Marketing is a huge field and for anyone who wants to make money on their own time, one of the most crucial fields that you can understand and learn about. A business with good marketing will always outperform a business with good service/product but substandard marketing. Hell even con-artists can survive with good marketing meanwhile people with the best product/service there is, fail to get by all the damn time. It’s almost a proverb by now.
Marketing makes or breaks your business and considering how many of us are relying on our own businesses as trust in corporations is at an all time low and they’ll sell you down the river as soon as blow their nose it makes sense. Things like entrepreneurship and homesteading are in now small part growing because of how much one can trust a “stable job” anymore. Big corporations are like giant politically correct sociopaths. To place your future on one is foolish at best. Because of this one career you see on the rise is the self-published author.
Both in fiction and non-fiction but mostly in fiction. Most non-fiction a book is used as tool to sell bigger ticket items and establish credibility. A book is after all the best business card in the world. So say that you’re looking to be a self-published author, especially fiction, what are the smartest things to do. After all there’s thousands of people, many of which are successful, that are going to tell you to do a whole lot of different things. And they list different things as being the “golden key” to succeeding. How do you sort through it all and find the truth, while also understanding different things work for different people?
The 80/20 Rule & Finding The Common Denominator
So there are a couple of ways to sort through all the chaff and get to the wheat or whatever analogy you want to use. To find the good advice in the mountains of useless or even bad advice. Like I was saying above there’s so much of it out there and ten different successful people may give you ten different things as to what’s the key to getting where they are. One thing I do with this is find the common denominator. For example six figure author (SFA from now on) #1 says that Amazon ads are crucial to making it as an author nowadays.
Coincidentally he also has a 300$ course on how to make money with Amazon ads but hey probably still decent advice right? Now SFA #2 says that you have to cut your teeth in traditional publishing first and leverage the connections you have there. SFA #3 says facebook advertising where’s it all at. SFA #4 says that it’s all about networking and going to different events and so on and so forth. Oh and they also all say that the others chosen “key to success” is a waste of time. How do you know what to go with?
The first thing you do is apply the 80/20 rule and understand that generally 80% of your marketing results come from 20% of your marketing effort. There are a few things that give you the biggest “bang for your buck” and then lots of things that can help a little or not. After understanding that go on to what commonalities do all of these SFA have, essentially without exception. One does Amazon ads the other says they’re worthless, okay no commonality there. But where are there commonalities and what do they tell us? What follows are the commonalities I’ve found with every SFA that I can think of and I’ve looked at nearly them all.
Self-Published Marketing Rule #1 – Have An Active E-Mail List
An email list where you can keep track of those that love your work is absolutely critical if you’re serious about making money. Perhaps more so than just about anything else. You have to have an email list and refer your happy readers to it so you can keep in contact with the. If you don’t, even if they love you, they’re going to forget you very very fast. You have to remain in constant contact with them and stay “top of mind” and right now the email list is the best way to do this. But it’s not just about collection a bunch of emails on a list you have to stay current.
What I mean by that is that you have to be reaching out to list on a frequent basis. What does frequent mean? It means more than once a month, once a month is about the bare minimum that you can do and make the list worth it and to me, why or earth would you do the bare minimum if you want to succeed? That doesn’t mean you should be sending out three emails a day, your time could be better spent doing other things (like #2). I personally recommend once a week, with some exceptions where you’ll email more.
Like a new release week for example. So have an email list and at the back of your books refer them to the email list so that they can sign up and stay in contact with you. Keeping track of your customers and those who love your work is essential. No one else is going to do this for you and this is the most important marketing asset that you’ll ever have. So treat it as such. Don’t skimp on the email list, especially in lieu of other “more shiny” type things. Have an email list and hit it up (with non sales messages) at least once a month but preferably once a week.
Self-Published Marketing Rule #2 – Write The Next Book
So aside from having an email list what’s the best marketing action that you can take? Write the next book. Sounds simple but so many forget it, getting caught up in this and that. Have an email list and write the next book and you have the 20% that’ll make 80% of your money as a self-published author. But let’s talk a little bit more about writing the next book. I’ve said elsewhere that a self-published fiction author should write in series so writing the next book isn’t so much about “following your muse” though it can be, than about laying out a strategy around your books.
And then of course executing that strategy. So for example if you have a five book series and you’ve just finished book three (and will be exhausted) you should have already started setting up book five and should start on it sooner rather than alter. Good to give yourself a small week or so break maybe but don’t put it off too much or get caught up in side projects that aren’t going to reward as much. So much of successful writing is a grind, something that very few people understand, and fiction more than anything else. You’re going to have to grind a lot to make real money at this.
Sometimes you’ll be sick of a book or series but you can’t afford to just put it away and start something else. You have to finish what you start and that’ll mean in most cases at the very least a trilogy but much more often more than that. So lay out a strategy and then execute that strategy which means writing that next book that needs to be written. No “waiting on inspiration”, no starting a new series to alleviate boredom, not this or that. But sticking your nose to the grindstone and doing what needs to be done.
Self-Publishing Success
These things don’t guarantee that you’ll be a self-publishing success, obviously you still have to be a half-way decent writer and understand the craft of writing. But these things does give you the best shot at success, which is about all you can ask for from anything. Then of course not just doing these things but doing these things for years on end. You can never get anywhere without putting the work in. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and do it.
If anything I said here interests you I’d highly recommend you check out The Ultimate Alpha Collection which is a compilation of 16 of my books for the price of 5. It covers everything from being a man to making money to getting the right mindset to getting girls to fighting and more and is a resource no man should be without. Pick up your copy today!
-Charles Sledge
One Comment
Comments are closed.