My latest book is available on the Amazon Kindle store this week

As time moves by and the startup dreams are on the back burner for the Winter, I have started to branch out into other areas. My regular readers will know that I have been doing a lot of writing recently.

My work on fiverr.com has really taken off and I am very pleased with the number of gigs I have been getting. I have also expanded the different writing gigs that I offer, which is bringing in more activity and more income.

But it is the book writing (and publishing) that is the reason for today's blog entry. I have published my latest book this week and it is gaining some interest already. I have started to promote the book through social media and there has been a small buzz associated with it.

I have written about the book on this blog before and it's now ready. The book is-




It is available now, so please investigate. Ask me any questions you have and I will help you on your own quest to write a book. It really can be done if you follow a plan like the one outlined in my book.

The next book is starting and it is going to be about writing a blog, gaining readers for your blog and then monetising the blog. It will be another mid-sized book like the others I have written and I think that it will become as popular as te others I have written and published.

A bit of everything has been happening all at once this week

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A bit of everything has been happening all at once this week. It's one of those occasions where I don't really know which way to turn so I've turned all ways at once! Let me explain-

Work

I've been offered the chance to  step up to the next level until after Christmas. It means going full-time for a few months and this impacting on the available time I have to do other things. But I've  accepted the offer in the basis that many of the other things I do at this time of year will start to tail off.

Fiverr

I came home to 4,500 words of fiverr writing on Friday night. It's mice to get regular sales on fiverr and it means that my gig explanations are hitting the right notes. I'm relatively new to fiverr and I'm finding out that Friday afternoon seems to be the time for buyers to instruct you. About 60% of my gigs have been commissioned on a Friday afternoon. I set aside two hours on Saturday morning to complete the gigs and I've had the first drafts sent off for approval.

Mystery shopping

This does really start to tail away at this time of the year when retailers really want to concentrate on serving customers and making money.

http://mysteryshopperblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/its-time-to-start-mystery-shopping-now.html

There have been a couple of mystery shops and a gambling success but few and far between-

http://mysteryshopperblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/see-how-quick-mystery-shopping-trip.html

Book sales

I've been using my blogs to promote my books more and more recently, especially-

The Mystery Shop Blog - http://mysteryshopperblog.blogspot.co.uk/

How to Sell Your Home - http://how-to-sell-a-home.blogspot.co.uk/

I'm finding that books sales are steady and that interest in the blogs is increasing well at the moment. From here I hope to produce a solid regular income for when the business opens.

homeestates

Fiverr

Seller

I am a writer - I write all the time. I have several blogs, have written three books (so far) and I just love writing. I will write positive reviews or articles or mention you in my blogs in clear English. I'm new to Fiverr but I'm incredibly passionate about what it can empower.

See the free easy tool that's helped to promote my blogs and books

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It's been quite an eventful week in the small world of Amazon Kindle book selling with my book "The Secrets of Mystery Shopping: How to Become a Mystery Shopper" receiving quite a lot of interest and a lot of questions. Amazon don't really give you a great idea of sales figures, as I always find their reports sketchy until the month is over and the money is in my account. This is largely because of Amazon Prime, which gives people the chance to read some or all pages for free and then you, as an author, are given a percentage of the Amazon Prime fund. This is based on the proportion of reads your book got from everything available on Prime.

The immediate, personal feedback has been good, though and I know of a growing number of people that have told me they've bought the book. Friends, family, work colleagues and then their contacts (reached via Facebook) have been buying and I hope it to be my biggest seller yet.

To go alongside the book, I've started a blog. The purpose of this blog is threefold-

1- To promote the book

2- To give people an insight into what a mystery shopper does

3- To give people an idea of the good things that you can get out of mystery shopping

I've seen more interest in this book then any of the others that I have published so I hope that it continues to create a few waves. And I hope that it helps people who are interested in mystery shopping to get a start in the industry. As with all my books, if just one person gets something out if it then I think it will all be worthwhile.

I also used some spare time this week (precious commodity that it is) to produce short animated promo videos for two of my books. I used a website called www.RawShorts.com to produce the videos and many of their templates are free. The videos are as follows-

THE SECRETS OF MYSTERY SHOPPING

HOW TO SELL YOUR HOME

If you don't think that you can use a site like RawShorts, then an alternative would be somewhere like www.fiverr.com where someone will be able to produce you a promo video for as little as $5.

