WordPress has long been a great platform for that. With the selection of third-party Learning Management System (LMS) plugins, it’s even better! Here are five (5) of some of the best LMS WordPress plugins available for you to check out.
I’ve been watching this LMS space closely for the past few years. Played with them on occasion. My interest was reinvigorated recently by some plans I have in mind for right here, on Wordpreneur itself.
I’ve played with LifterLMS extensively (free for the basics!), and like it.. a lot. For what I have in mind, I still think it’s overkill though. Not necessarily because of the functionality and feature set it provides — you can never really get enough of that — but for the technical overhead this kind of software will bring.
Although I very well could run any of these solutions as “yet another plugin” on my base WordPress site on top of all the other plugins I’m already running, I really wouldn’t recommend it. These aren’t exactly tiny little utilities. I’d say run them as the focal site application, or set them up on a subsite — a separate WordPress installation on a subdomain, for instance.
But sure, you could run it as yet another plugin. Just realize and be prepared for what you’re getting into.
But here you go folks, five of the best LMS plugins for WordPress I’m aware of out there, both commercial and free. Check them out (in alphabetical order).
No idea which one is best. Maybe you should tell me.
Enjoy today’s featured selections!
— EES
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![1+tip[1]](https://wordpreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/1tip1-167x130.jpg "1+tip[1]")
“Can’t you give me just 1 tip (for getting book reviews)?” she asked
“The other day a newly published author who had befriended me 5 minutes earlier asked me if I could give her just one tip how to get book reviews from Amazon top reviewers.
I told her to read my book.
She came back with, ‘Can’t you give me just 1 tip?’
Hmm… Apparently this author was not aware how much in demand these reviews are; on average Hall-of-Fame reviewers get 250+ review requests per month.
So, I told her that getting a book reviewed by an Amazon top reviewer isn’t a ‘1-tip thing,’ especially if the book did not have any reviews yet. Getting reviews is a challenging task that encompasses many steps; which is why my book has 100 pages.
She immediately un-friended me.
I guess that says it all. Just another wannabe author who does not really want to learn the trade. The indie author industry is overrun with people like that. The sooner they get out and make room for the people who really hone their craft and all skills, the better for all.
Of course, from experience I know that most indie authors work a lot harder than this one.
So, here is one tip for authors whose books received already a few reviews (including from top reviewers).
‘Like/find helpful’ the reviewers’ reviews!!!”
Continue reading @ Gisela’s Straightforward Blog »
“Self-Made” is a Myth; Here’s the Real Formula for Success
“[T]hat’s what most people get wrong. They never learn how to reach out. You’ve got to be willing to put yourself out there…”
» Medium
$4,344.81 in 40 Days with my Fiction Book Only Spending $30 on Advertising
“I had a plan. A big plan. Heck, I had the plan of the universe — to sell thousands of copies of my new release Science Fiction book, Project Atlantis, during the first month I published it.
This plan started six months before I started writing the book. The plan entailed rapidly finishing three books in a series — Project Atlantis, Destination Atlantis, and Colony Atlantis — and once it had been edited, beta-read, and sent out to my ARC reviewers, I’d release Project Atlantis, then Destination Atlantis seven days later, and Colony Atlantis fourteen days after Destination Atlantis. Additionally, I’d have the fourth book, Beyond Atlantis, almost 100% written. Yet, I’d have Beyond Atlantis’s pre-order already up and running before Colony Atlantis was released, all the while dropping over $1500 dollars in Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, and on Promo Sites, and whatever else I could get my greedy paws on.
Well, I did none of the above.
Here is what happened that led me to only spending $30 on Facebook and Amazon ads and how I was able to make $4,344.81 in 40 Days with my Fiction Book.”
Continue reading @ Medium »
10 Actionable WordPress Security Tips for the Layman
“[T]he more popular something is, the more people want to leverage on it for nefarious means… Fortunately, WordPress is a platform that offers you a multitude of opportunity to defend yourself.”
