In this business the first thing you need to do is learn how to market your book and find out who you are similar to. Being similar to somebody is not a setback, on the contrary, it's a significant opportunity. Authors and books that you are emulating with you are your clues for cracking the Amazon marketing world. When you click on an author's profile, it shows you even more authors that are most commonly purchased by a certain target audience. They share similar target words and marketing strategies, so feel free to be creative and work with what you have. It makes a lot more sense than just turning on a couple of Amazon ads. And really, you've got to prime those Amazon ads anyway with clicks and sales from other sources.
How to Market a Self-published Book Without a Budget
Reaching out to your friends who are also in the business or other people that are in your niche or similar is the safest and most noble approach you can take. Ask them to cross-promote your book, or do a podcast with you, or get yourself invited to theirs if they host one. We call this a virtual book tour, and it's completely free. It just takes a little bit of effort and a few kind words. On the other hand, these methods might seem like you are creating competition, because there are a lot of authors but not so many customers. You need to kiss this mindset goodbye as soon as possible. The digital world is abundant, and there is enough room for everybody.
So the question is where to start to market your book if you're broke. To find out more listen to today's episode of Serve No Master podcast.
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Leave some feedback. We would love to hear from you!
Connect with Jonathan Green and Serve No Master:
The post SNM191: How to build an authorship business without breaking the bank with Ray Brehm appeared first on Serve No Master: Be Your Own Boss - Live Free
Connect with Jonathan Green
In this business the first thing you need to do is learn how to market your book and find out who you are similar to. Being similar to somebody is not a setback, on the contrary, it's a significant opportunity. Authors and books that you are emulating with you are your clues for cracking the Amazon marketing world. When you click on an author's profile, it shows you even more authors that are most commonly purchased by a certain target audience. They share similar target words and marketing strategies, so feel free to be creative and work with what you have. It makes a lot more sense than just turning on a couple of Amazon ads. And really, you've got to prime those Amazon ads anyway with clicks and sales from other sources.
How to Market a Self-published Book Without a Budget
Reaching out to your friends who are also in the business or other people that are in your niche or similar is the safest and most noble approach you can take. Ask them to cross-promote your book, or do a podcast with you, or get yourself invited to theirs if they host one. We call this a virtual book tour, and it's completely free. It just takes a little bit of effort and a few kind words. On the other hand, these methods might seem like you are creating competition, because there are a lot of authors but not so many customers. You need to kiss this mindset goodbye as soon as possible. The digital world is abundant, and there is enough room for everybody.
So the question is where to start to market your book if you're broke. To find out more listen to today's episode of Serve No Master podcast.
▶️▶️▶️▶️
Resources mentioned:
Leave some feedback. We would love to hear from you!
Connect with Jonathan Green and Serve No Master:
The post SNM191: How to build an authorship business without breaking the bank with Ray Brehm appeared first on Serve No Master: Be Your Own Boss - Live Free
Connect with Jonathan Green
191-ServeNoMaster-How to build an authorship business without breaking the bank with Ray Brehm How to build an authorship business without breaking the bank with special guest Ray Brehm on today's episode. [00:00:06] Today's episode is brought to you by LearnDash, the backbone of my membership area. Launch your next course on the right foot at servenomaster.com/learndash. [00:00:14] Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to Serve No Master podcast where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical Island in the South Pacific by bestselling author,
Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. [00:00:44] Ray and I have been in each other's orbits for about two years. Participating in different events, emailing back and forth... This is the first time we finally got to talk live, and boy - did he knock my socks off. It's a great interview that I know you guys are going to love. He's going to talk about turning your book into a successful business, his successful book launch process, and most importantly - how to get attention o your work without spending too much money. [00:01:01] One of the mistakes that happen to many new authors is, we just spend and spend because we don't know better. I know services that help you write your own book that costs more than a car. They don't write the book for you, they just help you a little bit. It blows my mind how expensive some of these services are.
