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Self-Publishing Resources for Writers

If you’re interested in self-publishing your work these resources will help you get it done. Today there are a variety of resources that can help you realize your self-publishing goals so it’s a good idea to check out what is offered before choosing. Try writing down what you think you need to help you and then looking for something within your budget that does the job.

Community

Finding a community of writers that have been there is a great resource for any writer. There are both free and paid communities. One that is highly recommended is Writer Help Wanted. This membership option has courses, resources, and a Facebook Group and other resources to help any type of writer succeed.

Researching

One of the best ways to research anything is to “Google it” but you do need to understand what constitutes a good source versus a bad source. Another good choice is to pay for scholarly data bases. Sometimes you can get access for a fee via your local community college. The public library may offer free access too.

Writing

Using software like MS Word, (or free alternatives) is usually the easiest and best option. However, there are specific writing software programs that you can use too like Scrivener, Final Draft, and others. Finding the right software that will help you get your words down is important. What works for one person might not work for someone else but giving different software a try is a good idea.

Editing & Proofreading

When it comes to editing and proof reading there is also software that can help. However, the main thing that helps is reading what you wrote out loud, finding someone else to read it, and using systems and software to make it work. A great plugin to get for MS Word is the Grammarly.com plugin. You can upgrade to get more features. Alternatively, you can hire a service like Scribendi.com or Landmarkeditorial.com to edit for you.

Publishing

If you want to self-publish a book Lulu.com is a great resource to help you through the entire process. You can come out with a print book as well as digital books on all the popular platforms. Another option that many writers love is Bookbaby.com as it’s considered to be an affordable option that helps with publishing and promotion.

Marketing

With marketing, you will need to market on all online platforms, social media, your website, and more. Working with a company like BookBub.com can make it a lot simpler for you to outsource. If you want to publish only Kindle books another option is KDROI. As a writer you should be focused more on writing than anything else so using tools to help is going to help you make more sales.

Keep in mind that while all these resources are awesome, you don’t really need much to get started. The main thing is that you should find a way to focus mostly on writing and finishing your manuscripts using whatever tools and resources you believe that you need.

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If you found this advice helpful, you’ll find more of it in our Elite Writer’s Lab, and the good news is, you can join and get instant access to a huge library of content, just for writers, by clicking here. And you can get in for just $1.

You’ll also have access to a huge library of other expert interviews, courses and resources for turning your writing skills into a living. You’ll love our Quick Start Success Kit that will you publish and market your first book or information product quickly!

Expand Your Audience with Joint Ventures and Partnerships

Content marketing takes on so many different forms. You may not have previously considered joint ventures and partnerships as a way to increase the amount and type of content that you produce, but they can be very effective.

Joint ventures are short partnerships to work on a small project together such as co-writing a book, or hosting a podcast together. Even joining together to blog about topics together can be a type of joint venture if you both agree to promote each other.

Joint ventures and partnerships are also a great way to build trust with your audience as well as expand your audience. By joining with someone else who is well-known, you will automatically be seen as more well-known and trusted than you actually are. Even if you are both equally known and trusted, you automatically double the awareness of your business. Double the awareness can equal double the trust. The combined years of experience will add up to more trust from your audience and a bigger audience, since you get access to your partner’s audience.

Start Small to Test the Waters

Start small with a short-term joint venture to get your feet wet. Try co-writing a short eBook to publish on Kindle, or create a free PDF report to give away to people who sign up for your newsletter. Then move toward working on a longer term project together after you know that you work well together. A joint venture or partnership can be between two or more people. You can meet people to JV with by joining mastermind groups online and at in-person events.

Guest Blog and Cross Blog

When you joint venture with someone you can combine forces to create even more interesting content to market your business. For example, people who joint ventures together can agree to post guest blog posts on each other’s blogs, and to send out information about each other’s products and services in their various newsletters. This will help you (and them) get known by a new audience.

Create More Content

Interview each other in writing, video, and audio. Use the content to promote your business and your partner’s business. By working with other people it’s almost like duplicating yourself. The efforts you make together will pay off for a long time to come.

