Blog Archives - Page 19 of 23 - Elite Writer's Lab with Ron Douglas

Working Smart or Just Working Hard?

Here’s something that most writers and online business owners struggle with – working too hard for not enough return. Even when the returns are good, the hours can be grueling.

We know. We’ve DEFINITELY been there.

As work at home parents, we can’t afford to be sitting at our computer 24/7. We chose to run our online businesses because we want to be home with our kids, but at home glued to a computer screen isn’t like being at home.

Even if you don’t have a child or a spouse, a business or writing venture should not become your entire life.

Add to that, it’s a recipe for burn out and a dismal life that revolves around a computer. At first, building your business and working on your writing really may seem exciting, but then you look up and realize there’s nothing else in your life.

So, how do you work smarter and not harder? In other words, how do you make more money with less personal time invested in your business.

To us, it comes down to 3 key points:

* Value your time
* Leverage the strengths and time of others
* Implement Passive Income Models into your Business

Here’s some more thoughts on each of those…

1. Value Your Time:

You need to set and limit your working hours. You probably run your business or wanted to be a writer, so you can stay home with your family&/or have more freedom to do what you’d like. Well, being a prisoner to your computer doesn’t do either of those things for you.

In addition, when you limit your work time, you are more productive. If you have only 3 hours to get work done, you’re more likely to stay focused and do what you need to do. If you have set aside the whole day to work, you’ll probably slack off and hang out at forums, check your stats endlessly or find other distractions. Sorry to say – that’s NOT working.

2. Leverage The Strength & Time of Others:

Don’t think of yourself as a solo entrepreneur or writer…think of yourself as a team. You can leverage the strength and time of others by:

– Outsourcing: Never try to do it all yourself.

– Find Project and Business Partners: Your competition doesn’t need to be your enemy. Partner with others reaching the same target market as you.

– Set Up Your Affiliate Program: Get other website owners and writers to promote your products and services in return for a commission.

– Mastermind: Become part of create a mastermind group that shares business strategies and experiences.

3. Implement Passive Income Models Into Your Business:

Outsourcing and having your own well-managed affiliate program are ways to generate passive income. Other ways to add more passive income to your online business are:

– Join affiliate programs of other writers and companies: All you do is promote products you love and earn a commission when you make a sale. You don’t have to fulfill all the orders and provide customer support.

– Learn search engine optimization (SEO): Search engine optimization is an excellent source of highly-targeted traffic for your website. Just think, people enter a keyword phrase for something they want and voila, they find you.

– Use autoresponders: Effectively automate your follow-up process with our prospect and customers.

– Backend Sales & Upsells: When someone is already going to buy from you once, they’re more likely to buy more. Make sure you make extra offers.

When you’re just working for work’s sake, it can be tough to see the big picture of your business and really plan for your growth. When you’re able to step back and have time to strategize and plan, you’ll grow much more quickly and with much less stress.

So please, stop doing so much work! Your business, family and friends will thank you for it!

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35 Things to Make Content Marketing Easier

Today’s post is all about making your content marketing easier. We do hope you find it helpful in getting your content down and out to your followers. Feel free to share it on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere. We’d love that.

Now let’s get started. Here are 35 things that can make your content marketing easier…

1. Write about what interests you most. Sometimes it’s good to challenge ourselves and expand our horizons, but if you want to do well with content, it’s best to focus on topics that are of most interest to you. If there’s no passion behind your writing, it’s going to be hard to get others excited about what you have to say.

2. Use the mediums you’re most comfortable with. If you prefer to write, focus on writing. If you like talking, do more audio and/or video recordings. Again, it’s good to stretch and get out of your comfort zone now and then, but for every day publishing, use the communication medium that lets you put your best foot forward.

3. Get help. Don’t try to do it all yourself. If you’re the customer support person, blogger, email marketer, CEO, accountant, bookkeeper and everything else for your business, some things are going to fall through the cracks. Get help, so you can focus on growing your business and keep your sanity in the process.

4. Hire a ghostwriter. One way to get help is by hiring a ghostwriter. A ghostwriter will write your content and you can put your name on it. Because they’ve done all the writing, you can now focus on monetizing the content and promoting it.

5. Get free guest bloggers. Most of us know by now that we can get free content from other website owners. Guest bloggers will write original content for you in return for a byline promotion and links back to their site. Having a guest blogger means you can provide varying points of view and bring new expertise to your readers. Plus, it saves you from slaving over the keyboard.