[00:01:14] I know editors that would charge 10 to $20,000, I know cover designers that charge North of $2,000. You can end up spending a hundred thousand dollars to launch a
book, and because you don't know any better - than money's just gone. You'll never recover it. I don't want that to happen to you. And Ray's going to make sure that doesn't happen to you - right now. [00:01:31] Hey guys, I'm really excited to have Ray Brehm here. He's an amazing guy who's really an expert on book launches. He's going to be teaching us some really, really cool stuff in this session, so please make sure you listen carefully. He's going to give us some really cool details. And I'd love to know how you transitioned to, I know you used to be in some other industries, how you got into books in the first place? How did that journey start?
[00:01:50] Great question. I wonder that myself sometimes, but I had been wanting to write a book for 20 years. And the technology wasn't there when I first started, you know, in the nineties I wanted to write a book. I'm like, 'Someday I want to write a book'. And I have a
folder where I keep, just as a reminder of all the little notes, like, 'Oh, this would make a
good book!' And I sketched out books and put them in sticky notes and different sheets and just sat on it. Because I just lack the confidence and lack the idea. I didn't know how to
write a book. I've never been taught how to write a book. I've never been taught how to
market a book or launch a book. It just seems so far out there. [00:02:32] And then one day I was walking by a booth at the infusion soft conference, and there was an opportunity to write a chapter with Jack Canfield back here. So I keep that as a reminder right above me. And I said, 'That's going to be the only way I really forced myself to get into this world and get it done - by committing, by making a financial commitment.' [00:02:55] So I signed up and then I got an email that said, 'Your chapter is due in two weeks'. I'm like, 'What?! I don't even know what I want to write about yet!' But I wrote. And right at that time I had just taken a course and done a standup comedy routine at the local theater here in Phoenix, or the comedy center. They taught us how to write jokes and all that. And then we had to get on stage for a real performance. They brought in a headliner from LA and all of the students did our routines. So, I wrote about that and I said, 'Look, there's four mental muscles of success that you've got to deal with when you're doing anything as an entrepreneur, as somebody who's trying to be successful. And I had hecklers in the crowd, and I had somebody out there that was finishing my jokes before I started, and it was just like, 'Well, how do you deal with that?' And you're going to get that if you stand on stage. So I did that [00:03:55] And then, I was in an entrepreneur group and one of the other entrepreneurs said, 'Hey, I need a book'. And I'm like, 'Well, let's do a beta test and we'll do your book from one of your seminars'. And so I actually did somebody else's book before I ever wrote my own. And the rest is kind of history. I figured out how to do it, how to publish, and then started writing my own - about that experience. And then I ran into the whole marketing, and how to get a bestseller and all that stuff. [00:04:25] And then I had to learn that next step. So just keep taking steps. And as I was going along, people started kind 'of clinging on saying, Hey, how'd you do that last thing you did? Oh, how'd you do that? How do you, how are you marketing your books?' And so forth. So it was just kind of a way to get into the creative world of offering entrepreneurship and online businesses. And it all started with making a commitment before I had the confidence to do it.
