Writing, producing, and promoting tips booklets for marketing, motivating, and making money.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Keeping Booklet Order Fulfillment Where It Belongs
Many booklet authors have zero interest in filling orders for their booklets. That statement does not mean they (you) don't want to make sales. It just means the mechanics of filling the orders has appeal that can be measured in the minus column.
There are two simple ways to keep from filling orders in your own office:
1. Require minimum orders of 1,000 copies. Doing this means your orders are shipped directly from your printing company, prompted by nothing more than an email or phone call to your printer, who then bills you for the order.
2. Do only licensing deals. That means your client does all the production work because you grant them the right (by written contract) to use your content in very specific ways, including the possibility of printing a certain number of copies. Licensing deals are typically lucrative and no stress of any kind.
We have a licensing contract package to streamline your process even further. See it in the home study kit section of the products menu at our website.
"The next set of billion-dollar opportunities in the U.S. might lie in leisure products and nursing homes for aging boomers, along with energy, natural resources, specialty chemicals, and semiconductors for consumer gadgets. Our increasingly harried society is also likely to embrace any time-saving product or service." from today's Forbes Small Business Weekly Newsletter Do you think this means there will also be a need for booklets about how to choose a nursing home, how to identify the best leisure opportunities, ways to best use energies, and how to use consumer gadgets? Oh, and are tips booklets the time saver of the century? That's how this all reads to me, especially since I'm not inclined to open a nursing home, develop a leisure product, go into the energy or chemical business, or return to the time-saving field of professional organizing.
Are you doing tip sheets right now, ala late night US talkshow host Dave Letterman's Top Ten? Combine 10 of those tips sheets and you've got a tips booklet you can now sell as a product, and you did it by writing 10 tips at a time for however long you've been writing the tips sheets. Rather instant and painless, isn't it?
It's fairly common to find booklet authors insistent on creating booklet manuscripts larger than the 5,000- word upper limit I suggest. This happens no matter how much I seek to impart the benefits of keeping a booklet between 3,000-5,000 words.
The solution to the over-5,000-word booklet is to make it into at least two booklets, depending on how far over the 5,000 words the booklet has grown. Two booklets of about 3,000 words each are better than one booklet of 6,000.
"Why?" you ask? Here's two simple reasons:
1. You can keep your cost of production and shipping low enough to keep your prices low enough that large-volume buyers will want to buy from you.
2. You give your clients the choice of which booklet to buy instead of whether to buy a booklet at all.
There are other reasons, too. For now, these two are enough to ponder.
'Just got a Google Alert in today (you did subscribe to Google Alerts, didn't you?)that makes a great point about booklets being useful for parents, educators, and students. Plus the alert identifies one kind of place that sells educational material. Do you see that the way I do, as a red carpet invitation to contact them if your information fits theirs? Here you go.
Google Alert for: tips booklets Scoring against test anxietyGreenwood Commonwealth - Greenwood,MS,USA... High School has booklets for parents from the parent Institute, which sells educational material. "Help Your Child do Better on Tests" has tips on reducing ... Until next time, Paulette http://www.tipsbooklets.com
A Valuable Industry Sales Report for Booklet Authors
A Merrill Lynch report released last week predicted that the Internet would be collecting more advertising revenue than the magazine industry by the end of 2006. The investment bank is predicting a 27% surge in online ad revenue for the year. Reading the above information in the daily Advertising Age trade publication today, I saw this as nothing but good -- no, great -- news for booklet authors. For several years I've been talking about approaching print magazines to license them booklet rights to use to attract new subscribers and retain current ones. "Get a free booklet with your new or renewed subscription." And now, as the print publications are struggling to stay alive in many cases, they need as many tools as possible to do that.
At the same time, many of these same magazines are increasing their online presence, as are other companies. The PDF version of the booklet is ready and available to be licensed to these website owners to use in much the same way as the hard copy -- as a way to incent people to visit the website and to make a purchase or complete a survey or open an account or do whatever the site owner is interested in having them do. The booklet author has the ability to license the site owner very specific use of the PDF of the booklet or other formats of the booklet (like a digital audio version), as well as license the contents of the booklet to be sliced and diced.
The shift in advertisers' attention from hard copy magazines to Internet web sites is a valueable piece of industry intelligence, one worth following for booklet authors.