You’ll expand your audience, boost your expert status, and as you do that the trust your audience feels for you will grow. As your audience trusts you more, they’ll be more likely to spend money with you, as well as take your advice on products and services they should use.

Don’t feel like you have to stick to just one JV partnership, but don’t put too much on your plate at a time. Make each JV limited in time and scope so that you can move on to other joint ventures. The more partnerships that you participate in, the larger your audience will grow. The best people to JV with are those who market to your target audience but who aren’t really direct competition.

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Which Content Types Pay Best?

To get paid well as freelance writer, you want to work with clients who have a budget to pay well. But even with that, business owners needing certain types of content tend to pay more than for other content. Knowing which types of content pay the best is your first step to reaching your income goals.

Long Form Blog Posts

The pros of this type of content are that blog posts that are in-depth and cover a lot of information tend to pay more. The reason is that a post that goes very deep into the topic requires a lot more expertise to accomplish. But the con is that it will take you a lot more work than a more general post.

You may need to interview subject matter experts or read other published works from your client, and do a lot of time-consuming research to get a long-form post of 2000 words or more to be informative, engaging and actionable enough that people will want to read it and act on the calls to action.

Email Sequences

If you understand how funnels work and are good at writing persuasive copy you may be good at creating email sequences that market a particular product of your clients to their audience who is signed up for their email list.

The best part of this type of content is that usually, emails are not long. However, this particular type of email can earn your clients a lot of money. Therefore, the pay is higher since it includes conversational writing, product knowledge, audience knowledge, and copywriting skills. However, they may take more background work that you’ll have to rely on your client being able to give you.

Specialized Content

Any type of content that requires expert knowledge is going to pay more. For example, if you’re a nurse who wants to write about topics relating to your nursing expertise you can charge a lot more for that than if you were writing about organizing your home using items from Ikea which you can learn from a magazine and no education.

The positives of this, of course, are that if you can take education, you already have and apply it to your new writing career that is going to give you a profitable niche to work in automatically. The downside is you may want to leave that profession even if it’s your expertise. You may not like it anyway.

Case Studies

You may notice a theme. Longer, more specific content pays more. A case study usually includes discussion of a problem, with mention of one or more solutions along with the proven results and the conclusion you want the audience to come through when they read the case study.

The cons of doing case studies are that you must collect the information from the client to produce the case study. Give yourself enough time to ensure your client gets the information to you promptly. The plus though is that you can charge a premium for this type of work since case studies are longer and take more time and a more professional type of writing.

Sales Page Copywriting Plus Audio & Video Scripts

With all the YouTube videos, webinars, and podcasts that abound today, it’s no wonder that you can charge a premium for scripts. Usually, these are focused on specific sales related scripts. For example, a video that goes on the sales page. These videos can also be put on YouTube but think of it as a sales page video.

You need a lot of knowledge about copywriting to create scripts for video sales pages and marketing videos. That’s the downside. However, if you have a skill for writing in a persuasive way you can get it done. If you can write a sales page that gets results, you can do this.

Whitepapers

A white paper usually includes a client interview or subject matter expert interview, plus collecting lots of proof, research, and information that goes into the whitepaper. For this reason, it takes more time, and it is long so that will garner a larger fee.

The con of this is that white papers are long. It can take months to create one due to the back and forth necessary. They always include a table of contents, images, examples, and so much more. It’s a lot of work. However, it’s satisfying work because when you’re done with it, it’s a great sales tool for your client.

As a business owner, it’s imperative to remember that you are the one who sets your fees. Not the client. The client establishes a budget, and they choose who to hire based on a combination of budget and other factors. But you don’t have to take work if it doesn’t pay what you want to be paid. In fact, you should not take jobs that pay less than what you feel that you’re worth. If you are having issues getting the pay you want, you may want to try a different audience.

