Cheap Self-Publishing

Bob Martin on Creating Websites (and Businesses!)

Do you know why I like Bob Martin? It's because he gives away vast amounts of information and support for free. I believe that is why he has been so successful. I have, many times, emailed him with questions and received quick responses that get me back on track.

I have been fortunate to work with Bob Martin on a number of projects. Some of my better websites are solely his design. I like what he does, so I go back to him again and again. Over the years, we have become friends and, I admit, support each other in a myriad of ways. One way is to let you know about him here. Bob also publishes books (in addition to all sorts of other things; check out the bio below). He is certainly a kindred spirit. I encourage you to take his advice below to heart.

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1. Why is it important to have your own website for selling your books?
 
Let me change up a little bit here, Tom.  Instead of why I think it is important to have your own website for selling books, I want to talk about why it is important to have your own website.  Selling books is such a small niche.  I have many websites (around 50) of my own.  Only one of them is for selling books.  Some of my other sites are for selling other types of products. Some of my sites are for providing information to people for free, and are supported by advertising revenue.  Some sites are only for my pleasure, and don't make any money at all.  So, there are many reasons to have a website, not just for selling books! :-)

However, for the purpose of this interview, I will concentrate on why it is important to have a website for the purposes of earning money.  Why is that important?  Really, we are in a new century, and I believe that we are entering into a new type of economy.  To be honest, I saw this coming back in the late 90's, although it has progressed more quickly than I thought it would.  Look at the job situation these days where there are so many people unemployed or underemployed.  I believe we are entering a time when far fewer of us will be employed in the traditional sense, and more of us will be more self employed, and primarily using the Internet to make our living.  We may be selling books, doing consulting over the net, selling physical products or any number of other money making methods, primarily through the Internet.  Because of this, we will need to have a website, or multiple websites to facilitate that type of scenario.  I personally believe that we all have something that we can contribute to others, and through our particular type of expertise we will be able to make money in a far less traditional way where fewer of us will have what we think of as "jobs" today.  Getting into this type of mindset now, it is still early enough to be ahead of the curve and position yourself ahead of the masses of people who will figure this out over time.
 
2. What is the best way to set up your own website?
 
These days, it is far easier to set up your own website.  Even if you choose to hire somebody else to set it up for you, you will still need to be able to keep the website updated with fresh information, maybe make some visual changes to the site from time to time and such, so even if you don't "set it up" you will need to be able to do some maintenance type things on the site yourself.  Fortunately, today it is much easier to be able to do those things yourself than it was a decade ago.  Today, there are a lot of "content management" types of software that make setting up a website quite simple.  These days, if you know how to use a program like Microsoft Word, you can also work on your website, adding fresh content and keeping things up to date.  

I like to use WordPress software to make my websites.  I feel that WordPress makes it easy to do, to the point where I can concentrate my efforts on providing information to my readers instead of focusing my time and efforts on making my website look good.  After all, the reader is what it is all about, and having loyal readers on your site is how you will be able to leverage your site into making money for you.  Of course there are other software packages that will do this for you as well, but WordPress is my choice, and is currently the most popular website building software in the world.

The process of setting up a website consists of a few steps:

    1. You will need to purchase a domain name (www.yourname.com).  The domain name will cost you roughly $10 per year to register and keep for your exclusive use.
    2.  You will need "hosting".  Basically this means that you will rent space on a web server through a hosting company.  There are literally thousands of hosting companies.  A popular one that I have used extensively is Hostgator.com.  You can rent a hosting account for $5 to $10 per month for a normal website.  If your site becomes super popular you will end up spending more so that you can have a more powerful server that can handle the added needs that come with a more popular site.
    3.  You will need to build the site (yourself, or hire somebody to do it).  I prefer to do this using WordPress, as I said, but there are lots of ways you can do it.

3. Should you hire someone to create your website or should you try to do it yourself? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

For a beginner, it is probably best to hire somebody.  As you gain more and more experience doing these kinds of things, venture out a bit and give it a try yourself!  I learned everything I know just by doing it and learning from my mistakes!

I would say that one of the biggest advantages of hiring a professional to do your website is that it will be exactly that... professional!  In particular, if you are selling products and you have a website that looks more amateurish, people will be reluctant to buy anything from you.  They will consider two things.. firstly, are you really legitimate?  If they send money for a product or service, will they really get what they are paying for, or are you just there to get their money?  Secondly, if you are legitimate, what is the quality of what you are selling.  If you have a website that looks like it was done by an amateur, how good is the information in a book that you wrote?  Another important consideration is that by hiring a professional to build a nice site for you, you can spend your time concentrating on the things you do best, creating quality items for customers and such.

The biggest disadvantage?  I suppose that I kind of covered that when I talked about the advantages!  It is a two way street and the advantages and disadvantages kind of go hand in hand. 