In the non-traditional world of publishing tips booklets, it's important to be clear about your purpose. The large number of booklet authors I know have a couple of primary goals:
1. To get their message out to people who will find the information helpful 2. To make money
Hidden (or sometimes not so hidden) in those two possibilities is the goal of using booklets to market the booklet author's business.
The best way I know to accomplish both or all of those goals is by getting to the largest number of people with the least amount of effort and other resources. Selling booklets one at a time does not appear to do that by itself. Yes, single copies can lead to bigger things, which it has done even in my own case. However, when deciding from the get-go that going after bulk sales supports the goals stated above, that seems to be the much better and more direct route, wouldn't you agree?
Next time you find yourself thinking about selling single copies of your booklet(s) or other products from your website or at the back of the room when you do speaking engagements, I encourage you to please consider those gravy sales and not a primary way of selling your booklet. Your message will go much further and you will make much more money when you sell thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of copies at a time. And yes, that is all completely possible. Ask me how if you're in the dark about that.
Do you and someone else have booklets whose topics compliment each other's? Keep theirs in mind when you are talking with a prospective large-quantity buyer as a way to instantly expand your own product line without doing anything but introducing it to the buyer.
It becomes a three-way win: You get a pre-arranged commission from the booklet author for making the sale. The booklet author made a sale without ever pitching it to the buyer. And the buyer got exactly what they were looking for. How easy is that?
What's Better Than a Happy Client? Hundreds of Them!
The following testimonial came today from one of my most favorite people, Dr. Bob Houle. Here's what he said:
Your blog is is a "Blast furnace" of great ideas. A must have freebie for anyone considering writing and marketing booklets.
FOR EXAMPLE: You mentioned Google Alerts. I signed up for it and asked to be alerted for the word "Happiness" (my booklets subject of course)/ Well it turns out that every day they send me a world wide list of people writing about happiness, courses being presented and...get this...companies disseminating information to thier employees about happiness.
This is a heat seeking missile (I'm into Hot metaphors today) for discovering world wide sources to market my booklets. You are right on the cutting edge Paulette.
Sincerely, Bob
And here's what I said:
Thanks for your email. Glad to see you are getting some instant value from the blog. I appreciate your enthusiastic testimonial, which I may want to use with a twist. I don't know if you noticed that I have harvested and organized all the blog entries of the past year into a publication for easy navigating and mobility. I announced it in last month's ezine, which came out right when I know you had some very pressing things on your plate. It's called "Booklet Tips from Paulette - Secrets, Strategies, and Resources." It's in the Manuals section of the products on my website, available either as a downloadable or as hard copy.
Now, what do YOU say? Can you really truly live another day of your life without this well-organized compilation that basically just about turns itself into instant money for you?
Would it be clear to anyone who sees the title what it is that's inside your booklet? It makes it so much easier to sell the booklet when the title simply tells what is contained. Obviously it's not going to reference the details, and it will likely prompt certain assumptions. My own booklet, "110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life" clearly says what it is. Within it, I satisfy the assumptions of information about time, paper, and space management, plus some subsets of those like sorting, interruptions, desktop surfaces, and the like. The clearer you are, te easier it is to sell.
Months ago, I discovered that, among the many things they do, www.Google.com offers something they call Google Alert. You can go to the home page of their site and enter various words or topics of interest to you. When something pops up on the gazillions of pages Google spiders, you get an email telling you about it.
I have two Google alerts in place. One is for my name and the other is for the phrase "tips booklets." Not only do I know who is mentioning me online, these alerts also give good industry intelligence to know who else is doing tips booklets around the world. That's often highly useful data to use as a reference point when talking to some large-quantity prospect or to approach some organization with your own booklet.
"When I have someone who is interested in licensing, I'll come back and talk to you about that, Paulette."
Don't hold your breath that licensing will automatically pop up all by itself in some conversation you are having with a potential client. It's up to you to not only intoduce the idea, but to expand on it to as large a sale as you can. And it can be the most lucrative and easiest sale you'll make, which always makes me wonder why booklet authors are so reluctant to approach it. Here's a few situations to suggest to your potential licensee, each one enlarging the licensing fee for you. There are many more, though this will get you thinking.
