Freestyle Imagined! - Celebrating Unique Creative Success

How Can One Word Have Almost Opposite Meanings?

(Email from Thursday, January 3)

What do you think of when you hear the word hack? As in business hacks, lifehacks, content hacks…

To be honest, for me it’s one of those words I’ve never liked. I don’t know where my negative reaction to the word first came from, except that there ARE some none-too-pleasant connotations for the word hack.

A computer hacker is usually someone who breaks in illegally.

Hacking can also mean “cutting with unskillful or irregular blows.”

And maybe the biggest one is to call a person a hack when they aren’t very good at what they do. (A mediocre writer is called a hack!)

BUT like lots of words, this one has it’s good side, too. Like this:

Hack (noun): a usually simple and clever tip or technique for accomplishing some familiar task more easily and efficiently.

That sounds pretty positive doesn’t it? Simple and clever; easy and efficient; those are words I can get behind!

Isn’t it funny that hack can mean unskilled or mediocre in one sense, and clever/efficient in another? How ironic!

Content is another one of those words.

Not a negative word, certainly, but it’s not an interesting one either, until you really dig into what it means.

Content is your WRITING.

It’s your books, your emails, your products that you sell, your social media conversations, your short reports, your giveaways, your blog posts, your articles–I could go on and on.

In short: a business doesn’t run without content. And content is what makes your audience love you.

So I call THAT pretty interesting–and exciting!

Content Profit Hacks is a training that Amy Harrop put out a little while back and the simplest way to put it is that it’s a shortcut to creating content.

Or, to borrow from my definition above:

“…a simple and clever tip or technique for accomplishing your content creation tasks more easily and efficiently.”

First let me tell you what Content Profit Hacks IS, and then I’ll tell you what I think about it, and what I found inside it. (AND if you want to pick this one up, I have a coupon code you can use to save $10.)

Coupon code: JANUARY10

Content Profit Hacks is a 90+ page PDF training guide with step-by-step instructions for creating content FAST. It also includes over-the-shoulder videos AND a cheatsheet.

In the training, Amy will show you how to produce a ton of great content on demand that delivers traffic, sales, profits, email subscribers, and more! She’ll show you how to ‘hack’ the content generation system.

She doesn’t hold anything back as she shows you, step-by-step, everything she knows about producing content quickly with a number of (mostly free) online tools.

She includes:

Word Processing and Slide Creation Hacks
Rebrandable Content Hacks
Automated software and tools hacks
And much, much more!

Here’s my take on the training, from the INSIDE:

First, there are some great tips for creating content quickly and easily, including tips for using rebrandable content, such as your PLR or Public Domain items.

What makes this even BETTER than many products on the topic is the list of tools she shares that make things easier.

There’s one (FREE) tool that will allow you to search your content for a keyword, phrase, quote, or topic and quickly extract what you’re looking for.

This is HUGE when it comes to PLR, especially if you have as much as I have. I do my best to sort and categorize mine to make things easy to find, but still end up spending LOTS of time searching for just the right content.

To be honest, I would have paid for this product just to find out about that one tool. But that isn’t all there is.

There’s another tool that allows you to break down all of your content into categorized topics and keywords. This makes further content creation much, much quicker.

One of the first things I have my coaching clients do, when it comes to writing their Business Card Book, or a series of books is to inventory their existing content.

It’s a BIG job for most people, and this just makes it easier.

There’s a lot more too: like ways to format content quickly, ways to “remix” your content to make it new and fresh, and one of my FAVORITE hacks is on page 35-36.

(Hint: Microsoft Word had a feature in it years ago – discontinued in 2010-that would allow you to summarize content. I’ve sorely missed that feature, but Amy has a solution!)

And it’s not just TELLING you about tools, Amy also SHOWS you exactly how to use them, both in the screenshots in the PDF and in the accompanying videos. The cheatsheet gives you a summary of the hacks, along with where in the main guide to find more detail, and a direct link to demo videos.

The more I read through this training, the more I realized how valuable it is, and it’s valuable to ANYONE who creates content in any way. Whether you use your own, or rebrandable content, or a combination of both, like I do.

This is a must have for anyone who creates content:

Publishers
Authors
Bloggers
Online Marketers
Service Providers
And more!

Inside Content Profit Hacks, you will discover the secrets to creating all kinds of content fast in a fraction of the time!