[00:04:56] So what do you think is kind of the biggest mistake first time authors make? Is that in the research process, the writing process or the launch process? Where do you think
people get stuck the most? [00:05:07] Well, there's a lot of places to get stuck, and I think the place to get stuck the most is just - the fear. Some kind of fear is triggered and it shows itself in different ways. Like, 'I don't know. I don't have my... this is a big thing for me right now, I don't have my author website done.' And it's okay, you don't have to learn. You don't have to become an expert in programming or HTML or WordPress or anything like that to get that done. Nowadays, the techs are there. [00:05:37] There's somebody told you you couldn't write. I mean, if I went back and if I asked for permission from my English teachers back in high school and junior high, if I could write a book, they'd be like, 'No, I's not allowed.' That was like the most boring subject for me. But you have to learn some of that stuff when you actually start writing. [00:05:57] But at every stage you're going to hit some fear and it's going to be the imposter syndrome based on fears, some kind of imposter syndrome. And then it manifests itself with, 'Oh, I don't have time today', or 'I don't have the resources', or 'It's going to cost too much'. [00:06:17] And really, it's all about just believing you can do it. And really - most people have something valuable to share, even if it's just one step ahead of the next person. [00:06:30] A lot of people talk to me when their book is finished and they're like - there's that space when the book's finished and they're hesitating to release it. They need to put it out and they get stuck there. It's amazing how often that happens. And they're like, 'Well, what if I get a bad review?' What do you say to them? [00:06:46] You cannot step into the ring without somebody disagreeing with you. You just can't do it. It's going to happen. On my 10th book, I had some people just waiting until it was released to write bad reviews. That was about a year ago. And it took me 24 or 48 hours to kind of get past that mental state. And now there are some great quotes like Rachel Hollis says, 'Don't let people in the cheap seats take an expensive viewpoint on your life.' And as Renee Brown says, 'If someone else is not in the arena like you are, they don't get to say anything about you.' [00:07:30] At this point, I don't even look at the reviews anymore. Because if you go out there and look at every book that you love, there's some horrible reviews out there. And there's people out there that are just unhappy about something in their life and they can take it out online and really, if you're not getting bad reviews - you're not taking enough of a stand. Your book's probably boring anyway because you've got to make some people really happy and make some people really mad in order for it to be good. [00:08:07] And it's so, it's a good way to tell if you've written a good book. And you can't want to produce a work of art like a book and then not put it out there far enough, because you could certainly do a little launch. Just tell, not even advertise it, tell all your friends, get some good reviews and feel kind of good. But you're really not spreading your message to the world. And so, it's just one of the things - you should be prepared for it, but that's okay. That's down the line. You're going to hit a lot of little... just rereading your own draft is a harrowing experience, right? [00:08:46] For every one of mine, I'm like, 'Oh, you're so close to the work that you get...' It's funny, I haven't talked to anybody who wants to reread the first book they've ever written either. I just don't want to do it. I was up at a seminar with Ray Edwards, you know, the copywriting guy, and he was like, 'I can't stand to read my first book.' And Nick Stephenson, I was talking to him and I said, 'Hey, I’m reading one of your fiction books', and he's like, 'Oh, I can't read that one. I don't even want to look at it.' So everybody - every single author has that feeling. [00:09:26] One thing that I find really interesting, you have a really good process for the entire book launch. Maybe you can give us that bird's eye view. Someone gets over that fear. They go, okay, I'm ready. I don't care
if it gets some bad reviews and ends up doing a good job. What do I do next? Is I know a lot of people hit upload, they send the book to Amazon and they're ready for the money to start rolling again? And then they don't do anything else. [00:09:49] It's interesting because you and I both know that, in the world of digital marketing, one of the first things you learn is about discovering your avatar. And so that's the process I take people through - I'll either assist people or sometimes I even do their launches for them. But the first thing they have to give me is - who are my author look likes? What are the books that I'm either emulating, or the audiences that are the similar to who I'm trying to target...? And like you said - there's kind of this myth that you just hit the button on Amazon and money's going to start rolling in. That's not going to happen. You actually have to try to target the right people. [00:10:30] And so really the process I do is - we go out and look on Amazon, we use Amazon and Google and we will try to find similar