1. Expand their reach to people of a different language. Spanish is a huge second language in the US.
2. Use the tips in a morning drive-time radio advertising campaign to broaden their exposure. "This fitness moment brought to you by XYZ Health and Fitness Club."
3. Include tips on product packaging. Having a well educated buyer makes them want more of what you've got.
4. Distrubute tips throughout a print catalog. It makes the catalog more interesting while educating the buyers.
5. Make the booklet available as a PDF download from the licensee's website as an incentive to visit the site. It's the same as a hard-copy premium used to prompt more business.
6. Have the company print the booklet themselves when they are interested in 10,000 copies or more. It's more cost-effective for them and much less hassle for you.
7. Create the content into a different format like an audio CD. This reaches their buyers through a different learning style than the printed word and will capture the attention of those people.
Be proactive in attracting licensing opportunities. It's easier than you think. Learn to do this through the home study course, How to License Your Booklet for Huge Profits. You can find it at http://tinyurl.com/f7eny
Real estate companies, mortgage brokers, and those in related fields are clamoring to survive and thrive right now in many parts of the United States. Southern California is certainly feeling the squeeze and looking for creative, cost-effective ways to weather the economic storm through their promotional efforts.
Several months ago one of these folks bought a couple hundred copies of my booklet (110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life) to use in a promotional campaign. I've watched this person add in several other simultaneous advertising and publicity activities. When I phoned to find out whether it was time for a re-order, the person said the booklet was being received well, yet there was still a bunch in inventory. I suggested combining some of the campaigns to include getting a copy of the booklet when calling because of a radio ad they heard or seeing some print advertising this person was doing.
It had not occured to the broker that this could be an excellent way to be distinguished from among the competition. After all, how many people are offering a booklet on how to organize your business life, especially in a context like this?
In crowded markets like real estate, financial planning, and many others, your booklet can help a company distinguish themselves from among the rest, especially when the market is on a momentary downswing.
The Ideal Scenario for Writing at Least One Booklet
Reading my pal Joan Stewart's weekly ezine today (aka www.PublicityHound.com), I saw the following:
Publicity Hound Christie Scott of Chicago, Illinois writes: “I’m starting my business as a certified coach for doctors. When doctors have communication issues or want a more profitable practice, they call me. I work with them to eliminate stress—from relationship problems to medical malpractice risk, because the problems are usually communication-based.
“I’m looking for ways to let them know about me and my services. I’d love to speak at their medical society meetings and conventions. But this presents challenges. Until they are familiar with me, they are skeptical to book me. And until they hear me or see me speak, they are slow to hire me.
“I am open to new and innovative ideas and I will do what it takes to reach them. But I need some ideas of where to go next. Can your Hounds help?” You can learn more about Christie here.
My reply: Your situation screams out for creating a tips booklet. It’s a way to give meeting planners and your soon-to-be-physician-new-clients-of-yours a sampling of your knowledge base, promoting yourself every step of the way. What’s better is when an association you want to speak to buys a quantity of your booklet(s) to distribute to attendees, who are prospective consulting clients. Whether the association hires you to speak yet or not, you get promoted to their attendees. It really doesn’t get a whole lot better than being paid for your marketing materials.
When you are writing a booklet whose topic is directly related to your business, you are most likely getting leads for bulk buyers delivered every day the mail arrives. Look at the direct mail pieces from manufacturers and distributors who would find your booklet useful as a promotional tool to help them sell more of their product. Look at the catalogs you're receiving. Sell them large quantities of your booklet for them to use as a promotional tool as well. (Get a free booklet when you buy something in this issue of our catalog.) Look at the professionl journals you're receiving. The journals are leads (Get a free booklet with your new or renewed subscription.) And the advertisers within the journa are also leads.
That should keep you busy for awhile with plenty of prospective buyers! Be sure to get a copy of "How to Promote Your Business with Booklets" from my site (manual or home study kit) so you'll know the exact steps to take when contacting those prospective buyers.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where the width of your document really needs to be 65 characters wide (or some other specific width) to avoid wrapping or just being too wide? This should help you do it. http://www.formatit.com/
Dan Janal of www.PRLeads.com gave an interesting teleclass today about syndicating your articles as a way to promote your website and your business. Ths is so easy for booklet authors to do since you've already got plenty of content for simple 300-750 word articles. Dan gave some useful formulas for writing articles, and is offering a free e-course about the whole thing at www.PRLeads.com/ford.htm
If you want to offload the process of uploading your articles to the article syndication sites, Dan is offering that fee-based service, too. I've been posting articles to dozens of article directory sites over the years with great success. Just Google my name and see what you find!! And yes, it's time consuming, no question about it.
