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
Please Share the Love!
WordPress
![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
Top Ten Trends in Publishing Every Author Needs to Know in 2017
“What does 2017 have in store for authors? If you haven’t had a chance to read forecasts and predictions for the coming year, fear not. We have read all of the top articles written by industry professionals and top indie authors so you don’t have to. We also reached out to some of our industry friends to see what their thoughts are. Below we have compiled a list of the top 10 trends in publishing that will impact indie authors the most, with specific takeaways on how you can best navigate them.
1. The Majority of Fiction Sales will Come from eBooks
Data Guy notes in his DBW White Paper that 70% of adult fiction sales were digital last year. It is likely that ebook readership will continue to grow in 2017. More eBook readers means more eBook sales. This means that if you’re writing fiction, promoting your eBooks is a good place to focus in the coming year.
What this means for you: If you are a first-time fiction author, publishing your work as an ebook is an affordable and easy way to enter the market. If you are a published or self-published fiction author, continue to focus your time, resources and budget on driving ebook sales.
2. Indie Authors and Small Presses will Dominate
In the October 2016 author earnings report we saw the Big 5’s market share continue to drop. Small presses, Indie authors, and Amazon imprints account for over 50% of market share. This shows a continued shift in reader perception: a book does not need to be traditionally published and available in brick and mortar stores in order to be deemed readable. Jane Friedman of The Hot Sheet foresees a tough year for traditional publishers:
I think it will be a lackluster and perhaps soul-searching year for traditional publishers. The ‘print is back’ fanfare will diminish, with Barnes & Noble continuing to remain flat or decline, and Amazon further gaining market share across formats. 2016 didn’t have a blockbuster book, and I anticipate the dry spell will continue in 2017. Without smarter ebook pricing, traditional publishers will continue to see flat or declining sales in that format.- Jane Friedman, The Hot Sheet
What this means for you: Competition for indie authors is increasingly coming from other indie authors. Given that most indie authors price their titles at $2.99 or below, pricing alone is less effective at acquiring readers. Marketing your books (see trend #9) and cultivating a loyal reader following will become even more important.
3. Amazon Imprints will Command Top Spots
Amazon now has 13 active publishing imprints, each catering to its own genre market. In 2016, 7 out of the top 10 Kindle best-sellers were books published by their imprints. Data Guy also reports that Amazon imprints took an additional 4% of the market share in the last quarter. While there is no stated proof that Amazon’s algorithms favor Amazon published titles, the rankings make a convincing argument that they do.
What this means for you: Deploy marketing techniques that allow you to benefit off of Amazon’s preferential treatments of their own titles. If you can market your book in conjunction with an Amazon imprint title, resulting in your book appearing in their also-boughts, then the number of readers who see your book may go up.
Continue reading @ Written Word Media »
![december-14-2016-wednesday[1]](https://wordpreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/december-14-2016-wednesday1-167x130.jpg "december-14-2016-wednesday[1]")
How to Begin Writing Your First Screenplay
“I’ve never written a screenplay so I’ve decided—even though I don’t plan on branching out into screenwriting—to rewrite one of my stories as one. Just for practice because I think that stretching myself, my abilities, is a good thing!
Writing a Screenplay: First Things
1. The Logline or One-Line
I’ve written an article about this (See: Creating A Logline). Basically, a logline is a sentence that spells out in dramatic fashion the central conflict of a story.
The central conflict is composed of three things:
- The protagonist’s goal.
- The person or force that opposes the protagonist’s goal.
- The stakes of the conflict.
Here is a formula:
[Protagonist name] is a [description of protagonist] living in [setting]. But when [complicating incident], [protagonist’s name] must [protagonist’s quest] and [verb] [villain] in order to [protagonist’s goal].
An example logline for Die Hard:
Headstrong NYPD detective John McClane wants to save his estranged wife and her colleagues from certain death at the hands of Hans Gruber, a mercenary willing to sacrifice anything to get his hands on $640 million in bearer bonds.
Joe Bunting over at The Write Practice wrote an article about how to write a screenplay. He gives the following tip on how to craft your logline:
‘It’s also helpful to put a summarizing adjective in front of your characters to give a sense of their personalities.’
Here’s his example: ‘A headlong orphan and his Vulcan nemesis must save the Federation (and themselves) from revenge-seeking Romulan from the future.’
Continue reading @ Karen Woodward »
peeps: Luke Young
Luke Young says he was “one of those people who would watch a movie and think, hey, I could write a better film than that.”
