Review: Make Money with Teleseminars and Webinars

Make Money with Teleseminars and Webinars is the new guide from Dana Lynn Smith, also known as The Savvy Book Marketer.

As a fan of Dana's work (see the list of other products of hers I have reviewed at the end of this post) I was keen to see this one as well, and so she kindly sent me a review copy.

Make Money with Teleseminars and Webinars is a bit different from Dana's other guides. Rather than a text-based manual, the product is based around a recording of a one-hour teleseminar. As that is what the product is all about, you certainly can't say that Dana doesn't practise what she preaches!

Buyers are first taken to an Order Confirmation page. From here they can click a link to watch a recording of the teleseminar (audio plus slides), and another to access a download page for the other resources sold with the product. These are as follows:

• Audio recording of the presentation (MP3)
• Slides from the presentation (PDF)
• Resource Guide, with links to dozens of useful resources (PDF)
• Guide to Choosing a Service Provider - this discusses what to look for when choosing a teleseminar/webinar service provider and gives a summary of five popular providers, with Dana's recommendations (PDF)

At the heart of this product is the teleseminar recording. I'd have to say I thought this was extremely well done. Considering this is a recording of a live presentation, I was amazed by how smoothly it ran. I didn't notice any fluffs, backtracks, or errors. This is either a testament to some very impressive editing, or an even more powerful testament to Dana's powers of organization and communication!

The actual advice is conveyed concisely, with the aid of slides that are informative and don't try to cram too much in. There are numerous bullet-pointed lists, the titles of some of which I've copied below. I'm not giving away anything I shouldn't here, as they are listed on the 'What You Will Learn' section of the sales page as well.

• 6 reasons why nonfiction authors should do teleseminars and webinars
• 4 ways to make money with paid teleseminars and webinars
• 5 ways to profit from free teleseminars and webinars
• 5 ways to earn revenue by repurposing content
• Techniques for doing educational presentations, interviews and online conferences
• How to add visuals to your presentation
• Tips for running your event smoothy
• Options for recording and replaying the presentation
• Free tools for editing audio and video files
• Insider tips for choosing a teleseminar/webinar service provider
• Pros and cons of various registration and payment methods
• How to promote your event for maximum attendance

The teleseminar provides a good overview of the various options available and how they work. I also found the discussion of the pros and cons of free versus paid-for events quite enlightening.

There is some excellent advice too about how to choose a suitable service provider. If you're new to this field there is plenty of scope for slip-ups here. Dana's advice should ensure that you are aware of all the key considerations, and choose the best provider for the type of event you have in mind.

The PDFs are also useful. I especially like the resource guide, which lists all the resources Dana has used personally and recommends (or in some cases doesn't). This includes everything from audio and video editing software to USB microphones, press release distribution companies to teleseminar announcement websites. For anyone planning their first webinar or teleseminar, this would more than justify the cost of the product in itself, I'd have thought.

If I had one nitpick, I would have liked a transcript of the whole teleseminar, as (being a writer, I suppose) I like to have all information in text form as well for easy reference. However, you do get a PDF containing all the slides used in the presentation, which is almost (though not quite) as good.

If you're thinking of getting into teleseminars and webinars - and they are not only great for raising your profile but (as the title implies) can be excellent money-makers in their own right - this reasonably priced guide would provide a great introduction and reference resource.

For more information about Make Money with Teleseminars and Webinars (and to order a copy) just click through any of the links in this review. You can also read my reviews of other guides by Dana by clicking on the appropriate title in the list below:

How to Get Your Book Reviewed

Twitter Guide for Authors

Facebook Guide for Authors

Virtual Book Tour Magic

If you have any comments or questions for Dana (or me), as ever, please feel free to leave them below.

• My sponsors, WCCL, also publish an excellent, in-depth guide to creating your own podcasts called The Ultimate Podcasting Kit. If podcasting is something else that appeals to you, please click on the banner ad below for more information.

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of Make Money with Teleseminars and Webinars by Dana Lynn Smith. In addition, the links in this review include my affiliate code, so if you click through and make a purchase, a proportion of the fee will go to me. This has not influenced my review, but you should of course complete your own due diligence and read the sales page (and this review) carefully to determine whether this product will be relevant to your needs.

Review: KDP Select Report by Rosa Suen

In this post last week I reviewed Rosa Suen's report on publishing to the Amazon Kindle.

Today I'm reviewing her companion KDP Select Report - also available as a Warrior Special Offer - about the benefits to authors of opting into the KDP Select program.

For those who don’t know, KDP Select is a new program allowing authors of Kindle e-books to earn money by allowing their titles to be lent out to US Amazon Prime customers (though authors don’t have to be US-based themselves). Such customers are allowed to borrow one Kindle e-book free of charge per month under the program.

