how to – Page 6 – Michele Christensen

Book Review – Making Your Book a Bestseller

One of my big themes for 2014 is narrowing my focus, and one of the areas I’m focusing on is writing Kindle books. I’ve got two published and a third is in the works. One of my books even got to #1 Bestseller status in the Kindle store! In this post, I’m reviewing a Kindle book that has information I used to get my book to #1 Bestseller status:

Author’s Quick Guide to Making Your Book a Bestseller

The book’s author is Kristen Eckstein, who is one of my Kindle mentors. I was in her first “Kindle in 30 Challenge” back in January, and from that I was able to get my series “The Solopreneur’s Success Strategy” started.

Here’s the review, in short form: Buy it. It’s well worth the $3.49 price point. If you are writing Kindle books that sell for $2.99, you only need to sell 2 to cover the cost of this book and I’m pretty certain this book will cause you to sell at least two additional books.

If you want more information, here’s the longer review.

Kristen’s credentials for writing this book are extensive and can be found in the beginning of the book. Suffice it to say, she knows her stuff. She covers many areas that will help you become a bestseller including writing a good book, choosing catagories, pricing, using keywords and writing for your specific audience.

One of the great things about this book is that much of what you will learn is applicable to other areas of your business as well. For example, she spends a lot of time on finding your audience and learning to speak their language. That skill is useful in so many areas of your business – when marketing on the web, when speaking from the stage, when creating products or when talking one-on-one with potential customers.

This book was hugely helpful to me and helped me get one of my books that coveted #1 status! My tip: Don’t forget to take a screenshot when your book gets to #1!

Check out the book here:

Author’s Quick Guide to Making Your Book a Bestseller

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Image source: Amazon.com

Website Traffic Basics, Part 2

This post is the second in a series on website traffic basics. If you want to read part 1, click here. In the first post, I explained the concept of generating traffic to a website. Many new website owners assume that if they create a website that people will visit that site automatically and that’s not the case. In this post, I’ll expand on the concept of website traffic by talking about what you can learn by how long your visitors stay on your site. Not all visitors to your site are equally interested in what you have to sell, and not all visitors will behave the same way on your site.

One of the first things to look at when analyzing your web traffic is how long people stay on your site. In general, the longer people stay the more likely they are to take action (e.g. opt in to your email list, sign up for something free or buy something). When people stay on your site for a long time, it’s a good sign that they are interested in what they find there. After all, why would someone stay on a site that they weren’t interested in? Google Analytics can give you statistics on your website visitors in great detail including how long they stay.

A second figure to look at is bounce rates. In Google Analytics, a bounce is when someone clicks on you page and leaves quickly. It’s a good indication that they didn’t find what they were looking for. This is a good figure to compare for various traffic sources and keywords. If people land on your site after doing a search on a certain key word or phrase and then many of them bounce, that means that people searching on that key word or phrase are not finding what they wanted on your page. There could be a great opportunity for you here – fine tune the content of your page to better match what people want. You may also find that traffic from various sources tends to stay on your site for more or less time.

A third figure to look at is what actions people take when on your site. You might want them to opt-in for your email list, sign up for a free event or make a purchase. This is also a way to compare your traffic – you can look at what actions they tend to take while on your site.

In the first post I wrote, I talked about Pinterest and how it is great at driving site visitors. That post focused mainly on how Pinterest was good for driving a good volume of referral traffic. However, Pinterest is also good at driving high-quality traffic. My own experience is that the visitors I get to my site from Pinterest tend to stay longer than visitors from other sources. There is also some great data to support the idea that Pinterest users have a higher tendency to buy than visitors from other sites. In order to learn more about Pinterest and website traffic, you can watch this training I did with Becky Sangha, the creator of Business Marketing with Pinterest. She shares some great tips for using Pinterest and actually accomplishing something, and she also gives her strategy for using Pinterest in just 10 minutes per week! You can get a lot of traffic and followers in that time, which is a great return on investment. Check it out at the link below:

Pinterest Training for Solopreneurs

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Get Started Right – Standardize Your Intake Process

If you provide a service or work with clients, you have some sort of intake process. Even if currently you just grab bits of information as you realize you need them, you still have a process. Once practice I recommend is having a standardized intake process. Aside from saving you time, if you have a set process you’ll avoid re-inventing the wheel every time a new client enters your business. You can design your process to make sure you get all the information you need for each new client, such as their contact information, what name they like to be called, how they like to be contacted, etc. Because the process is standardized, you’ll get the same information in the same format for each new client which lets you hit the ground running. If you process is set up correctly, you can also be sure that each new client is added to your email newsletter list without any intervention from you. Of course always make it clear they are being added to a list during their transaction.