offers. [00:10:39] That's really good you said that - find a look like, because I find that a lot of people go, 'Oh there's no one like me.' And that is so hard - to find your audience. I would love to say that there's nobody like me. No one's ever written a book about quitting your job before. I'm the first one who ever thought of it. I'm the first one who ever said, 'You know, it's cool to work online, but it's all commodity'. It's like I'm selling bags of rice and everyone is. So, I find that there are people I'm similar to, and then it's finding out what's my unique spin or what's my unique part of the story. So once someone figures out - okay, these are the books I want to emulate, this is the part of the story I want to tell, this is what makes me special - how do they start to get their message out there? [00:11:18] Because I find that the hardest part is like - yeah, people started reading my book, they love it, but how do I get my book into those hands? How can I start getting attention? [00:11:27] So what we do, we'll go out and say - okay, let's say I was in success and I've got Tony Robbins and Jack
Canfield and a couple of people, I'll go out and look at the Amazon. And Amazon gives you the clues. You go and click on their author profile and it'll show you 6 or 12 other authors that are most commonly purchased by people that purchase Jack Canfield's book, for instance. And then I'll take those and I'll start building a list. I call it the 'The six degrees of Kevin Bacon',
because the myth is that you can, I wander if it's a myth, I think it's actually true, but that any actor in Hollywood, you can make a six movies connection to Kevin bacon. [00:12:09] It's the same thing. We can move out six layers and get a ton of names. Usually it doesn't even take that much to get a feel for what's going on. I'll usually try to get like 20 or 30 look like authors. And then we'll go over to BookBub and just start testing them. And a lot of times we do it during preorder. So, we're just testing who's responding. And I'll give you an example: so, for instance, this book, The Snowball Book Launch, when I launched that book, I went out there and was testing it and was during preorder, so I'm just accumulating sales. [00:12:45] Of course, I can hit 'Amazon bestseller' anytime, and I did, and it stayed there the entire time during preorder, but it was because I was testing all these authors... and you might think like, 'Okay, we've got some great people on here.' I could say, 'Oh, I want to target readers of Jonathan Green or Jesse Krieger, or Derek Decker'. And that's who I thought would be the most responsive. But what was interesting - I did the testing and readers of Gary Vaynerchuk had the highest click-through rate on my ads on BookBub. [00:13:19] So that told me - okay, there's a whole next degree of separation where it's like - okay, there are self-publishing guys I would think be interested, but there's a lot of digital marketing and thought leaders' audiences who would be interested in this book. And you know, I think part of it was like - I got Frank Kern to write the forward, so that helped people relate when they saw that on the ads.
[00:13:46] But we would do that, and then we'd start taking that information and saying -
now let's put that in Amazon and say, 'Okay, Gary Vaynerchuk, names of his books, let's see
what keywords on Amazon work'. And we just kind of go back and forth and test that. And it
makes a lot more sense than just kind of turning on a couple of Amazon ads. And really, you've got to prime those Amazon ads anyway with clicks and sales from other sources. [00:14:14] So that's what we like to do, it's really just - dig in and get the testing done on BookBub, and start driving the algorithm on Amazon, and then turn on some ads there and that's what I call 'cross pollination' - where it's like, 'Hey, we found some keywords over here. They're working and that leads to this offer. Let's go test this offer and BookBub and this other authors working on BookBub, let's test his name and his keywords, and his book titles in Amazon'. And we really do a lot with those two to get the launches going. [00:14:51] I think that's really interesting. I suppose you don't talk about thata lot. I know my experience with writing book testing ads and authors that I relate to - it's never who I expect. It's like, 'Oh, this is what I'm just like', and I'm always wrong. So I'll test 20 authors. I can tell you that the number one author, if someone likes Daymond John's book - they're going to like mine. And it's not like a little bit more, it's eight times more. [00:15:13] So someone is eight times more likely to click on my ad and buy my book than any other ad I ever tried. And this has worked for three different books. So there's something we have going on and I'm not sure why. I would have never guessed it. It's just, I was watching Shark Tenk, and I thought 'Oh yeah, I'll throw him in!' Because he had a book out. And I like his investment, all that stuff, I like watching him on the show and I was like, 'Oh, I guess people see me in him and they go - we're like two peas in a pod', but there's something about his book that - eight times more out, eight exes, more than any other ad I've ever run, and every time I run it and I go - wow. [00:15:46] So that's really interesting. Then you for talking about going to the next