Using the BAR Approach To Market Your Book

I’ve been a fan of Jonathan Fields for some time. His book Career Renegade: How To Make a Living Doing What You Love is a must have for those of us wanting to live and work according to our own dream-map as well as by our own rules.

Recently Jonathan launched Tribal Author, a blog/community for those authors who see traditional publishing as a complete waste of time. It’s for authors who want to build a community (tribe) around their ideas…kind of like what I’ve proposed here.

Building a blog around your main idea is the first step in creating your tribe or following.  Got a killer idea?  Absolutely sure it’s gonna light the world afire?  Go for it!

If you’ve got a book simmering on the back burner and perhaps aren’t sure whether to shop it around to publishers or go to Lulu or some other Print-On-Demand outlet, give Tribal Author a look.

Jonathan’s got some free downloads for you, too. An eBook and an awesome mindmap that looks at 8 power bases for Tribal Authors.

Check it out! I think you’ll be glad you did.

There’s the obligatory showroom, the painfully embarrassing demonstrations…not to mention the maintenance plans.

Then there are the accessories…toilet brushes, cleaning solutions, even knitted toilet covers!  Heck, you might even build a whole blog around toilets like the guys over at Downtown Toilet.

OK, I might be kidding a bit. But the point remains that with enough focused blog traffic, you could sell toilets.

In fact, if your blog’s traffic supports your goals, you can pretty much sell anything, right?

Wrong. Here’s why…in my best Yoda-speak:

Hungry crowds do not customers make.

Yeah, that sounds a bit backwards if you’re not a Jedi.  More simply put, just because you get a bumper crop of traffic doesn’t mean you’re going to sell an eBook, a site membership, a new training program, or even…a toilet.

That’s because it takes quite a bit of effort to sell anyone anything.  Until your readers are ready to make three assumptions, your dreams of a porcelain business empire is out of reach.

The 3 Assumptions Necessary to Sell a Toilet…

…an eBook, a site membership, or your new training program.

And here they are…

Assumption 1: They know you.

OK, this is kind of a no-brainer – but there’s a larger point…

• People like to buy from people they know.

Going further:

• People like to repeatedly buy from people they know.

That means the more they feel they know you, the better the likelihood that they will ultimately buy from you.

Here are a couple of things to you can do aimed at allowing readers to know you better:

1. Respond to your readers offline.  Sure, responding to a blog commenter is cool, but responding offline is even more effective.  It sends the message that you care enough to reach out.  Simple and effective.
2. Get personal. Every once in a while, throw into your blog a post about your real life. It makes you more human and it extends your persona; both result in a closer connection with your readers.

And that leads to the second assumption a potential buyer needs to make…

Assumption 2: They like you.

Likability is a huge issue when it comes to buying from someone. Now, this theory may go right out the window if we’re talking about buying romaine lettuce at a flea market, but we’re going to suppose that isn’t your gig.

How do you get reader to like you? It helps to give away money! OK, I’m kidding.

Being liked isn’t something you can predict with a high degree of accuracy because there are many people involved.  Not everyone is going to like you. And that’s OK.

You only want certain people to like you…the ones with with the problem that your eBook, membership site, or training program solves.

Still, these 3 factors are important:

1. Personality: It helps to have one and not be shy about presenting it on your blog.
2. Solutions: When a reader knows that you’re serious about solving their problems, you quickly get a tick in the ‘like’ column.
3. Photos: Pictures of you (those of you smiling and generally liking life) go a long way to getting your readers to like you.  If the camera isn’t your friend, get some pictures of you doing fun things – people like that, too.

That brings us to the third assumption that customers need to make before buying from you…

Assumption #3: They Trust You

Trust is often underrated but shouldn’t ever be.Trust speaks to how comfortable a customer is with you.  Trust is also a marker for the level of risk a customer feels.  If there’s enough trust, and a low level of perceived risk, the sale goes forward. But without it, it goes nowhere.

How can you bump up your reading on a potential customer’s trust-o-meter?

