Writing a book is a big challenge. But there is another hurdle at the end: you have to launch your book. Danny Iny of  Firepole Marketing came up with a radical strategy of creating and launching a book when he created Engagement from Scratch. Read about his new strategy in this no-holds-barred interview with Mary Jaksch:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for the book, “Engagement from Scratch”?

A: It started with my own experience building Firepole Marketing, which I started really working on about a year ago, in January 2011.I read and studied everything that I could, and everything that I found about building and growing an audience seemed to assume that you’ve already got one; if you were starting from scratch, there really wasn’t a place for you to go and be pointed in the right direction.

Further down the line, as Firepole Marketing was starting to get some real traction, I wanted to create that sort of “jumping off point” for people who are getting started, but I noticed something interesting – there were a lot of successful people doing what I was doing, and we were all getting good results, so clearly our way worked – but then there were lots of other successful people who were doing different things, and also getting results, so clearly their way worked, too.

I realized that this isn’t a “one path up the mountain” sort of endeavor, and the only way that I could do it justice would be with input from a wide array of audience-builders, which is what I ended up doing with the book.

Q: The book is a great collection of individual articles. What’s your experience of putting together a multi-author book? Do you have tips or warnings?

A: Putting the book together was an amazing experience – I was really blown away by how helpful and considerate the contributors were, and by how much I learned from the the contributions that they sent me. At the same time, I learned that it’s a lot more work than it looks.

For this sort of book to be really good, each contribution has to be “meaty”, which means that you’re going to have to push back with the contributors asking for more content and more information. It also takes a lot of editorial and organization work to make it really flow, and that’s something that I hadn’t really accounted for in my initial timelines and projections.

Q: You’ve come up with a great mind map of how to create a book. Your first step includes writing a great book – and building relationships. Why is it important to build relationships?

A: Well, I should clarify that I came up with the content, strategies and ideas, but the actual map was designed by my friend Matt Tanguay at Fluent Brain. But yeah, the first step is to write a great book, and building relationships. The relationships are important because they drive everything else; for one, without relationships, this book would never have happened, because nobody would have agreed to contribute.

I didn’t build relationships with the intention of asking for something in return, but I did invest a lot in building relationships, right from the start (for example, with Guy Kawasaki – and having him on-board made a huge difference!). Even if I was writing a book on my own, I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the exposure, or resulting traction, if I didn’t have great people backing me every step of the way.

Q: Your second step is ‘Learn from others”. I’m especially interested in your strategy of research engineering other book projects. Can you please say more about how you went about that?

A: There’s a story about a disciple who goes to a Zen master and asks him to write down some advice for success in life. The Zen master takes a piece of paper, and writes the word “Attention”. The disciple says that he was hoping for a little more, so the Zen master takes the page, and expands the text to read “Attention! Attention! Attention!”

There’s a lot of wisdom in that, particularly in this day and age when so much happens in public; the first and most important step is to just pay attention to what people are doing, what you’re finding impressive or persuasive and why, and what results they’re seeing. The rest is reverse engineering, but honestly, that’s the easy part – the hardest part is to just pay attention in the first place.

Q: What was the one most critical thing you learned from others?

A: That there is no single insight or trick or strategy to success; rather, building something real is about learning, absorbing, integrating and synthesizing a lot of different insights.

Jim Collins explains this very well with the metaphor of a flywheel; you push the wheel and push the wheel, and each push adds a bit of momentum, until it’s spinning quickly and powerfully. You can’t point to a single push, though, that made the difference. It all comes down to committing yourself to buckle down and do an enormous amount of work – that’s the only way to really get substantial results in the big picture.

Q: Your third step is choosing your launch plan. What worked and what flopped in your launch?

A: It’s hard to answer that question with certainty, because it’s hard to say that results came from this tactic and not that one – they all kind of blend together. I can definitely point to some things that feel more successful and less successful (i.e. I fumbled them), though.

On the more successful side, I think having close to 30 guest posts on major blogs around the launch made a huge difference in terms of the initial spike of traction, and giving the book away for free was of course a cornerstone as well. I also had a very structured follow-up sequence in place that solicited feedback, shares, and reviews from people who had read the book, and I think that worked pretty well, too.<

In terms of stuff that I goofed, the top of the list would be my video trailers (I copied Tim Ferriss’s tactics instead of reverse engineering the strategy), and my Nominate Your Engagement Superstar contest (I live in Canada, and goofed by scheduling the contest for American Thanksgiving weekend). Oh well, live and learn. ;-)

Q: Step number four is to give yourself a lot more time than you think. The mind map mentions the Gantt chart in order to organize a project. What tips can you share?

A: The thing is that well experience a sort of Doppler effect with regards to our projections for how long things will take, the further into the future we’re expecting to do them.

There are lots of things that we have to take care of day in and day out, that don’t really get scheduled far in advance; there’s this doctor’s appointment, that meeting with the accountant, these phone meetings, that client engagement, and so forth. They add up to a big chunk of your week, and if I ask you how much time you have to work on a project next week, you’ll be able to tell me fairly accurately, because you know more or less what’s coming.

Looking a few months out, though, we don’t think of these things, and expect to get a lot more done than is probably realistic. We also don’t realize how many different things we may be planning to do in a given month, so creating a Gantt chart helps to visualize the timeline and see where there might be bottlenecks that could trip us up along the way.

Q: What about the actual launch week? What are your suggestions or warnings?

A: Heh, all I can say is that if you’ve done a good job of laying the groundwork, it’s going to be intense. Clear your schedule, don’t plan anything for that week that you don’t have to, and expect to spend your days answering commenters, fixing problems, and hitting refresh to see your stats go up. ;-)

Q: You offer the digital version of the book for free. What’s the rationale behind this strategy?

