NOTE: The following EPIC post comes from the book, “The Digital Writer’s Guide to Building Assets (You Are Your Best Client).”

Enter your best email address in the box below, absorb the free content once a week, then take action on what you learn. You will be a more successful writer.

You’re a writer with magic to be envied.

You possess the rare skill of being able to make something from nothing.

You can change thinking, create emotions, and paint pictures in your readers’ minds.

You can manufacture money just by moving your fingers across the keyboard.

Through the alchemy of writing, you can take what makes you unique and turn it into consistent revenue. Write with a plan and you can turn your thoughts into assets that pay out on repeat.

Consistent asset development is essential to your growth as a writer, and the money you will make throughout your career. Writing your first eBook is a great place to start.

Writing an eBook

Writing an informational eBook is one of the most straightforward and effective ways to make money online, and a great way to dip your toe in the publishing process.

With the success of the Kindle, iPad, and other e-readers, business will only continue to boom. With a little knowledge of a niche and the desire to learn how to publish to eBook format (it’s easy), you can have an eBook to market in very little time. As with anything else, do it well or don’t do it at all.

Your eBook must address a specific need or want in your market. If you’ve developed a bond with your audience, your book should stand as an extension of that relationship. The same care you’ve put into developing your free content must be evident in your eBook. You can stake your claim in a crowded marketplace with unique positioning and perspective, but you can’t put out a less-than-stellar product and expect to charge a premium or grow your relationships.

I’ve paid $97 for e-books with a smile on my face, because I knew they were a shortcut to a better tomorrow. But never charge $97 just because you can. You must deliver value.

Research your market, outline your book, section it into bite-size chunks, then work on it until it’s finished. It doesn’t have to be long, especially if it’s cheap. Check out Seth Godin’s books for an example of short and sweet. Just make sure your book delivers value on every page.

Once your feet are wet from your first eBook, you can finally get around to writing the novel you’ve been dreaming about!

Infographic by: Website Creation.com

Selling Fiction

While publishing houses are crumbling, the voice inside you could make you a mint.

My world changed after I’d been writing for three years. I built an audience online because I wanted to write fiction. The old world of publishing was terminal and I wanted no part of its lingering death. Self-publishing would only grow stronger and I’d rather be among the first waves to wash on a new shore than the last to roll from the lost island of traditional publishing.

Things were changing fast, but I still figured it would be 2014 or so before the trends would shift enough that I’d be able to make enough money writing fiction to justify my time. Until then, I could write copy to pay the bills, while tending dreams in my spare time.

In February of 2011, I read the numbers with wide eyes and my jaw on the floor – for the first time, eBooks were outselling print on Amazon.com, and by a margin of 3:2. My heart thudded at the history happening in front of me and what it meant for my potential. There were virtually unknown authors selling anywhere from 50,000 to 450,000 eBooks on Kindle in January alone.

Even some published authors have started jumping ship to self-publish.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think traditional publishing is without its benefits. Between distribution of print books and marketing budgets, publishers can help an author sell a hell of a lot of books. They also handle editing, cover creation, and layout, things which some indie authors struggle with.

However, self-publishing offers a few distinct advantages. You set your pricing (and profit margin), there’s no waiting to publish as is the case with traditional publishers who can take several months to get a book to press, and you’re free to write whatever you want without having to sell it to anyone other than your readers.

Print on Demand technology and Kindle have leveled the playing field for authors by letting them bypass the gatekeepers and get their work to the masses in just a few reasonably simple steps. You can make great money from your fiction, but you must treat it seriously. Your social media strategy and reader reviews are everything. And if you think you can publish marginal work and people will buy, think again.

Pretend you’re writing your book for a traditional publisher. Take the time to edit, re-edit, and edit again. Hire a professional to do your layout and cover design. You could make an amazing living on Kindle alone, but only if you have the essential elements of a good book, regardless of the format.

Beyond Kindle, you can use POD services such as CreateSpace to publish your book on Amazon, or record yourself reading it and distribute the audio through channels such as PodioBooks and iTunes to maximize your exposure.

