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5 Reasons To Write a Book: Entrepreneurs, Coaches, Everyone

5 Reasons to Write a Book

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5 Reasons to Write a Book – Yes, You Must Become an Author!

When I decided to share this post, I thought about the 5 reasons to write a book and what that would mean to you. Are you struggling to build an online business or sign more clients? Not sure what to do next in your marketing plan? There’s one simple answer you probably haven’t yet considered:

Write a book.

It’s true. This one thing—especially if it’s an actual printed book rather than a Kindle or eBook—has the power to grow your business beyond your expectations. You’ll experience a whole new world of opportunities simply by having your name on the cover of a book. Here are 5 reasons to write a book:

Authority

Imagine you’re at a workshop or a conference or local networking group and you meet two people who both specialize in business branding—something you know you need help with.

One person says all the right things. She’s been in business for years and worked with some top-notch business owners. She has great ideas for how she can help you solidify your branding.

The other has a similar history and story, with one added bonus: she’s just handed you a copy of her latest book. It’s a professionally printed, substantial publication that practically exudes confidence.

Which person do you think shows more authority in her field? The one with the book, of course. There really is nothing better when it comes to establishing your authority in any niche than having a book with your name on it.

Expertise

So why does a book speak so highly of you and establish your authority so well? Because it gives you a platform to show off your expertise. It’s like being invited to present on any topic you choose on the world’s largest stage.

Not only that, but your readers are a captive audience. They’re listening—in that moment—only to you. That’s a powerful position to be in, and one that gives you an opportunity to really show off your stuff.

Market Reach

No matter how many readers Google sends your way, no matter how much traffic your YouTube channel receives, nothing will ever compare to the number of potential readers Amazon and other online booksellers can bring your way.

Positioned correctly, your book can reach millions of new readers, and thousands of potential clients. Combine that with the expertise and authority we know comes with being a published author, and that’s a recipe for success that can’t be beat.

Better Than a Business Card

If you’ve ever been to a conference, you have no doubt collected a stack of business cards. You get home and toss them in a drawer, and six months later you throw them out, without ever having contacted the people who gave them to you.

But if one of those people handed you a book instead, what happened? You’ve likely read it (or at least leafed through it). You almost certainly didn’t throw it away. And you remember it—and the person who wrote it.

Press Opportunities

Turn on your television to any interview show, browse through Huffington Post or Forbes, or listen to any of a number of popular podcasts, and you’ll quickly see that most of the guest speakers and interviewees have written a book.

The fact is, interview shows depend on interesting, insightful guests to keep their audiences listening, and there’s no better applicant than an author. Writing a book will open up many, many opportunities for appearances that you may never have without your name on that cover.

Do you have to write a book to be successful? No. But there’s no denying the fact that a published author will find she has a much easier time growing her business than the person who keeps putting it off until later.

I certainly hope these 5 reasons to write a book have been helpful to you. I wrote and published my first book in 2010 and am currently finishing my fifteenth. It’s still difficult for me to believe I have written so many bestsellers, and my business would not be where it is today had I not chosen to become a published author.

I’m Connie Ragen Green and I work with new online entrepreneurs to help them get into profit as quickly as possible with information products, affiliate marketing, marketing for small businesses, blogging, authorship, and more. Download your Online Entrepreneur Blueprint and get started right away.

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How to Write Short Reports

How to Write Short ReportsIf you search for information on how to write short reports, you will unearth a myriad of examples and opinions prepared by people from many walks of life. Instead of sifting through all that has already been written on this topic, I prefer to explain exactly what I have done since 2006 that has helped me to build a massive online business as an entrepreneur on the internet by writing, marketing, and selling short reports.

My definition of a short report is a simple one. Short reports are comprised of content on a specific topic and may be based on original writing from the author/publisher, PLR (Private Label Rights) content, curated content from a variety of acknowledged sources, or content from guest authors and contributors. The purpose of a short report is to provide readers with a summary and overview of a topic in order to form opinions, impart knowledge, and lead to further discussion and study. They typically range in length from several thousand to more than twenty thousand words, though this is entirely left to the discretion of the author and/or the publisher.

In the world of information, a short report makes it possible to share information more readily and in a condensed form so that all parties have the opportunities to come to conclusions and make decisions without having to do massive research on their own beforehand.

Over the years I have published many short reports on topics related to online entrepreneurship. If you go to my main marketing site at ConnieRagenGreen.com you will see “Short Reports” and “More Short Reports” in the Menu Bar at the top. Those will give you an idea of what you can create to give away. Even those those short reports are free, I continue to earn income from them because of the links I include within the reports themselves and in the Resources section at the end. Knowing how to write short reports opens the door to passive and residual income opportunities.

My recommendation is that you start small by creating a five to ten page short report. Use a combination of your own original writing and some PLR, curated, or guest articles. Get into the practice of adding a Table of Contents, a Resources section, and About the Author.