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Writer Life: Committing yourself to the profession

Once you make a choice to become something professionally it’s imperative that you know what it takes to accomplish it, are dedicated to it, and understand that you must live the life if you want to be whatever it is. That is very true with any profession not just writing. If you want to be a good writer who earns the living they need and want and to enjoy your life, you’ll need to understand that you need to work on committing yourself to the profession.

Be Dedicated

The very first thing you need to do is know what kind of dedication is needed to become a sought-after writer. If you’re going to be a writer, it takes more than just understanding the language you’re using. It also requires that you keep at it during the difficult times. As a writer, you must not accept things like “writer’s block” or anything that gets in the way of you doing your job. Imagine if a doctor had “doctor’s block” how would that work?

Improve Your Skills

Work on improving your skills. As a writer, it’s important for you to learn about all types of writing, to improve your vocabulary, and to read about the types of things you write about. Doing this is going to help you enjoy writing more because you’ll have more to pull from when you sit down to write if you keep working on improving your writing skills.

Invest in Professional Development

There are many types of professional development that you can attend from writer workshops to online marketing workshops. Whatever it is that you want to learn that is even slightly related to what you do can help you improve your work.

Learn About Your Audience

It depends on the type of writing that you do, but you must know who your audience is and what makes them tick to be able to write for them. If you’re a ghostwriter, you’ll need to know all about the person you write for, but also about the people who will read the work to ensure you get it right.

Build Your Portfolio

Even if you don’t have a client to write for right now, it’s important to build your portfolio. This can happen simply by writing about the types of topics you want to write about. That way you have something to show potential clients.

Market Always

If you want clients, it is important always to keep marketing. You can market via your website, social media, snail mail, email, and in person. You should do all of the above marketing to get the word out about your services.

Write Daily

This is probably the most important advice for anyone who wants to be a writer. Do it. Write. Write every day. Write all the time. Write about everything. Write about anything. Practice writing and getting words out every single day.

The fact is, if you’re not committed, you’re doomed to fail. Think about what it takes to become a doctor? Is becoming a writer really any different? Other than societal perception writing is a very important career choice that can make a big difference. Writing is used in all aspects of life. Devoting to learning the profession in the same way a doctor learns to be a doctor through education, doing it daily, and marketing can make a huge difference in your ability to achieve success as a writer.

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How to Get Media Coverage for Your Book

When you finish your book, you probably feel good. However, when it comes to becoming a successful author, writing is only part of the process. Now you need to market your book, and part of marketing requires that you obtain as much media coverages as possible as quickly as possible so that you stay at the top of mind for the audience. Let’s look at ways to accomplish this.

Create a Book Trailer & Website – At least a few months before launching your book you will need a website or page for your book. A creative thing to do if it works for your book is to create a book trailer which is just a nice movie style video describing your book without giving away all the details.

Create an Advance Review Copy – When your book is done make sure you create an advance review copy. Some people give their actual book, but others hold some of it back with specialized review copies that aren’t inclusive of the entire book. It’s up to you how you do this, but either way, giving them something to go on is helpful.

Solicit Testimonials When Possible – Once you’ve given your review copy out and given enough time for them to read the information ask for reviews. It’s worth it to ask almost anyone willing to read your book but most especially the press, professional reviewers, and other subject matter experts.

Develop a Focused Press Release – You may need more than one press release. You want to send them to the right people who will help get the word out about your book and sometimes you may need to include different pieces of information. Think about who is going to read it, then create it accordingly.

Target Media Partners Carefully – When you do send out your press release or even a pitch for an interview it’s imperative that you target the right media partners. You don’t want to blanket the media with your information. Instead, you want to pick and choose very carefully targeted partners who market to your audience.

Speak Publicly & Get Interviewed — Seek to get interviewed on TV, radio, online, in person, at events and more. The more you speak via interviews or as a talk or speech, the better. When people hear you talk, they will start to trust that your book is also worth a read.

Tie Promotions with Other Events – One way to get buzz going is to tie your promotions with other events. For example, if you wrote a book about your journey with breast cancer, you may be able to talk at related events and give a percentage of profits to a charity that helps women and men with breast cancer.

