasks, and free you up for the more important ones.
Ghostwriters
When you’re looking for someone to help you with the “heavy lifting” of your business – content creation – then you’ll need to find yourself a quality ghostwriter or ghostwriting service.
Many ghostwriters are also skilled at repurposing your existing content and doing research on potential topics that you can write yourself if you wish. After all, sometimes the toughest part of writing your own content is figuring out what to write about.
Transcriptionists
You may find that you already have raw content available to use and repurpose, such as videos you’ve made or interviews you’ve conducted. This existing material can be a great source for new content for your business.
Some ghostwriters offer transcription services as an “add on,” so that they can transcribe your audio or video content as well as transform it into an article, a book or whatever written content you desire.
Guest Writers or Bloggers
Finally, not all content creation needs to be something you hire out or pay for. You may be able to find a guest writers or bloggers for your website, and usually the only “compensation” back to them will be publishing their bio and a link back to their site along with the article.
There are so many options for getting things done. Whether you start by hiring a Virtual Assistant for a couple of hours per week or a writer to write some monthly articles for you, you’re taking small steps to the long term growth of your business through content marketing.
One of the secrets to successful content marketing is not only being seen by a lot of people, but also turning those views into prospects and customers for your business.
Alice was recently interviewed about being a prolific, results-oriented content publisherWITHOUT working yourself to death and we have a handy summary of that interview for you.
Always remember, that’s the key, ensuring that your content works for YOU and your business and that you don’t spend your entire day tap tapping at the keyboard while creating content.
Here’s a summary from that interview…
Q:How can someone be a prolific content publisher without working themselves to death?
First, ask yourself how prolific you really want to be and for what reason? People always make the mistake of thinking they have to be everywhere…on every social media platform, on blogs, every video site, etc.
Instead, make some choices on where you want to focus or if you still insist on being everywhere, make sure you have team to back you up.
Also, remember just because it’s a new day, doesn’t mean you have tweet 5 times, post to Facebook 3 times and make a blog post or the world will come to an end. Give yourself a break.
Focus on meaningful content instead of VOLUME. Add to that, make sure most of your content is evergreen. Sure, you might do content on hot topics and the latest news…you should do that. But keep the focus on content that lasts.
If you do that, over time, you’ll have a huge library of content to draw your audience in and it will continue to work for you years from now. And when you also work to get your audience to SHARE the content, a lot of your work is done for you.
One of the keys to being a prolific writer is having a plan and we’ll talk about that in a bit, but it’s also about getting help. YOU do not have to create all your own content and you shouldn’t.
When you make your business all about you, you put yourself into a corner…where you’re overworked and left with nowhere to go.
When your content and brand is all about you:
You have to work too hard, creating content and having your audience relying on you for all the answers.
Working too hard means you don’t have time to plan and strategize the growth of your business.
You also have no exit strategy. If you’re doing all the work and the brand is all about you, it will be difficult to sell your business later on when you retire, when you want to move onto something else (and you will)…that’s a valuable asset, completely wasted.
A few ways to put content together, without doing all the hard work yourself:
PLR (Private Label Rights Content)
Hire a ghostwriter
Hire or have guest writers write for free
Accept submissions from your audience
Answer questions from your audience
Record everything you do and turn it into content
Hire a Virtual Assistant to go through your older content and reuse and repurpose it for you
Snippets of your books or products
Repurpose your social media posts…we often post a lot of gold to our personal profiles
Encourage your audience to share
Q: What do you mean by results oriented content?
I mentioned content should be meaningful. It should be meaningful to your audience, but also to your business.
I always say each piece of content should have a purpose and be related to the leaders you’re trying to create or the products or services you’re trying to sell.
Now that doesn’t mean all your content should turn into a sales pitch, but you definitely need a plan.
If you’re launching a product on meditation, it’s natural that you’d talk about meditation with your audience. If you’re promoting a membership on Kindle publishing as an affiliate, you’ll be talking about Kindle publishing.
