Tag Archives: Creating

Writing an eBook: First Steps to Creating Passive Income

Writing an eBookWriting an eBook Just Makes Sense

Learning more about writing an eBook can be the first step in creating information products to build passive and residual income in your online business. You may not be aware that eBooks are more popular than ever, especially after books on Kindle have become all the rage. Readers are able to print out eBooks, and I believe this may be the biggest reason they continue to grow in popularity.

The first eBook I wrote and sold online was on the topic of real estate “farming”. This is a common activity among people working in real estate and refers to the process of choosing a geographical area that you can “farm”. I used to knock on every door in my farm once a month. It consisted of about three hundred homes. Over the years I became quite proficient at this activity and turned my door knocking into a steady stream of excellent clients. It just made sense that I would share this knowledge and experience with others.

So, where do you begin? Writing an eBook may appeal to you, but you must understand the process to truly be successful with this. Here are some steps to help you move forward:

  • Choose a topic that you know well and one that is of interest to others, Search on Google and at Amazon to see what is already available and what is selling well.
  • Purchase a domain that will serve as the “home” for your new product. Remember than an eBook is an information product and I will refer to is as such.
  • Create an outline for your eBook to make sure you cover everything you intended.
  • Start writing! Writing an eBook takes time, but it will be well worth it over time as you add another information product to your inventory.
  • Begin blogging about your topic and discuss your upcoming eBook.
  • When your eBook is complete, set it up as a product on your new domain.
  • Discover creative ways to market your eBook, including adding affiliates, hosting teleseminars and webinars, advertising on Facebook and other sites, and connecting with people locally who would be interested in learning more about your topic. This worked extremely well for my real estate farming eBook.
  • Ask others to interview you to introduce you, your topic, and your eBook to their audiences.
  • Think about what else you could create that would be a helpful addition to your new eBook. Think checklists, workbooks, and templates. These are amazing add-ons and will bring you additional revenue over the years.

Writing an eBook can be an excellent way to begin your online marketing as an entrepreneur. Remember that an eBook is a digital information product that will serve you for years to come. And once you have written one eBook, begin outlining your next one. Jim Edwards has a new training program for writing and marketing eBooks that is second to none. Check it out and get started right away.

I’m Connie Ragen Green and I’ve been an online entrepreneur since 2006. If you are ready to get started on your journey to multiple streams of online income, visit my site at Online Entrepreneur Blueprint and download your complimentary training to get started today.

Share Button

Creating Your Free Giveaway to Build Your List

Your Free GiveawayIs Your Free Giveaway Complete?

Long ago, before I came online in 2006 it was said that people would opt in to your list just to be on your list. You didn’t have to promise them a newsletter or provide them with a short report or other opt in gift or free giveaway. All of what we now do on the internet was new and exciting and everyone involved looked forward to receiving email messages from people who had information on any of a variety of topics. Those days have gone the way of the dinosaur and you must accept that fact and move on.

There was a short period of time where people would join a list just to receive a newsletter, but these days that typically would only be effective for those who are already well known in their niche. The very first list I joined in 2006 was for a newsletter on being positive in our lives. This newsletter was from Jon Gordon, an author and speaker on the topics of leadership, sales, culture, and teamwork. I eagerly awaited each issue arriving in my inbox and took his valuable information and tips to heart. Jon had become an icon in my mind at that time.

For the rest of you who are not known to the world, you must provide something of value to the visitors whom you hope will opt in to your list. I have found two effective ways for you to make this happen.

There are several names for what you will offer people, including free giveaway, ethical bribe, and opt in gift. I will refer to it here as your free giveaway. Typically this would be a short report on a specific aspect of your overall topic, and could vary in length from five to thirty pages. The preferred length has gone back and forth over the years, and I now recommend that my students offer something that is between fifteen and twenty-five pages. You include a table of contents, an introduction, a resources sections, and information about the author at the end. It’s sort of a mini eBook in that it is self-contained and filled with excellent, helpful information.

At the end of your free giveaway you absolutely must include a call to action. This is what you want your reader to do next after they come to the end of your report. I send people to look at my author page on Amazon to see all of the books I have written, to one of my products or online courses, or to another one of my sites where they can find further information. The idea is to move them through a process that will serve their needs while also allowing you to share more about who you are, what you do, and what you have to offer.

Free giveaways can consist of audios and videos as well, but I would not create them without including a written component as well.

As you can see, there are many things to think about when it comes to creating and distributing your free giveaway to build your list. I offer a training on this called Really Simple List Building that continues to be beneficial to new online entrepreneurs who want to build a list and grow their business.