1. Testimonials: Especially reverse testimonials. When someone reads how satisfied existing customers are or have been, they begin to trust you. Testimonials can be a dime-a dozen and therefore ineffective.  But when you sprinkle in some reverse testimonials, your trust-o-meter readings climb. (More on reverse testimonials later in the week.)
2. Consistency: In your posting frequency, in the strength of your content, and in your commitment to solving their painful issues.

Summary – Selling, whether your product line includes information products or toilets, is a matter of people feeling comfortable.  Making them feel comfortable around you is key to making any money from your blog. 

Making people feel comfortable enough to buy from you is HUGE. It takes work, commitment, and perseverance. 

But if you go about it in a consistent, systematic manner, you’ll have them standing in line witing to buy with an unstoppable sense of urgency.

What Do You Think?  Is selling toilets, eBooks, membership sites, etc., only a matter of likebility, trust, and being known? Is there more to it?  Please share your thoughts below!

If you’re a regular reader of BAR (bless you ), you’ll notice the blog has undergone some plastic surgery. A face lift to be exact.

Of course all the same great articles and blog posts are here, but the overall appearance is somewhat more contemporary…a more youthful appearance if you will.

At nearly 52, I’m all for looking a bit more youthful…even online.

I’m using the Headway theme

Headway is an extremely versatile and flexible theme. It allows you to change the layout of any page at any time.

And, if you’re not exactly a code-monkey, there’s literally no CSS or PHP to deal with.  Right up my alley.

If you’re looking for a new WordPress theme and you’re tired of the limitations that free themes offer, then I’d urge you to check out Headway.

Click here for more information on Headway Themes (my aff link).

“Who Else Wants to Earn a Gazillion Dollars While They Sleep?”

You’ve heard offers like this, right?  I have, too.

And no, this is not a post about how to make bank while you dream.

Instead it’s the second post (consecutively) that I’ll be recommending  Marko Saric’s blog.  No, it’s not link-baiting but rather an opportunity to piggy-back on a post I read yesterday on his blog.

It has to do with the role of hype in selling.  Whether that idea has to do with the latest and greatest techno-widget, your services as a consultant, or the offer for a product you’ve poured your heart and soul (and sore fingertips) into…hype on your sales page is a tempting, albeit dangerous, option.

Does Hype Have a Role to Play in Your Blog Religion?

What is ‘hype?’ I define it as valueless hyperbole.  It’s an outrageous headline, USP or offer that promises a very appealing result in exchange for your money. It can border on the absurd like the fictitious headline above.

But isn’t hype a part of doing business? Yes, and no.

It’s  a part of doing business in that there is a transaction taking place without coercion.  I mean, no one is really making your click on the ‘Buy Now’ button.

It remains your choice to do so. I mean, no one has a gun to your head…hopefully.

It’s also ‘not just a part of doing business’ because it can lead to taking advantage of others.

When your product or service only delivers for the very few; those that willing to follow the multiple steps involved in your process; those that encounter the same circumstances you did; then it borders on something other than ‘just doing business.’

It then seems more like a Oxi-Clean commercial with Screamy McScreamsalot.

What’s the Right Approach?

Take the higher ground. Hype has no role in a blog-religion.

Building a blog-religion is predicated on solid business structure and strategy. It’s about building a business based on service to your customers and clients. It’s a truthful approach to building your blog.

Readers want to hear the truth. Anything less is insulting their intelligence.

Good salesmanship doesn’t have to include valueless hyperbole. It should simply relate your offer, the expected benefits a user can reasonably expect and how to get started.

Granted, there are many copywriting techniques that will boost your sales and conversion rates, but the truth never hurts either.

At first glance, this strikes some bloggers as strange.  I mean, bloggers blog, right?  And blogging means writing.

Yes… and no.  Yes, the majority of a blogger’s time is spent writing. But the writing needs to come from a place of authority; a place of experience.

Consulting is where this begins.

3 Reasons To Consider Consulting

1. Consulting Forms the Basis of Your Message  

I think Albert Einstein said it best:

“Nothing happens until something moves.”

Movement implies an event has taken place.  Nothing is learned unless you experience something.  Nothing builds experience better than rolling up your sleeves and getting to work.