You’ll also imagine yourself talking to your friends. If you were helping a friend with a problem and you knew of a product or service that would help them, you’d tell them…right? Of course you would! Do the same with your content.
Your want to educate your readers on the topic and eliminate their objections through content content, so you can sell them the RIGHT products.
For example, you can create:
Informative articles, videos, etc.
Q&As related to the product or topic
Product Reviews
Product Comparisons
Interviews with the product seller
If you educate while you sell, your audience will come to see you as someone they can trust to make smart buying decisions. Some people will buy this time, but others won’t because you educated them. But those people are more likely to take your recommendation at a later date.
Not every piece of content has to be product focused, but do have a purpose.
For example:
Get an opt-in
Get a phone call
Click a link for more information
Leave a comment
…and sometimes content will be just for fun or to build your community. But be wise with your overall content strategy. When you think about content in the context of what you’re trying to achieve in your business, it will be much more effective.
Q: How do you develop a system to publish content consistently?
Sit down once a month and for the following month, think about:
The products and services you’ll be launching
The products you want to promote as an affiliate
Your existing products that have been forgotten, but you want to make a special offer for
Shape your content ideas around that.
Think about the topics you’ll cover and what format they’ll be in (articles, videos, Q&As, interviews, reviews, etc.).
How will you get this content created? (ghostwriter, PLR, submissions, etc.)
What platforms will you publish on and when?
People often think planning ahead takes a lot of time and would rather just publish as they go, but if you’ve ever logged into your WordPress dashboard and just stared at the “New Post” screen and then went off to Facebook…you’re WASTING a ton of time each month. If you plan ahead, you know exactly what you’re going to do and you’ll get much better results.
What to Do Next: Take Your Content Marketing to the Next Level with 40% Off Our “Content Management for Traffic and Monetization” Templates.
And, of course, use our special coupon code to get 40% off. Coupon code: EWLBLOG
You can use these templates for your own webinars are select developer or resell rights to use the templates for your clients or to sell them. The choice is yours!
You work hard create content for your readers, but if you want to grow your business, it needs to serve a purpose for you. With that in mind, we’ve got 12 easy ways to monetize your content.
1. Building Your List: Don’t do anything else until your content is feeding people into your mailing list. Your mailing is still your number 1 marketing asset, so have that in place first. Include an invitation for a free gift in your blog posts and everywhere else you publish content.
2. Sell Your Content as Kindle Books: Instead of just giving away all your content for free, turn some of it into Kindle Book. Kindle offers you so many opportunities to reach customers you probably never would have reached otherwise.
3. Self-Published Info Products: Similar to selling your content on Kindle, you can sell it yourself and command a higher price per sale. You can also publish content in a variety of formats, create interactive courses and more. We have a comprehensive info product training program here.
4. Membership Sites and Subscriptions: The recurring revenue model never gets old and having someone pay your for your content month after month is a great monetization approach. But it’s not enough to slap up some articles and think you’ll have a rush of members. Constantly think of ways your content can be more useful to your members and make it so valuable, they never want to leave. You can learn more about creating a membership site here.
5. Product Links and Recommendations: Adding recommended products and creating product reviews with affiliate links (or links to your own products) have always been a great monetization model and continues to be so. Make sure your links are highly and targeted for best results.
6. Selling Advertising: While it can be time consuming dealing with advertisers, there plenty lot of scripts and programs that can automate the advertising process. Keep in mind, today’s advertiser is pretty savvy and anything you can do to provide a better client experience (stats, split testing, conversion data), the better your advertising opportunity will be.
7. Selling Rights to Publish Content: Selling your content, so other business owners can publish it is a lucrative model. Whether it’s private label rights (PLR) or resell rights, online publishers are always on the lookout for ready-made content. If you’re interested in learning more about selling content as PLR, click here.
8. Writing for Pay: Ghostwriting and guest writing opportunities are all around you. With ghostwriting, you write and let someone else take the credit. With guest writing, you get the credit, extra exposure and you get paid. It’s one of the most direct ways to make money from writing content. We take you through all your options here.
