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Self Publishing a Book and Building Your List

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Self Publish a BookSelf-Publishing a Book and Building a List: Why This Is So Important

You have a great deal of knowledge to share, and one of the very best ways to share that is with a book. I’ve now written and published more than a dozen bestselling books and am writing here from my experiences. Self publishing a book gives you:

  • Instant expert status
  • Opportunities to speak and present to others
  • Access to an audience you might not otherwise reach
  • The opportunity to fill your sales funnel with interested, engaged readers

Here’s how:

Start by publishing on Kindle. If you’ve been blogging or creating other content for more than a few weeks, you likely already have everything you need to “write” your book. Simply gather your content, organize it in logical book format, do some light editing to make it flow well, and you’re done! Right now, take some time to see what content you have already created that could be repurposed and used to create your first, or next book.

But before you hit the “publish” button, create an offer just for Kindle readers. This can be a landing page with an opt-in offer of a related checklist, an additional resource guide, or even an audio version of your book. You’ll want to be sure it’s closely related, so downloading it is a true “no brainer” for all your book buyers, and follow up with a relevant autoresponder series.

I highly recommend using Aweber for this, as this service is inexpensive and fairly self explanatory to set up. Their customer service is very good and I am also more than happy to answer questions for you about doing this part successfully.

Pro tip: Add a link to your landing page in the front of your book, so that those who are browsing on Amazon will see it, even if they don’t buy.

Once your landing page is finished and your book is published, you can offer it for free through Kindle’s KDP Select program. Promote it heavily on social media and to your mailing list. The more downloads you generate, the higher your book will climb in the rankings (if temporarily), driving more traffic to your book—and your landing page.

Follow up with a second (and third, and fourth) book to keep the momentum and your list building going strong for years to come.

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Kindle Publishing to Build Your List

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Kindle PublishingKindle Publishing to Build Your List

There are many ways to build an email list such as offering a lead magnet, running Facebook ads, and building up your expertise status so that people want to follow you so they can know what you’re saying. However, there is one way that is very effective that you cannot only use to build your list fast, but you can earn money while you’re building your list. That method is list building via Kindle Publishing.

If you don’t know, anyone can publish a book via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program. You simply write a book (or outsource it and have a ghostwriter write it) with a few extra pieces inside to help you build your list. We’ll talk about that later, but for now let’s talk about why having an email list is so important for the success of your business.

Why Having an Email List is Important – Kindle Publishing Is A Part Of It

Getting people on your list gives you an opportunity to get people to buy higher priced products. The way you do that is, you send them planned messages that they’ll receive while they’re on your email list. These planned messages are designed to help you move the list members through your product funnel.

It’s easy to get confused about what’s important when building your business. You use social media, blogs, webinars, and more. However, did you know that the point of everything you do online should be to build an email list full of targeted members, who want what you have to offer? Business owners who aren’t building an email list are missing out on important opportunities to boost business. Email is the most consistent way to drive repeat traffic to your website and to sell ever more products and services to your audience.

Let’s break this down by how email can benefit your business.

  • Build Community – You may think the only way to build community is through your social media connections but that is not true. When people are on your email list you can actually get them more active in your social media communities by sending them a message to “check out the great discussion in our Facebook group” happening right now. Since most people keep their mobile devices close, you can encourage more interaction with that simple of a message.
  • Make it Simple to Communicate – When you send a message on social media not everyone receives it. While it’s true that sometimes people do not open emails, every done receive it and therefore has more of an opportunity to see your messages. Practice crafting better subject lines to improve open rates.
  • Help You Build Your Reputation – The better you are at sending just the right messages about just the right thing to your list the better they’ll view you. They’ll share thoughtful messages with their friends and family too. Plus, you can easily let your list know more about you via email messages than you can any other way.
  • Assist with Brand Building – More than likely, people who sign up for your email list already see you as an expert that they want to learn from. Plus they like your content already. You can actually use your list to try different types of content and see how they tend to share the new content giving you clues on whether it will work with a larger unknown audience before you put it on your website.
  • Enable You to Reach Audience Sub-groups – Did you know that with a targeted list you could make more money anytime you want? All you have to do is send out a message with an exclusive members only sale, or promotion and see what happens.
  • Email Lists Are Inexpensive – The technology that enables you to set up auto series is inexpensive, you can start in some cases free and work your way up to a larger account. It’s going to cost you about 20 to 30 dollars a month until your list is larger, then it will cost more but your return on investment will be more than enough to make up for it.
  • Build Relationships – Email is a great way to build a relationship with your subscribers. They get to know and trust you through the information and offers you share. List members also get a feel for your business ethics. In short, emails are a great way to prove that you really care about your subscribers and have their best interests at heart.

If you skip build an email list, you’re making a huge mistake. Email marketing is the most effective form of marketing. Whether you build a big list or a small list, when you get interested people on your list your business will be forever changed for the better. So, now we can go on and learn how Kindle can help you build a powerful email list

How Kindle Publishing Can Help Your List-building Efforts

Since Amazon doesn’t share email addresses of the people who buy your book, you have to be creative and know what to include in your book but first let’s go over how big and powerful Amazon is.

Amazon has built trust with much of the public. People give their credit card number and address information to Amazon to save for future buys so they don’t have to think about money. They just click one button and the purchase is made. Because Amazon tracks purchases and suggests related items, you have a good chance to sell your book even if you never promote it.

However, Amazon gives you plenty of ways to promote your book. Many of the promotion methods are inexpensive and some are even free of charge. In fact, you pay nothing to publish your book and can earn up to 70 percent royalties. In the traditional publishing world, you’re lucky to make 50 cents a book, but on Amazon, you can make much more per book by cutting out the middleman.

Each person who buys your book and reads it will be exposed to your free offer or lead magnet. All you have to do is mention your lead magnet in several spots within the book to make it easy for your reader to get to the lead magnet.

You’ll need to insert the lead magnet differently than you would in an information product that someone will read on their computer. Therefore, choose a link that is very simple to type in for your lead magnet opt-in page. However, the lead magnet you promote in your Kindle book isn’t much different from the other types of lead magnets that you create to build your email list. The exception is that a self-published Kindle Book makes you a published author with the ability to reach millions of customers who are ready to buy on Amazon.

Take a look at my books on Amazon to see why I am an advocate of Kindle publishing to build your list. What other questions do you have about this proven strategy?

 

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