A:  They are low ticket items with terrible margins, so unless you’re in a position to sell tens of thousands of them, there isn’t a real financial up-side to selling a book. And realistically speaking, unless you have a significant platform already, you can’t count on sales figures like that.

At the same time, the relationship with the reader (and their opting in to an email list) is more valuable than the few dollars I’d get on a book sale, especially since I can probably get 15-20 people to download it for free for every one person that I could get to buy the book (selling a few hundred or even thousand copies is nice, but not that valuable ultimately, whereas having 5,000-10,000 people download it and subscribe to my list is worth a lot more to me).

Ultimately, my goal for this book is more to grow my audience than to sell lots of copies (though I think people who download it and like it are more likely to buy a copy – who wants to read 240 pages in a PDF?). That being said, if it were just an e-book, it wouldn’t be perceived as being as valuable. Also, the physical book just feels different, and I think that makes a difference for contributors, and for reviewers.

That’s my thinking behind it – I’m pretty sure that it will turn out to be either smart strategic thinking, or a gross error in judgment – one or the other. ;) The bottom line is that the business model of traditional book publishing is fundamentally broken, and this is just one example of authors getting creative about publishing.

Q: What was the most important thing you learned from creating and launching ‘Engagement from Scratch”?

A: Any big project is a marathon, not a sprint. Things will get difficult at times, and that’s okay. You’ll stumble and fall from time to time, and that’s okay, too – you just pick yourself up and keep on going. It’s the cumulative energy and momentum that you invest in the project that will ultimately determine its legacy.

Q: What are three main things that writers can learn from reading “Engagement from Scratch”?

A: If I had to boil the book down to three main takeaways that could each fit on a fortune cookie, I’d say that they are (1) Know your audience, (2) Create epic stuff, and (3) Get to work. :-)

Dany Iny is a co-founder of Firepole Marketing. You can read more great stuff by Iny on the Firepole Marketing blog. Click here to download the free version of Engagement from Scratch.

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Looking to make the leap to becoming a published author?  Wanting to expand your brand?  Hoping to position yourself as an expert in your field?

An eBook can help you achieve all of this – if you know what you’re doing.

Why write an eBook?

eBooks are easy to write and simple to release. You don’t have to maintain an inventory or worry about shipping; the product is a one-time investment on your part.  With the introduction of the Kindle, iPad, and other tablets, e-publishing is a quickly expanding industry.  Time is at a premium for most readers, so the faster you can get information in their hands, the better.  There’s no better way to do this than with an eBook.

As convenient as an eBook is for your readers, it’s just as convenient for you as a writer – you can write an eBook from your couch.  If you’re a regular blogger, you’ll already have a lot of content to mine for book ideas.

How to Decide what to write about

Find a niche.  Your eBook needs to fill a demand, so look at what’s lacking in the marketplace.  If your expertise is in management but every website is flooded with eBooks on how to reward employees, write about how to make the transition from employee to manager.  Finding a void in the marketplace is key to establishing yourself as an expert, and it’s essential to attracting readers.

If you’re not sure whether others would be interested in the subject you’ve chosen, put feelers out on Facebook or Twitter.  Introduce the idea on your blog, and pay attention to reader comments on other topics you’ve addressed.  Often, your readers will ask a question or make a remark that nudges you toward a subject they want to know more about.  Take note of the problems people are trying to solve.

How to write your Ebook

Remember that while your tone can be casual, your eBook still needs to have structure.  Outline your points so your ideas can be presented in an organized way.  Include transitions between topics; don’t make your readers struggle to follow you.  An eBook is longer than a blog post, and you need to keep readers’ attention without confusing them.

Brevity is your friend!

Be ruthless in cutting unnecessary words and phrases.  While we’re talking about language, most eBooks exist to teach people something.  If this description fits your eBook, write in clear language – don’t confuse your audience with industry-specific terms that add nothing to the lesson being learned.  If you do need to use some industry verbiage, remember to fully explain the terms when you they’re introduced.

Your focus is on substance.

Your words need to have gravity behind them.  Your cover and images can be eye-catching (and, in fact, they should be – whether we like it or not, people do judge books by their covers), but your words need to be just as stimulating.  Research your topic and incorporate facts and examples where you can.  Many manuals and books rehash the same information with different words.  Give your audience something new to chew on – make connections between things they may not have seen before; point out patterns.

Write something revolutionary.

One caveat here: do not research a topic dry.  If you’re burying yourself in other people’s thoughts, you’re more likely to regurgitate them for your readers.  Furthermore, you should never write about something you don’t know.  The fastest way to hurt your publishing reputation is to throw bad product out into the marketplace.

Find ways to isolate information and make it pop.  Use subheadings, bullets, excerpted quotes, and other text blocks to draw the eye to important information. 

Good eBooks condense broad subjects into bite-size chunks.

Give yourself deadlines.  Deadlines will push you to write, and they’ll help you head off writer’s block.  Working on chapters can be a leap if you’re used to writing smaller pieces, so this will help you pace yourself.

What kinds of technical stuff do you need to know?

eBooks are painless to publish.  Most are released as PDFs and are fewer than 50 pages.  If you keep your eBook to 2 MB or fewer, readers will be able to email your eBook around to friends and family.  I can’t emphasize enough the power of your readers to promote on your behalf, so keep these details in mind.  If you’re looking for a more unique way to publish your eBook, go to www.foboko.com and use the Publishing Wizard there.