The idea is that they give me a little more exposure for the books and offer a different way for people to find my blog, my books and me.

See the book that will help you on your mystery shopping journey

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My Amazon Kindle book called The Secrets of Mystery Shopping : How to Become a Mystery Shopper was released yesterday. This is one of my books that I have published as I look to generate an income in the run up to opening my own business. The idea is that these books bring in a (modest) income as the estate agency starts next year and I go without an enlistment income for the first few months it takes to get properties on my books and through to sale completion.

The book was available to pre- order on Amazon but there was a little bit of a wrangle between me and them about the pre-order and edits to the book so the pre- order was cancelled and the book launched immediately.

When I uploaded the book file when setting up the book for ore-order, there was no mention of any issues in updating the content in the run up to launch. So when I went through the final edit of the book, checked and updated the contact details of all the mystery shop companies I was ready to upload the final file to the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing site. When I got there, this book was greyed out and I couldn't access it to update. I contacted the help desk and was told that for the 3 days before the release, the book was unavailable to edit - I'd missed the deadline by about an hour! Although I didn't know I'd missed a deadline because there wasn't enough information there to tell me.

I was gutted - the choice was to wait until after it was released and then change the book file -meaning that any pre-orders would be unable to access the updated file. Or to withdraw the pre-order title, republish as a ready to buy book and have my customers read the full experience. This meant that I would lose the ability to set books up to pre-order for a year. I went for the second option as I couldn't see the value in having someone pay for what wasn't a full book.

So, here we are, it's published and I've set up a blog (here) and a twitter feed @mysteryshopper74 to help with the exposure.

It's available on the Amazon Kindle store now, so take a look and see what you think.

A different way of presenting my work

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The internet, especially social media, seems to be full of headlines or strap lines such as-

You won't believe what happened next…

See what happened when…

Who would have thought what could…

And I like the fact that people have realised the world is more interesting with words. As someone who writes a lot, I think that simple, interesting stories can transform other parts of the internet, and the world around us. And it's got me thinking about how I present things such as my photography and Kindle books to the world. Adding my own story to the photographs or the books gives some context, some background and some interest to what I present.

I can now see photography as a story. "See what happened when one photographer…" is a far more interesting piece than just uploading photos to social media - no matter how good the photos are.

Presenting my books with the context behind them of how I ended up writing them will mean more to potential readers than telling them it's good or great or interesting or any other description I could come up with.

So, off the back of this enlightened thinking today, I'm looking at re-writing the blurb on Amazon for my two current books and adding to the introductions for both. I think that anyone browsing through Amazon and coming across my books would be more interested in whi ive written them than a synopsis of what the books are about.

So here goes. I write them because-

I'm sick of dealing with estate agents that aren't very good at their jobs.

I think I can do better.

I want to help people to help themselves.

I think that there is a better way than how houses are currently bought and sold.

I think that consumers should know more about the process.

Watch this space, and I'll update you on my progress.

Fiverr and RawShorts

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I've been back on the serendipity trail (blog) this week and I've found two great little sites that are helping me to earn money and self-publicise the work that I have been doing recently.

The sites that I am referring to are www.rawshorts.com and www.fiverr.com and I've found both sites to be a real help in moving forward with marketing.

I've mentioned before about using fiverr to get the covers designed for my Kindle ebooks and I find that for a medium such as the Kindle ebook, the designers come up with suitable fast designs that meet my needs. The things that fiverr offers are huge - from flyers, posters and banner ads to copywriting, translation and proofreading. There are thousands and thousands of people on there offering services for small and medium businesses. It's worth checking it out.

One of the people offering services is me! And I'm offering blog mentions on my football, retail and estate agency blogs or positive professional reviews on a website of the buyers choosing. The concept is simple - find a service you need, pay $5 to the seller and then receive the service in a couple of days.

My offering can be found at https://uk.fiverr.com/homeestates

Check it out!

The other website that I found on one of my meandering serendipity trips is RawShorts. This has a series of templates of short animated promotional videos for yout to edit and make into something that you can use yourself. The videos can be uploaded to YouTube and from there you can download the MP4 file and use it where you need it.

I have produced the video below to advertise my blog service on fiverr.com.