» WHSR
10 Best Uses of Video Marketing
“All brands need a video marketing strategy. Digital marketing professionals and video makers understand how integral video is to growth hacking the current market.”
10 Bestsellers That Began as Self-Published Books
“There is much to be said for self-publishing, especially if you have spent a year or ten (see Michael J. Sullivan below) trying to get publishing houses interested in your work.
If you self-publish, and do a proper job of marketing, your book may not only achieve success in its own right, but may be picked up by a major publishing house. (Ironically, it may even be published by one of the houses that has previously sent you a rejection slip.)
All of these books have one thing in common – their authors did not simply publish and then lean back and enjoy their success. They marketed, pitched, and sold the heck out of their books.
And they continued to write.
Here are a few best-selling books whose authors did not give up on them.”
Continue reading @ Publishing … and Other Forms of Insanity »
10 books that will make you a better writer (and why)
“…
I love borrowing books. But there are some books that a writer really should have in their own personal for-keeps libraries. These are the books that you’ll keep coming back to, over and over, through your career.
Here are my top ten writing craft books. Some of them I’ve owned for twenty years or more. Some are new to me. Some are classics that you might already own. Maybe there are some that will be new to you.
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King
“You want to draw your readers into the world you’ve created, make them feel a part of it, make them forget where they are. And you can’t do this effectively if you tell your readers about your world secondhand.”
In 2004, when I was eight months pregnant, I won Nanowrimo for the first time. I wrote a truly awful first draft of a romantic suspense story. Then I had a baby girl on December 8. I never looked back. Once I knew that I could finish writing a novel, I knew that I could learn how to write well.
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers is the book that taught me how to be a better writer. I finished my first manuscript and took a solid year, going through this book, chapter by chapter, exercise by exercise, and applying what I learned to my work.
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
Ray Bradbury’s little book of essays about writing and creativity is an essential little pocket of inspiration. I’ve read it half a dozen times and every single time, I pick up something new. Because it’s a collection of essays, you can pick it up and read what you need, when you need it.
Bradbury’s advice for fiction writers has shaped my writing life. He believed, especially, in short stories and in reading a lot. And watching movies. One of my favorite parts of Zen in the Art of Writing is the way that Bradbury breaks down how and why he wrote some of my favorite short stories.”
Continue reading @ Startup Grind »
10 Common Sales Objections (and How to Overcome Them)
“The remedy lies in anticipating and tackling customer objections head-on so you’re prepared and confident.”
» Rambl
Free
15 Ways to Earn Your Audience as a Writer
“Your best and most noble path to developing an audience as a writer is by having something awesome (or many awesome somethings) to give them. Tell the best story you can tell. Above all the social-media posturing and brand building and outreach, you need a great “thing” (book, movie, comic, whatever) to be the core of your authorial ecosystem. Tell a great story. Achieve optimal awesomeness. Build audience on the back of your skill, talent, and devotion.
Here are 15 ways to develop an audience:
1. Swift Cellular Division
The days of writing One Single Thing every year and standing on that single thing as if it were a mighty marble pedestal are long gone. (And, if you ask me, have been gone for a lot longer than everybody says—unless, of course, you’re a bestselling author.) Nowadays, it pays to write a lot. Spackle shut the gaps in your resume. Bridge any chasm in your schedule. This doesn’t mean write badly. It doesn’t mean “churn out endless strings of talentless sputum.” It just means to be generative. Always be writing.
2. Painting With Shotguns
The power of creative diversity will serve you well. The audience doesn’t come to you. You go to the audience. “One book is less likely to find an audience than three?” Correction: “One book is less likely to find an audience than two books, a comic, a blog, a short story collection, various napkin doodles, a celebrity chef trading card set, and hip anonymous graffiti.” Joss Whedon didn’t just write Buffy. He wrote films. And comics. And a webseries. The guy is all over the map. Diversity in nature helps a species survive. So too will it help the tribe of storytellers survive.