When referencing something, add hyperlinks for ease.  Utilize hyperlinks when you’re developing your table of contents, too – your readers will thank you.  The more user-friendly your work is, the more likely your audience will check out future eBooks you publish.

In the U.S., your eBook will automatically hold a copyright.  According to current copyright law, you’re covered for up to 70 years after your death.  That doesn’t mean that intellectual theft doesn’t occur, so add a notice with the copyright symbol (©) with the publication year and your name.  You can also add “Copyright” before this notice.

Once you’re ready to go public with your work, network through social media.  The people you’re connected to are most likely to invest in your concept, so let them spin a web outward for you.  Take advantage of the keywords in your eBook to increase your profile on search engines.

If you follow these tips, there’s no limit to what an eBook can do for you.

How do I get exposure for my eBook?

There are a number of resources that help you in getting exposure for your eBook. Make sure that the site you use to gain exposure draws the right market for your book and allows you full control of distribution. You can try out Free-ebooks.net to allow others to read your book and gain exposure and profit! You can also use book directories and even get your eBook on Amazon.com.

Nicolas Gremion is the CEO of Paradise Publishers and Free-ebooks.net He has been in the eBook industry for six years, before Apple, Google and Amazon entered in the field.

We are living in the most exciting time in history to be a writer, to publish your ideas, to make a living helping others.

It’s incredible because:

• It’s easier than ever before to publish your ideas.
• Publishing a book can be done by anyone.
• Good ideas rise to the top in this new idea marketplace.
• There are no limits to how you publish ideas — books are just one option.
• You no longer need permission to get your ideas out, and you’re not limited by shelf space.
• You don’t need money to be a publisher.

And that’s just the start of it.

But how do you create and publish an ebook? How do you get people to buy it? That can be confusing, but in four years of publishing books, ebooks, courses and more, I’ve learned a few things most people don’t tell you.

I’ll share some of what I’ve learned here, in hopes that it’ll help you get your ideas out there, and in the process, start making a living doing what you love.

1. Ebooks can be simpler than you think. Many people are intimidated by publishing an ebook, or put it off for months (or years) because it seems too hard. It’s not. It can be as simple as gathering your best information on solving a problem you’ve already published on your blog, perhaps expanding, updating or refining it, and putting it in an order that makes sense for learning that topic. It could be gathering reader questions on a topic and simply answering them in short chapters — I’ve done this and written an ebook in just a few days, by keeping the scope of the problem very limited. It could be scheduling webinars once a week on various aspects of a problem, and either charging for the webinars or making them free, and then using those as content for your product. It could be a very simple ebook (10-15 pages) to start with, and then expanded to a series of ebooks, a larger ebook, or a full digital package that includes audio and video — and you can expand even after you’ve started selling the product.

Once you have the content, publishing can be really simple — you can use a simple program like Word (PC) or Pages (Mac), publish as a PDF, and you’re done. You can expand on this with other formats (Kindle, epub, video, audio) but you don’t need to do that to start. Publishing an ebook or digital product can be very complicated if you make it so, but it doesn’t have to be. Keep it simple and get your ideas out there.

2. Launches, landing pages, and mailing lists are NOT what’s important. This is something many online marketing types won’t tell you, because they’ve found some success building up massive mailing lists, creating huge launches, crafting the perfect landing pages. And yes, to some extent, that stuff works. But in the end, they are trying to convince people to buy something who don’t want to buy something. That’s the wrong approach. Instead, build a relationship with people who want to read what you have to share, and base that relationship on trust. If people trust you, you don’t need to sell to them. If they already are in a relationship with you, they don’t need social proof or testimonials or before and after photos. They already know you put out good stuff, and they already want to read more from you. When you’ve accomplished that, you need to do minimal selling, and your landing pages can be nothing but a simple list of what you get when you buy the product.

How do you build this relationship based on trust with readers? That’s the hard part, but also the easy part. Put out great stuff on a regular basis on your blog. You might already be doing that. Here’s the important part: always put your readers first. Pop-ups that encourage them to sign up for your mailing list, a ton of ads, social buttons and widgets all over the place — these things and more tell the reader that you care more about their email address or sharing your stuff on their Facebook page or advertising dollars than you do about what they want. Don’t do any of that, and instead, give them what they want and get out of their way. They will begin to trust you, and so when you do put out a product (especially if you do it in a non-spammy, non-markety way), they will say, “All right. I trust Leo, I know this is going to help me, and it’s designed to solve a problem I want to solve.” You don’t need to sell.

3. There are no rules. I like to write, so I create ebooks. Other people are better at making videos, so they make a video product. Others like doing live webinars. There is no limit to how you create your product, but it really should solve a problem that people want solved. Want to make a simple PDF and nothing more? Awesome. Want to add some instructional screencasts, or workbooks, or quick guides, or interviews with experts? Even better. Want the entire thing to be online, so people can read the articles and watch videos on your site, and you can update the product at any time? Great idea! Want to have live weekly calls with you, or interactive forums? Easily done! Want it to be a membership program, paid monthly, with monthly webinars or fresh content? Well, I’m sure you can guess whether that’s possible.

There are also no rules for pricing — it can be free, $1.99, $20, $49, or $597 if you like. Figure out what it’s worth to people to solve that problem — it’s worth much more to help them pass the bar exam than it is to help them fix a broken faucet.

There are no rules for anything. You, like the rest of us, will be making it up as you go, figuring out what works best for you and your readers. You will make mistakes, and it will not end your world. That’s the liberating thing: there are no rules, and there’s no such thing as bad mistakes. You are free to do anything, and mistakes just help you get better.

Ebook Mastery Course

Mary Jaksch and I have created a course called Ebook Mastery for the A-List Blogging Bootcamps.