There are loads of videos to choose from and then you can edit away to add your own logo, own wording and own images to make it look like something that was made just for your brand. Again, I recommend that you try it out.

The video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s1dOfqflec

homeestates

Fiverr

Seller

I am a writer - I write all the time. I have several blogs, have written three books (so far) and I just love writing. I will write positive reviews or articles or mention you in my blogs in clear English. I'm new to Fiverr but I'm incredibly passionate about what it can empower.

New book is now available in the Kindle store

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It's finally here! I've published my new book! It's been uploaded to the Amazon Kindle site and is now available here.

It's entitled "How To Buy Your First Home - What estate agents don't want you to know".  I'm really pleased with how it's actually pulled together in the end. The several layers of editing have increased the size of the book and the quality of the writing. I've again used fiverr.com to have the cover produced, after the success of using it last time.

The blog about that is here.

The final cover looks like this-

And the book is available here

So what's next on the writing front? Regular readers of this blog will know that I spend a lot of time mystery shopping. I've carried out mystery shops now for nearly five years for twelve different mystery shop companies, and I've decided that I should share this experience. The book will be a mix of background knowledge, practical advice and some hints and tips. I hope to have this book written quickly and to add to the library I have on offer.

As I be said before, the idea behind having these things available is that it provides me with an income whilst I go away from my paid job and start up a business that won't bring in an income for the first few months. Having a set of five to ten of these books will give me the best chance of gaining an audience. That's where I'm heading…

Ebook revised, edited and published

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Just a very short blog entry today to state that my ebook 'How To Sell Your Home - What Estate Agents Don't Tell You' is now fully edited, extended and updated and available on the Amazon Kindle store.

How to sell your home: What estate agents don't tell you

I'm pleased with the updates, as it extends the book by approximately 40% and goes into more detail in parts of the book that need attention. I've told the story on here before, so if you're not a regular reader, then the blog below will give you a good idea of the changes-

Photographs, reviews, fiverr and some changes to my ebook

Thinking time whilst on holiday, and not enough action time on my return

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I've now returned from three weeks holiday. A three week break brings lots of thinking time but the return to reality and activity is tougher than I remember.

I've kept physically active whilst away, with a gym and swimming pool on the complex I've been staying on. But a lot of time on the road, by the pool, in the gym and on the beach gives you plenty of time to think about what you are doing and where you want to start going next with everything you do.

I think that it is good (and it was good) to have a period of reflection and contemplation. It gives you a chance to determine whether you think that you're on the right track and to plot the way forward without the everyday distractions of work life. It also enables a little "blue sky thinking" as there exposure to a different routine and a different culture can have you thinking about things in different ways. I have looked at the direction I'm heading in and I broadly think that it's where I want to be going.

It's now thinking about heading out of the break and back into my life that's occupying my mind. I landed and got home in Sunday evening and it was back to work at 7.30am on Monday, so there was no real transition to be had. It was a case of holiday mode as is went to bed and work mode when I got up the next morning. It was just the way it had to be with three weeks off - there was no spare time to be had! So it was straight back into it, which can sometimes be the best way to get on, although I don't really feel like that the the moment! I can just about see the wood from the trees at work now, after a few days of catching up. I just wish I could say the same about everything else I do.

The thinking I've been doing has further develop the direction I've been going in with the writing. I've got the two books ready for final edit, plus the extras of getting the covers done. I think that I should be able to final edit this evening and from there I will produce a glossary of terms that will help readers of both books. This should all be finished this week and then it's time for the launches.

The next book after that will now be one based on "What estate agents can't be bothered to tell you" or a similar title. I'll be looking to set up a blog, some simple You Tube videos and a social media presence. From there it will be a case of editing the blog into a readable book. I think that the social media can feed the You Tube views, then the blog and create an interest for the book. When all are up and running, I expect each to feed the other.

The new book is almost there - editing commences!

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The new book is almost there

It's taken far longer than I thought possible, with extra work commitments and ending up doing a lot more mystery shopping than I thought I'd do, but the second boom is almost complete. Large parts of it have actually been written in the same way I'm writing this - on the park and ride bus on the way to work. I have chapter after chapter saved and stores in different devices and I'm really pleased with the first draft. All that remains is reading through it, editing the text to ensure it flows and makes some sort of sense. I say all that remains, but I know from the experience of writing the first book that this can take some time. The first book was edited up from a series of blogs, so the content was really written without me really noticing the amount of time it took. I then had to re-read, edit and make it sound like a book with chapters, rather than a blog with entries. The cross-references had to work and I wanted to break up the text with blocks of colour.

