Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Introduction to The Ultimate Marketing System for Authors

Chances are you're not reading this because you want to learn how to become a great marketer. You're an author and you're listening to this because you want what marketing can bring, which is money, recognition, and helping others.

Great marketing will help you sell more books. It will enable people to find and learn about you-which will sell more books. And it will provide a way for you to either entertain or share useful information-depending on how you want to help people-and this will also sell more books. You probably don't have the ambition to become a marketer at all and you would probably skip marketing altogether-if you could still get everything you wanted.

But marketing is the best way to easily get those three things you want: money, recognition, and helping others. You don't have to learn everything there is to know about marketing, but you do have to learn enough to give you what you want.

What you need is a marketing system that has the following seven criteria that any great marketing system should have:

1. Easy to learn and maintain. You have limited time and you have plenty of other things you'd rather be doing.

2. Big results for little time. The Pareto Principle says that 80% of the results come from 20% of the work. Your marketing system should provide you with the greatest leverage for the least amount of work so you can spend more time doing what you're passionate about.

3. Costs as little as possible. It's easy to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on marketing campaigns that usually provide little more than fluff. How many television commercials have you watched that left you scratching your head and afterward you can't even remember what the advertisement was for?

4.

Attracts quality traffic that spends money. Your marketing system should be targeted. You don't need to attract everyone, just those people that are interested in you and will buy your books.

5. Not dependent on the flavor of the week. Right now, everyone is telling you how awesome Facebook and Twitter are and how you have to use them if you want to attract customers. Your marketing system should be timeless. It can and certainly should take advantage of the latest technology, but it should not be dependent on them.

6. Does not require super sales or copywriting ability. You already know how to write and what you know should be good enough. Your marketing system should not require you to become a master copywriter or learn sales techniques. A great marketing system does the selling for you.

7. Not dependent on someone else's platform. You want to have complete control over your marketing. If you rely on someone else's platform (such as eBay, Google Adwords, Twitter, or Facebook), you could one day find the rug pulled out from under you and your business would be gone in an instant. It's okay to make use of these platforms, just don't build your business or marketing system on them.

The Ultimate Marketing System for Authors fulfills all seven of these criteria. The best thing about this system is that it generates sales and income by developing influence and trust through relationships built by engaging with people over time. You do not have to do any selling-the system does it for you.

Nonfiction books generally outsell fiction books and have the most opportunities for selling collateral products. Trying to make a living selling fiction is like trying to make a living selling art. It's possible, but it's significantly easier to make money by selling nonfiction. People are more willing to spend money on useful information than what they perceive as entertainment. Despite this disclaimer, even fiction authors can use this marketing system to gain more readers and can also create nonfiction collateral products and create multiple information products.

And please keep in mind; you don't have to be an "expert" to be an expert. Most people are hesitant to write content and proclaim themselves experts. They think they don't deserve the title and need advanced college degrees and years of experience with many awards before they can consider themselves experts. To be considered an expert, you simply have to know something that someone else doesn't and then share your knowledge. Expertise is a relative term, not an absolute state of being. All of us have knowledge in some area that we can share with others. Don't sell yourself short-you are already an expert in the eyes of many.

The Ultimate Marketing System for Authors is based on a blog and the content is then replicated and spread far across the galaxy of the Web. The heart of the system is the material you write on your blog. Let me explain this in a little more detail and then show you how the Ultimate Marketing System for Authors fulfills all seven of the criteria mentioned earlier.

The first thing you do is set up a website. Make sure it's set up with the WordPress blogging and web design software-which is completely free. Next, you start writing in your blog, perhaps twice a month. Writing your blog posts is the hardest and most time consuming part of this process-and it doesn't take very long. The rest are just technical details.

The next step is to record yourself reading your reading your blog post and turn it into a podcast and submit to all the podcast directories. Turn your audio into a video and submit it to Blip.tv, which automatically puts it on all the video sites. If you are writing fiction, submit your short stories-your blog posts-to the appropriate sites and if you are writing nonfiction, submit to all the article marketing sites. Next, submit your blog post to the social networking sites and mention your post on any social media sites you belong to.

This is all talked about in more detail in future posts. This part may sound daunting, but remember that you can always find someone you can pay to do this work for you.

The Ultimate Marketing System for Authors is a starting point. It can also be an ending point, the only marketing you need to do. It can easily be responsible for 80% to 90% and more of your marketing success. It builds on your website and automatically creates multiple products. Product launches can be built in and it can feed content to your mailing list on a regular basis. It's magnetic because it attracts web traffic to you instead of pushing people like most advertising. It can also take as little as one to two hours per week. That's a great investment of time and energy for such a huge return.

What this marketing system does is build a relationship with your audience and they start trusting you and looking to you as a trusted advisor. This happens just from hearing your voice and reading your content on a regular basis. This attracts the people that are really interested in what you have to offer.

Know that this will slowly build over time. It's not a quick fix, but it's stable and real and continues to build. My best business advice is to take action and keep at it.

Here is how the Ultimate Marketing System for Authors fulfills all seven of the criteria mentioned in the introduction:

1. Easy to learn and maintain.

Since you can pay someone else to handle the technical details, all you need to do is write your blog posts and record yourself reading them.

2. Big results for little time.

Again, if you have someone else handle the technical details, all you have to do is write your blog posts and record yourself reading them. The can be done in two hours a week or less.

3. Costs as little as possible.

If you handle all of the details, your only costs are buying your domain name and hosting your website. Nowadays, this costs very little. Even if you do pay someone else to handle the technical details, you can still get by for a relatively small amount per month.

4. Attracts quality traffic that spends money.

Because you are putting your material out there on the Web in so many places and in so many formats, people will find you simply by searching for what you're talking about. This way you only get people that are actually interested in what you have to say. And because they are interested, they will continue to come back for more and that develops trust. People that will trust you will buy what you are selling.

5. Not dependent on the flavor of the week.

This system uses the technology that is available. Just because you are listing your podcast on iTunes does not mean you are out of luck if Apple goes out of business and iTunes disappears tomorrow. There will always be some directory that will list your podcast. The same goes for video directories and any other website you use. If one goes out of business, another one will take its place.

6. Does not require super sales or copywriting ability.

All you are doing is writing your blog posts. As long as they are either useful or entertaining, that is all you have to do. The rest is just distribution and does not require that you try to convince anyone of anything.

7. Not dependent on someone else's platform.

It is not dependent on someone else's platform because you are setting this up on your own domain name, you own your site and you own everything you put on it. eBay, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and WordPress.com have all cancelled peoples' accounts for no apparent reason. They legally own everything you put on their site and they don't have to provide any explanation for what they do. Why rely on someone else's platform when it is so easy to set up your own and retain complete control?

The Ultimate Marketing System for Authors fulfills all seven criteria that any great marketing system should have. It's a timeless system that is based on your own ability to write. It is also based on establishing a relationship of trust that is build over time.

How does this system sell books? It sells books because it attracts people that are interested in what you have to say. If you simply put up a website and waited for the search engines to list you in a favorable position, only a handful of people would find you. Because you are replicating and distributing your material far and wide, you create opportunities for thousands of people to find you. Once they find you and look at you as a t

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