4. Is it possible to create an inexpensive ("cheap") website that still does what you want it to do?

Of course, it depends on what you consider "inexpensive" to be.  But, generally, yes, it is possible to do an effective website on a budget.  So, inexpensive.. how much is that?  $5?  $50? $500?  Really, you could create a website on any of those budgets, of course the more you spend the better.  You won't be able to hire a professional for $5 or probably even $50, but for $500 you could get a nice website, without a doubt!

Now, if you are making a commercial site where you are doing e-commerce, selling things and such, then you will need to spend more to build the site.  But, still, for $500 or so you can have a great site that can make you real money.  The way I look at it $500 is cheap.  Think about 20 years ago where if you wanted to sell stuff to make a living you needed a "real" store, so you had to either buy a building or rent a place, that was much more expensive.  Today, with just a website you can make a nice living.  These days, I make 100% of my income online, and I make a lot more money now than I ever did when I had a "real" job.  It's an amazing world we live in!

5. Anything else you would like to share?

Really, I would just like to encourage anybody to get a website up!  Now is the time to get into the game, and if you wait much longer you will run the risk of being left behind.  We are in a new economy that works much differently than your Dad's economy.  We are already earning a living in much different ways than our fathers did, and the future holds more changes.  I started earning money online in the early 1990s, and the changes I have seen in that time amaze me.  It is easier to make a living online now than it has ever been.  Now is the time to join the revolution and be part of the new economy!  Don't let fear keep you away, the best thing you can do is jump in, you will learn much more easily than you imagine!

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Bob Martin is an Internet Entrepreneur.  He is an American who has lived in the Philippines since May of 2000.  Bob has been earning a living on the Internet for more than 20 years already, and enjoys helping others do that as well.  Bob writes books and sells them online, he also designs and builds websites for clients.  If you are interested in contacting Bob for a website, or for any other reason, visit his personal website:  http://MindanaoBob.com and send him a message through the contact form.

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Dan Poynter on getting manuscript help from experts

Get Manuscript Help from Experts

by Dan Poynter

Savvy nonfiction author-publishers take each chapter of their nearly complete manuscript and send it off to at least four experts on that particular chapter's subject. This step in book writing is called "peer review."

Some experts might get two or three chapters but most will get only one. Do not overwhelm them. If you send the whole manuscript, most experts will put it on their desk with the best of intentions and never get back to it.

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.

--Niels Bohr (1885-1962), Danish physicist and Nobel Laureate

Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One-Minute Manager Library, says "I don't write my books, my friends write them for me." He explains that he josts down soe good ideas and sends them off to friends for comment. They send back lots of good ideas that he puts into his manuscript. Ken is being very generous, of course, and what he is describing is "peer review."

What you get back from your peer reviewers is extremely valuable: They may add two more items to your list; they sometimes delete whole paragraphs where the practice has changed; they occasionally cross out that comment you thought was cute but was potentially embarrassingly stupid, and they sometimes even correct punctuation, grammar and style.

Also send copies of the complete manuscript off to friends, family, literate objective readers, potential buyers and even a Devil's Advocate or two. The more feedback you get the better.

When your book comes out, you will receive far less adverse-reader reaction because the book will be bulletproof. After all, it has be reviewed and accepted by the best.

And, there is another valuable reason for peer review: You have more than two-dozen opinion molders telling everyone about your book -- and how they helped you with it.

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Dan Poynter, the Voice of Self-Publishing, has written more than 100 books since 1969 including Writing Nonfiction and the The Self-Publishing Manual. Dan is a past vice-president of the Publishers Marketing Association. For more help on book publishing and promoting, see http://ParaPub.com. (C) 2003

Fern Reiss on the 5 Best Ways to Get Media Attention for your Business

The 5 Best Ways to Get Media Attention for Your Business
by Fern Reiss, CEO, PublishingGame.com/Expertizing.com

How do you get journalists to write articles about you?  In the past year, I’ve been featured in over 100 magazines and newspapers worldwide (including many of the biggies, from The New York Times to Fortune Magazine).  How do you get that kind of attention for your book or business?  Here are my top techniques.  (See my special report, www.PublishingGame.com/mediareport.htm for an even deeper look at how to maximize your media attention.)

Be media worthy
This should be obvious, but even experienced publicists seem to overlook it. Journalists are looking for news, for trends, for cutting-edge story ideas.  They’re not looking for “I published a new book” or “I hired a new employee” or “I have a great new business idea!”  Even though those sentences have the word ‘new’ in them, that’s not sufficient for most journalists, whose first reaction is, “Who cares?”  If you can satisfactorily answer the “Who cares?” then you’re well on your way to nailing down a story.

Learn to coin juicy soundbites
Besides having a newsy story to tell, it’s also helpful if you can present it in a juicy, clever way.  Most of the stories that are covered by today’s media profile people who can tell a good story in an interesting way.  Get some consulting or take a class with someone whose expertise is coining soundbites in order to maximize your ability to be quoted.  (I offer this consulting, as do others.)  What do I mean by a soundbite?  Take, for example, the time I was featured in a major wire service syndicated news story, in a story on the bankruptcy of WonderBread.  My quote—which appeared first in an article that also quoted the CEOs of Krispy Kreme and Bruegger’s Bagels—was “America’s donut days are dead.”  (If you don’t understand why that was a desirable quote, quickly run out and get some training!)