I’m Connie Ragen Green and I’ve been an online entrepreneur since 2006. If you are ready to get started on your journey to multiple streams of online income, visit my site at Online Entrepreneur Blueprint and download your complimentary training to get started today.

Share Button

Creating Your Sales Offer Funnel

Sales Offer FunnelWhy Do You Need A Sales Offer Funnel?

Your job is to create the right information and content to lead your audience from awareness to purchase. A great way to do that is through creating a sales offer funnel. You’ll match each stage of your audience’s buying cycle to the content that helps them become a paying customer or to move through your funnel, buying more expensive products or services.

 

Planning an Info Product

One of the best ways to get people to sign up for your list and get into your funnel is by creating an information product. The best way to plan any information product is to figure out at least one problem that you can easily solve for your audience. The information product can be a longer report, a short report, a checklist, or something else that is useful for your audience.

Everything starts with knowing who your audience is, where they hang out, what they do, and what they want or need. You could start with a small item as a freebie opt-in, building up to the most expensive products and services. However, there is an even better way to create your entire offer funnel fast.

Once you have done the research about your audience, you know who they are, what their pain points are, and how you can solve their problems then you can actually build your offer funnel backward. Instead of starting with the smallest thing first, start with the biggest most outrageous expensive product or service that you can offer then tiered down to the least expensive item or freebie after the fact.

 

Identify Your Most Expensive Product First

Depending on your niche, start by writing down what your most expensive product or service will be. It will help to write it all down as if you’re going to create a sales page. Choose what the price point will be for this most expensive product or service and all the benefits of it to your audience.

If you already have a super expensive product or service such as a long-term, one-on-one coaching package, start with that. Because everything you do is designed to get more of your audience into your one-on-one flagship product or service. When you start from there you can easily create the less expensive products and opt-ins that will most fit with this audience.

 

Identify Lower Priced Products that Work with Your Most Expensive Product

Now look at any lower priced products that you have that fit in with your flagship product or service. If you don’t have any, you’ll need to create them as they fit in with the buying cycle of your audience. For example, your flagship product is a $10,000 dollar a year group coaching with one-on-one coaching options mastermind. What can you find or create that will appeal to and help your coaching clients? Items like checklists, Facebook Groups, webinars, courses, training, information products and more can all fit into your sales offer funnel as long as they make the audience curious about the flagship product.

 

Identify Free Content/Gifts That Leads to Increasingly Higher Priced Items

Finally, you can fit in freebies that attract people to your flagship product or your lower-priced products too. These might be free webinars, blog posts, infographics, eBooks, small reports, case studies, interviews, and more. As long as it’s of interest to those who would want your main product you can use it. For example, keep in mind you want people to join your flagship coaching program mentioned above, you might offer content that explains why coaching can work using case studies to prove your point.

 

Forms & Formats of Products & Services

Let’s look at some potential formats of different levels of products and or services to help get your creative juices flowing. Your most expensive product has a format, as do your other offerings. Some products include a combination of formats. This is just a potential example for you to use as a guide.

 

Most Expensive (Flagship) Product

Offer: Group coaching, with one-on-one coaching possibilities, as well as a membership website that offers a lot of materials and lessons. Your price is $10,000 a year and includes all the bells and whistles. Your exclusive clients get access to all your checklists, mind maps, infographics, lessons, courses, information products, group chat, group discussion board, weekly webinars, weekly Q & A, a one hour one-on-one call each week and daily email access and discounts on live events and other products that might be of interest to the audience.

My Flagship product is my Internet Marketing Six Pack training course, even though I also offer a Mastermind group through the Online Marketing Incubator program.

 

Mid-Range Product

Now that you have your product, you can easily identify mid-range products that will solve a problem or two for your audience, while also make them want more. A great mid-range item is an information product that solves one of your audience’s problems. For example, if you’re a business coach, you might offer a course on branding, content planning, or social media marketing. Essentially, you can take one small part of your cornerstone product and make it one of the mid-range products you offer. Say that one of the things you help your clients do is choose a business name. You might offer a short course on naming your business.

 

Intro Product

When you figure which items you’ll offer in the midrange area, then you can identify the intro products to offer your audience as a part of your sales offer funnel. Intro products can be low priced or free products. Anything that requires an email address to opt-in will work great here. Webinars, teleseminars, podcasts, social media posts, Facebook live, YouTube videos, free eBooks or reports, checklists, and so forth all make great intro level products and services as long as they offer a taste of what’s in the flagship or mid-range product or service offerings. Let’s say you have a mid-range product that is a six-week course on branding. You can offer a free branding checklist to collect email addresses and market that mid-range product and the flagship product to the people who signed up.