Like everything else, though, the key is consistency. Create one article a week and send it to 25 sites each week. Ezine and site owners come to the directory sites for content. Once your article is posted onto their own site, it's there indefinitely, bringing you traffic for the duration.
See if what Dan has is a match for you. Otherwise do whatever you can to get your articles out there. You'll be amazed by the kind of business it brings back to you.
Last week someone in the UK sent me an email that confirmed what I've known for a long time. Booklets live on, past the latest greatest software of any given moment, or other technology that shows up on any particular day. If you've read much of my meanderings at any point along the way, you know I am a self-professed techno-weenie anyway. That said, I appreciated what this guy (or bloke, as they call them on that side of the pond) had to say.
He had some legal re-sale rights to the video of an event at which I spoke over there in 1998 or 1999, I believe it was. He wanted to focus on my part of the three-day conference because so much of the rest of that event was about software, most of which is long outdated. Booklets were still very current and very do-able. He wanted permission from me to grab some things from my website to support and surround what he had on that video. Of course I said yes, and that I'd be more than happy to help him in any ways that would work for both of us. It is not uncommon for me to be the non-tech contributor at a conference, and that's perfectly fine with me.
With all the internet marketing conferences, and the increasing conversation about and existence of iPods, vodpods, webinars, and the rest of the fabulous technology present in our lives today, sometimes the basics are what prevail. Sometimes it's those basics that reach the widest audience and keep them coming back for more. No, I don't have my head in the sand. I'm just very clear about my niche and its reason for being.
I am not suggesting ignoring the technology, not by any means. I am saying you can do a booklet in very short order, and have it available as a 'yes' answer for people and situations where the technology is not a match, for whatever reason.
Rarely a week goes by that someone doesn't invite me to be profiled on their site or in their ezine or interviewed for an audio recording or some other piece of exposure or joint venture. It continues to fascinate me just how this all happens.
The most recent profile is on http://www.womens-business-gallery.com/TP1 , owned by Angel Brown. This particular one happened because Angel noticed reference to my doing a teleclass with Jennifer Tribe of www.juicedconsulting.com , which happened from a referral when I contacted Lisa Martin of www.briefcasemoms.com after she and I met when I spoke in person at a conference of www.SPANnet.org (Small Publishers Association of North America) for the second time.
Now, who says women business owners don't network or find great interest in the activities and accomplishments of colleagues? And guys certainly do, too. The above trail is one tiny example of how this can and does work. Like so many other things in life, I find I get luckier the more I do the part that's mine to do. And it doesn't need to be difficult at all.
Send an article or a tip to an ezine. Offer to do a joint venture teleclass. Either of those two things can set some amazing wheels in motion, costing very little in time and money yet bringing huge returns.
Does Your Cousin the Corporate Contact Know Marketing?
When you discover you have the ideal contact into a corporation you think would be the perfect whale of a sale for your booklet, take a breath and ponder a few things first.
Your neighbor, friend, family member, former professor, or whomever it is may be a great door-opener for you by providing you a phone number and a name of the person high in the ranks in the sales or marketing department. Your contact may not know the first thing about marketing. This is a vital consideration when it comes to your enthusiasm in wanting to show them your booklet, or their enthusiasm in wanting to see it.
Your contact could look at the booklet and have opinions about it that bear zero relationship to the success you will experience when talking directly to the marketing or sales person. Your contact has different strengths than that, as a computer programmer or human resources person or head of the company cafeteria. They do not necessarily know about marketing.
Save yourself and them the anguish of a misstep by focusing your request on giving you the name and contact information of the key person high up the ladder in their company's marketing or sales departments. Your original ontact will be thrilled to know they were a catalyst to your success when you later tell them about the sale you made within their company. And send that catalyst some flowers or a gift certificate or something you know they would appreciate as a thank you once you've made that big sale!