Promote Everything Wherever Your Audience Is – Marketing and promoting is a continuous thing that should not ever stop when it comes to getting the word out about your book. Carry your book and cards and other information with you so that you can give it out whenever it seems appropriate.

Getting media coverage for your book is an important part of being a published author. Even if you went with a big-name publishing house, you’d still be responsible for the marketing efforts. The only exception to this is if you are a big name with a huge following already, then they will help you more marketing from a publishing house. Until then, you’re going to have to do it yourself, but you can also hire people to help you.

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Copywriting Strategies That Set You Apart from the Competition

One of the most important aspects outside of your product or service is the copywriting and content that you use to get more sales. After all, you can have the best product ever created but if no one knows about you, you’ll make no sales. The copywriting strategies you use can set you apart from the competition.

1. Develop Audience Personas – Your job when writing any copy is to get to know your audience as intimately as possible and to engage with them. Creating audience personas helps to give you the right information on who you’re writing to – who you’re trying to persuade with your writing. You can create more than one audience persona too. In fact, you should map the audience personas you create to their buying cycle, as well as by targeting the various audiences who need the product.

2. Understand Your Products – Study the benefits your products offer your audience. If you’re not sure, ask the people who have bought or tried them. What do they feel are good benefits of your products? It might help you to write a list of features, then beside each feature write down the benefit of it for your audience so that your copywriting focuses only on the benefits.

3. Learn Persuasive Writing – Persuasive writing is all about finding the right words to convince the reader to believe your information is the best advice and your product is the best solution for them to solve all their problems. You want them to build up the “know, like, trust” factor with your writing. Many devices are used in persuasive writing such as metaphors, similes, repetition, and parallelism.

4. Write Headlines with Clarity – The job of the headline is to get the audience to click through so that they can read the next sentence. The aim is to create a headline that is clear. The best headlines mention the solution, give a time limit and address objections. But you don’t have to include all three every single time in each headline; just using one will make a huge difference.

5. Learn AIDA – The acronym stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. That means the content you create should grab their attention, trigger their interest to learn more, and then create a strong desire to fix their problem, and of course always include a call to action. If you follow this idea for every piece of content – whether it’s a sales page or an email message, you should be able to increase your conversions exponentially.

6. It’s All About the Audience – Your audience is trying to learn something about a specific topic. They’re looking for answers to their questions so that they can find solutions for their problems. When you tell your own story, it should be from their perspective and not from your own. Why you’re the right person should make them feel comfortable in working with you due to your experience, expertise, and knowledge.

7. Test Everything – Thankfully, the technology exists today to help you ensure that you’re using the best headlines, best images, and the best words for your copy. Test different headlines, test different types of sales pages and test various places on your website for the best response to your efforts.

The right copywriting strategies above can make a big difference in your clicks and conversions. Use these tips to improve your copywriting and set yourself apart from the competition.

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How to Find High-Paying Freelance Writing Jobs

If you want to be a freelance writer one of the tasks you have before you is to find work. As a freelancer, you’re responsible for finding the work to make bids on so that you can keep your cash flow positive. Locating high-paying freelance writing jobs is possible, but you need first to be ready and then know where to find them.

Know Your Audience

Understanding who you want to write for is an imperative that cannot be skipped. Many people will often say that they’ll write for anyone about anything because they’re fast at learning topics. However, it’s hard to market that. You can take that work if you want to as it comes, but you should market with a focus to the audience who can afford to pay you what you want to earn and who need work about topics you are familiar with.

Get Clear on The Types of Projects You Want to Do

Knowing the type of projects, you want to write also helps. For example, if you’re going to be a grant writer that is an entirely different type of writing than if you want to ghostwrite Young Adult novels or write blog content about all things WordPress, for instance. You need to know what you want to work on and who needs that type of work.

Know the Movers & Shakers

Once you’ve identified your audience and the types of projects you want to work on, now you need to find the movers and shakers in that arena. Not the writers. You want to find experts to follow in the niche who have followers. Those followers may be people who need the writing, and the expert may also need the writing. It totally depends on the niche, but remember that you don’t want to always hang out with other writers you want to hang out with people who need your services.

