Become an expert by writing, every day. And then self-publish an e-book.
The reason Marco Polo is famous was because he wrote down his travels, even though many people had explored the East trade routes before. Polo wasn’t an explorer, but a merchant.
One doesn’t have to be an expert (many aren’t) but they’ve positioned themselves as such. See pg 18-19 for Ferriss’s rules on how to be an expert. Michael Goldberg also has a blog article on this topic.
Don’t hoard, share.
Write every day. Set a goal of 100, 500, or 1000 words per day and hit your mark. A good e-book is only 30,000 words = 30 days/60 days.
Teach Everything You Know.
Marketing
Develop a landing page to target specific customers (use a WordPress plugin and your personal name domain), add an opt-in form, and collect leads. Email is better than social media for selling. Don’t let your leads die – keep delivering valuable content sporadically.
Don’t trust Facebook or Twitter to host your content (rules can change). Instead, use your personal blog
You can’t increase your pricing if no one knows who you are. Improve that by becoming a visible expert and authority.
Writing should end up with 25,000-30,000 words. Blog posts at 3000 words, launch marketing emails at 500 words, and guest posts at 7000-10,000 words
Stand rather than sit, outline the book using wireframes, and pick a clear name rather than clever.
Price your book based on value delivered. Don’t race to the bottom, but do provide many times the worth of the book. People will pay for repackaged content in the form of ebooks and PDF files.
They may do it to support you, want it in a specific format, or extra content (video tutorials) if they pay full price.
Interviews allow you to leverage the audiences of the interviewee. Just make it easy for them to be the interviewee and share the content.
Some authors refuse to call books “books” because they sell for less. If they are repackaged for “guides” or “masterclasses” then you can charge more.
iBooks Author (now titled Pages) may be the best tool for writing in designing your own book.
Not marketing or selling your book on your own is a failure. You have to the word out when a book is launched. Be everywhere all the time. Send out previews of relevant content to people you want a review for. Get them to write testimonials by asking. Testimonials include photos, names, job titles, and blurbs about the service you provide. If you’ve been published by news agencies, then feature them.
When launching draft sample emails and tweets for friends to post to various sites to help get the word out.
To avoid sales dips, keep writing articles.