Printables (worksheets, journals, etc)
Short Reports
Blog Posts
One Page style content
Books
And much more!

Content Profit Hacks

Coupon code: JANUARY10

Additional Offers: There are some other offers if you decide to pick up Content Profit Hacks. They are:

1. Public Domain Power Pack ($27) – Software and live quickstart training to easily find thousands of images, written content, and other content you can use for free.

2. Printable Profits Mastermind ($97) – Complete A-Z system for publishing easy books and printables that sell. (I believe this is normally $147, so you can save some money here.)

3. Done-for-You Content Club ($9.99 per month) PLR membership featuring ebooks, blog posts/articles and market research.

I feel like any or all of these items can help by adding value to Content Profit Hacks. They will give you more ideas on how to use content, along with where to get MORE content.

But with or without the extras, Content Profit Hacks is a super helpful training for content creators.

It gets my highest recommendation.

Content Profit Hacks

Coupon code: JANUARY10

Much Happiness and Success!

Teresa

Turn Your Content Into Products – And Doors to Your Business

An information product, or info product for short, is any type of content-based product that helps your audience accomplish something they need help with. A typical info product could be an ebook, audio or video recordings, or some combination of these. You can also move into print or Kindle publishing as well, but usually the first step is to create a digital product that can be sold on your own website.

One reason digital information products are so lucrative is that there’s very little expense in creating them, unless you hire outsourcers. Even if you do outsource some of the creation, info products don’t tend to cost more money the more you sell. Once your product is created and your costs are recovered, everything after that is all profit, and can be set up to sell for you time and again. It’s like opening a store that sells for you even when you aren’t there.

No matter what your business is, whether you have a niche blog, provide services to others, or provide coaching or consultations to people, you have information that you can turn into a content-based product. And having products set up for sale on your website is an excellent way to make more money in whatever business you’re in.

More Doors = More Money

One of my mentors always likes to say “Money loves speed.” I added to that: “Money loves speed and quantity.”

When it comes to the items you have available for people to buy, the more you have out there, the more each individual item will do for you. It’s one of those times when 2 + 2 + 2 can add up to more than 6. How is that?

It’s simple really: when you have more books and/or products out there for sale, they become MORE than just products that can be sold, although they are certainly that. They also become more DOORS (entry points) for people to come into your “store.”

Think about that for a minute.

If you had a tiny little store in a busy, busy city on a busy, busy block, on a busy, busy street, and you had just one door and one product for sale how much would you sell?

Not very much, I imagine. Perhaps not every person would even see your door, because of all of the other stores on the street. And even if every person that came by on the street in front of your store DID come in, they would only have one product to choose or not choose. And perhaps not every person would be interested in that one product.

But let’s say that you had 10 products for people to choose from. Boom. Automatically, all of the people who come into your store have 9 more items to choose from, and you have increased your chances of making a sale on SOMETHING for everyone who comes in.

But let’s say that you also put in a back door and a side door to your store. That means that you not only have increased the number of products you have to offer, but you also have increased the number of people who will see all of those products, by increasing the number of ways for them to enter your store.

How do you add more doors?

Well obviously, one way is to sell in more places. You can have your books on different platforms, including your website, and you can have it in different formats, including Kindle, print, and audio. But the first and easiest way to add more doors is to add more books/products. Yes, not only does that give you more items to sell, it also gives your customer/reader more ways to get into your store.

Because of course once they have one of your books or products, they’re going to check to see what else is available. And no matter which one of your books catches their eye first, and gets them in the door, you HAVE caught their eye. You have led them through the door.

So… that increases your income by not only increasing your catalog, but also by increasing your customer base, and by increasing future sales from the same customers. It’s the kind of money that comes in easier over time, because the more you produce, the more of the work your books/products do FOR you. And the more your CUSTOMERS do for you.

Believe it or not, getting started creating your info products doesn’t have to be hard. It’s not a start-from-scratch situation. More than likely, you have a wealth of content already at your disposal, just waiting to be used in a fresh new way.

Analyze Your Content

The first step in turning your existing content into products is to analyze what you already have. That could include things like articles, blog posts, emails, social media posts, and more. It could also include the answers to questions you get often asked by customers, readers or subscribers.

Also look at items that you use behind the scenes in your business. They can be turned into business plans, checklists, or workbooks for people to achieve results in their own business.

I think you’ll find that you have lots of content just waiting to be turned into products that you can SELL and DOORS leading new customers into your business.