If you already use a shopping cart or Paypal, you can specify what contact data you want from the client when they checkout. Your shopping cart or Paypal should also add the client automatically to your email list. A great next step is to have your client visit an online form where they fill in whatever information you need to get started. You’ll want to make sure whatever form you use is as secure as you need it to be to protect your clients’ privacy. Finally, it’s important that you design your process to be as error-proof as possible. The client should be ushered through easily and flawlessly with no effort on their part. Whatever comes after the intake process should appear at the right moment.

Since you can’t, nor should you be, at your computer 24/7 all of this needs to be set up to happen automatically to create the best experience for your new clients. Making sure client intakes happen smoothly with or without you present is especially important for solopreneurs. The last thing you want is a bad first impression or a customer service situation you need to fix. You also should not set up a situation where you need to be there all the time to start new clients. Fortunately, you can use free or low-cost automation tools and even settings on the tools you already use to make this happen. Automating your intake process is one of the areas of automation I cover in my book The Solopreneur’s Success Strategy: Automate Your Grunt Work. In the book, I cover 10 key areas where you can use automation to deliver better service and more of yourself without adding more to your bulging to-do list. There’s also 3 bonus automation-related strategies and downloadable checklists to make your business run smoother. Get a copy today by clicking here.

Note: The book is a Kindle book, but you don’t need a Kindle device to read it. You can get a free reader for your desktop, or an app for your smartphone or tablet.

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3 Myths about Pinterest

This year, I’ve narrowed the number of social media sites I’m on so I can spend more time on each one and get better results. One of the two sites I’m focusing on is Pinterest. I was slow to get onto Pinterest, and one of the reasons is that I didn’t think it was appropriate for my business. I didn’t see how puppy pictures, wedding shoes and gorgeous food pictures could possibly fit into my business. However, it turns out I was wrong. I believed some common myths about Pinterest which have turned out not to be true. Here’s what I thought, and what’s right.

Pinterest Myth #1: It’s only for women

Yes, I am a woman and I do love to work with women, however my niche is solopreneurs, and I work with both men and women. I didn’t think being part of something that is primarily used by women would get me connected to people I might be able to work with.

The reality: Pinterest is still has more female users, but men are starting to use it a faster rate. There are some very specific interest areas in which men tend to post including sports, travel, home repair, SEO and social media.

Pinterest Myth #2: It’s for hobbyists

Before I knew better, the only people I knew who were using Pinterest were using it for their hobbies. They were sharing pictures of their favorite foods, clothes, animals, equipment, makeup and other hobby items. My business isn’t particularly picture-worthy, so I didn’t see how sharing pictures could possibly help me.

The reality: Pinterest is great for business, and there are a lot of businesses using it with great success. Pinterest is a great way to drive interested people to your site and Pinterest users tend to make purchases once they visit a site from Pinterest.

Pinterest Myth #3: It’s only for visual businesses

Take one look at Pinterest and you’ll see that it is indeed great for visual businesses such as photographers, designers, people in the fashion industry, artists, craftspeople, etc. However, you can have a non-visual and even a visually “boring” business and still use Pinterest. Yes, you will need to create some graphic to go with whatever you want to pin but you can use really simple graphics and even just a quote graphic can be pinned and shared.

Are you using Pinterest for your business? If not, why not? Jump in before Pinterest gets saturated with your competitors and start reaping the benefits.

Need a place to start? Watch this webinar for a great introduction to Pinterest for Solopreneurs. I hosted Pinterest expert and creator of “Business Marketing with Pinterest” Becky Sangha for a video training on getting started with Pinterest. Oh, and please use the Pin it and social sharing buttons below the video to share this with your friends and colleagues.

13 Gifts for Business Freedom Giveaway closes tomorrow!

Just a quick note to let you know that the giveaway event I’m participating in is closing tomorrow. There are 13 great gifts for you to download, and they are all designed around the theme of freedom in your business. Make sure to get the gifts you want before the giveaway closes.

Grab your gifts here:

13 Gifts for Business Freedom Giveaway

Beware of the “Trojan Horse” Sales pitch

As I’ve increased the reach of my business, I’ve had an increasing number of people attempt to pitch me something in the guise of a Trojan Horse. It’s usually something like “Can I share your {whatever} with my audience?” or one particularly blatant one “I have a speaking gig for you, let’s talk (turned out to be a long sales pitch for something that was completely inappropriate for me.)