Obviously, authors don’t get any royalties from this program - as their books are loaned out free - but Amazon has set aside a substantial fund (an estimated $6 million during 2012), which is shared out every month according to how many times each e-book has been borrowed. With low-cost e-books - as Rosa's report indicates - your earnings per loan are almost certain to be higher than your royalties per sale.

The KDP Select program has been the cause of much discussion among Kindle authors, with some contending it offers a poor deal for authors. This is largely because, if you want to take part, you are barred from selling your e-book digitally through any other outlet (e.g. Smashwords) during the (minimum) 90-day period your title is available through the program. Rosa is the author of around 200 (non-fiction) e-books, however, and she shows clearly through her own sales figures and earnings that the program can be very effective if you use it in the right way.

One key aspect of the advice in the KDP Select Report concerns how to use the opportunity KDP Select authors are given to list their e-books free of charge on Amazon for up to five days per month (consecutive or otherwise). With stats from ten different e-books, Rosa clearly shows the effectiveness of this strategy for generating interest in an e-book and getting it into the Amazon best-seller lists.

She compares the number and value of sales generated (on non-free-promotion days, obviously) with loans per month, and shows the total earnings in each case. She discusses how she intends to refine her sales and pricing strategy to maximize her earnings from each title, and also sets out what she has discovered about the best price points for Kindle e-books.

I found Rosa’s systematic approach to marketing using the KDP Select program impressive, and the specific case studies quite enlightening. The guide doesn’t actually tell you anything about devising or writing Kindle e-books, though as previously mentioned Rosa does have another report, also available as a WSO, which covers this subject. And, of course, my own Kindle Kash guide sets out step-by-step advice on publishing an e-book to the Kindle Store using only free resources.

If you’re a Kindle author and have been wondering whether to take the plunge with KDP Select, I recommend this modestly priced guide. It may not have all the answers, but I guarantee it will give you food for thought. It also demonstrates a systematic, mathematically-based way of analysing the returns you are getting from applying Rosa’s strategy and fine-tuning it to boost your profits further. Incidentally, along with the report you also receive 10 charts (plus one already filled in as an example) to help you apply the strategy to your own titles.

With this report, as with Rosa's original one, there is a 30-day unconditional refund guarantee.

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of Rosa Suen's KDP Select Report. In addition, the links in this review include my affiliate code, so if you click through and make a purchase, a proportion of the fee will go to me. This has not influenced my review in any way, but you should of course complete your own due diligence and read the sales page (and this review) carefully to determine whether this product will be relevant to your needs.

Word cloud by courtesy of Wordle.

Author 2.0 Blueprint - Great Resource for Indie Authors from Joanna Penn

Just wanted to let you know today about a free, 52-page e-book from prolific author and blogger Joanna Penn.

Joanna describes Author 2.0 Blueprint as 'Your Blueprint for Writing, Publishing and Marketing Your Book'. It's a beautifully written and produced introduction to self-publishing, covering both fiction and non-fiction.

The e-book is a fully updated, 2012 version of Joanna's original Author 2.0 report. It’s based on articles from her blog The Creative Penn, as well as information from other blogs. There are links to many sites and blogs Joanna says she has found useful herself. The book also recommends further resources, some free and some paid-for, for additional advice and assistance.

Author 2.0 Blueprint is published under a Creative Commons licence, so it can be freely shared as long as you don’t use it commercially and you cite TheCreativePenn.com as the source. I've therefore taken the opportunity to embed it below, or you can visit the announcement page on Joanna's blog and download it from there if you prefer...
Author 2.0 Blueprint: Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing using online tools (2012 version)

If you are receiving this post by email or RSS, you may need to visit my blog to see the embedded version of the e-book. Also, if you can't read the embedded version clearly - and I can't control how exactly it will display on different browsers - click on the 'View in Fullscreen' icon at the bottom. You can return to this blog post afterwards by using your browser's 'Back' button.

Thank you very much to Joanna for making this valuable resource available to the world-wide writing community.

Finally, while we're talking about freebies, you might also like to sign up for The Writer's Giveaway by my blog sponsors, The WCCL Network. This features a wide range of free, writing-related reports and software. All you have to do in exchange is sign up for their Smart Writers e-newsletter (to which you can, of course, unsubscribe at any time). Just click on the banner below for more information!

Ten Top Tips for Making the Most of JustRetweet

My recent post about the free JustRetweet service (see screengrab above), which aims to help bloggers and Twitter users reach a wider audience, attracted a lot of interest.

So in this post I thought I'd share a few tips on getting the most from the service, based on my own experience and what I've observed of other users.

