Archive for March, 2008
Win This Copy of Poor Richard’s E-mail Publishing
The book we’re giving away this week is a copy of Poor Richard’s E-mail Publishing: Creating Newsletters, Bulletins, Discussion Groups and Other Powerful Communication Tools by Chris Pirillo.
Same rules as before. Basically, just leave a contextually substantial-enough comment on any Wordpreneur blog post (really, doesn’t take much), and you’re entered. More comments, more entries!
The winner will be randomly selected from among all comments made between now and Sunday, April 6, 2008 (process is described in this post). The winner (and another book to given away) will be announced next Monday.
Good luck!
And the Winner of StrikingItRich.com is…
…Nancy Geiger, who is also the author of A Bride’s Cookbook or Surviving Your First Year. Congratulations Nancy!
This was, as I said, a random selection. Granted, the pool of possibilities was pretty small this time around, but it was random nonetheless.
In case you want to do something similar for your blog or site, here’s how I do it:
3 Tips to Achieve Your Writing Goals
Some of the best advice come in small packages, like this brief, classic Wordpreneur piece worth more than its weight in gold in been-there-done-that pro writer wisdom. — EES
By Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ
1. Make your goals achievable.
By achievable, we mean realistic and attainable. You might unconsciously have set a goal even others will have a hard time achieving, even if they had the means and the time to do so.
Here’s what you can do: Break down your goals into small, realistic goals set against reasonable time frames. Oftentimes, you’ll achieve your bigger goals if you work on achieving the smaller goals leading to those. The important thing is making your goals as realistic and as achievable as you can.
Repurposing Content
Stuck? Don’t know what to write about? Today’s vintage Wordpreneur article reprint may help you get unstuck very quickly by revisiting work you’ve already done! — EES
By Cathy Stucker
Today’s phrase that pays is “repurposing content.” That means taking intellectual property you have created and using it in another way. For example, turning a book into an audio program, or excerpting parts of the book into articles.
Repurposing content can help you reach a brand new audience with your ideas. One advantage of transferring your existing information into new formats is that you can meet the needs of people with different learning styles. This can help you to reach a larger audience with your message, as well as increasing your profits.
Dark Room Text Editor: If All You Want to Do is Write
Big thanks to Michael Werner and Dosh Dosh for helping bring this nifty writer’s tool to my attention. I’ve been looking for something like this for my PC for the longest time!
What I wanted was a word or text processor for my PC that behaved and looked much like the MS-DOS word processors many of us grew up with did — black screen, green (or amber) text, monospaced screen font, and probably best of all, minimal distractions (no color, windows, icons, blinkies and other attention-seekers), leaving us with just our words and writing.
The 25 Most Valuable Blogs
Check out this report by 24/7 Wall St. (a financial news and information blog for investors). They put an actual dollar $$$ figure to what a blog is worth, which is tough considering that these babies are all privately-held.
But they calc’d it up, and here’s 24/7′s list.
Free Podcasting Courses for Teachers
My friend Michael Werner just announced on his Dream Jobs Dialog blog that his day job company’s giving away three free courses for teachers on podcasting technology — from podcasting basics and simple-to-understand terminology to integrating podcasts in the classroom.
Quick and Dirty Affiliate Program Tests (3 of 5)
PREVIOUSLY: Who’s Running the Show?
Test #3: How Many Other Affiliates are There?
Assuming the affiliate program you’re interested isn’t brand spanking new, then it should have a track record. And if it does, I wouldn’t be interested as much in total sales but in how many different affiliates there are actually promoting the program.
Sales figures you really can’t verify — practically-speaking the merchant can pretty much give you any number it pulls out of a hat.
Let’s Get Some Interactivity Started Contest
Writing and publishing this blog is fun. But you know what would be even more fun? Reading and responding to your comments, questions, feedback! Although my logs show a nice amount of regular traffic coming in, seems that you guys are for the most part a quiet bunch. So…
…let me see if I can give you a little oomph to get things rolling.
Advice for Copywriters: How to Win the Freelance Bidding War
Here’s another good piece we ran a ways back. Time for a refresher. Dina’s advice, by the way, is good for all freelance writers, not just copywriters. — EES
Article by Dina Giolitto
Are you a freelance copywriter working from home? If so, you’ve probably been on the project bidding war sites, like eLance. You’ve probably seen ads like this:
“Need 50 Articles Ghostwritten. 500-800 Words. Budget: $250-$500. Timeframe: one month.”
“How insulting!” you think to yourself, and yet sheer curiosity lures you to the bidding area. What do you see? Lowbrow bidders losing their minds… chomping at the bit for this embarrassing offer: “Bid: $500.” “Bid: $300.”
Product Reviews Blog or Site
IDEA: Publish a blog or site of product reviews specific to a “niche” special interest audience.