My very best recommendations for PLR (Private Label Rights) content:

Alice Seba and Melody Spier: http://ConnieLoves.me/freePLR

Alice Seba: http://ConnieLoves.me/AliceDIY

Ronnie Nijmeh: http://ConnieLoves.me/SelfHelpPLR

Nicole Dean and Melissa Ingold: http://CoachingStickyGlue.com

Sue Fleckenstein – http://ConnieLoves.me/SuePLR

Use your new short report as a free giveaway to build your list, a simple product, or as a bonus for another product or course you have available. The time you spend working on learning how to write short reports will serve you and your prospects for years to come.

I’m Connie Ragen Green, online marketing strategist, bestselling author, and international speaker on the topics of entrepreneurship and inner game mind shifts. Let’s connect to see how I may best serve you in the near future. And be sure to check out my popular training course, Really Simple Content Marketing.

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How to Write an eBook: Now Is The Time!

How to Write an eBookHow To Write An eBook

The question I am most often asked is on the topic of how to write an eBook. There is not a definitive answer to this, but I will tell you that it is extremely worthwhile to write an eBook as a part of your online business. Reasons for this include:

  • Becoming a published author on your specific topic
  • Being seen as an authority in your niche or industry
  • To have something to give away at no cost to attract new prospects
  • To sell for profit, on your own site of through Amazon’s Kindle program

When you go back less than a decade the idea of publishing your own book was not something most people thought of as a possibility. But the truth is that eBooks have been around for almost twenty years now. My friend Jim Edwards was instrumental in taking this concept mainstream when he began writing, publishing, and marketing his own eBooks back in 1997. Knowing how to write an eBook is life changing!

You may download a Special Report I put together with some of Jim’s guest posts for me on this topic. Please let me know if you are putting this all to work for you as an online entrepreneur.

And as far as publishing your own eBook, whether it be on your own website or for the Amazon Kindle program, it’s not a particularly complicated process. And when you look back after writing and publishing your first eBook you will see that the writing is actually the easy part.

The most important part of this process is building your platform and marketing your eBook before, during, and after it is written. I have done this successfully with more than a dozen books, and you can take a look at them here.

The truth is that it has never been easier to do this, and knowing how to write an eBook and build upHow to Write an eBook a business around it is an excellent way to change your life and become an online entrepreneur. Even if I did not create any other information products, online training courses, live workshops and events, and my Online Marketing Incubator and Platinum Mastermind programs the income generated from my books would replace what I used to earn before coming online. I attribute this to what I have learned over the years and continue to learn from Jim Edwards 7 Day eBook program.

So before you think about having your book published by a traditional publisher or self-publishing it as an eBook, check out Jim’s completely updated training course. The main pdf is over five hundred pages of detailed, step-by-step training, and the course also includes additional webinar replays and more. This course will change your life and give you options as a published author and online entrepreneur.

Check Out Jim Edwards’ 7 Day Ebook Training Now

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How to Write Effective Web Sales Copy

Web Sales CopyWriting Web Sales Copy That Sells

I believe that learning to write effective web sales copy (copywriting on the Internet to sell products, services, courses, and more) was the best investment of time and money I could ever have done for my business during my first year online. Now that I have more than fifty different products for sale on the Internet, my web sales copy is like a sales team always at the ready to assist me in making sales 24/7/365. And the interesting part of this is that it didn’t have to take me a full year to learn how to do it. Now you can get started in as little as ten days.

I was given a review copy of a new training on copywriting by Dennis Becker, and I’d like to share my thoughts on this with you within this post. I also decided to do some additional research before publishing it here.

I was reading a post by Derek Gehl over at the Entrepreneur site called Make Your Sales Copy Sell: 7 Tricks to Writing Copy that Brings in Business where he says that:

Writing good sales copy doesn’t have to be hard–you just use a formula. Plug in all the elements, and you’ll create a whole that’s bigger than the sum of its parts.”

I agree, up to a point. When you are new to copywriting it’s easy to get confused by the glib comments of more experienced copywriters and marketers. Writing effective web sales copy takes practice, and that is exactly what you get from a new training just released by Dennis Becker. It’s called CopyBox and is a ten day copywriting challenge and short course on how to get started with copywriting to sell your products and services online. And it’s quite inexpensive as well. Dennis says:

Learning how to write good sales copy is one of the most valuable and profitable skills you can pick up in your business career. Because once you know how to craft irresistible, sizzling sales letters, then you’ll have the power to sell anything to anyone!

That’s why I’ve put together this 50+ page hands-on course, where you’ll get a step-by-step guide for crafting high-response sales letters. This includes:

*Ten daily modules where you learn exactly how to write sizzling copy!
*Ten daily assignments to go with each module. If you follow along, you only need to invest a few minutes a day to write a new piece of your copy – and in just 10 days you’ll be ready to roll with a high-response sales letter!