Publish Your Own Work

While you’re working on finding high-paying freelance writing jobs you want to keep writing. The only real way to get work in a creative arena like writing is to have samples in the niche you want to write about including the different types of content from blog posts, to emails, to copy, to eBooks and so forth. Publish it on your own site or to Amazon as a Kindle book so that you can show people your work. While you’re writing, you might as well get published in industry magazines (for pay and for free) using your own byline. This will help you get more work.

Set Up Your Website / Portfolio

Using the information that you’ve gathered, and your knowledge about your audience and the niche you want to write in, set up your website as a portfolio but also as a landing page that helps weed through the audience and onboard new clients. For example, you can add a scheduling app to let them schedule discovery calls to a landing page offering your writing services.

Get the Right Systems & Tools

Don’t skimp on systems. At the very least you need a three-stage funnel which will require an email autoresponder, a website, and a scheduling app. The way it works is that someone sees a link to your site on your Author Profile on Amazon, or LinkedIn (or anywhere) they click it. Once clicked they will go to a landing page to sign up for a discovery call. Then they’re on your email list, and once you talk to them, they’ll be that much closer to choosing you if you’re right for each other.

Pitching regularly is a necessity if you want to keep your client roster full. Setting up automation to make some of the pitches easier to come by is always helpful, but you’re still going to have to submit a lot of pitches. Most people will have to make about 10 pitches to get one or two projects.

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Free Ways to Boost Your Knowledge in A Given Niche

When you want to learn information about any topic this information will help you do it. The biggest thing is that you need to open your mind to be a life long learner. No matter the niche things do change with time. These free ways to boost your knowledge in a given niche will make all the difference for you.

Interview Subject Matter Experts

This is one of the best ways to learn something about any niche. Find people who already know and ask the questions that you need to know. It will help you to get some background so that you know what questions to ask though so do educate yourself before you contact subject matter experts.

Read Industry Journals & Magazines

This is a great way to get some knowledge. When you read just read and don’t even try to take notes at first. Reading as much as you can before you start choosing references and ideas is usually best so that you know what is accurate and what is not. The reason is that even a journal may contain information that is contrary to what you want to tell the audience. Getting lots of information from all ideas and sides is best.

Read Books

Yes, you can still go to your local library and check out books free. You may also be able to access digital books free via your local public library. Check out old books and new books on the topic so that you can learn where people are getting their current ideas from and how everything developed to where it is today.

Listen to Podcasts Hosted by Industry Experts

Sign up for podcasts about the topic and listen. You may have to listen to a lot before you find someone who resonates with you. Check on the people who are passing themselves off as experts to ensure that they’ve done what they said and that they are true experts.

Commit to Immersing Yourself in The Niche

They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert on any niche. If that’s your goal, you can do it. Just realize that it takes time. You will need to get involved in the niche intimately to learn what you can about it. That means signing up for everything you can, talking to everyone you can, and committing to doing it.

Go to Live Events

Nothing is better than a live event about a particular niche. This is a place you can often get ideas from several experts in the niche at one time. Often live events have multiple speakers and presenters all claiming expertise. This is a good way to find people to connect with.

Connect with Influencers

Once you start meeting people within the niche start connecting to them more. Follow them on social media, get their email address, and if you can find out their cell numbers to hat you have a direct connection to them. Make it profitable and interesting for them to provide that connection to you.

Even if a product or service does not change, and the customer demographics do not change, the customers still do transform over time in terms of their likes, dislikes, and fears. It’s important for you always to keep learning.

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Choosing Which Goals to Focus On

Setting goals for your business each year is an important part of business planning. In fact, studies have shown that people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them. You already know that goals need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-sensitive, also known as “SMART” goals. But, how do you choose which goals to focus on each year – or anytime for that matter?

It all comes down to the fact that if you don’t know where you want to go, you can’t possibly set up a map with any direction to get there. But if you do know what to focus on and what the end goal is, you’ll be able to better set up a system for success. However, to choose just the right goals to follow, you’ll need to know how.