For the blogger, hopefully that has occurred. I mean, who can write endlessly about a topic unless they’ve had experience doing it?  

Doing it for others is what consulting is all about.  The experience gained through performing your service for paying clients forms the very basis of your expertise and authority.

2. Consulting Sharpens Your Message

Your blog is about one thing, really.  If you can’t boil down your blog’s focus and core philosophy to just one idea, there is still much work to be done.

If you know what your blog’s one-thing is, then the experience gained in performing this one-thing is like your own professional laboratory.  It’s where you form your hypothesis and test your methods.  

It’s where you evaluate client feedback and results. These ultimately impact your message by sharpening the razor’s edge of your message and discarding the rest. 

3. Consulting Brings In Revenue

No matter how much we blog on a topic the fact is there are some in our readership that won’t do what we urge them to.

There are both doers and pay-others-to-be-doers among us.

 The pay-others-to-be-doers are your potential consulting clients.  They take longer to ‘sell,’ but they can represent a significant percentage of revenue for your blogging business if you market your services in the right way.

How much revenue? That depends on your service you offer.  My consulting service for crafting referral-generating case studies for blogs and websites runs nearly a $1,000. Chris Garrett’s Flagship Content production services brings in between $1,700 and $3,900 a pop.

Summary

Consulting can be a blogger’s best friend. It helps you build authority of experience, a sharper overall message and a healthier revenue stream.

What About You?

Do you have experience consulting with clients?  Care to share what worked and what didn’t? I’d love to hear your comments.

Now, I’m mad about good cartoons.  I especially love the cartoons I see each day in my daily desk calendar from The New Yorker magazine. But I digress.

We talk about classic cartoons…Calvin and Hobbes…The Far Side….you get the picture.

Then you tell me you’re going to publish a book with your cartoons in it.  Cool, again!

You pop the question

Would I be interested in seeing a couple of sample chapters so I could decide whether or not I’d like to buy it?

Of course I say yes and you ask me for either my email or snail-mail address so you can send it to me, right?

I mean, you’re not going to to just pull it out of your briefcase and hand it to me and walk away hoping that:

1. I’ll remember you 45 minutes later.
2. I’ll remember to buy your book three months from now.
3. I’ll bookmark your website (if the address is on the sample chapter).

I mean… it would be a colossal mistake not to ask for that information, right?

Enter the gaping void

The folks over at TheGapingVoid (a very cool site where some neat cartoons are born) have just such a book and, guess what?

Yep, it’s due out in three months.  And they kindly ask if you’d like to download two sample chapters to preview.  Still, very cool because it’s look like a book I’d like to buy.

But when I clicked on the link to download the sample chapters, guess what happened? It downloaded instantly.

Um, isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?

Where’s the conversion?

As any BAR reader knows, giving away something in exchange for nothing is noble, but it’s not a ‘conversion point.’

Recall that a conversion point is where your blog and a customer cross paths. It always involves a transaction of some kind and it should invite your reader/customer to become deeper involved in your blog-religion.

Becoming Irresistible: The Giveaway

When I wrote Becoming Irresistible, I too gave away sample chapters. However, I used the names and addresses I asked for in exchange as a separate mailing list of potential buyers.

It’s kind of like seeing a new car in the middle of a shopping mall and filling out the ‘Win This Car!’ coupon.  Your name goes on a list and you receive all kinds of marketing information from a dealership or Hawaiian vacation tour group.

I used my sample chapter list to sell about 40% of the people who downloaded the sample chapters.  Some on that list bought the book, some the audio program, some even engaged me for consulting at a much higher price.

The lesson?

Never underestimate the power of a conversion point.

Giving away two chapters of  a book is a great idea. But without any transaction? Not so much.

Today’s Brief: ‘The 10 Commandments of Brand Religions’

Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm, posted this regarding brand religions.  Interesting reading.

Read the post here!

(This is a special guest post by Yaro Stark of BlogMastermind.com.  Yaro is my blogging mentor and his advice is not only straightforward and easy to understand, it’s absolutely trustworthy.  Enjoy this special post!)

In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

[important]Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.[/important]

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better. 

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was written by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:   www.BlogMastermind.com