We’re looking forward to helping you create your first (or best) ebook or digital product.

What you get with this course:

1. The course teaches you the simple abc steps for choosing the best eBook topic; planning and writing your eBook; and designing and publishing your eBook.
2. You’ll have interaction and support via an online forum, from the course teachers, from forum moderators with experience in creating profitable eBooks.
3. You can ask questions live, and get them answered, in weekly live video webinars by Leo Babauta, Mary Jaksch, and other superstar guest experts.
4. Each week you’ll get a new module of content aimed at teaching you the specifics of creating an eBook from beginning to end including:
   • Articles with specific strategies and actions for determining a viable topic, outlining your content and writing plan; creating a writing style that is best for your readers; and specifics on designing and publishing your product.
   • Recommendations and statistics on pricing your eBook.
   • Case studies by people from regular bloggers like you who have created successful and profitable eBooks.
   • Videos, podcasts, and expert interviews to motivate you and help you stay on track with writing and completing your eBook.
   • Assignments, resources, and planning materials to help you stay organized and focused while working on your eBook.
5. Your own eBook that you have created (or started to create) during this course that you can sell right away.

Check out Ebook Mastery.

Have you got the tools you need?

By Mary Jaksch

Every writer dreams of being discovered. Don’t you?

Whether you write fiction or faction, you want people – lots of people – to read your stuff.

Maybe you dream of writing a bestseller, or becoming a Top 100 blogger, or writing a script for a box office hit, or landing an article for a top magazine.

How to get from where you are now to your dream?

For the slog from novice to master you need two different skill sets: skills as a writer and skills as a marketer

Why marketing skills are crucial

Here’s a story. A few weeks ago a blogger emailed me with a pitch for a guest post on Goodlife ZEN. Actually, you could hardly call it a pitch. She just threw an idea at me without telling me about herself, her writing, or what the guest post might be about.

I emailed back: “If you want to land a guest post, you need to read my article: The Perfect Pitch: How to land a Gig Every Time. Remember that I receive guest post requests every day – so you need to stand out from the crowd by writing a great pitch.”

She whined back, “Oh, but that’s like marketing my guest post. I don’t like doing that.”

Yes, well – as you can imagine, she didn’t land a guest post on GLZ…

The point I’m making is:

No matter what you write, you need to learn marketing skills to get your stuff in front of readers.

When writers need to market

• When you contact a possible agent.
• When you write to a publisher.
• When you pitch for a guest post.
• When you introduce yourself to fellow bloggers.
• When you ask people to share your stuff on Social Media.
• When you approach a joint venture partner
• When you launch a book or a report- even when it’s free.

As you can see, there are many more occasions when marketing skills come in handy.

I must admit: at first I really disliked marketing.

There’s something about creating desire for something people don’t really need that doesn’t seem right to me. And I hate it when people try to sell stuff with a ‘gun to head’ style.

So, when Barrie Davenport – one of the best bloggers to emerge from the A-List Blogger Club that Leo Babauta and I run – approached me with the idea of joining up to create a marketing blog for bloggers, my first thought was: “Yeah, right – I’ll start a marketing blog when water starts to run uphill.”

But then I thought about it. Barrie’s a lovely person with lots of integrity. She runs a beautiful blog, Live Bold and Bloom. It seemed to me that there must be a way of marketing that’s different. That treats potential customers like valued friends. That places passion and respect before profit. And still works to create a great income.

I thought of all the people like you who would like to earn some extra cash – or want to develop an online career that gives them a recession-proof income.

So, in the end I said ‘yes’.

Barrie and I then developed a style of marketing we call ‘Good Karma’ Marketing because it’s based upon the principle that what we give out in life is what we get back.

And today we’ve finally launched A-List Blog Marketing as a resource for all those who want to learn how to market themselves or their products – in a way that feels good.

Do come and visit us! We’ve created a complimentary video course for you: The Heart of Online Marketing. Grab ithere.

Mary Jaksch is the Chief Editor of Write to Done. Check out her new blog A-List Blog Marketing

A guest post by Ali Luke of Aliventures

Admit it. Somewhere on your hard drive, there’s an abandoned document: ebook-in-progress.

You once had high hopes for it. You were going to launch it to the world, make lots of money, and bask in your new-found fame and fortune.

Except, it wasn’t quite that easy.

At some point, you put that ebook draft aside … and you haven’t picked it up since.

Maybe you think you just haven’t got it in you. Sure, you can write blog posts … but a whole ebook?

Trust me, you can finish your ebook. And here’s how:

Step #1: Look Over What You’ve Already Got

This can be a surprisingly tough step, so be prepared to feel some resistance. Push on anyway – it’s only a document, and it can’t hurt you.

Open up that file. Skim through what you’ve already written. Chances are:

• You might have done more than you remember
• You’ll have forgotten writing some of it
• Your writing will probably be better than you thought it was

Even if you’ve only written 1,000 words of your ebook, it’s a good start.

Once you’re clear about where you’d got up to, it’s time to create an outline.

Step #2: Put Together a Complete Outline

If I didn’t write outlines, I’d never finish anything. Your outline is a crucial tool for both the structure and organization of your ebook itself, and for the motivation that you feel when writing. It’s a lot easier to work from a series of bullet points than from a blank page.

Your outline doesn’t need to be insanely detailed. And it’s not even that hard to get started: just begin by creating a summary of the material that you’ve already got.

A good outline might be:

• A rough chapter heading for every chapter (you can tweak this later)
• Three to five key points that you want to cover in each chapter

For instance, if your ebook was about novel-writing, your outline might start like this:

Chapter 1: What is a Novel?

