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.

See how changing blog presentation should improve click through

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I looked recently about a different way of presenting the work that I carry out over the internet.

http://245daystogo.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-different-way-of-presenting-my-work.html

It's about looking at headlines that will prompt the reader to look further into the article. Many of my blogs are publicised on social media and I'm looking at how the initial words get someone to read through and get interested. I've taken on this way of looking at my blogs as well as starting to formulate how I will put this together for my photography.

The result in a couple of places is starting to show dividends and I have stared using these style of titles in my blogs-

How To Sell Your Home

http://how-to-sell-a-home.blogspot.co.uk/

With titles such as "Find out how to highlight your home for the best sale price" and "Use this selling tip when marketing your home" give interested readers enough information to read through the hyperlink and maybe take in more of the blog whilst on that page.

The mystery shop blog

http://mysteryshopperblog.blogspot.co.uk/

This is another new blog and is designed to help sell my new Kindle book-




It has titles like "See how a quick 2 hour mystery shop can be profitable" and "Find out how I earned money with a shopping trip to a local coastal town" which again are designed to get people to read through. If they then like the content, it may trigger a sale of the book.

I'll report back on here how the sales of these products go through and the response to the blogs with these new titles.

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.

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

Days of relative inactivity must stop

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After a great Fathers Day and the photographs I took (see previous blog) I've had a couple of days if relative inactivity. Now I've been working for 8 hours a day in my employed role for the last two days but it's stopped me from getting in with the task in hand - making money.

That said, it's mainly the administrative side of things I've let slip, with the mystery shops, paid surveys and selling tasks in the PC having been left behind. I did manage to procure about 200 books for the princely sum of £3 yesterday so there is progress being made on this front. eBay is where this purchase originated and I'm on the lookout for joblots of books locally at a good price. The next task here is to add them to my inventory on Amazon to have them seen by the public and hopefully to make sales. I think that the sale of only one of these books will pay back the outlay and the mileage, and there will be some in there for my children, for the local playgroup and charity as well. So everyone wins, to a degree.

So tonight after work (another 8 hour shift) tomorrow morning and tomorrow evening will be set aside for catch-up as suspect my email inbox will be showing over 200. And about half will be money making opportunities from survey companies or mystery shopping companies. Looking forward to it!

Ray, the walking estate agent

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I've worked with many people who consider themselves good salesmen. Watching The Apprentice this series makes me realise that some work really really hard at sales and others just have it naturally.

When watching the programme it makes me think back to people I've worked with in estate agency and how successful or otherwise they were in their sakes roles.

Some can use their gender and their natural spiral to strike a deal, without resorting to high innuendo. Roisin from this years programme struck a great deal with the diamond seller in last weeks episode probably in part because he found her alluring. But you can't have that connection with every customer. So what about different sellers and how they operate? I've come across a few.

There was a guy called Lesley and he played on this fact with customers. He often referred to himself as the man with a woman's name. It distinguished him from all of the other estate agents out there. And it got results - people remembered him.

Which brings me to Ray, the walking estate agent. He was the loveliest man. He had nothing but good to say about everyone, and everyone had nothing but good to say about Ray. He had a driving licence, but no car. So Ray walked everywhere. He'd leave for an appointment a mile away over an hour before so he could walk there and be in plenty of time. He wasn't the most dynamic of characters, he often needed reminding or prompting but he was just a wonderful guy. His vendors, buyers, landlords and renters loved him and just bought from him.

The walking everywhere was Ray's "man with a woman's name." What's yours?

How I'd have dealt with the changes in stamp duty this week

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I'd share a basic stamp duty calculation to spark a conversation with your customers, both buyers and vendors.

The calculation is-

Someone buying at £185,000 would have paid £1,850 under the old stamp duty rules. Under the new rules, they will now pay £1,200, which is a saving of £600.

The reason I would use this calculation is to prompt a discussion, to pick up the phone. I have stated in a blog already that I believe you should speak to every one of your clients every week-

http://eaboost.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-often-do-you-talk-to-your-customers.html

This is the perfect opportunity and perfect timing to have this conversation. For my registered buyers, then they will no doubt be registered with more than one estate agent. It's the agent that services these clients, looks after them and has the right communication with them that will more than likely win the business and the recommendations.  I'm sure some buyers will have missed the changes in stamp duty or will have heard about them but maybe not understood what it means to them. A 2 minute chat will clear this up and may change their search criteria. What a valuable conversation to have!

Depending on the part of the country you are in, you may hand to tweak the above calculation but it's just an example and it's the communication with your clients (every week, remember) that's important.

Give it a try!