9. Contextual Advertising: We’re talking Adwords, Chitika and others like it. These advertising networks display ads relevant to your content and you get a percentage of the advertising profits. While many publishers have indicated that their contextual advertising revenues have gone down over the years, it still remains a viable and very easy way to monetize content.
What to Do Next: Take Your Content Marketing to the Next Level with 40% Off Our “Content Management for Traffic and Monetization” Templates.
And, of course, use our special coupon code to get 40% off. Coupon code: EWLBLOG
You can use these templates for your own webinars are select developer or resell rights to use the templates for your clients or to sell them. The choice is yours!
Here’s a question we recently received from our subscriber, Ed.
“How do we keep from ‘giving away the store?’ That is, how do we keep from giving away what we’d normally charge clients to do for them?”
This is a very common question amongst our clients and people we’ve worked with over the years. It’s a common question because it’s a VERY GOOD one and something anyone who uses content marketing should ask themselves. The good news is, it’s actually easy to keep a hold on that store and reap the benefits of publishing content.
We’d like to illustrate how you do this through a few examples…
If you sell a service, you don’t need to provide content on how to do what you do because people who want to do it themselves aren’t really in your target market. You can create content that teaches your readers how to find a reputable service provider. You can also create content that teaches people how to enhance the work you do for them.
For example, if you are a virtual assistant (VA), you can create content that shows business owners to effectively use the extra time they’ll have after they hire you. You can teach them how to delegate, how to plan their marketing and so forth.
Or if you’re a laminate floor installer, show your readers the benefits of using laminate and tell them how to care for their laminate floor.
If you sell a consumer product, the same logic applies. You want the content to teach them why they need your product and enhance their experience of using your product. So if you sell anti-wrinkle cream, you can create case studies, talk about the effects of aging and all kinds of things. There are plenty of things to share that will help your target customer.
If you sell information products, people think this is where it gets really tricky, but it doesn’t have to. There are a couple of ways you can approach this.
In the often quoted words of Jimmy D. Brown, “teach them what do do, but not how to do it.” In other words, you’re giving people the solution to their problem, but not the step-by-step instructions for doing it. You’re showing them they need your product to fully accomplish what they want to do.
For example, if you sell an ebook on dog training, you might tell your readers about the key points of obedience training. You can share the basics of training…but your information product can go deeper into helping people with hard-to-train dogs. Give them a reason to go for the further training.
You can also offer extras with your information product. Do you offer personalized service, an active discussion community or valuable customer only discounts? Use those to create further interest in your info product.
The bottom line is, your product needs to add value beyond anything you share freely. If you create your product and content marketing plan haphazardly, you might run into some conflicts. But if you plan your product with your content marketing plan in mind, it’s much easier to create a cohesive plan that educates your reader AND gives them a reason to buy your product.
Having just one relationship with an online influencer in your market can have a huge impact on your business. These influencers often have energetic personalities that command respect from other players in their niche.
You should be seeking out relationships with people of influence since they help shape consumer decision by promoting products and ideas across multiple channels.
The good news is they are usually fairly accessible…but you need to be careful in your approach. Begin by focusing on doing something for them before you ask them to do something for you.
Here are eighteen relatively easy ways you can connect with the influencers in your industry who can hopefully help you get your business to the next level.
Begin by building a relationship with the following ideas:
1. Focus on giving something to them first. It’s a good rule to give more than you take when connecting with influencers. Determine what you can offer that will be of value to them.
Don’t just say “hello,” especially on social media. Instead offer to interview them for your blog or a special report. Successful people enjoy telling others about their story. You will benefit from this as well as them. You will most likely take away at least one or two tips in your chosen field. The influencer can benefit by getting additional exposure and access to potential new business partners.
Can you offer them a speaking gig or can you introduce them to your own network influencers if you are involved in some sort of trade or professional organization?
