You’ve got your blog set up, and you’ve started blogging your book. Have you considered what you might do to sustain your interest in your topic or story and to fill your wallet once you finish your manuscript and publish your book? Here are the cold hard facts: Making a living as a writer takes hard work, and most books don’t provide much more than an entertainment fund (by which I mean dinner and a movie). Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, you need to consider how to turn your blog and your blogged book into a business. That means sustaining and addressing your readers’ interests, thereby getting them to open their wallets to pay for products and services you provide that relate to your book.
The Good News
Here’s the good news: You already have the makings of a successful business. Because you chose to blog your book, you’ve created the foundation of an online business: a blog. From here, the sky is the limit! You can create any number of products and services, develop an online store and begin marketing and selling your wares around the world. You can make money as you sleep. Congratulations for taking a super first step towards creating a successful business.
Building a Business Around Your Novel
I realize that it is easier for nonfiction writers to create products and services around their books. Therefore, I’m going to begin this discussion by addressing novelists. It is, indeed, possible for fiction writers to do the same. Many a novelist have found themes and issues in their novels and drawn upon them to write nonfiction as well as fiction. If you are willing to do so, you can find ways to create course, talks and lectures, and numerous products and services that can support your novels. In fact, more people will buy your novels when you are out speaking on related topics than at simple readings. Why? Because more people likely come to hear you speak about topics about which you really care and feel passionate.
Building a Business Around Your Nonfiction Book
If you write nonfiction, your topic should give you amply ideas for teleseminars and webinars, courses, coaching or consulting, and talks or lectures. Just continue to solve people’s problems and answer their questions. Address their most pressing needs, and you will find yourself busy and profitable. Today, there are so many ways to create products and services from the comfort of your home office and to offer them to people all over the world.
If you want to read about someone who turned a small niche blog into a profit center, check out this post by Carol Tice. She explains exactly how she grew her blog, Make a Living Writing, into one that helps her earn a living. And you can read about Darren Rowse’s journey to becoming a professional blogger here. Now, they haven’t blogged books in the way I talk about it, but they’ve both got books.
Have you thought about building a business around your blog or blogged book? Have you begun to do so? Do you have questions about accomplishing this task? Tell me about it in a comment.
Learn How to Build a Business Around a Blog with Nina Amir’s home-study course. How to Build a Business Around a Blog provides you with a 1-hour webinar replay explaining how to build a business around your blog with ebooks, blogged books, booked blogs, booklets, consulting, coaching, and more! You also receive a workbook to help you brainstorm products and services and create a detailed plan to monetize your blog with them. Plus, you also get a 1-hour BONUS webinar replay with Kathleen Craig of www.thegoodgirlsguide.com discussing “How to Use Membership Sites to Build a Business Around Your Blog” and a worksheet with 14 ideas for how to build a business using membership sites. To find out more or purchase, click here.
Photo courtesy of renjith krishnan | freedigitalphotos.net
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