3. Sharing Is Caring
Make your work easy to share. This is triply true for newer storytellers: Don’t hide your work behind a wall. Make sure your work is widely available. Don’t make it difficult to pass around. I have little doubt that there’s a strategy wherein making your story a truly rare bird can serve you—scarcity suggests value and mystery, after all—but the smart play for creative types just setting out is to get your work into as many hands as possible with as little trouble as you can offer. This is true for veteran storytellers, too. Comedian Louis C.K. made it very easy to get his new comedy special on the web. And that served him well both financially and in terms of earning him a new audience while rewarding the existing audience.”
Continue reading @ Writer’s Digest »
Forget fake news: How in-feed native ads can spread positive news
“Because these highly visible ads are mixed in with regular content, they can be powerful vehicles for influence and engagement.”
» Digiday
peeps: Rosalind James
An American and former marketing executive, author Rosalind James says she never really wrote any fiction before. And that she never took risks. That is until she and her civil engineer husband found themselves in Australia and New Zealand for a few years, where she worked her “day job” remotely.
She eventually found herself “in a tiny cottage in the middle of a barnyard on New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula,” where she wrote the first scene of what would become Just This Once, the very first book of her bestselling “Escape to New Zealand” contemporary romance series.
Although she didn’t write fiction previously, she says she “always had stories running through her head.” And for some reason, at that point she was ready to develop one of them into a book. To her surprise, on top of her day job, within a week she also found herself writing six hours a day, finishing that first book in six weeks. Then she decided to quit her day job to write full-time. “Fifty years of conservative caution,” she says, “right out the window.”
Good call? As an author, in her first 11 months Rosalind published six titles and sold more than 100,000 books. Yeah, I think that qualifies as an epic good call. But she sure didn’t know that yet at that point.
How Rosalind Got Started Self-Publishing
In the following six months, Rosalind wrote two more books in the series. But things stopped going so smoothly — Rosalind fell seriously ill. She also spent a few months shopping Just This Once around to agents, generating some interest, “but no bites.” The lot probably just wasn’t familiar enough to confidently package and market her book’s “New Zealand rugby” theme.
Now, we’ve all experienced really trying days, but the following has got to really rank up there: On the day Rosalind’s doctor confirmed the seriousness of her condition and referred her to an oncologist, the president of a major New York literary agency told her New Zealand rugby “wasn’t a good hook.”
Well, Rosalind felt otherwise.
She focused on and tackled her health issues, and after getting out of the hospital, she “finished editing the first three books, and put them all up on Amazon as Kindle ebooks a month later.” That was end of August 2012.
She sold 40 copies the first week of going live. Then she decided to try KDP Select to see what would happen, giving away free copies of her book for three days. It was downloaded 14,500 times during the promo, then proceeded to sell 2,000 copies in the next three weeks. By January 2013, she had sold 20,000 books.
It’s now only October of the same year. She has just released her seventh book, Nothing Personal, the second title in her new “The Kincaids” series. I think it’s safe to say she hasn’t looked back since.
Self-Publishing Tips
- “Why did it work? The marketing professional’s opinion: The most important marketing happens before you publish your book. Here’s how.”
-
“Genre. Romance and YA/NA, in particular, as well as the Big Daddy, Erotica, do very, very well on the Kindle.”
- “Story and subject. News flash: ‘New Zealand rugby’ was a great hook.”
-
“Writing and editing. If you write reasonably well and your book is extremely well edited, you’re way ahead of the game. Seek out your most ruthlessly honest friends, the ones who will tell you the truth. And then listen.”
- “Title and subtitle. Escape to New Zealand sold books.”
- “Cover. You think you can do it yourself, but unless you’re a professional graphic designer, you can’t. Your book may not sell with a professional cover. It’s guaranteed not to sell without one.”
- “Blurb. Study blurbs for bestselling books in your genre and practice, practice, practice. If you can write a book, you can write a blurb.”