2. Do your research. Once you find an influencer you are interested in connecting with, research their past speeches, any writing they have done, their interests and pet projects. This can all be done with a simple online search. This way you can find common areas where you can connect with them.
3. Build trust but don’t pitch. Don’t pitch anything to them when you first connect. Instead show a steady flow of interest in what they are saying.
For example:
• Join their tribe on all their social networks. • Engage them on social media by commenting and interacting. Just don’t turn into a stalker. • Comment on their blog posts occasionally. Make sure it has substance and is relevant. • Share their content with your own networks.
This might seem like a lot of time and effort but the return can be huge. Once you pitch your awesome product or service, you have already established a relationship. You have a better chance of getting their interest.
4. Ask questions. Every once in a while, ask a question of your influencer on the social media sites. Make sure it’s targeted at their area of expertise.
5. Become their affiliate. Take the time to market their product or service with good content. In the end, they will thank you and remember you.
6. Ask to reciprocate if someone has helped you in some way. It’s possible they may be dealing with a challenge you can help fix. Asking is a form of relationship building, by showing the influencer you care and are interested in giving back.
7. Write a blog post about the influencer. This is a great way to get the attention of an influencer. It works best if you target a single influencer, but can also work with multiple influencers in one post.
8. Link to their content. Read the blogs of influencers you are targeting. When you find a post share it on Twitter and other social sites. Be sure to include their @username in your post or tweet.
9. If they have a podcast, do an iTunes review of their show.
10. Comment on someone else’s blog and mention the influencer.
11. Become their customer and send them an unsolicited review. Most influencers will be thrilled.
12. Comment on their blog with the most informed comment for that post. Another option, disagree with them respectfully to grab attention.
13. Present them with gifts or samples. By putting your latest product in their hands, you are encouraging them to share their reactions to it with their friends and followers.
14. Get connected to influencers through someone you know. This can work both online and offline.
15. Connect with influencers at conferences, meetups and webinars. Make relevant comments or ask pertinent questions. Make a point to get introduced to the influencers at the event.
16. Use social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter to establish contact. Social media posts can sometimes be the easiest and fastest way to connect with influencers. This is because they are already connecting with other like-minded people.
LinkedIn is the largest online network of professional people making it an excellent place to begin connecting. Twitter is especially useful since the “verified” status lets others know an influencer has a following.
17. Tweet your target with an invitation to connect.
18. Blog on other sites with engaging content. Consider reaching out to smaller blogs in your industry first. Then you can move on to the larger sites with examples of your content.
Once you’ve established a relationship, then you can discuss how to mutually benefit each other, but the key is getting on their radar and being seen as a person of value first.
We’ve been talking about making more connections with your fellow online business owner and even being so bold as to turn your competitors into friends and allies. If you’ve missed any of this discussion, check these out:
Now moving along, and with the goal of making things easier for you, we’ve put together 10 networking mistakes you definitely want to avoid. A couple of things I’ve mentioned here and there, but now you have everything in one place…so there are no excuses for flubbing it up. 😉
1. Saying “How Can I Help You?”
We brought this up last week, but this one really sets you up for failure. If you want to connect with someone, you should know about their business and be able to anticipate what they might need. When you come to the table with a vague offer of, “How can I help you?” you are asking your potential connection to take the time to figure out how you might work together.
What to Do Instead:Do your homework and learn about their business first. Already have an idea of how you want to help them before you make your approach.
2. Asking for a Favor
The typical “JV” email tells people about your product, the awesome commission you offer and hopefully, your incredible conversion rate. But the problem is, offering a commission doesn’t really do anything for your new connection. They can join any affiliate program and earn commissions. Of course, you can give them a review copy of your product, so they can be sure what they’re offering is quality, but just like in #1, you’re putting the onus on them to do the work.
What to Do Instead: Help them before you ask them to help you. Refer to this list of 8 ideas for meaningful connections instead.