6. Hire a guest blogger. Instead of relying on free bloggers, you might choose to hire someone for pay instead. They still get a byline, but by hiring you can ensure a more steady stream of content as writers who are paid are more likely to produce the content they promise to add.

7. Interview someone. If you’re stuck for content ideas, just have a conversation. A recorded and/or transcribed interview can be a great source of content.

8. Plan your topics in batches. Sitting at a keyboard scratching your head never did anybody and any good. Instead of coming to the computer and deciding what to write just before you write it, plan your topics ahead of time. By planning them in batches, it’s easier to come up with more ideas. Plus, you can more easily shape your content topics around your product promotions, create ongoing series that your readers will keep coming back for.

9. Use an editorial calendar. Get all those content ideas and plans organized in an editorial calendar. You can do this on paper, in a spreadsheet or there are a number of free WordPress plugins that can help you get organized.

10. Do your writing in batches. The same goes for the writing process. Once you get on a roll with your writing, it’s easier to write a bunch of articles or posts at once. You can also more effectively create connection between your articles to keep your readers interest from piece to piece.

11. Schedule time to create content. If you approach your days thinking that the time to write will automatically present itself, it probably won’t. Schedule your content writing time, so it gets done.

12. If you don’t feel like writing, don’t sweat it. On the other hand, if you just don’t feel like writing one day, don’t sweat it. Give yourself a break. But beware of doing this too often. Improving your writing skills takes discipline and practice. Sometimes it’s kind of like exercise. You don’t think you want to do it, but you always feel better afterward.

13. There are no laws about the number of posts you must write. We’re always puzzled when people create strict blogging schedules for themselves and then get frustrated when they can’t meet that schedule. If you have a very high traffic blog and each post you write ensures a return on investment, then by all means, you probably need to be more strict with yourself. But if a blog is a supplement to what you do or your traffic is just starting to grow, give yourself a break…especially when other important business activities need to be taken care of.

14. Hire someone to do your research. Adding facts, statistics and resources to your content makes it much more valuable. Of course, thorough research is time consuming. You can always hire someone to collect research for you, so you can focus on putting the content together.

15. Get some PLR. PLR or private label rights content is perhaps the easiest way to get ready-made content for your website. You don’t have to hire someone, check their work and go through all that process. Instead, you purchase polished and ready-to-go content. Alice makes some great PLR content here.

16. Stay up to date with current events: If you’re informed, it’s easier to find things to talk about. Pay attention to headlines and listen to news broadcasts in your downtime. Just don’t get so bogged down in being informed that you don’t have time to use that knowledge.

17. When you write, just write…don’t worry about mistakes: First drafts needn’t be perfect. The words will flow better if you just write without worrying about mistakes, formatting or any of the other things you can do later.

18. Get someone else to proofread your work. Proofreading one’s own work is a challenge. It’s hard to catch our own mistakes and sometimes we just want to move onto the next thing. If you can’t hire or get someone else to proofread for you, at least read your content out loud to make sure you catch the mistakes.

19. Hire a VA to publish, distribute and help you get your content out there. Writing is only one piece of the content marketing puzzle. It’s important to get as many eyeballs as possible on our content and that takes work. Hire a VA (virtual assistant) to help you with those pesky, but necessary, tasks.

20. Watch your competitors and fellow online business owners. Sign up for RSS feeds or use a special email address or sorting rule to funnel emails to one place. Scan headlines for ideas, create content responses and more.

21. Focus on the most profitable content first. Look at your stats and determine which types of content are producing the best results for you and put your focus their. For most of us, that will be email. An email list produces such a high ROI, so put your time into growing your list and creating content for it.

22. Realize that your blog CAN do that. If you use WordPress and have ever thought, “I wish my blog could do this,” chances are, your blog CAN do that. Search for plugin solutions in the WordPress plugin directory and you’ll be amazed at what you can find.

23. Hone your copywriting skills. One of THE most important thing for any content marketer to do is to hone their copywriting skills. When you understand copywriting, you can write more interesting and persuasive content. Grab a copywriting book of Amazon and get to work.

24. Let your audience contribute. Ask them questions, have them submit photos and other material. Not only does this give you free content, it intensifies a sense of community and is a win-win for all.