I know, I know, there’s nothing groundbreaking or fresh about this idea. But my sense is that the typical consumer online can’t get enough of good feedback from real world users reviewing the exact product the consumer’s interested in.
Proofreader Spam
Just thought I’d share this bit of spam I received today:
SUBJECT: Typing and Proof Reading Services
Dear Sirs:
Please contact us for your typing and proof reading requirements at competive rates.
Sincerely,
<name withheld>
ROFLMAO! Classic. And yes, I kid you not, this really did hit my mailbox today. Enjoy!
Hack Something
IDEA: Site Devoted to Unusual Theme “Hacking”
Hacking or being a hacker isn’t really a bad thing, regardless of what the geniuses in the movie industry and general media have mucked it up to be. But still, over the years, hacking has come to mean many different things (usually black hat); for our purposes, however, we’re sticking with its original, pure definition — hacking is figuring out new and ingenious ways to use something.
And not just computers. Anything.
Quick and Dirty Affiliate Program Tests (2 of 5)
PREVIOUSLY: Intro – Make a Purchase
Test #2: Who’s Running the Show? (Network vs. In-House)
Some programs are run independently, in-house so to speak, by their owners. This simply means they’re in charge of and responsible for everything: providing you with support/services; tracking your transactions; paying you, etc. There’s no shortage of examples of these independent in-house programs.
Many others join and rely on an affiliate network — a service they pay to manage all that good stuff — while the merchants themselves focus on, well, running their businesses (presumably what they know how to do instead of futzing around in unfamiliar territory). Three well known networks are Commission Junction, LinkShare and Shareasale.
eBook Publishing: Why Bother Going With a Payment/Product Fulfillment Service?
Now that we know there is a dirt cheap, automated in-house solution for processing payments and delivering your downloadable ebook to customers (see yesterday’s post), this then begs the question: Why bother with an external third-party service like PayLoadz, ClickBank, E-Junkie, CafePress, Lulu and the others I know are out there but I’m getting too old to remember?
A couple of reasons jump to mind immediately.
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Recommendations for Processing Payments Online & Delivering eBooks
One of your fellow wordpreneurs Akemi Gaines, publisher of the Yes to Me site, recently asked me: “Do you recommend any ebook delivery company? I currently use PayLoadz because I saw some recommendations for them, but I’m not quite happy with their customer service.”
Thanks for asking, and I’m sure many readers are thankful as well since, without a doubt, year in year out this “How do I handle online payments and automated delivery of ebooks I sell” question in its various guises is the most frequently asked by ebook wordpreneurs.
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How to Price Your eBook
Relatively short, but you really can’t help but feel that Ms. Martin has managed to compress a whole book on ebook pricing and marketing strategies into this single article. Good job! Worth going through quickly, even if you think you already know everything there is to know about pricing books. — EES
Article by Karen Martin
You’ve written and compiled an ebook. Now you have to decide how much to charge for it. Finding the right price is essential to the success of your product. If you charge too little, people will think it’s of little value, and they won’t purchase it, or even it they do buy your book, you will have to sell thousands of copies to get to the point where you can begin to see a profit. If you price it too high when compared with your competition, you will find yourself steadily lowering the price, which will cause you all kinds of new problems in the future. For example, if you sell your ebook at first for $39.99, and later reduce it to $24.95, don’t you think the people who bought it for $39.99 are going to be pissed?
Quick and Dirty Affiliate Program Tests (1 of 5)
The online business system of promoting external products and services as an affiliate to help monetize our blogs and sites has been around for a while… over a decade, actually. Considering the relative maturity of a business model where advertisers and companies pay third party publishers (us) for traffic, referrals and sales, should we still bother, then, to test the legitimacy of an affiliate program before devoting resources to promoting it on our blogs/sites?
You betcha.
A Newsletter Publisher’s Main Task: Packaging Value Content
You’re thinking about starting a blog as an online publishing business venture. But what if, instead of “blog” you publish a “newsletter” — but using blog tech? Well, why the heck not? Although the tech may have changed just a tad, the model for developing good content is essentially and pretty much the same. Go quickly through this article/overview Wordpreneur first ran a while back, plug in blog whenever you see newsletter, and you’ll see. — EES
Article by Alwyn Botha
The main task of a newsletter publisher is to select and package quality content of direct, practical relevance to its specific readership audience.
This might sound quick and easy, but it is not.
Publishing a quality newsletter is more than just cutting and pasting quality content into your newsletter. A quality newsletter is more than just the sum of its parts. The more the different sections in a newsletter support each other, the more benefits subscribers can get from it.
A quality newsletter makes sense out of the Internet chaos. A good newsletter editor understands the Internet big picture and is able to pick out relevant information which is packaged into one newsletter issue in a way that makes sense for its readers.
Bebo Author Short Story Competition
Just got wind of a small short story contest being run by the Bebo Author site (Bebo’s a social media network). Thing is the deadline’s fast approaching: March 21, 2008.