3. Thinking Likes and Comments are a Relationship
Here’s the typical approach to social or online networking: Like and/or friend on Facebook; follow on Twitter; connect on Linked In. Then like, share and retweet the post of the influential people you connect with. The problem here is that this is superficial communication and doesn’t let you stand out from the crowd. The relationship essentially goes nowhere or takes a very long time to develop into anything meaningful.
What to Do Instead: Take the conversation further and move it off social media. Again, you can do that by using one of these 8 ideas for meaningful connection here.
4. Thinking Business Cards Mean Anything
If you bring a big stack of business cards to a networking event and plan to give out as many as possible, you may as well stay home. Everybody collects business cards and when the event is done, the cards go into a desk drawer…pretty much completely forgotten. Making a meaningful connection and creating a concrete plan to further develop that relationship is what’s going to help you better than a business card.
What to Do Instead: Contrary to typical networking advice, try leaving your business cards at home, so you can focus on creating meaningful connections instead. When you make that connection, you can connect on social media or exchange information on your phones.
5. Believing EVERYONE is a Potential Connection
This one has us scratching our heads all the time. For example, when Alice owned a work at home moms site that was very business focused, she had all kinds of crazy requests to promote products. As soon as people heard the word “moms”, they thought she should promote their weight loss product, parenting product or just about anything else a mom might purchase.
When this happened, she would explain that it’s not a very targeted offer and they would still push because “moms are a big part of our audience.”
Then she’d have to explain, “Well the moms on my list expect business information from me and by asking me to promote something that isn’t targeted, you’re asking me to reduce my profits (because the offer won’t convert as well as a business product) and potentially alienate my audience.”
What to Do Instead: Keep your partners’ profits and reputations in mind and only offer the most targeted products only. And remember, you only have so many hours in the day. Spend them connecting with the people who are the best fit for your business.
6. Asking to “Pick Someone’s Brain”
If there’s somebody influential and successful in your niche, it might be tempting to ask if you can “pick their brain” over lunch or coffee. Realize that influential people get requests like this all the time and if they provide advice for a living, you’re demeaning the value of their time by thinking a coffee or a free lunch is enough.
What to Do Instead: Once again, refer to these 8 ideas for meaningful connections instead. Or if you really do want to get together to get advice and consultation, hire them. Respect their expertise and it will serve you much better.
7. Waiting Until You Need Something
Networking should be part of your business from day one. If you wait until you need help, you’re going to find it a lot harder to get anywhere. Remember that while you’re working on your next product launch and realize that you don’t have any friends to call on to add some buzz to your launch.
What to Do Instead: Develop relationships early. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a product to sell because you don’t start relationships by asking for favors. Take the time to have solid relationships in place, so when you need them, you can call on them.
8. Not Keeping Up Your End of the Relationship
Now you’d think this was common sense, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind. There’s nothing worse than promising to do something for a friend and then not getting around to it. But further than that, just like in real life, if your friend is putting more into the relationship than you are, it’s going to fizzle out.
What to Do Instead: That’s easy. Do what you say you’re going to do. Keep in touch with your friends and help them where you can.
9. Talking Too Much and Not Listening Enough
We all get passionate about what we do and it’s easy to dominate the conversation. If you find yourself talking to someone and realize that, after some time, you don’t know much about them…you’re probably talking too much and need to listen more.
What to Do Instead: Get to know your new connection by giving them a chance to talk. Ask questions and learn about their business and personal life. The more you know about them, the more you’ll know how you can help them.
10. Not Saying Thank You
As our businesses grow, the more people out there will do things for us without asking for anything in return. They’ll share our products, our blog posts and more…but most people don’t take the time to say thank you. That’s a real shame because that’s an important bonding opportunity that gets missed.
What to Do Instead: Pay attention to what people are doing around here. Subscribe to the lists of others in your niche and connect with them on social media. Take the time to say thanks when they take the time to sing your praises.
The important thing to remember is we’re talking about people. Even if you’re networking online, the rules of relationships are the same. If you’re looking out for yourself only, you’re going to end up alone. But if you embrace the idea of helping others, you’ll go places and you’ll go places quickly.