Many writers are doing extremely well in this quickly-growing market. You can, too.

Niche Sites

You may think writing a book can’t provide enough passive income to feed you and your family. Maybe it won’t. What about four, five, or six books? What about three passion books you’re dying to write, along with one killer nonfiction book you research, write, then release as a lead magnet for a lucrative training course?

Niche websites are small websites, often built on a blogging platform such as WordPress, finely tuned to a target market. They are relatively easy to build, and you can build one for every book you write, especially your nonfiction.

You’re a writer, which means you have plenty of specialties. Take a topic you’re qualified to discuss – something you would have fun writing about while guiding your audience toward quality solutions, then publish it in WordPress. Post some of the content for free, then lock down the rest and sell the key.

You could build a niche site with physical products, but being a writer means you’re too smart for that. Selling information isn’t only lucrative, it’s also low-maintenance – no shipping, no handling, and outside the cost of creation, the profit margins are wonderfully high.

Info Products

Creating your own information products can be incredibly profitable. Info products can open doors to opportunity, enhance your authority, and help you reap the best benefits of being a writer.

When you create a product, you become an authority by default. This means the return on your investment doesn’t come from just the products you sell, but also through the attention and monetization that chases authority.

“Creating an information product” may sound hard, but it doesn’t have to be any more difficult than writing a book or a long series of blog posts. Map your process, chunk the project into pieces, then put it all together. Follow the steps below to take knowledge you already have to create an asset that will pay you repeatedly.

Know your market. This is critical regardless of what you’re writing, but the better you know your market, the easier it will be to sell your product.

Do the research. Know your market, so you can clarify its most common needs, concerns, and desperate questions. The more answers you have, the more specific (and profitable) your product can be.

Be specific. Specificity is a shortcut to the sale. People are rarely looking for a one-size-fits-all solution. They want the best possible answer to a specific problem.

Many of the Internet millionaires I know are great writers, who use killer copywriting skills to profit from other people’s products, so you can still earn, even if you don’t have an interest in building your own products.

Affiliates

Even if you have no desire to create your own products, you can still make plenty of money through affiliate marketing, which is an Internet-based marketing practice where businesses pay commissions on sales generated through “affiliate” channels.

Affiliate commissions are typically low for physical products (where the profit margins are usually slimmer), but information is different (and where you want to be). Standard payout for digital downloads is around 50%, but commissions can climb as high as 75%. You could promote a $97 eBook, tutorial, or info product and make almost $50 without creating a product.

Affiliate marketing is like creating mini-marts on the Internet, stocked with the information you consider most valuable. You create a page, then point people toward a product, essentially serving as advertiser with wide margins most mini-marts would kill for.

As with everything you do, conduct yourself with integrity and full disclosure. In the Unites States, the Federal Trade Commission expects you to be honest with your intentions, they’ve even crafted laws to crack down on how bloggers promote products and what they must reveal to readers. Check out the link below to make sure you stay within the law (and be sure to check for updates to the laws as they change).

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm

Being open and honest doesn’t just keep you within the law, it also helps you establish long-lasting bonds with your customers, which is just good business.

Writers have an edge with affiliate marketing since the big money in it involves well-written copy. Emails, articles, tutorials, bonuses, endorsements, sales letters, and reviews all require writing. The sharper the writing, the more profitable it will be. Done well, it’s money in the bank and you never have to do the selling. Your job as an affiliate is to warm your lead, then send them to the sales page.

Be natural. Tell your readers why you think the promoted product or service is a great deal and a good fit for them. When you’re finished with the promotion, you can take your marketing materials and re-purpose them in as many places as you can.

Importance of Re-purposing Content

Every site you build will require fresh content. From the books you write, the products you create, and the marketing materials you use for promotion, learning to effectively re-purpose your content is the single best means of sewing your world together, splitting it apart for your benefit, and making every word you write work as hard as you do.

Even if you wrote for eight hours a day, it wouldn’t be enough to populate every available online channel. Writing copy is an enjoyable, but draining, profession. Do it more than four hours or so a day, and you will quickly find yourself with less to say and a diminished ability to say it.