25. Not every content piece has to be a literary masterpiece. I’ve seen people who insist an article needs to be X words long or people who think every single piece has to be your best work. Now, we’re not saying to do a shoddy job. Not all. However, it’s often our shortest posts and the ones we create on the fly that turn out to be the most popular. Besides, brevity is a good skill to have. Just ask Seth Godin.

26. A picture is worth a thousand words. Take a glance at your Facebook feed or take note of the rise of Pinterest. People are visual creatures and love photos. Get in the habit of creating and sharing great photos and other images. It’s easy to do!

27. Reuse, recycle and sometimes reduce. Whether you reintroduce content to your audience or take snippets and ideas to create something new, a lot of what you need is probably in your front lawn.

28. Save your bylines and use them as templates. A lot of people use the same byline for all the content they write. That certainly is the EASY way to approach it, but probably not the most effective. Each piece of content needs a byline carefully crafted for its topic. To make it easier to craft new bylines, keep a file with all your bylines, so you can tweak them for your specific project. You can get some free byline templates here.

29. Add content curation to the mix. Who says your website has to create all the content? Using content curation techniques can bring traffic to your website and offer excellent resources to your audience. This means you tell your readers about a useful resource, post, podcast or whatever. But you add your own thoughts, giving your readers more value and showing you as a great source of content.

30. Discover your own productivity. There are a lot of productivity systems and approaches, but works for you will likely vary. Experiment to discover your most productive times and figure out what works for you. What works for others, may not work for you…so dare to be different for better productivity.

31. Get your apps for when you’re on the go. If you’re out and about, waiting in line or at the doctor’s office, these are great times to boost your productivity. You can download your favorite apps to your phone, so you can write quick blog posts (try the WordPress app), take notes, make graphics and more.

32. Have a place to write ideas as they come to you. Speaking of taking notes, always have a place where you can jot down ideas as they come to you. Alice uses the notes feature of her phone, but you might have a different preference. Just make sure to keep them in the place, so you don’t lose all those great ideas.

33. Speak it if you can’t type. If you’re driving or can’t stop to type, you can always record your ideas or even create little podcasts or recordings for your audience. Most phones come with a voice recorder, so take advantage of this whenever ideas strike.

34. Set your priorities. We touched on it earlier, but knowing where to spend your time is important. You can make all the to-do lists you want, but unless you prioritize your work, you’ll likely be running in circles. Work on your most profitable activities first.

35.Overall, don’t be in a rush. Content marketing isn’t a race. He who has the most blog posts rarely wins. Instead, take your time coming up with great topics, researching them well, creating great content, monetizing it effectively and promoting it well. Make everything you do work to grow your business. When you rush, so much of that work is lost because you don’t get a chance to make the most out of each piece of content.

But that said, don’t drag your feet either. Don’t overthink things or wait for perfection. There is no such thing.

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Why and How to Outline Your Book

There are many ways to write a book. You can wing it. You can sit down at your computer and just start writing. Many people take that approach. In the world of fiction writing they’re called “pantsters” because they write by the seat of their pants.

However, there are other types of writers too. They are called plotters. They essentially plan their book before they write it. Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, there are many benefits to outlining and planning your book before you write it.

The Benefits of Outlining

There are some reasons beyond simple writing personality style to outline your book. They are profound and abundant. In fact, they are compelling enough to consider changing how you write.

* You write faster. If you’re working from an outline, you’ll write your actual book much faster. In fact, don’t be surprised if you finish your book in just a few weeks or a month.

* Fewer revisions. The outline helps you stay on topic. You won’t have to spend time on multiple revisions. When you work from your outline and your book plan, you’ll simply have to edit for spelling, clarity, and grammar. You won’t have to re-work or re-organize your book, because that’s already been done.

* It’s easier. Sometimes it’s easier to make sure that you cover all of the topics you want to cover when you have an outline. You can make sure that your book is well thought out and is positioned to help your prospects solve their goals and you to sell more books.

How to Outline

You probably already know how to outline, at least the basics. However, when it comes to writing books there are a few different approaches or considerations. One solid approach that can really help you create a stellar book is to outline based on a chapter topic, the headlines for each chapter, and the subhead lines.

Another option is to outline with the same topic, headlines and subheadings but to format them as questions. For example, if your topic is “Drinking more water,” then your question would be “What are the benefits of drinking more water?” “How do I drink more water?” “What are the risks of drinking more water?” and so on. As you can see, answering the questions then becomes quick and easy.