As I've said in a recent blog, this has been re-edited again, adding a chapter, rewriting parts of other chapters and adding photographs and a newly-designed cover-

http://245daystogo.blogspot.com/2015/07/photographs-reviews-fiverr-and-some.html

I want to go through this process in the first instance with my second book. I want to edit it thoroughly and launch it on the Amazon Kindle store in it's finalised form, to make the most of the reviews and sales. After this is launched, the next step will be to write a link between the two books to ensure that they flow and then publish this as a double book. The idea is that you can get the content from both books as a double book for less than the price of buying each book individually.

Hopefully this will all get finished before a near-three-week holiday starting soon, and I'm hoping that the writing creativity continues to flow. I'm thinking about/hoping that I can get another book written during this holiday. It will be a fiction book that describes the beautiful landscape of where I'm going on holiday mixed with thoughts and feelings about certain aspects of my life so far. I'm inspired by the inner monologue of the writings of Phillip Roth and I want to tap into feelings I have the echo and come to the forefront when reading Mickey Sabbath or Swede Levov in Roth's writing. Obviously I'm not comparing myself to Roth or trying to be a Roth-lite but I find the writing crisp, energetic and witty. I hope to capture at least the first two in my writing, but I'm very aware that this will be quite a slow process and the drafting, redrafting and editing process is something I expect to take up a lot of my spare time. I'll look to self-publish it again, but the main idea behind it is a sort of line-in-the-sand moment where I can move on to other things. It's quite personal, and I'll get my wife to read the drafts first and help me with the content editing process. The writing and rewriting will all come down to me, though.

Photographs, reviews, fiverr and some serious editing are improving my Kindle book

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I've been looking to increase the income from my first Kindle ebook by improving it in several ways.

How to sell your house: What estate agents don't tell you by Steven Thompson

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00I5HOJAM/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_etaRvb3QK3CFG

These changes are coming before I finish my second ebook on the related topic of and then a combined book of The income I receive from this has been modest but steady, and I want to extend this to help when I eventually open my estate agency and have to rely on other income for a short while.

I've looked at the book and the changes I think were needed and the details are below-

Addition of photographs

The book itself flowed quite well in the way it was written but the newer version, to be released soon, will have some stock photos added to the text to break up the words and provide a link between the chapters. They are simple stock images that provide visual clues to the text and make it more easily readable.

Top tips boxes

I found that throughout the text I was highlighting really good ideas of how to make the most out of the process of selling your home. The ideas tended to get lost in the text as there were over 5,000 words. I came across the idea of adding boxes marked with the heading "TOP TIP." This enables the reader to spot the things to make the big changes. In short, it really highlights the really good ideas.

Reviews

I've started the process of emsing people a copy if the book so that they can give me a review. The Amazon reviews help potential buyers to make their decision in terms of whether to buy something. I've started to contact the top reviewers on Amazon with a copy of the book with a request to read and review. Hopefully this will add to the interest in the book and some reviews (hopefully positive) will tempt people to buy or borrow.

A new cover

I decided that the original cover that I designed myself on Microsoft Publisher didn't really stand up to the competition. It looked homemade. During one of my serendipity trips on the internet I found a website called fiverr.com. (See blog - http://245daystogo.blogspot.com/2015/06/stumbling-across-ideas-and-answers-when.html .) The website brings together designers and people who need quick basic designs - all for the princely sum of $5.

My designer came up with the following design first-

Obviously with a website that crosses large parts of the world, there can be small issues with communication. With fiverr, the designers have rules they post in the site when you instruct them to produce work for you. My designer allows one alteration to the design and if you're still not happy after that they refund your money. I asked for a revision to change the notes at the bottom of the picture to UK sterling pound notes as the book is mainly aimed at the UK market.

And this is the final design. The new design is uploaded to the book's profile on the Amazon page. The new design shows another change, albeit sort-term. There are many books called 'How To Sell Your House' on Amazon already, so I've decided initially to make this Kindle book titled 'How To Sell Your Home' to differentiate. The next step will be, however, to order another Kindle book cover and add the title the second time, so it's listed under both 'house' and 'home' on the Amazon website. I hope that this will enable me to reach both search terms.