level, because that's what I haven't thought - to then go and look at other people who are similar to his book, and appearing on that page, and then targeting them. So that's really cool. That's the next level. I think a lot of people, obviously I'm guilty of that, don't think of going deeper and deeper and deeper to find every similar author that's the right fit. [00:16:04] So besides the pay traffic, which is a great way to go, some people don't have a budget for that, or they're intimidated with paid ads. I know I certainly always find paid ads a little bit overwhelming and stressful. So how can someone do other things to start to build up a little buzz or start to figure out where they can carve a niche for themselves to get a little bit of attention? [00:16:24] The only thing that took me a long time to figure out, and that's how you and I met too, is reaching out to other people that are in your niche or similar, and seeing if they're willing to cross promote your book, or maybe they want to be on your podcast, if you have a podcast. They may ask you to be on theirs. You can do some podcasts outreach. We call it a virtual book tour type of thing. You can do some blog posts. That stuff is all right, it's arguably more powerful and it's free. It just takes a little elbow grease, right? But now I can see a future in it. Look, all this stuff takes a little bit time to get started. You can't get overwhelmed on doing that. If you can get a little help, that's great. [00:17:20] The first person - that's the hardest, right? The first million - that's the hardest. It's the first-person connection. That's the hardest. And then, because of that first step, you're going to get introduced to other people and connected. What I love about the online world is - if you and I and everybody else lived in the same town, in the old days with brick and mortar businesses, we might feel like we're competing. And there's only so many
customers. Because in the digital world - it's so abundant, and we have to shake that mindset. We probably grew up with that competition, and really online - everybody's your partner. And if somebody doesn't want to be that, that's fine too. They' re probably limiting themselves as much as they're limiting you. But what I've found is - everyone I was afraid to reach out to was super nice and grated me with open arms. [00:18:20] And once you build up a list... As for instance, you and I probably both know we could write a book right now online, right? On this interview. And we can make it a best seller by the time we push 'publish', because we could just send it to our audience. [00:18:41] And this is another thing that I did wrong, and it's okay, but you got to start now, is that email list is the most valuable thing. It's more valuable than your book. It's building your tribe, and your email list and people that want to read because not only will they read your books, but now you've got something to say, 'Hey, I'll promote your book to my audience and if you'll promote my book to your audience, then you've just doubled the size of the people that were going to see your next book'. [00:19:11] And having something to offer is always the kind of the scary part of getting started. And really you do, because if you can shout from the mountaintops about somebody else - that's valuable to them. So that's another thing - do, as I say, don't do as I did. [00:19:34] So a lot of people, I know so many authors, they build out a list and they never do anything with it. Recently I was talking to someone else, they go, 'Oh, I've been building a list for eight years. I've never emailed them and I'm about to send out that first email. What should I say?' And I was like, 'Don't do it!' No one's going to remember that eight years ago they said, 'You can email me', and then you're just going to go to spam. They don't remember this guy and you're going to get banned. [00:19:56] And I got an email today, actually, that's why this is on my mind. Someone emailed me and said, 'Oh, Jonathan, I love your emails, but can you just send it to me once a week instead of every day?' I was like, 'I don't know how to do that. I don't have an option to give someone an individual version. I'm not there yet'. I understand the idea, 'Oh, we'll just make a digest list'. And I get that email like every six months. I know a lot of people that go, 'Oh, I email my list once a month or every six months', because they don't want to be
annoying. [00:20:21] And I just wonder where do you see that balance in how often people should communicate with their audience? Because I think you get a lot more spam complaints if you're forgotten. Then if you email it's too much because they go, 'Who is this person? Spam!' as opposed to, 'This is too much - delete'. What do you think? [00:20:41] I completely agree and I've been there. For the longest time when I started in, this is the stuff kick myself for now, because, you know, how much time did I waste in the beginning by not being ready to send emails? And a part of it is like, and I don't know your system exactly, but for me, it's like - I have this idea in your head that I've got to write an email every day and it's not necessarily the case. You can write a few emails in advance with the technology, and send them out. Especially if you're just putting them on a campaign. It's still the same useful information.