If you're not familiar with JustRetweet, you might like to read my earlier post before proceeding and watch the video embedded in it. Don't worry, I'll wait :-)

My ten top tips are as follows...

1. Don't retweet everything that's available on JustRetweet to earn credits. If you do, it will only alienate your Twitter followers and cause some to unsubscribe. There are lots of messages to choose, so pick the ones that look as though they would be interesting and relevant to your followers. In my experience - and I guess I'm a fairly typical user - you only need to retweet two or three messages a day to keep your account nicely topped up.

2. On the other side of the coin, when adding messages you hope others will retweet, be aware of what a reasonable reward is considered to be. Certain norms have evolved on the site, so I would suggest offering a bare minimum of 10 credits for an RT, and preferably 20 or more if you want to get the most from the service. Offering just 2 or 3 credits won't impress other members, and such 'low-paying' offers will quickly disappear from view on the site.

3. It's not just about credits, though. Remember that your messages will (you hope) be retweeted by other people who want to preserve their own good reputation. Make your messages sound interesting and useful - and if you offer a decent reward as well, there is every chance you will get an excellent take-up from other JustRetweet users.

4. Avoid being overly promotional in your messages. Twitter, as you should know anyway, is not the place for this. In addition, other JustRetweet members are unlikely to want to RT explicit sales messages, for fear that they will be accused of spamming. And JustRetweet also has rules against requesting retweets of some types of commercial messages, including those promoting trackback spammers and other products or services deemed undesirable.

5. Another thing that doesn't work on JustRetweet (in my opinion) is posting a barebones URL with no other message. When this goes out on Twitter, it will look like spam, and few people will want to click on it anyway. Always include a message with your link to explain why viewers should click on it. If it's a long link, shorten it first with a service such as Bit.ly.

6. Another approach to be wary of - again in my opinion - is the short and enigmatic message. I've seen a few of these listed on JustRetweet, and I can't believe they are productive, either of RTs or clickthroughs. I wouldn't retweet these messages, and even if I did I can't imagine that many of my followers would want to explore them further. I could be wrong about this. Maybe a few people will click through out of curiosity - but even then, it's pretty unlikely they will happen to be interested in whatever you are trying to promote.

7. Bear in mind that a message shared in someone else's Twitter stream is likely to be seen by someone who has never heard of you before. Messages that might work in your own Twitter stream - "Secrets of Better Novel Writing, part 26" - may be off-putting to such people, implying that this is something that has been running for a while and there is no point in a newcomer joining in now. The same applies with very personal sounding or enigmatic messages (see item 6).

8. JustRetweet now offers a PostLater option. This is a great resource for ensuring you don't deluge your followers with a series of tweets in quick succession. At present - in response to a request I made - the interval between PostLater posts is set to one hour, although I understand that an option to vary this may be added soon. I recommend mostly selecting PostLater when retweeting messages - you will still receive your credits for these immediately.

9. Bear in mind that JustRetweet offers other methods for earning credits as well as retweeting. You can sign up to follow other members listed on the site on Twitter (this typically pays between 2 and 10 credits), introduce new members (pays 25 credits per new member), visit other blogs and websites for credits (pays up to 10 credits), and so on. If all else fails, though, you can also buy credits for a very reasonable sum!

10. Finally, it's worth mentioning that you can choose the minimum number of Twitter followers a member must have to see your offer. It's obviously tempting to set this figure high, but doing that will drastically cut the number of potential retweeters. In addition, Twitter users with a small following may actually have more influence over their followers. Personally, I tend to set my minimum follower number to 200 or 250, but experiment to see what works best for you.

So those are my top ten tips - I hope you find them helpful. If you are already on JustRetweet, do you have any tips of your own you would like to share? Please do post them below!

How to Use Incentives to Get Extra Sales

Today's guest post is by Jimmy D. Brown of the website iBusiness Owner.

Jimmy is talking about a subject that I'm sure will resonate with many self-publishers, and especially with buyers of my 10-Day E-Book course (which discusses writing and publishing a money-making e-book on ClickBank).

Take it away, Jimmy...

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The vast majority of your prospects aren’t all that passionate about your offer.

Truth is, they’re kind of lukewarm. They’re interested, but they’re not taking their credit card out. Instead of making a buying decision, they decide to “think about it.”

Of course you know what happens: They forget about your offer. They don’t return to your store or sales page. Some of them may even make the conscious decision to NOT buy your product.

So what can you do to get your prospects to get excited and take action NOW?

Simple: Offer them an incentive if they order now. Do it right, and you’re virtually guaranteed to make more sales!