 

Free Products

While some of your intro products may be free, there are things that you may not consider free products. Blog posts, social media posts, guest posts, images, and other things can be also being thought of as products. But, if you have a good grasp of what you can do and what is possible, it’s going to be a lot easier to figure out what you need to offer your audience in terms of tools and free information. For example, I offer many Special Reports at no cost whatsoever and these serve me well in my business.

Your product generally will be a combination of all of these types of content and services. One way to figure out what you can offer in every step of your sales offer funnel is to conduct a content audit. When you find out what you have, and what you need, you can fill in the gaps.

 

I’m Connie Ragen Green, an Online Marketing Strategist, bestselling author of more than a dozen books, international speaker, and Mentor. I would love to connect with you to see how we might work together in the future.

Share Button

Creating Resource Pages for Additional Revenue

Resource PagesResource Pages to Build Your Online Business

This post is all about how to create resource pages to build your credibility and increase your online income. Resource pages are hand-selected products and services you are recommending to your community. In contrast to a typical blog post, resource pages are designed to be a source of comprehensive information on a particular topic.  While blog posts are typically in the three hundred to seven hundred fifty word range, resource pages tends to be longer because they need to cover a subject in great detail. And they are extremely effective for a variety of reasons.

Got a website or a blog? Of course you do! But chances are it’s not as useful as it could be, just because it’s missing this vital piece: a resources page.

Your readers are curious. They want to know:

  • What tools you use in your own business
  • What training programs you’ve studied and recommend
  • What advertising platforms you use
  • What books you’ve read and loved
  • Whose blog you read
  • Who designed your logo
  • Who you turn to for technical advice
  • Where you go for marketing advice
  • And a host of other resources

In fact, next to your “About” page, a well-planned resource page might just be the most visited page on your site. Here’s an example of a great resources page: http://ConnieRagenGreen.com/resources

It’s time to capitalize on that potential traffic with some strategic monetization in the form of affiliate links and partnerships. You’ll be so glad you did this after your business really takes off.

Start by making a big list of all the tools you use on a regular basis. One good way to create a list fast is to go through your passwords file. You’ll quickly see all of the sites you log into regularly, such as your shopping cart, your membership sites, your favorite theme provider, etc.

Next, think of all the training programs you’ve purchased. You probably have them stored in a folder on your computer, so open that up and make a list of what’s relevant. You can even become my affiliate by signing up here.

What about JV partners? Have you worked with other coaches or service providers you’d recommend? Even if they don’t have an official affiliate program, you may be able to work out a private referral program, so don’t be afraid to ask.

Finally, don’t forget your own products. Sometimes I get so carried away with recommending other people’s products, tools, and services I neglect to mention my own.

Be sure when you’re adding links to your page that you use your affiliate link when one is available, and be sure you have the appropriate disclaimers in place when you do.

Share Button

Body of Work – What Are You Creating?

connie-teslaIt wasn’t until I became an online entrepreneur in 2006 that I ever thought about creating a body of work. I’m defining that term to refer to “the collected output of a writer or artist, or at least a substantial part of it, over the course of their lifetime or a clearly defined period during their life.”

Once I published my first book during the summer of 2010 I became aware that all of my writing, including my blog posts, articles, short reports, eBooks, and then my completed manuscript for the book I published in paperback represented what it was that I was attempting to share with people on the topic of online marketing. Then I thought about my audio trainings, public speaking and presentations, and also my videos and saw that they were an important part of my body of work as well. In short, anything that you say or do related to your topic falls into this category, and I believe this makes you think about what you are creating and the legacy you will be leaving behind in a very unique way.

During 2016 I created online courses as a part of my “Really Simple” series, and this all began in January with my Internet Marketing Six Pack training course. For the first time since coming online more than a decade ago I cared about the impact I was having on people around the world in a way that I had never thought of before. This made me work even harder and more diligently to put together training programs that could help the people in my tribe to change their lives dramatically.

I’m not including social media as a part of the content we can create as a legacy for after we are gone. Why? Because the posts we make on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites is fleeting in the overall scheme of things. I would encourage you to spend time creating a body of work on sites that you own and control.

Do you think of what you are creating in your business as your own “body of work”? What other questions may I answer for you about this topic?

Share Button