- “Professional author website, Facebook page, Twitter, all that good social media stuff. Especially in romance, readers want to know who you are.”
- “Free books. You may have written the best book ever, but if nobody knows about it, you’ll never sell it. Give readers a risk-free way to try you out. And by the way — it only works if, yep, you have a professional cover, a great blurb, and a pretty good book. And a few reviews too (at least ten).”
- “Writing fast. It’s hard to get noticed with one book. If you write more at the book-a-year pace, it may take you a while to get any traction.”
- “In short: Don’t look self-published, don’t let your books look self-published, and you’ll stand out from the crowd.”
Learn more about Rosalind and her work by visiting her Amazon author page and her website. You can also follow her on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook.
Originally Published: October 23, 2013
Top 10 Writer Myths of All Time
Top 10 Writer Myths of All Time
SOURCE: Write Wild
LINK: http://christiewrightwild.blogspot.com/2016/09/top-10-myths-writers-believe-that-keep.html
You should write every day… Some writers really believe this. Write every day. That’s all fine and good if it works for you, but it doesn’t work for every writer. At the other end of the spectrum, some writers only write when the Muse strikes. The best thing is to find your own personal balance…”
[bookmark]
Webdev
“Can’t you give me just 1 tip (for getting book reviews)?” she asked
“The other day a newly published author who had befriended me 5 minutes earlier asked me if I could give her just one tip how to get book reviews from Amazon top reviewers.
I told her to read my book.
She came back with, ‘Can’t you give me just 1 tip?’
Hmm… Apparently this author was not aware how much in demand these reviews are; on average Hall-of-Fame reviewers get 250+ review requests per month.
So, I told her that getting a book reviewed by an Amazon top reviewer isn’t a ‘1-tip thing,’ especially if the book did not have any reviews yet. Getting reviews is a challenging task that encompasses many steps; which is why my book has 100 pages.
She immediately un-friended me.
I guess that says it all. Just another wannabe author who does not really want to learn the trade. The indie author industry is overrun with people like that. The sooner they get out and make room for the people who really hone their craft and all skills, the better for all.
Of course, from experience I know that most indie authors work a lot harder than this one.
So, here is one tip for authors whose books received already a few reviews (including from top reviewers).
‘Like/find helpful’ the reviewers’ reviews!!!”
Continue reading @ Gisela’s Straightforward Blog »
“Self-Made” is a Myth; Here’s the Real Formula for Success
“[T]hat’s what most people get wrong. They never learn how to reach out. You’ve got to be willing to put yourself out there…”
» Medium
$4,344.81 in 40 Days with my Fiction Book Only Spending $30 on Advertising
“I had a plan. A big plan. Heck, I had the plan of the universe — to sell thousands of copies of my new release Science Fiction book, Project Atlantis, during the first month I published it.
This plan started six months before I started writing the book. The plan entailed rapidly finishing three books in a series — Project Atlantis, Destination Atlantis, and Colony Atlantis — and once it had been edited, beta-read, and sent out to my ARC reviewers, I’d release Project Atlantis, then Destination Atlantis seven days later, and Colony Atlantis fourteen days after Destination Atlantis. Additionally, I’d have the fourth book, Beyond Atlantis, almost 100% written. Yet, I’d have Beyond Atlantis’s pre-order already up and running before Colony Atlantis was released, all the while dropping over $1500 dollars in Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, and on Promo Sites, and whatever else I could get my greedy paws on.
Well, I did none of the above.
Here is what happened that led me to only spending $30 on Facebook and Amazon ads and how I was able to make $4,344.81 in 40 Days with my Fiction Book.”
Continue reading @ Medium »
10 Actionable WordPress Security Tips for the Layman
“[T]he more popular something is, the more people want to leverage on it for nefarious means… Fortunately, WordPress is a platform that offers you a multitude of opportunity to defend yourself.”