[00:21:28] Now, if you're wanting to send an email out about the Coronavirus or something,
well then, okay, that has to be timely. It has to be now on a broadcast email. But anyway,
what I did wrong was, one - I wasn't ready. And Brendon Burchard says this thing, 'Look, it
only takes an extra week to make something great'. And most people are, 'Yeah, let's just
get it out and get it done'. And if you're in your lead magnet set and a great onboarding sequence, that's half the battle. [00:21:59] And then - continuing to email them. And that could be campaigns, it could be broadcast. But I finally drew a long line in the sand and said, 'I'm just way too inconsistent'. And there are some people that like that, like you said, the person who you were talking about, but for me, I finally just said, 'I need to switch to every day'. [00:22:24] And if people don't like it, then they probably don't like hearing about me. That's okay. Then they probably shouldn't be on the list. And I just cold turkey made that switch, where it was just kind of inconsistent - at least once or twice a week. But they might go a week without something, and I just said, 'I'm going to send something every day and it might
be somebody else's stuff, it might be my stuff', but I need it. My list needs to get used to just
getting something every day so they're not shocked by it, shocked by me making an offer or sharing a tool I really love. And so that's the switch. [00:23:07] Now, when you're starting out, that seems overwhelming. But it could be as simple as saying, 'I'm mapping out the first two weeks of what somebody's it's going to get'. And maybe it's just every year, the other day, every third day - what cool stuff can you share those first couple of weeks? And then maybe, at the very least you're going to broadcast every Friday, send your newsletter, and then in between - you can start putting in offers. [00:23:37] Now, I don't expect people to start with 365 days of content. But you can start with a couple of weeks of content - and that part's done. So, every single person that comes on your list, they're going to get stuff for two weeks, and then you add the next piece. If they've seen all my stuff about that download, they just go, 'What's next?' [00:24:01] Okay, here's what I have, and maybe that's another free thing, or maybe a small product, maybe it's just selling them your next book on Amazon. Especially because the point they like you the most is that very first opt-in. So, you don't want to lose that. If you can kind of maintain that feeling by sharing new things and so forth, it's good. But that was a mental shift for me. And I was like, 'I don't want to bother people'. And really, they're not there to be worried about that. [00:24:39] How do you deal with unsubscribes? Because I know every day you look and it's like, 'Oh no, 10 people said - never email me again!' And there's that feeling - the same feeling we get when we have a fear of the bad review. It's like, 'Oh no, I offended someone! And so they've clicked unsubscribe and I'll never get to talk to them ever again. They just broke up with me!' How do you feel about that? [00:24:59] You know, in the beginning I used to click on it and see who they were, and do I know them. And I remember a buddy of mine unsubscribed, and I was like, 'What is he doing?!' But he wasn't going to buy anything from me. He was just helping me out by being on the list at some point. And people don't have to be on my list to buy something from me, but they should be on the list if they enjoy my content or my dad jokes or whatever. [00:25:25] I don't even look anymore. To me, I am almost sure that 99% of the time it was a good thing. If they unsubscribe, they don't like my message. They're never going to buy anything from me. And they've got enough other emails to look at and not everybody's going to stay forever. And if you try to cater to everybody, if I was just a trust fund baby andall, if I was just trying to have fun and write emails - fine. I might try to please everybody, but that wouldn't keep the people that were serious about learning more. [00:26:10] So I don't even look at it anymore. Like you just said - I brought a broadcast out today and 15 people unsubscribed and three clicked on the spam button. And then I look at the average and I'm like - yeah, that's about right. 