I love this type of “short course” where you can go through the materials quickly and easily over a ten day period. And I promise that if you do that you will most likely look forward to writing copy instead of dreading it like I once did. And Dennis provides dozens of examples and tips throughout this entire course to make it easier than ever for you to create your own sales letter.

One other part of Derek’s post that you will find helpful is this one on the topic of features and benefits:

Talk about benefits, not just features.
Your potential customers want to know how your product or service will make their lives easier, so focus on benefits, not features. Here’s an example:

      • Feature: The Grade A Gardening Shovel is ergonomically designed to remove weeds more efficiently than traditional shovels.
      • Benefit: Get your weeding done in half the time and reduce wrist soreness!

A benefit answers the question “What’s in it for me?” and gets visitors to imagine using your product to take care of the problem they’re trying to solve.”

So if you are ready to jump in to the world of copywriting for the Internet, grab Dennis Becker’s Copy Box and start your ten day challenge and course of study. You’ll be glad you did, as this is a necessary part of online marketing that you can’t afford to be without. And you might even decide you like it enough to write web sales copy for others. Yes, that’s something that is in high demand among those of us working exclusively online, and learning how to do this part of the business effectively could be your next career.

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Writing Online: Write What You Know

moon-pieWhen I first came online and started a dozen blogs I made the mistake of thinking that I could write on a variety of topics, most of which I knew very little about from personal experience. Writing online is no different from any other type of writing in that you will do best when writing about what you already know well.

Writing coach Suzanne Lieurance discusses this topic in her recent article, entitled Write What You Know. In it she says:

“If I Can Do This, You Can Do This!

Ever since I left the classroom after being a full-time teacher for many years, I’ve been making a living writing about all sorts of things. The best part is, most of these things are based on my own life experiences.

For example, when I was a child growing up in the South, every day I saw my grandmother pack my grandfather’s lunch for work, and that lunch always included a Moon Pie. Years later, I thought about those Moon Pies and sold an article about the history of the Moon Pie to an educational publisher.”

This reminded me not only of my days of eating Moon Pies but also the idea that we all know so many things based on our life experiences that make excellent and enjoyable reading for others. This is what I recommend if you are struggling with writing online to start your business…

Spend thirty minutes each day writing about anything you know about. This can be current events, stories from your childhood, or something related to a job, vacation, or other experience you have had. This is non-fiction writing, so keep it factual and interesting. Over time, make a point in your writing that is related to what you will be writing about for your online business. I have said for many years that I can turn any topic or situation into a marketing lesson, and this holds true to this day.

Imagine how easily people will get to know, like, and trust you if you continue to share stories with them about subjects and situations you know well. I still enjoy telling stories from my days as a classroom teacher and while I was in real estate. Remind to tell you about the time I was alone on the yard with over a hundred elementary school students when a little girl had a grand mal seizure. Or the time I hosted an open house in an empty home and two escaped convicts ran through the back yard. You just can’t make this stuff up…

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Press Release Examples: How to Write a Release That Stands Out

Press Release ExamplesPress Release: Examples of Effective Ones for Your Business

Having just spent two weeks in Santa Barbara at the International Film Festival I am once again reminded of how and why press releases are so important. Small, independent films from countries around the world received more attention when press releases were distributed throughout the festival. This is an effective way to communicate directly with the audience you wish to reach, while sharing the exact and specific information you wish to share.

According to its definition, a press release, also referred to as a news release, media release, or press statement is a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something ostensibly newsworthy. This is just a fancy way of saying what I wrote in the previous paragraph, but it sounds much better this way.

Long ago, perhaps in an English class you may have been taught that press releases should contain the “who, what, where, when, and why” of a news story. Even thought this is still true, in modern times we have expanded upon this to include some other components. Here are some tips for you to keep in mind as you are composing your release:

  • Remember that your press release is intended to arouse interest from your target audience
  • Whatever you choose to write must actually be newsworthy
  • Use quotes whenever possible, and ask permission before using them
  • Grab attention with your headline and then get right to the point
  • Write in the third person when you compose your press release
  • Include your contact information so that people may connect with you

Press releases are intended to pique the interest of journalists and the media, so take your time to put together a release that is well thought out, well written, and informative. This can be the first step in achieving your goal of visibility for yourself and your topic. The marketplace is flooded with potential stories and pitches on a daily basis, so making yours stand out from the pack is crucial if you are to maintain credibility.

If you assume that ninety-nine percent of the people who read your release do not actually care about you or your topic you will be forced to make it interesting, succinct, and detailed. This will make it much easier for you to sift through the readers and find the exact people and groups who will be interested and benefit from what you have to offer.

Before you even begin writing your press release, ask yourself what end goal you have in mind. For example, do you want people to read your book, attend your event, or contact you for an interview? If you know where you are going from the very beginning you have a much better chance of hitting your goal and moving forward.

I hope these press release examples are helpful to you. I recommend using the free services available online first, and then paying for publication and distribution of your releases. What other questions do you have on press release examples?

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