Send out publicity releases regularly
On a consistent basis, send out press releases on whatever you’re doing.  Depending on your business objectives, you might want to send out releases monthly or weekly, but try to develop a regular pattern that reporters can rely on.  Barbara Corcoran, whose company became famous as New York City’s biggest residential real estate group, attributes much of her tremendous media success to the regular publicity release of “The Corcoran Report,” where she quantified the average condo and co-op sale in the city.  Use one of the low-cost or free press release services for your frequent communications, and a more upscale press release service infrequently for your particularly important communications.
 
But do targeted publicity too
Don’t just send generic press releases to publications randomly; do targeted publicity as well.  When you speak to most publicists, their idea of targeted releases is sending to 500 publications instead of 10,000.  When I say targeted publicity, I mean zeroing in on one publication, and one editor or journalist at that publication, to whom to address your story.  A few years ago, when I wanted some major international publicity for Expertizing, I sat down with all the business magazines and decided which one was most appropriate; then I read back stories by everyone on the masthead until I’d zeroed in on the journalist who was most likely to appreciate my story.  I sent him a press release—just one press release, just to him.  Two days later he phoned, and a few weeks later he attended my all-day Expertizing Workshop in Boston.  The result?  A full page story in Fortune Magazine.  (More on how to target publications most effectively in the Expertizing Publicity Forum—   www.Expertizing.com/forum.htm)

Sign up for the Expertizing Publicity Forum
If you’re promoting a nonfiction book or general –interest business, consider my new Expertizing Publicity Forum, where each week you can tell top journalists about your business—and hear their personalized tips on how you can best promote it, and whether they’re interested in writing an article about it for their publication.  Participants have gotten placement in everything from The New York Times to USA Today, and two participants got literary agents and big publishing deals!  For more information, check out www.Expertizing.com/forum.htm.

If you’d like to get the top 18 tips on getting more media attention for your book and business, get Fern’s $11, 7-page special report “Get Media Attention for Your Business: 18 Techniques to Attract Journalists to Write About You”  at www.PublishingGame.com/mediareport.htm. Or join the Expertizing Publicity Forum where you can pitch your book or business to journalists from national publications each week; spaces are going fast at www.Expertizing.com/forum.htm.

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Fern Reiss is CEO of PublishingGame.com (www.PublishingGame.com) and Expertizing.com (www.Expertizing.com) and the author of the books, The Publishing Game: Find an Agent in 30 Days, The Publishing Game: Bestseller in 30 Days, and The Publishing Game: Publish a Book in 30 Days as well as several other award-winning books.  She is also the Director of the International Association of Writers (http://www.AssociationofWriters.com) providing publicity vehicles to writers worldwide. She also runs The Expertizing® Publicity Forum where you can pitch your book or business directly to journalists; more information at www.Expertizing.com/forum.htm.  Sign up for her complimentary newsletter at www.PublishingGame.com/signup.htm.  And definitely sign up for her Facebook Writing and Publishing group at harvard.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6138914001.

Copyright © 2009 Fern Reiss

Penny Sansevieri: How to maximize and monetize social media

 

Outsourcing your work

I readily admit that I have too much going on to keep things moving in a forward direction. Notice how little I post around here these days. It's not because I don't love you all, but rather because there really is that much going on in my business.

Take, for example, a project that I have been working on. This year I purchased fifty domain names that go along with the fifty states. An example would be California Online High Schools. Another example would be Wyoming Online High Schools. And so on.

I purchased these to drive traffic to my main website, Best Online High Schools. The problem is that these Wordpress-based websites need actual content for them and I do not have the time. What to do? What to do?

Along comes my good friend, Bob Martin, he of Davao City, Philippines. He owns a number of companies and one of them, Web-Earner, provides several different services including outsourcing. Do you need work done that you do not have time to do? If you can explain it to Bob, he has employees standing by ready to provide those services.

So, in my case, I needed those fifty websites filled with posts (parts of articles, Youtube videos, etc.) that relate to online high schools. I started working with Bob on Monday and I already have thirty new posts for a very reasonable price. I am paying him for ten hours of work each week and I can already see that I am getting my money's worth.

So, how about you? Do you have too much work?

Morris Rosenthal on Virtual Inventory POD

Morris Rosenthal, publisher of Foner Books and author of Print-On-Demand Book Publishing, has begun to compile an impressive set of Youtube videos on how to be the sort of independent publisher that he (and I) are.

His book is one of the five books that I recommend to everyone considering this journey. It has molded and shaped what I have done and you should definitely read it. It offers a completely different model to self and independent publishing, but a successful one. Gone are the days of 3000 books sitting in your garage. Printing books as you sell them seems to be the wave of the future.

You will want to watch this video below. As time permits, I will put up others of his series as well.