• Give a dictionary definition
• How’s it different from other forms? (Short stories, memoir, etc)
• The history of the novel
• Key types of novel today

Chapter 2: Why Write a Novel?

• Much more popular than short stories
• New publishing possibilities, e.g. as an ebook
• The desire to write and create

Step #3: Set Yourself a Deadline

Now that you’ve got your ebook planned out, you’ll be able to decide on a deadline.

A good deadline allows enough slack that you don’t give up entirely – but keeps enough pressure on you that you build up a good writing momentum.

To work out a sensible deadline, you’ll need to figure out:

• Roughly how long your ebook is going to be (work out the average word count of the chapters you’ve already written, and assume that each chapter will be that length)
• How fast you can write (if you’ve no idea, time yourself across a couple of writing sessions)
• How many hours you’ll be able to spend writing your ebook each week (aim for at least four hours)

If your deadline ends up being a very long time away, you might need to adjust your plan. Perhaps that 60-chapter ebook could be split into a series of five 12-chapter ebooks.

Step #4: Book in Your Next Three Writing Sessions

One of the reasons that your ebook ended up gathering virtual dust is because there’s never going to be a “perfect” time to write. Perhaps you were in a good routine with your blog posts … but your ebook kept getting shunted aside.

To avoid that happening again, make time for ebook-writing sessions. Put them in your calendar, and treat them as non-negotiable appointments.

Try to position your sessions during your best writing times: for me, that’s morning (I’m typing this at 9.23am) but for you, it could be afternoon, evening or late at night.

Block out your next three sessions – ideally, within the next week.

Step #5: Work Out Your Target for Each Session

Simply having “write ebook, 10am – 12 noon” on your plan isn’t going to do much for you. It’s all too easy to sit down and stare blankly at the screen … only to end up chatting on Twitter instead of writing.

Give yourself a specific target for each session. That might be “finish chapter two” or “write the first two sections of chapter five” or “revise the introduction”.

Setting your goals in advance removes the element of indecision when you sit down to write. It also helps to focus your thoughts: if you know that you’re going to be working on chapter five tomorrow, you may find that some new ideas bubble up while you’re in the bath or cooking dinner. (Keep a notebook on hand to capture these.)

Step #6: Repeat!

One week of effort isn’t going to get you a finished ebook, unless you’re working on something very short.

If you really want to finish your ebook, you need to put in consistent effort, day after day, week after week. Yes, there’ll be times when it’s not easy … but once you start making steady progress, you’ll realize that it can be done.

A half-written ebook is no good to anyone. It won’t bring you any fame or fortune, and it won’t help your readers either.

So make the decision today to finish that ebook and get it out there. You can do it – and I promise you, it’ll be a great feeling.

Ali Luke is the author of several ebooks, including the popular Blogger’s Guide series. She’s just released The Blogger’s Guide to Irresistible Ebooks, which covers the whole ebook-writing process from initial idea through to post-launch promotion. Click here to find out more about it.

In January 2010 I put a goal in place for myself. That goal was to become a full- time Virtual CEO, leaving my desk and the 250 people that worked for me in the dust as I enabled myself to work from anywhere, on my own terms and focus on building businesses, instead of running them.

By the end of the year, I had achieved my goal, and successfully created a great online following for myself in the process, as well as a kick-ass community of other like-minded folks at my blog, Virtual Business Lifestyle. I have to be very, very honest, unlike a lot of bloggers out there, I did NOT set out to create a popular blog.

Although I have been very humbled by the popularity of it, and the big names I’ve been able to attract to appear on its sister-podcast, including our beloved Leo Babauta! The real reason behind the blog was to follow that one-year journey. It seemed that a lot of other people wanting to follow it, too. Which included my monthly round-up reports, along with other video reports and tips and tactics for removing yourself from ‘business’, and becoming a more new-age entrepreneur.

Productivity Ensued

Fast forward another 6 months down the road and I am achieving more than I honestly thought possible in my new role as a Virtual CEO. In the last six months I have started two new businesses, each doing fantastically well, especially considering their short age-span and added another 25-odd staff to my ‘brick n mortar’ business in the Philippines. I’ve become more focused as a business owner, because I now work a lot more at home, in my ‘own world’, as I call it, and with hardly any disruptions – despite having a toddler in the house!

What’s Different and Why?

There are, however, three main reasons why I have been able to create so much more productivity for myself since becoming a Virtual CEO.

Email Management – First up, I have taken on board two very easy-to-follow email rules. Email is probably the biggest time drainer for entrepreneurs, and I knew I was going to have to get this in check if I wanted to become more productive. So, firstly, I adopted a one-click rule. Meaning, when I open my email its replied to, deleted or archived for future reference. That’s it. And I never open the same email twice.

Secondly, I adopted a 3-sentence rule. All of my email is now no longer than three sentences. This has meant I spend way less time composing and replying to email, creating tons more time to work on other, more important tasks.

Work / Life Balance – There has been so much written on this subject, I am not going to try and become an expert, or preach about it. However, I can say that I have been spending more time with my family since becoming a Virtual CEO (one of the main instigators for my goal in the first place!). Because of this, I am actually more relaxed. Being more relaxed gets my creative juices flowing like you wouldn’t believe it. Hence the productivity, and the launching of two new businesses!

Minimizing Meetings – I run a 250+ employee outsourcing company. I work with clients from all around the world, literally. And I have a great management team in place (part of that one year goal!). However, I still have to ‘do’ meetings pretty regularly. I now go into the office just twice a week on average, and usually for around 3-4 hours at a time, and only for meetings. I rarely even bring my laptop with me… Just my iPad, for taking notes / presentations.