So he did.
“I started by reading some sample screenplays, I also bought a book and downloaded some shareware screenplay formatting software and got to work. It took about a month to crank out a somewhat decent first draft, but I did it.”
But heck if he knew what he was going to do with it.
So he entered a few screenplay contests. Got a script consultant to help improve his work. Entered even more contests. “With each contest I waited and waited to see the results… I lived and died by those silly little expensive contest results.” Although he didn’t win any of them, he managed to make it to the quarters in a few. He was ready for the next step: querying agents.
No bites. So, he “basically stopped writing.”
Considering he’s now the best-selling author of Shrinkage and the romcom Friends With… Benefits Series, obviously something got him started again…
How Luke Got Started Self-Publishing
In early 2010, Luke couldn’t help but notice how ebooks and self-publishing were increasingly on the radar. Amazon’s announcement that it was paying a 70% royalty certainly piqued his interest. “I spent a couple months adapting my second screenplay into a novel and set out to learn how to format it correctly and make it available for sale.” Although he says he made a number of mistakes and wasted a decent amount of money, he saw it for the “incredible learning experience” that it was.
“I hired an editor, commissioned a photographer to shoot a picture for the cover, built a website for the book, created a book trailer and finally released my first novel Shrinkage (a comedic look at male enhancement gone horribly wrong)…” That was November 2010. “The book didn’t exactly fly off the shelves. I sold a handful of copies the first couple weeks and experimented with different price points, but nothing worked all that well.” Even after writing an article for Askmen.com — which had 5 million monthly visitors — the book’s sales didn’t take off.
In the summer of 2011, Luke had finished and released the first book in his Friends With… Benefits Series. He also developed an Amazon contact while trying to fix some category issues on his product page. The guy suggested that Luke try a free promotion. This was before KDP Select and its freebie options, and with Luke’s go-ahead, the guy “flipped the switch” to have Shrinkage offered for free for a while. “The book took off like crazy. I’m not sure how, but back then there were so many fewer titles free at any particular time so I suppose it was a little easier to stand out. I’m sure that played a big part in the success of my promotion which drove my title to reach number 2 overall on the free list.”
In three days Shrinkage was downloaded over 20,000 times, and Luke sold 2,000 copies in a month, helping to boost the sales number of his second book too. In a few months, sales started to taper off, but Luke pounded out the second series installment, then the third. By then, Amazon KDP Select had just launched, and encouraged by the great results he got from his first free promotion, Luke put all his four titles into the new program.
And boy did it work. Luke reports that he sold around 33,000 books in 2012, and he’s already equaled that the first six months of this year. “I’ve sold more books than I ever thought I would. I’ve also had a taste of unbelievable success after an astonishingly successful free promotion, a month where my sales doubled and I sold over 10,000 books. Of course, things got back to normal, but it was fun while it lasted and I hope to get back to that level and beyond at some point.”
Self-Publishing Tips and Observations
- “Instead of hiring a photographer I should have found a good reasonably priced designer to put together a cover.”
- “I wish I skipped creating the book trailer — sure, it was fun to put together, but in the end it was a waste of money.”
- “I should have focused less on trying to get online magazines to promote my book and more on book bloggers and social media.”
- “I recommend writing a series — a large group of readers love to read about the same characters.”
- “Offer your books for .99 or free… I recommend two services for getting out the word: Ereader News Today — their Bargain and Free book promotions work very well — and Bookbub also is a great service which isn’t cheap, but in my experience has always more than paid for itself.”
- “If you do offer your books for free, be prepared for those ‘I’m so glad it was free’ awful reviews. I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate those reviews. OK, so you didn’t like the book… great, no book is for everyone — tell us what you didn’t like about it, but don’t minimize the author’s hard work — we don’t care that you got it for free and I’ve got to believe that six hours of anyone’s time is worth more than .99 or 2.99. If you start reading a book and you absolutely hate it, put it down and do something else — read another book, watch some TV, turn to the person next to you and say something, anything… Life’s too short to spend it reading a book you hate. Okay, I got that off my chest.“
Learn more about Luke and his work by visiting his Amazon author page and his website. You can also follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
Originally Published: November 11, 2013
Attention, Millennials: The Average Entrepreneur Is This Old When They Launch Their First Startup
“Some people say younger is better… On the other hand, wisdom comes with age.”
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.”