If you’d like to learn more, I would love to have you join me in a 30-Day Information Product Creation Challenge, where I’ll show you some amazing ways to turn content you already have into products you can sell.

Publishing and Content Training – Free Peek Inside

[Email from Thursday, September 6]

I am SO excited with the directions I’m taking in my business right now, and I will be telling you more about that very soon. But in the mean time, I have something I wanted to share with you from my friend Amy Harrop.

She has just opened up a lifetime access offer to her Content Perks Training Vault for a SINGLE (really LOW) payment.

She shares all of her secrets and strategies for publishing and monetizing all of your content. There are currently more than 12 hours of video training included (18 individual trainings) covering everything from formatting to generating traffic to your book, and additional trainings are added each month.

That means that if you sign up for access to this right now, you’ll get all of the new training videos each and every month for no additional payment!

Here are some of the topics you’ll learn about:

The hottest new platform to advertising your books on…and best practices to profit
Easy ways to sell more..without creating more content
How to expand your reach and find more readers, subscribers, and customers
How to leverage the time of others to grow your business
Free tools you can use right now to create, promote, and monetize your content.
How to tap into free traffic you can use right now
And much more!

AND…If you want to get a sneak peek of what’s inside before you buy, I have you covered there too.

Go Here to See the Latest Training

Get Lifetime Access to the Entire Content Perks Training Vault

This pricing is for a limited time only…a one-time investment for all existing videos AND new training each and every month.

Much Happiness and Success!

Teresa

The Power of Book Funnels

One of the most powerful ways to grow a list for any business person is to give something away. But when you do it, you should have a plan for what comes next.

I found this article by Russell Brunson a pretty fascinating look at how he set up a full funnel for giving away his books – and at his follow-through.

Interesting to note that he actually gives away physical books, (free + shipping) and has that built into his funnel. Since giving a physical book away is something I’ve taught multiple times in live workshops, I found this particularly relevent.

NOTE: Brunson is the owner of ClickFunnels, a popular funnel-creation software-as-a-service. Of course he recommends that service for creating your funnels. If you don’t already have a page builder, then ClickFunnels is certainly an option, and it comes with a free funnel template just for books. Otherwise, you can replicate what he talks about here with the builder of your choice.

Russell Brunson’s 2017 One Million Book Journey Update

Choosing the Right Publishing Keywords

Keywords are tricky, right?…OR are they?

This article from Dave Chesson from KindlePreneur.com will help you to not only choose the RIGHT keywords when you publish, but will also help you understand how those keywords work to help your ranking and your sales. That understanding is the key to finally “getting” the whole keyword thing.

I trust Dave, because he has studied keywords and Amazon marketing IN-DEPTH, and is the creator of one of the most popular and most effective marketing tools for authors, KDP Rocket. While I DO recommend the software, I think it’s important that you understand the rules and tools first.

This article will give you a FREE education that’s well worth your time!

The right kindle keywords can make or break your book sales. Choose wisely with these steps, my friends…Dave Chesson / KindlePreneur

Fix Your Writing BEFORE You Hire an Editor

As a self-published author, you’re responsible for a lot things on your own that would be taken care of for you if you went the traditional route. That’s good, because it means you have more control, but it also means you have a lot of expenses up front, before you ever earn a dime from your books.

One of the most important expenses is editing. It can also be one of the most costly, particularly if you dump a first draft on an editor and they have to clean up all of the things you should have already handled.

You can and should get friends and family to read your manuscripts and give you feedback, but that won’t replace doing your own diligence with finding weaknesses in your writing…and fixing them.

That can be a difficult thing to do – after all, there’s a reason for the famous “kill your darlings” advice for writers. We fall in love with our own words and deleting any of them feels downright murderous.

But you CAN learn to tighten up your own writing, before passing it off to an editor. One way to do it is to become someone else…your own writing teacher. That’s what’s suggested on EnchantedMarketing.com in an article entitled “How to Spot 8 Weaknesses in Your Writing (and Fix Them)”

When we become our own teacher, we can be both kind and tough, and perhaps it won’t feel quite so deadly to trim the fat.

For more help on fixing your writing:

Get Your Freestyle Author’s Quick Guide to Grammar, Spelling, & Punctuation Fundamentals: Help with your self-editing and proofreading, including basic pointers on common mistakes, and quizzes for helping you to become more adept at finding those errors.

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