Plus, I put a 30min meeting rule in place, too. Before this, so many of the meetings I was involved in caused PAIN in my daily schedule. I was always running over, and always scratching around for more time to sit with people. This rule enables me to get more meetings in, make them more productive and to the point, and ultimately get more done when I am in the office. If I’m not in the office, I meet with people via Skype, but with the same 30min rule in place. It works. Its nice. I like it.

The Biggest Takeaway

Without a doubt, the biggest takeaway for me from all of this is that it is absolutely, 100% possible to make changes in the way you approach your life, your business, your health and fitness and your online world, too.

As a blogger, vlogger and podcast host, I absolutely love what I now do online. The audience continues to grow, and so do my businesses. Coincidence? I don’t think do. That doesn’t mean that my readers / fans are all becoming clients, because the very, very large majority are not. What it does mean is that because I am having so much fun doing what I am doing online (I almost see it as my personal outlet that’s expanding into something so much more now), as well as spending more time with my family, and starting new businesses and enjoying life in general…

Business is rewarding me for all my hard work.

Looking back, when I put that goal in place in January 2010, I honestly knew I would achieve the goal. I’m just that kind of goal-orientated person – always have been. However, if you had of asked me about any of the rest of the stuff that I’ve been enjoying since I hit the goal, because of the additional productivity I’m now encountering, I probably would have called you a crazy person! Make it your goal to write down your goal. Then, work hard towards realizing it. For yourself, your family, your business and your life in general.

Chris C. Ducker blogs at VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com, and is the Founder of three different businesses, including Virtual Staff Finder, a professional match-making service that helps busy entrepreneurs find experienced, high-quality virtual assistants. He lives in the Philippines, with his family, full-time.

This is a guest post by Chris C. Ducker of Virtual Business Lifestyle.

Writing can be a joy. A real way of expressing ourselves and what we’re all about. It can also focus on helping, inspiring and motivating people to do great things.

When I was at college I used to write a lot. I mean, I was always working on some short story, or the odd essay for school. I was, and still am a big reader, too – averaging at least one book (normally business focused) a week.

As someone who owns and operates an outsourcing company in the Philippines, I see a lot of people contacting us to outsource all types of tasks. Telemarketing, customer service, back-office work, chat support – the list is, literally, endless.

However, as a notable authority on the subject of virtual business and in particular, working with virtual assistants, as well as being a blogger myself, I am often asked the question “Can you use virtual assistants to create original content to use online..?”.

The answer is yes, of course you can.

But, what you decide to do with that content is a different ballgame, obviously.

Five Tips to Get You Started!

Here are my Top Five Tips to working with a virtual assistant to create original content that you can use online, for either personal or business purposes.

1. Don’t get a VA to blatantly write blog posts for your personal blog. Your personal blog should be ‘your place’ (except for the odd guest post, obviously!). Having a VA write content for this outlet of yours kind of defeats the object of blogging in the first place!
2. If you are going to use a VA to help create content for your blog minimize it as much as possible. Activities such as online research for a particular article you are planning to write, then perhaps formatting your blog post with bold and italics, and headlines, etc., to help save time on the publishing side of things.
3. VA’s are perfect for creating online content for anything related to link building. These articles are generally easy to write in a short time, are rarely seen by your target audience and work excellently. As long as they are 100% original. Plus, most VA’s can even go ahead and submit them to specific article submission or marketing sites for you.
4. You can also use a VA to help edit your eBooks or other types of written content. Having a VA do the first round of proof reading is huge. You can then send it onto a second source (perhaps a colleague or family member – my favorite is my wife!) to give it the final once over.
5. Be sure to pay your content writing VA what they are worth. There are many, many good VA’s working as full-time content creators. However, the fact of the matter is that if you don’t pay them what they are worth, they will either do a bad job for you, or simply not want to work with you at all.

They’re Good, but You’re Better!

Whether you’re utilizing the services of a domestically based virtual assistant, or one from another country, the simple rule of thumb to remember is that even though their writing may be good, it probably wont be as good as if you were to write the content yourself. So, always spend some time reading over their work and making sure that its good to go – before it goes!

Using virtual assistants for creative writing and other types of written tasks, such as sales copy, website content, etc., is ultimately a great move for all us who are busy business owners, or entrepreneurs – either online or off.

Nowadays you really don’t have to do everything – the world is a much smaller place, we’re in a global economy and the skill-set’s of people from all around the world are out there for us to get our hands on.

Try it out for yourself with a simple 500-word article on whatever subject you can think of. Look at the quality, and then simply figure out if it makes sense to do it again.

The chances are, it will be.

Chris C. Ducker is a full-time Virtual CEO and a sought after virtual business consultant. He blogs at VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com and is the author of the highly popular free eBook, “Saving the Day, the Virtual Way“, which has been downloaded over 5,000 times to date.

By Mary Jaksch

Do you want to earn money as a writer? If you love writing, then I’m sure the answer is ‘yes!’ Because if we can earn a crust whilst doing what we love – that’s pretty optimal. Agreed?

But how to do it?

If you’re a novelist, a poet, or a story writer – you may have to wait for the big break-through. But if you’re  ‘faction’ writer – I mean, if you write non-fiction – you have a lot more options.

Freelancing

There are many different kinds of freelancing jobs. You can write for magazines or other print media, for business, or for the Internet. As Carol Tice wrote in her post How to Start Earning From Your Blog Right Away , a blog is a great platform from which to launch a career as a freelancer.