Generally, an incentive can take two forms:

1. You offer a discount. One idea is the straightforward discount, such as offering a percent-off. Another ideas is to offer a discount on the overall package, such as by offering free shipping.

Tip: You can even make it a limited-time discount so that your prospects feel a sense of urgency.

1. You offer one or more bonus products. Again, you can even make the bonus offer limited to increase the sense of urgency.

Offering a discount is a pretty straightforward incentive. So let’s talk about how to offer a bonus as a buying incentive.

Here then are the seven keys to offering bonuses that generate extra sales:

• Make sure the bonus is desirable. Point is, if your prospects don’t care about the bonus product, then it won’t help you generate any sales. So make sure it’s something that your prospects already want. Something that gets them excited!

• Create a valuable bonus. Just because you’re giving the product away for free with a purchase doesn’t mean this bonus should be worth little to no money. Quite the contrary – it should have a high perceived value in the prospect’s mind.

• Choose bonuses that are easy to deliver. This is particularly true if you’re selling downloadable products online, such as software or information. Point is, you want to be able to deliver the bonus instantly – right alongside the main product – without you having to manually deliver the bonus.

• Supply an exclusive bonus, whenever possible. If the prospect can get the bonus somewhere else, he might just do that. So try to offer exclusive bonuses to help make the buying decision easy.

• Offer a bonus that compliments the main product. For example, let’s say you’re selling a book about retirement planning. Offering retirement-planning worksheets and software as a bonus would be a great incentive.

• Sell the bonus. If you’re selling via a sales page, don’t just list the bonus. Instead, sell it just the way you’re selling the main product, meaning you should list the benefits of this bonus product or service.

• Remember that you can offer products OR services. Let’s say you’re selling exterior landscaping supplies and information. As a bonus you can offer a free consultation where you provide specific landscaping ideas for buyers. Or if you’re selling a copywriting product, you can offer a sales letter critique.

Conclusion

Offering an incentive is a simple, yet highly effective way to generate more sales and grow your business. To discover still more ways to grow your business, visit http://tinyurl.com/6rtt8sl – you may just learn strategies you never even knew existed!

* * *

Thank you to Jimmy for an interesting article.

I do agree that offering extra bonuses is a powerful selling technique. My publishers, WCCL, always include a few extra bonuses with the products and courses they offer. In addition - as with my Kindle Kash course - I quite often add a few extra bonuses myself when people order from me personally!

If you have any comments or questions about this post, as ever, feel free to leave them below.

Photo Credit: Scared Candy by Enokson on Flickr. Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence.

Review: CreateSpace for Profit

CreateSpace for Profit is a report currently on sale via the Internet Marketing Warrior Forum as a Warrior Special Offer (WSO). It's written by Alan Petersen and Peggy Baron.

CreateSpace is, of course, the popular print self-publishing service operated by Amazon.com (see screengrab above). As this is an area of publishing I haven't particularly explored, I decided to shell out the modest fee of $4.97 to see what it was all about.

So I can reveal that what you get is a concise, well-written 28-page PDF that sets out five different methods for writing books for CreateSpace without totally starting from scratch. All are interesting, and I was impressed to see that the authors include links to examples of CreateSpace books they have written and self-published using the methods described.

The methods involve a combination of using and adapting PLR (private label rights), public domain material, and material bought or commissioned from other authors. It wouldn't be fair to give away all the details here, but I was pleased to see that none involves simply copying and pasting low-cost (and low-quality) PLR/public domain books. The authors point out that Amazon has been cracking down hard recently on low-quality, duplicate-content books. Interestingly, their examples show that by removing the spammy books and e-books, Amazon has actually done genuine authors a big favour.

CreateSpace for Profit doesn't include much information on how to publish to CreateSpace - it's essentially about quickly devising and creating non-fiction titles with good sales potential. The methods could just as well be used to create Kindle e-books, and in fact the authors do recommend publishing to this and other formats as well. If you want in-depth advice on the actual CreateSpace publishing process, though, you will need to look elsewhere (the actual CreateSpace site would be a very good starting point, of course).

Overall, I found this an eye-opening report with some clever ideas I am certainly going to consider applying myself in future, even if I choose not to go down the CreateSpace route. For $4.97 (around 3.50 UK pounds), I have no problem recommending it.

CreateSpace for Profit would also be a good purchase for anyone interested in publishing e-books for the Amazon Kindle, including buyers of my own Kindle Kash course. Bear in mind that the report is currently on offer as a WSO, so I don't know how long it will remain available at the current low price (or at all).

Any comments or questions, as ever, please leave them below!

Disclosure: I am an affiliate for this WSO, so if you buy it via one of the links above a proportion of the (modest) fees will go to me. This has not affected my review in any way.