10 to 15 per email. But there's there's same amount coming in that are interested. So, if I can trade those out, or even if I don't go higher each day, if I can just break even with people that are way more interested and get rid of the ones that aren't - that's great. I mean, if I'm not helping them, they shouldn't stay on it anyway. [00:26:51] I think that's really good because there's these phases we get to, we're afraid of a negative response and if we just think about how often we do the same. I unsubscribe to email lists all the time. I'm always trying to get off as many lists as I can and it's not that I hate the person and I'm tired of it, I go - I just don't have time for this. It's very rarely something as proactive as - this person's a jerk. If we imagine what someone else was thinking, while we think it's a personal decision that they agonized over, but it really something like, 'Yeah, you know what? I'm probably not going to be an author.' Click. And
that's it. It's not a big decision. It's like a small decision or they're just decluttering their inbox or they're using an app. So it's good to remind ourselves that. It's not a personal attack. It's not a judgment of us. I get emails all the time, I accidentally unsubscribe to. How do we get back on the list? And, again - that's a tech question. I'm not sure. [00:27:45] Because sometimes with some software, they never let you email someone again because they don't want to ever bother someone. But it's interesting that people do it on purpose, they do it on accident, all these things happen and we attach all this emotion to it. [00:27:58] The next question I have is, thinking about your talk and putting offers in front of people, what is the first time you should try to sell something to your list? Or how should you try and monetize your list? Because I know so many authors, they write that first book, they start building the list, they have nothing to say to them or they're like, 'What do I do? Do I tell him short stories? What do I white about? How do I generate some revenue from this list, because we need to make money while we write the next book?' [00:28:23] That's a great question. And you know, I was talking to someone the other day about this, and I think you and I talked about it too, a week or so ago, but the whole idea is - you may have nothing and there's still something you can share. So, for instance, we call it a value ladder. So, you might sell your book for a dollar and then you might sell something for $7, and maybe a course for $47, and you go up, and maybe you got $2,000 for coaching or something. [00:28:56] The sooner you can get that
filled out - the better. But it doesn't have to be your stuff. And so, for instance, there are products I like that just help writing. And not all of them I can be an affiliate for, but a lot of them you can. And so just being able to mention that to somebody and say, 'Hey, here’s a cool tool you can use', you get an affiliate commission. That's, I think, one of the biggest things that people miss. And I had it backwards myself. I mean, everything we're talking about - I did wrong. [00:29:31] So, take it from me. But I thought I need to get to this level of status, which I don't even know how you would measure it, but I just thought - it's in the future. Before I
can recommend other products and before I can come up, I'll worry about being a pro affiliate later. If I was starting now, and I just loved writing the book and I didn't know what was next, I would go out and find the tools that help people achieve what I said in the book and become affiliates for it. [00:29:59] And that could be your email system, it could be your writing software, it could be a success planner. I mean, for instance, if you're teaching people how to get daily habits and you don't have your own planner, you can create one pretty inexpensively, but until then - just recommend a different one and use your affiliate link to Amazon and you can make some money. [00:30:22] In fact, you told me last week, I think, that somebody bought a TV from you, or something. I don't know. Yeah, they clicked on an affiliate link. But anyway, being Amazon affiliates is one of the first things you can do, and by the way, you could say, 'Hey, I liked this other book' and you point to somebody else's book and you still get it - you still get a commission and they click on it and buy it. So, there's a lot of ways to do that.