Blogging also teaches you how to write well for magazines. Because the optimal structure of blog posts, as well as the crafting of headlines,  is similar to what you need to do in order to write well for magazines.

Writing and selling eBooks

Traditional print media are heading for a collapse. This is a great opportunity for web-savvy writers! A good way to create an online income is to write and self-publish books and reports. Or to create products, such as podcasts, videos, webinars, or courses. Those kinds of products may seem a far cry from an eBook, but in reality they are based upon written material. The content is just presented in a different medium.

The new wave of ‘pay for content’

There is a lot of discussion in the Blogosphere about how bloggers could offer premium content for modest subscriptions. For example, professional blogger David Risley asked in a recent post Is the Future of Blogging Paid Access? This is all very new, but I think it’s worth watching this movement closely.

In view of this, it’s a great time to build an attractive blog with a strong readership in order to make the most of this new direction when it gains traction.

Freelancing opportunities

Here at WTD, we’re keen to see you succeed. I’m mindful of the fact that many of us need to find a way to make our passion for writing pay the bills. That’s why I’ve jumped at a new opportunity that could benefit all of you. I’ve joined a network that collects and publishes freelance opportunities for writers.

For now, I’ve placed a widget with the job board in the sidebar. But I could also display a larger amount of jobs on a separate page. Leo Babauta and I would earn a small amount from the job provider when a WTD reader gets a job (but not enough to buy a pony …) More importantly – this may turn out to be a good source of potential jobs for you, our readers. Please tell us in the comments what you think of the Write to Done Job Board. Should we have a page of freelance jobs for writers on this blog?

Talking of opportunities, here’s a quick heads-up: Leo and I are closing access to the A-list Blogger Club this Thursday at midnight (Eastern). We’ll re-open the doors after our upcoming 4-week  Bootcamp The Art of Blog Seduction – How to Draw Subscribers to Your Awesome Blog. If you are keen to jump aboard the A-List Blogger Club, click here. (A Club member wrote recently: ‘You couldn’t pay me to unsubscribe!’)

Oh, and if you’d like to watch a video where I talk about how to blog Like an A-lister, please complete a 2-minute survey in order to get the video link. Click here for the survey.

As to our topic of how to earn money as a writer: if you have some good tip, please share them in the comments.

Mary Jaksch is the Chief Editor of Write to Done. You can enjoy more of her posts on Goodlife ZEN . Together with Leo Babauta, Mary runs A-list Blogging Bootcamps and the A-List Blogger Club.

Joining the A-List Blogger Club is like pouring accelerant on your blogging career. I know I’ve cut YEARS off my journey to monetizing my blog by belonging here.
~ Carol Tice of Make a Living Writing

Many years ago, when I was a starving writer wrestling day and night with the phenomenal angel of the fiction craft, I got thrown on my back a lot. I’d lie there wheezing until I could breathe again, then I’d gamely hop back up and go at it again.

Wrestle! Wham. Breathe. Up. Wrestle! Wham. Breathe. This went on for a really long time.

So now that I’m a professional indie editor, I know what’s going on at your house. And there are things I’ve learned about this craft that could make this wrestling match a whole lot easier on you. These are my secrets, the things you should know:

1. 1. You need far more discipline and profound human compassion than you think.

You guys. You bring me your precious manuscripts, written in ink from the opening of your own veins, these symbolic versions of the very real and tragic heartbreaks you yourself have survived, and you tell me, “Don’t be gentle. Lay it on me. I can take it.”

Fortunately for you, I’m the wimpiest writer ever in history, so I just ignore you. I know that every mild criticism is a slam to the writer’s solar plexus and every compliment is a faint voice mumbling unintelligibly in the distance.

Only when you’ve gotten a hefty dose of compassion for you, the writer, can you hoist up your suspenders and set about the Herculean task of applying the discipline and ruthlessness your manuscript needs. There are always piles, mountains, avalanches of it. If I simply laid the discipline on you first, you’d be humiliated—silenced.

This is why I’m not just an editor. I’m a writing therapist. Half my job is being really good at handling manuscripts, and the other half is being really good at handling writers.

2. Writing fiction isn’t expressing yourself, it’s creating an experience for your reader.

And yet we all write because we love it. Right? I’m not sitting here at my desk thinking about you. I’m actually sitting here thinking about me, about the fact that I know something important and I want you to get a kick out of learning it from me.

Which leads me inevitably to admit that the reader is the only one in this relationship who counts. I might very well have something you need, but if you don’t want it I’ve done all this work for nothing. Not only that, but you’re not here just for what I know, you’re here for the experience of learning it, and even more than that you’re here for the indescribable magic that happens when you find yourself sandwiched between what you’re learning and how you feel about learning it.

That’s the magic that changes a reader’s life. And the writer’s job is working that magic.

3. No one can properly line edit their own writing.

This point sucks, but it’s a simple fact, so we might as well all get used to it, the same way we’re used to dentists, freeways, and working for a living. I would far rather be independently wealthy on a chateau patio overlooking the 1920s Mediterranean coast, words like pearls falling in perfect order from my quill, bouncing over my feet and across the worn flagstones.

But that’s simply not going to happen.

Instead, I’m going to write as clearly and succinctly and vividly as I know how, and then I’m going to hand it off to someone else—my writer husband, my writer friend, or the editor of whatever publication or blog I’m writing for—to be line edited. They’ll catch the awkward phrasing and constructs that make a reader stumble over my words. They’ll smooth the rhythm I’ve worked so hard to achieve (and, hopefully, catch most of my typos.)

They’ll see my words the way a reader sees them. And that’s professional polish.