Yesterday we talked about why you want to make your competitors your friends and we promised to be back with ideas for making more meaningful connections, so let’s get to that. It’s time to forget “Likes”, “Shares” and “Retweets” (they’re superficial communication)…we’re talking real relationships.
The key here is to step up to offer REAL help to your fellow online business rather than ask them for a favor or to get stuck in the rut of the usual social media banter. And most importantly, when you’re ready to offer that help, come with a plan to the table…don’t just ask how you can help them? Do your research, anticipate their needs and offer them a solution.
First Things First…Never Go Blind!
We can tell you, from personal experience, if you don’t have a plan, you’ll get ignored. We get a lot of requests from people we have never heard of. We’re happy to work with new people, but if they simply ask us, “How can I help you?” or say something like “I really think we could work well together,” without any specifics, they’ll get passed up.
By asking your new connection to figure out what it is you should do together, you put the onus on them. You’re asking them to do the work when, if you want to create a new relationship, you should already have the solution.
So do your homework. Understand your new connection’s business, get to know their audience and understand what would be helpful to them. Once you have that figured out, use some of the following ideas to connect…
1. Guest Post
Don’t just say you want to write for their blog. Read their blog, know what makes their readers tick and create a post just for them. Having a completed and polished product that they can post right away makes it easy for your new connection to say yes. And the more targeted the post is for their audience, the more grateful they’ll be for your help.
2. Interview Them
Got a podcast? Invite them on as a guest for more exposure. Or put together a special webinar, showcasing their expertise. When you interview, be sure to offer your guest the fullrights to the audio and transcript, so they can use it in their own products, share it with their audience and more. Not only do you give them more exposure through the interview, but they have quality ready-to-use content they can use how they see fit.
3. Offer a Bonus
Look at the products they’re selling and see if you can create a very targeted and valuable bonus for their customers. The bonus will be branded with your information and the product seller gets to beef up the value of their product and wow their customers.
HINT: You don’t always have to start from scratch and you may have something you can offer, but do take some time to cater it specifically to your new friend’s target customer.
4. Provide a Viewpoint
Show your new connection that you’ve put some thought into what they have to say and that you appreciate the hard work they put into their content. Leave meaningful comments that engage them in a discussion. Create new posts on your own site that link to their content and provide a new perspective. When people see that you have something to say and are able to look at ideas critically, you’re more likely to get their attention.
5. Attend an In-Person Event
Whether it’s a seminar across the country or a local Meetup you sign up for (can’t find one, make one!), meeting people face to face is one of the best ways to solidify a relationship. Get out there and be active.
6. Do Well in their Affiliate Program
One of the first things to do when you want to develop a new relationship is to join your connection’s affiliate program – but that’s NOT enough. Work hard to sell their products. Send out emails, add promotions to your autoresponder, add them to your back end and more. Product sellers notice when someone new is bringing in a nice stream of sales.
7. Offer Free Valuable Stuff to Their Audience
If you’ve got a terrific product that you think their audience will benefit from, why not give it for free? If your product line or funnel is in place, you can afford to give it away and then sell them more products on the backend. Your new connection will be happy to make such an exclusive offer for an awesome product to their audience.
Can’t afford to give it away completely free to everyone? In that case, you could do a contest or sweepstakes…just make sure the prize is very valuable.
8. Invite Them to a Mastermind
Do you belong to a mastermind group? Invite them in.
Don’t have a mastermind group? Why not create one?
All you need is a small group of like-minded people, a place to meet (online is fine) at regular interviews. People like to be a part of something exclusive and the implications of a mastermind group is that only the best of the best are invited.
Make it a Habit
The key is to do these types of things regularly. Make it a goal to do at least one per week and you’ll be growing your connections immensely in no time.
Just realize that just doing a guest blog post for someone doesn’t make you BFFs. However, it does open the door for more conversations and working together in other capacities. So do follow up and keep in touch…it’s how relationships grow in the real and virtual world.