[00:30:49] My friend Matt McWilliams, I was just talking to him the other day, and he said,
'Number one thing you can do is put a toolbox on your site with all your affiliate links'. And
even the ones you don't have, even just the ones you're recommending. Because - wow, you
can really do a lot. And I was in the real estate business, property management business,
where numbers were the name of the game. It's the same here - email list. [00:31:18] Why not have these things in place as you're building your email list so if you're hitting, one out of every hundred transaction buys this $50 thing and you get 25 bucks, well that's a heck of a lot of increase on volume just from your book as opposed to just royalties. And so getting some of these things in place, getting them in the book or on your site, and then, as you grow your list -it's just going to start again exponentially building a revenue stream for you from other people's stuff. [00:31:47] That's really good what you said about the toolbox page. I remember I was doing research a couple, or four or five years ago, and someone said, 'Oh, the toolbox page is always one of the top three or four pages for traffic on anyone's website'. And so, I said, 'Oh, I better build one. And I learned it goes - 'home page', 'start here' or 'about us', and then
'toolbox page'. So it gets massive amounts of traffic. I go - oh, you know what? Every time I
visit someone site I go, 'What tools do they use?' So actually, it's funny, I just got an email
from my page designer because we're redesigning our toolbox page, all these new custom
graphics and all this stuff are updated to the tools that I use now, because, of course, things
change over time. [00:32:21] And there's this feeling that it's salesy to get paid a commission to recommend stuff. And how can someone overcome that feeling? Because I mean, I don't have that problem. You know me - I'm fine with it because I only recommend stuff I believe in or stuff that I use, but a lot of people aren't ok. I'll be like, 'If I can recommend a movie to you that I liked and get a commission for it, why not?' But some people feel bad about that. I'm like, 'No, you actually liked it. So, you should be allowed to do that. Why not?' How do you feel
about that? Or how can people deal with that next fear in this process? [00:32:54] That's a definite fear. And here's the thing - once you understand it, like you and I, if you recommend something to me, I want to make sure I use your like, knowing what I know now. But we've got to get over this hump of, 'Oh, I'm benefiting on somebody else.' The truth is - it never costs anybody more to use an affiliate link. And the way I'm positioning it now with an offer I'm going to be doing pretty shortly is - this big company over here is going to sponsor you to get my bonuses, and so let's make them do it. Hey, I could charge you this much for this thing, or you could just click on my link and let them pay me, and it costs you nothing. [00:33:45] And there's people that still don't like that. Most of the time, that's because they're just starting out. And then there's people just starting out and they're like, 'Hey, use my link, here's my link,' and there's an appropriate way to do it, but most of the time, you probably have the same thing, it's like somebody recommends something to me and I'll say, 'Cool, you got an affiliate link.' I want you to benefit from telling me about that. And if you told me about a great movie and they would give you a free pass for sending me there, why wouldn't I do it? And the person who doesn't want to do that, for the most part, they're probably not somebody that belongs in your audience. [00:34:27] That's really good. It's cool. We've covered a lot of ground here, all the way from coming up with your idea to launching the book, to how to make money on the backend. And I want to say - thanks for spending time with us. I don't want to keep too much of your time. This was an amazing session. [00:34:39] I know we went in a totally different direction than we were expecting, but sometimes - magic happens. So, thank you so much for being here. I know the audience is having a really, really good time. And I just want to say thank you so much. We really, really appreciate it [00:34:51] Thanks, Jonathan. It's been fun. This was great. [00:34:53] Thank you so much for listening to my interview with Ray. I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did. You can find out more about him at raybrehm.com, that's - R A Y B R E H M dot com. We've got the link in the show notes and below the episode, and if you like what Ray had to say - please leave a comment below the blog post or below the YouTube video if you're watching this on the YouTube feed, and thank you so much for spending time with us. [00:35:11] This is the last episode in this miniseries on authorship. We did 10 of these. I know that's a lot. That's two and a half months on authorship. Starting next week, we're going to have new amazing content. We're going to put together some other miniseries as we're going to continue doing interviews, as long as you guys continue giving positive feedback. So please take the time to just click a thumbs up below the video or just give me a 'yes', or 'we appreciate it', or 'thank you', or 'that was interesting', or even an 'ok'! A comment that just has two letters - I'll take it! And of course, you have a chance to leave a review on iTunes or any of the other podcast feeds. If you're listening to this on Spotify or anywhere else, please, the feedback means a lot to us. So, thank you so much for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. [00:35:44] Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe so you never miss another episode. We'll be back next Tuesday with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to servenomaster.com/podcast now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No Master. All you have to do is leave a five-star review of this podcast. See you Tuesday. [00:36:16] Ready to turn your book into a bestseller? Find out what other authors don't want you to know at servenomaster.com/secrets.