Fewer Goals Are Better – Set one goal for each part of your business. For example, there are five parts to every business no matter what: value creation, marketing, sales, value delivery and finance. If you can set one goal for each of these areas, you’ll be set for the year. Make some small, but only make a number of goals you can reasonably meet.

Goals Should Fit Your Overall Business Mission – Take a look at your mission statement and compare every goal you make to how it affects that mission statement. If it doesn’t fit in, then it can’t be a goal of yours. When you match business goals with your mission statement, it’s going to be a winner.

Base Future Goals on Past Achievements – Always audit the results of last year before you make new goals. You may also want to carry over some goals that you didn’t quite achieve, or continue by making those goals even higher. For example, if last year you had a goal to double your income and you achieved it, you may have a new goal to double your income again.

Understand Your Reasons for Doing Anything – If you don’t know why you’ve made a goal, it’s not going to happen. Know your why so that you can achieve the goal, based on something you have a passion for. It won’t work if you’re trying to achieve things you don’t care about and don’t understand why you’re doing them.

Does the Goal Stretch You Enough? – It’s important to ensure that the goal is something you know you can do, but that will push you a little bit out of your comfort zone. Ensure that you can use the goal to map the actions you need to take to succeed.

Organize Goals by Priority – Once you set the business goals that you know you can likely achieve, ensure that you organize them by priority. The priority you choose for your goals will depend on your business model, as well as your “big giant dream goal” for your business and how these goals fit in.

Set Benchmarks — Set up frequent targets that enable you to check up on how you’re doing with your goals during the year. Don’t just work in the blind. Know how you’re doing at certain times throughout the year to ensure that everything you thought would work is working.

Ask Customers – One way to come up with some of your goals is to ask your customers and your audience what they want to see from you this year. Often customers can come up with the best ideas that you never thought of.

Choosing which goals to focus on this year takes an understanding of the past, as well as where you want to go in the distant future. If your yearly goals are based on your future big giant dream goal, then you’re heading in the right direction.

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Making Your Metadata Work for You

Don’t get scared. Metadata may look like a scary, confusing, and complicated word but it really isn’t. Simply put metadata, according to Dictionary.com is “the information that you use to describe and define other data.”

So, for example, if you publish a blog post the metadata surrounding that post is the title, the images used, how many words the post contains, the tagline, the keywords, the description, quotes, sales points, reviews, promotional posts and so forth are all metadata.

Even what you can do to promote that post is metadata that is important to know. How people can find the post is metadata, for example, the category the post is in helps people find it but is also metadata.

Using all the metadata surrounding each piece of work will make a big difference in how many eyes get on the work. There are some important factors to consider about metadata to ensure its effectiveness to make it work for you.

Ensure Accuracy – If the metadata is wrong, it won’t work. For example, if you write a book and the book blurb is not accurate or worded in a way that helps the person looking at it choose it, then it won’t work. The metadata must be accurate to bring in the right audience. It doesn’t matter if it’s a tag line, a review, or a press release. It needs to be well-drafted and correct.
Use More Metadata – Once you’ve got the accurate metadata focus on finding more metadata to add. If you don’t, you may not be discovered. It’s important to include all the metadata whether it’s keywords attached with Yoast or ensuring the alt tags are included on all images because none of this should be skipped if you want to be found.
Focus on Quality Over Quantity – This really should not have to be said but just in case let’s say it together, “quality of metadata is more important than how much you have.” Yes, you want all the metadata you can find included for all the work you do so that it can be found, but it needs to be high quality and correct.
Metadata Is Part of SEO – Most metadata are really part of SEO. The more you can learn about SEO the better you’ll do at promoting your work online. You don’t have to get a master’s degree in SEO to succeed either. You just need to understand how it works so that you can see how metadata helps get views.

The more you market your work online, the more you’ll naturally learn about how metadata works to help you promote your work even while you sleep. The metadata is working 24/7 to bring visitors to your website and your online information so that your audience can find your work consume it, buy it, and share it.