4. The publishing industry is not Cinderella, and neither are you.

Or, to paraphrase Dylan: they ain’t a-going nowhere.

I know everyone’s breathing down your neck, exhorting you with the authority of wild-eyed fanatics to hustle your fanny out there and get your novel published. I know this is why you ask for blunt criticism and hope to skimp on the line editing, why it’s so daunting to be told this work is, more than anything, about magic.

But honestly. . .what’s going to happen if you don’t get published PDQ? Are the publishers all going to turn into pumpkins at midnight?

No. And neither are you. Novels have been written and published for over four hundred years. They will continue being published a good four hundred years from now. I spent thirty years delving into this craft in the privacy of one cozy little workspace after another, across three states and half a dozen countries, one desk in a closet and another on a minuscule Hawaiian lanai overlooking the endless ocean. You have time to immerse yourself in this craft for a very, very long time indeed before you need to start looking over your shoulder to see if the end is gaining on you.

Seriously.

5. Your manuscript is in much worse shape than you believe it is, but you have vastly more potential as a brilliant writer than you can imagine.

Now, you may have seen my recent moment of online glory in which I was immortalized in the Huffington Post for being dissed by my agent. That story was absolutely true. Every single manuscript that comes to me is the best, brightest, most word-perfect work of which its author feels capable, and every single one of them has aspects for which an agent with a caustic tongue could get them into the Post.

But that’s okay. I learned how to fix all that stuff.

Even more importantly, every single manuscript that comes to me has its moments of ineffable glory: a facility with words, specific telling details that snap scenes into three dimensions, plot twists and developments that carry me right out of myself, laser-like snippets of dialog and amazing character insights, things that make me sit up, make me laugh, torque my heart exactly the way a reader’s heart needs to be torqued.

These moments are the stuff of which brilliant fiction is made.

6. Your job is to go beyond the limits of possibility.

Of course, the biggest thing I know that you don’t is that writing fiction is an impossible labor. Great art is never as transcendental as its creator has in mind.

Readers might be happy enough with less than transcendental (but not much). Publishers and agents might be as happy as they’re ever going to get. (It’s hard to tell.) But once you’ve seen your vision and known what it’s like to capture even a fragment of that iridescent substance for your own in words, you will never again be satisfied.

So you keep at it—the impossible. Even though you know it’s impossible. That’s what you, great writers, and immortal protagonists all have in common.

7. Fiction isn’t really about reading or writing, it’s about living.

Finally, not the biggest thing I know that you don’t, but the most important: there’s no such thing as either “escapist” or “literary” fiction. There is only storytelling to which all of us, readers and writers alike, go over and over again, to find out what life is, learn the basic skills we need to survive it, and discover the unspeakable beauty and subtlety and significance that makes it worth living.

You don’t have to be a writer. You simply do this work because we human beings need it done.

Victoria Mixon spends her time blogging for the vast tribe of aspiring great writers in the blogosphere and editing their work with her suspenders hoisted up. She is the co-author of Children and the Internet: A Zen Guide for Parents and Educators and author of the recently-released The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual.

Twice a year, in December and June, I work on my “life plan”: It’s like a business plan, but it encompasses career/finances, health, relationships, and volunteering. Each section includes a brief mission statement, a bullet-point list of goals, a bullet-point list of obstacles to those goals, and a paragraph or two where I brainstorm ways around or through those obstacles.

I don’t check on the life plan regularly during the year — just when I feel inspired. And when I go to it again after six months, I often find that I had internalized and met many of my goals without even trying.

Except the income goals. For years, every six months I’d write out an income goal, brainstorm ways to meet that goal — and do absolutely nothing different in my career to try to earn that extra income.

Eventually I smartened up, and realized two key things about setting goals:

1. Your goals need to be something you can control.

As a freelancer, it’s difficult to control how many clients you gain, how many assignments you get, or much money you make (though you can always shoot for a range; after all, we need to eat). However, you can control how many queries and letters of intro you send out, how much marketing you do, and how many hours you work. Increase these, and you’re likely to increase your income as a side benefit.

Why not try it yourself for 2011? Instead of saying you want to make X amount of money or garner five assignments from national magazines, set goals that you can control — like how much marketing you do. For example, my plan for 2011 is to conduct a direct mail campaign to 900 local businesses for my copywriting (100 down, 800 to go!).

2. Your goals need to inspire you.

Guess what? It turns out I’m just not inspired by income goals. As long as I can support my family and we can do (within reason) what we want, I’m okay. However, I am inspired by the appreciation I get from the writers I help through my e-courses and mentoring. This morning I had a client who told me she had a big grin on her face as I outlined a new idea for her. Now, that I like — I just eat it up!

So my goal is to do more teaching and mentoring. (And of course, the more teaching and mentoring I do, the more money I make.) I also enjoy writing for magazine editors who treat me well, so another goal is to seek them out, hang onto them when I find them, and weed out PITA editors. As a byproduct, I make a good income because it takes me less time to do assignments from magazines with a low PITA factor.

These goals keep me a lot happier than working my butt off to reach some magic number I don’t really care about.

So — what do you really care about? Try to set goals that make sense for you, instead of caving under the pressure to set goals that you feel you should want to reach.

Linda Formichelli has written for over 130 magazines since 1997, from Pizza Today to USA Weekend. She  runs the Renegade Writer, one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers 2010/11. She is the co-author of “The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success”

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I’m amazed at the wealth of information in the A-List Blogger Club. I’ve been blogging for several years but was not very savvy about it, and I immediately made easy but high-impact changes to my blog based on the advice there. I’m already seeing an uptick in readers, students, and clients!
Linda Formichelli, The Renegade Writer Blog