Using this question outline method, you can write a chapter a day. You can even dictate your book, hire someone to clean it up, and have a full book in just a few weeks.

Writing a book can take time. In fact, some people take years to write their book. However, the more books you write, the more you sell, and the more money you’ll make. It makes sense to make the book writing process as efficient and effective as possible, and outlining your book makes it easier.

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.

How Long Should It Take to Write a Book and Will it Be Any Good?

Nervous about Book Publishing Most authors are full of questions. They’re also full of energy, doubts, enthusiasm, hesitation and a whole bunch of conflicting emotions. That’s what happens when you’re excited about an idea and invested in the outcome. So let’s try to answer some of those common questions so you can get down to writing and worry less about the questions swirling through your mind.

How Long Should It Take to Write a Book?

Well this is kind of a difficult question to ask, and the answer will undoubtedly leave you scratching your head. The time it will take you to write your book depends on how long your book is and how much you write each day.

So here’s a better answer. When do you want to publish your book? If you want to publish in three months then it’s going to take you two months to write your book because that’s how long you have. You can also work on the deadline based on how much you can write each day.

For example, if you can write 1000 words a day, about four double spaced pages, then it’ll take you 70 days to write 70,000 words. See how that works? You get to decide how long it takes to write your book.

By the way, one of our presenters at the Best Sellers Summit, Connie Ragen Green, had the perfect advice for getting your book done in 30 days with just 1 hour’s work per day.

How Do You Know If a Book Idea Is Any Good?

You never KNOW if a book idea is a good one. However, you can research your audience and make sure that the information you’re providing is top quality information that will provide value to their lives. You can then market the heck out of that book.

And here’s a secret…bad books sell just as well as good books. Of course you want your name attached to a good book but people don’t always judge “good” and “bad” the same way. If people buy your book and you reach your goals then you’re a success.

What’s the Next Step?

Once you’ve written your book and published it, the next step is to keep marketing it and to get started on your next book. Studies, and profit statements, have shown that you’ll sell more books if you publish more books.

For example, let’s say you publish book 1 and it has decent sales. You publish book 2 and book 1 suddenly increases in sales along with book 2 sales. You write and publish book 3, and then book 1 and 2 sales increase. And the same thing happens when you release your books in new formats. Release book 1 in print and your eBook sales will increase. It’s all about marketing, exposure, and creating a name and a reputation online.

Becoming an author and selling books is work. It can be a full-time, or almost full-time job. It can also be the best decision and business path you ever take. Your books help people and that’s a great way to make a living.

Do This Next, If You Want to Make Living from Writing

Do You Have Enough Content to Write a Book?

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

Stop Working So Hard: Build You Content Marketing Team & Get Things Done!

Over the past week, we’ve provided a lot of ideas for creating content and using it to grow your business.

There are so many possibilities 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.

What to Do Next:

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How to Manage Prolific Content Creation without Working Yourself To Death

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 publisher WITHOUT 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.

Make it easier to make your content work for you with our Content Management for Traffic and Monetization Templates Package that includes

Insider’s Strategy Guide with our best content marketing strategies.
Daily, Weekly and Monthly Content Planner to keep you fully organized and on track.
Master Content List to ensure you are maximizing all the content you publish.
Master Affiliate Promotions List to help monetize your content.
Master Products/Services Promotions List to help monetize your content,
50 Things to Blog or Post About so you never run out of ideas.

Click here to content management template package.

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!

Stay Up to Date with Elite Writer’s Lab

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9 Ways to Monetize Your Content Creation Skills

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.

Content Management Templates
Make it easier to make your content work for you with our Content Management for Traffic and Monetization Templates Package that includes

Insider’s Strategy Guide with our best content marketing strategies.
Daily, Weekly and Monthly Content Planner to keep you fully organized and on track.
Master Content List to ensure you are maximizing all the content you publish.
Master Affiliate Promotions List to help monetize your content.
Master Products/Services Promotions List to help monetize your content,
50 Things to Blog or Post About so you never run out of ideas.

Click here to content management template package.

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!

Stay Up to Date with Elite Writer’s Lab

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How Can I Give Away Content without Giving Away the Store?

by Alice Seba and Annette Elton

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.

That’s a win-win for all, right?

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18 Ways to Connect with Influencers

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.