Just to be clear, it’s totally appropriate to pitch and sell when you are in business. Without selling, there would be no business. My objection to the Trojan Horse approach is that it is sneaky and often untargeted. In each case, I didn’t know I was going to be pitched to and the product or service being offered was not something I needed or wanted. The person pitching me occupied my time under false pretenses and I felt burned at the end.

What I want to share with you is to be on the lookout for these sales pitches. They will waste your time and if your experience is like mine, the people that do this don’t even try to target the right potential customers. Here are a few warning signs to look out for:

Somebody comes to you with an offer that is too good to be true
The person is overly flattering when it’s clear they haven’t gotten to know you or your work
They request a phone, in-person or Skype meeting without explaining what the value to you will be or why it can’t be handled in a more efficient manner
Vague references to “working together” without even one example of what that might look like
You have a feeling of “What is this person talking about?” or “What the heck?” that isn’t shared by the other person
They express urgency at needing to meet with you right away

One of the really vexing parts of the Trojan Horse sales pitch is that it is usually flattering! I admit, the first few times it happened I was thrilled that a stranger recognized my genius. I’ve now gotten pretty good at sniffing out legitimate admiration vs. insincere and generic compliments designed to woo me into a meeting. I’ve also come to recognize just how valuable my time is, so I place a higher bar on any meeting and very low value on ego-boosting.

Another problem with ducking these sales pitches is that if you get too broad with your criteria for declining, you may miss legitimate and valuable opportunities to collaborate and have a sales conversation about something that may actually be useful to you.

It goes without saying that you should not be using this to sell your own products or services. It makes a very bad impression and wastes both your time and your unqualified prospect’s time. The big question is how do you avoid the time-wasting Trojan Horses and accept the right appointments?

Here are a few ideas:

First, don’t jump to schedule an appointment just because someone asks. Check them out by visiting their website, social media sites and doing a Google search.

Second, make sure you understand why you are having a meeting rather than some other form of communication such as exchanging emails. Ask them some questions about why a meeting makes sense. Often, this drives away people who you probably don’t want to meet with and people who are a good fit appreciate your thoughtfulness.

Third, don’t schedule right away. I generally schedule everything a week ahead of time anyway, but a side benefit of this is that it wards off people who don’t have a legitimate purpose for talking to you. They don’t want to work that hard or plan ahead!

Fourth, pay attention to your feelings. If you feel pressured, unsure, weird, etc. it may be because the meeting isn’t right for you.

As a solopreneur, you have to guard your time or you won’t be able to do everything you need to do. Don’t plan a meeting simply because someone asks. Make sure you know the value of the meeting for both you and the person who wants to meet with you.

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Website traffic basics

This post is an introduction to some website traffic basics. If you are already working to generate and measure your traffic, this will be a refresher for you. If you aren’t doing any traffic generation, you’ll learn what you need to do and one place to get started.

First, one of the biggest things to learn about having a website is that you have to work to generate traffic. Before you have your own site, it’s easy to assume that visitors are automatically finding your site. In fact, it’s easy not to think about website traffic at all and just put a site up. However without an active plan to generate traffic, it’s likely that your site will get few if any visitors other than those who you refer. This means that unless people are typing in your site address from a business card or perhaps following a link you posted somewhere like on social media, on a personal blog or in a forum, they probably won’t find your site. You have to take specific steps to get people other than those you refer to find and visit your site. This is called traffic generation. Generating traffic is a big topic, and in fact there are people whose expertise is nothing but traffic generation. You don’t need that level of expertise, but I do recommend that you have a basic understanding of the concept of generating and measuring your website traffic. Some methods of generating traffic include:

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which is making your site more likely to be displayed by search engines
Social media – you can post links and small bits of information that encourage people to visit your site and work to get those links shared
Paid advertising – you can pay to advertise your site to encourage people to visit

There’s a lot more to be said on the topic of generating traffic, but the main point is that this is something you need to be doing if you want visitors to your site. If you want a simple way to start getting traffic, I recommend Pinterest right now. It’s my single biggest source of referral traffic (i.e. people who have gotten to my site by being referred or clicking a link) and it’s not complicated or time-consuming to use. You do, however, have to use Pinterest correctly to get a good volume of quality traffic. You can’t just randomly post things and expect results. If you want to get started with Pinterest, I recommend you watch this webinar I did with Becky Sangha, creator of Business Marketing with Pinterest, and my personal go-to person for Pinterest questions.

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Back of the Bike Video – Have more time by using automation

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