I bring you great ideas to help your startup business, profiles of other startup owners and all the things that can help your startup to grow into something BIG.
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.
I've finished draft one of the content for my next book. It's a book about writing a book! It will talk through the process of writing a top selling non-fiction book. What I have left to do is-
Edit the content
Add any extras, such as illustrations or charts
Get the cover designed
Publish
Market the book
It's exciting stuff!
I've started the brainstorming for the next project and it will be entitled something like the following-
I'll show you how to become an estate agent
I want to produce a book, a MOOC (massive online open course), a support consultancy, a website and an app.
From here I think that I will be able to provide support for both startup estate agencies and marketing ideas for established agents. I will also make available a set of documents for estate agents-
Contracts
Letters
Invoices
Prospecting letters
These will be available to be bought singly or as a pack. Each document will be set up as both an administrative tool and a marketing tool.
As with all of the writing projects I've been doing, once the content is produced then it just sits there awaiting purchase. There will be annual reviews and updates (possibly more frequently than this for the MOOC) but essentially the work is done.
I've always wanted to have a set income coming through that frees me up to do other things and along with everything else I've written, this feels like it's getting there.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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-
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.
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.