Taking stock as the plans form for the next 3 months

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As you can see from the ticking timeline at the top of all my posts, the intended start date for my business has been and gone, but don't be disheartened - I'm not! The new date will probably be somewhere around a year late, but because the progress in the original 245 days was slow, the build up to the new intended opening will be jam-packed with the progress I make on the mad run towards the stsrt line.

It's time for me to take a brief look back over the 261 days since I started this blog and the things that have changed.

Personal life

I started this blog in what was the 40th year of my life and it brought about a big change in how I looked at the world and my place in it. I entered the audition process for Mastermind and The Apprentice and I got quite far in both processes. I started training, entered and comets the Great North Run half marathon. I'm now looking at the next set of achievements for the time between now and next year. Of course a lot of these are related to the business, and having things in place to generate an income for me when the business is up and running.

My own business

The steps towards achieving this have been small and background so far, but the most significant is the almost completion of converting my 2nd garage into a usable home office. I'm just short of some new garage doors, a desk and a bit of home comforts to have it ready. The home comforts include getting pictures and ornaments out of my loft and into the office to make it a little more comfortable and pleasant.

I have started a blog on my local area and post to it about every 7-10 days to keep an interest in the local market and possibly appeal to any investors or buyers on what will be my patch. Content marketing is becoming more and more important and having an audience and a SEL presence on the internet will allow me to point my content in the direction of my website and services when the situation arises.

Alongside the business I will have things like these blogs (6 in total at the moment) my photography and the website (www.estateagentboost.com) to bring in some much needed money while I'm busy taking on properties. The website is up and running and I'm updating the latest news on a regular basis. The section that will have training sessions for estate agents needs writing and editing and this is on the to do list but hasn't been completed. As is the editing and final chapters of my book on how to buy a property - the second Kindle book I will publish agree the companion How To Sell Your House-

How to sell your house: What estate agents don't tell you by Steven Thompson http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00I5HOJAM/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_udWGvbZCA41ZQ

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00I5HOJAM/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_udWGvbZCA41ZQ

I'm looking forward, but these writing tasks and the final set up of the office need to happen soon.

Website up and running - next stop Kindle book!

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I had an unexpected day off yesterday after my employers IT system collapsed and I couldn't carry out my particular job role. I've not avoided it completely , as I'm on the way in now on what would have been one of my days off this week. As it was unscheduled, my time was also unscheduled so it felt like a good time to get in with something that I'd planned but never really felt the time to execute - the website. The idea behind it is to have a further channel for my estate agency blog, somewhere to link estate agents and the latest news and eventually provide a platform for both my Kindle books and my training programme for estate agents, which is mainly born out of the blog in estate agency matters and how to do things differently.

The blog is now 107 editions old, so initially creates it's own content to share on the site. There are so many options that I will change the blog part of the website on a weekly basis with different themes. I've started with the most popular blogs in terms of readership, but I'll look at themes in the following weeks such as-

*Social media marketing

*Housing supply

*Visibility as an agent

*Marketing

*Photography

*The nuts and bolts of everyday estate agency

Having a set of blog posts that work together as a group will give a better link for my readers. The fact that each featured blog will be linked in some way will ensure that those that land on the page will find a selection of reading that interests them.

I've started my latest news page by linking to news coverage from my blog, estate agency news sites and the BBC. This will develop over time as I look at more diverse sources of news and how these affect the estate agency industry. I want to provide a place where estate agency professionals can go to see links to the latest news that affects their industry on different levels. This can be from local, national, industry-specific and international sources so I think it's a good thing to have these stories in one place.

There is a link and short description about my Kindle book on there and in addition I'll put links and information there about future Kindle books, such as the one I'm currently writing based on how to go about buying a house. The other area that needs development is the training area, where I will upload training material for budding estate agents and refresher courses for existing estate agents. This will be paid-for content but will be on a menu basis, where you can select the areas that you feel you need the help in and just pay for what you need.

I'm excited about the start of the project and from here on it's about maintaining the freshness of the changing content and writing the content still to be uploaded - the content that's in development.

The website can be found at-

www.estateagentboost.com

Take a look and see what you think.