Which is why you’ll want to re-purpose your content. Do it well, and you can take previously written content, break into pieces, and send it through various social media marketing channels.

I try to re-purpose most things I do. You can split blog posts into multiple tweets or posts for Facebook, take full posts and convert them to text videos, then place them on YouTube and other video sharing sites, or take series you’ve written and use them for email newsletters or special reports. The possibilities are endless.

Unless you’re writing bestsellers, the majority of your money probably won’t come from books sales, as the profit per title is relatively small. Your real money will come from using your book as a lead magnet to draw buyers to your higher-end products and services, as an authority builder to prove you know more than others in your niche. For example, a small percentage of people who buy this book will go on to buy in-depth training to fast track their results (more on that later).

There are two basic ways to shape your old content into new products: Compiling or breaking apart.

How to Re-purpose

Compiling is when you create one product from smaller pieces. For example, you could create an eBook from multiple blog posts or articles you’ve written, or gather fragmented, yet related, content into one unified collection.

Breaking apart is the opposite, splitting one large product into several smaller ones. For example, splitting an existing eBook into a series of blog posts, articles for marketing, or an e-course delivered by an autoresponder.

Compiling and breaking apart require rewriting or tweaking your existing content, but they aren’t the only way to re-purpose. Rather than changing the message, you could simply change the media.

You could create video versions of your eBook as a bonus, up-sell, or alternate versions of your product. It doesn’t have to be complicated – a simple PowerPoint converted to video with a voice-over is enough to get you started.

You could also break videos into bite-sized morsels that give the learner a step-by-step that’s easy to follow. Once you make your videos, you can extract the audio and use it for a podcast, then transcribe the audio, and tweak it for additional content you can use as guest posts or articles.

Another way to repurpose is to change your approach by shifting the emotion or perspective you’re writing from. Take a typical tutorial and turn it into a warm anecdote, turn an informational article into a step-by-step how-to, or a special report into an advanced email course for readers further along in their training.

Keep your base material the same, but expand it to satisfy your audience. Ask yourself, what if I tried it this way? If your eBook is serious, try a humorous approach. If you tried the creative approach with more abstract ideas, try a simple, step-by-step instead.

Tie it all together and you will be shocked how easy it can be to get your work noticed, build your authority, grow your audience, and multiply your income in relatively little time.

Asset Builders Every Digital Writer Should Follow:

Corbett Barr – How to Start A Blog That Matters
Chris Guillebeau – The Art of Non-Conformity
JA Konrath - A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
James Clear – Passive Panda
Tim Ferris – The Four Hour Work Week
Pat Flynn – Smart Passive Income
Maneesh Sethi – Hack the System
Cody Mckibben – Thrilling Heroics
Pam Sim – Escape from Cubicle Nation

Epic Asset Building Posts:

How to Get More Traffic to Your Blog with Corbett Barr – Pat Flynn
The Truth Behind What You Need To Do To Develop True Expert Status – Pam Slim
How to Turn Misfortune into $1000 in 1 Hour – Craig Gonzales
How to Make $30,000 in 30 Days (And Why You Don’t Need a Unique Idea to Do It) – Benny Hsu
How to Get 283 Free Business Leads Every Month, Rank #1 in Google, and Get 91% More Traffic to Your Website – James Clear

Of course, this EPIC Post would not have been possible without the awesome book, , “The Digital Writer’s Guide to Building Assets (You Are Your Best Client).”

Please share this EPIC Post on Twitter, Facebook and any other social media outlets where your audience will benefit.

Enter your best email address in the box below, absorb the free content once a week, then take action on what you learn. You will be a more successful writer.

Until next week!
I did it. So can you.

P.S. If there is an asset builder you feel every digital writer should follow, or a post on social media that should be included in this post, please add it to the comments and I will look into it as soon as I can. If you have a question or comment, please leave it below and I promise to answer within 24 hours.

P.P.S If you would like to get social with The Digital Writer, please do so at any or all of the following sites:
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• Sean M. Platt
• May 7, 2012
• Publishing