Power of Daily Journaling – My First eBook Republished

by | Personal Development, Self-Publish

The very first book I self-published on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) was The Power of Daily Journaling.  That was three years ago.  I just republished it.   One of the things I learned from my mentor was that when a book is selling well, add more value for your readers.  If the book is a skinny, beef it up a bit.  I did.   Doubled the content with more real life stories and thought provoking insight.

Its trending well. I’m keeping my fingers crossed but more importantly I’m really excited to see what affect some of the new tactics I applied will have on this book. I kept track of everything.

But first a bit of background.

Three years ago I bought a course on how to publish eBooks on Amazon.  For most of my life I flirted with writing but never took it seriously.  Writers are notoriously grouped in the “starving artist” category and the notion of becoming a starving artist had zero appeal to me.

One evening at a Meetup my ears perked up, my brain became a sponge as I listened with intense interest to our keynote speaker that evening. He was a successful internet marketer, pulling in a cool 60K/month and growing.

Impressed?  You bet I was!  But not for the reason you might think.  While 60K/month isn’t exactly chump change, our roster of previous speakers laid boast to the fact that there were plenty of dudes in that bracket.

So no big deal.

But what was a big deal was another number he threw out, one that was significantly smaller, a mere $10,000 royalty payments he received monthly from Amazon.  He went on to explain that the springboard to his big bucks was a small publishing business he started a few years back publishing eBooks on Amazon, and from there he spun out other complimentary businesses.

Granted 10K isn’t what legends are made of, but at 10K one did not need to live the life of a starving artist.  One could live reasonably well.  It wasn’t the 60K that interested me, it was the 10.  Hah!  I could write and eat too!

The short of the long of it I bought his course.  Diligently followed every step of it.  Wrote the Power of Daily Journaling, some 4000 words of it.  The objective was to publish a short book and at 4000 words it qualified.

I continued to polish those 4000 words over and over and over.

The book was ready but I wanted to make it better.  It was ready for the press.  Who was I kidding?  All this polishing was procrastination, pure and simple.   It was just a stalling tactic!

Truth was I was afraid.

Afraid that no one would see it.
Afraid that if they saw it they would not buy it.
Afraid that if they did buy it they would not read it.
Afraid of the ultimate rejection that they would return it for a refund.
But my worst fear of all was that someone would buy the book,  actually read it and post a negative review.

Mike Litman’s words rang clearly “You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going”

So I mustered all the courage I could, logged into my KDP account, and tremulously pressed the PUBLISH button.

Surprise of all surprises!

People found the book.

People bought the book.

Some even liked it and posted nice reviews.

My new small business was short lived.  After publishing six books within a year, I turned my attention back to running my digital media marketing business.  I put those six books on the set-it-and-forget-it shelf.

And then a funny thing happened.  Every month on or about the 29th, Amazon makes royalty deposits straight to my bank from every country that my books sold in.  A while back I logged into my bank account on the 29th and yup, there they were, four royalty deposits from the four countries in which my books sold.

Residual income!

That is an author’s holy grail.

The penny dropped.  My entrepreneur self kicked in.  It was time to revisit the self-publishing industry.  I reached out to some of my former colleagues.  Connected with new ones.  I found that there was a lot more than just pressing the publish button on Amazon.  There were so many more things I could do to revitalize my small publishing business and increase the cash flow.   The obvious was write more books.   The not so obvious was to take one of my existing books, beef it up with additional content, create a new cover, fine tune the title and republish.

That is the wonderful thing about writing and publishing eBooks. It’s so easy to improve on an existing book and republish.

I chose my first and best selling eBook: Power of Daily Journaling.   Immediate steps I took:

  1. Changed the title from:  Power of Daily Journaling 101
    to:  Power of Daily Journaling
  2. Shortened the subtitle from: Keeping a Daily Journal Will Help You Uncover Your Authentic Self, Unleash Your Hidden Potential and Live Your Life with Abundance and Prosperity
    to: Uncover Your Authentic Self, Unleash Your Hidden Potential and Live Your Life with Abundance and Prosperity.
  3. Beefed up the content from 4000 words to almost 18,000.
  4. Redesigned the cover

And just like that, the book was republished.These were the immediate steps.

There are others.  I will keep track of each step and share the results with you.  I will keep polishing and maximizing marketing strategies for this book, and the others that I have, I will also write and publish more books.

Glad to report that sales of Power of Daily Journaling have doubled and trending well.

Power of Daily Journaliing
CLICK HERE FOR YOUR COPY

 

Valentina

 

Goals, Projects and Time

by | Personal Development

Happy New Year!

Love things new especially when it signals new beginnings!

Over the weekend I watched the world welcome 2017!  City after city, country after country.  Fireworks and celebrations everywhere.  Joy at wiping clean the slate of yesterday and fresh one to begin with.  I was especially drawn to the New Year’s Eve in New York.  It is both magnetic and historic.  How could I miss watching it?

Every new year is a new beginning and holds a promise to bring us new opportunities … personal opportunities to grow, social opportunities to enjoy, opportunities to expand in all areas of our life.

In business and careers we anticipate that opportunities will show up between the 1201 a.m. January  and 11.59 pm December of any year.  Opportunities to scale up, opportunities for a startup,  and … opportunities of which we have no idea about as yet.  It’s all about the future and we have no control over that.

True.

But we can make plans for the year.  The people who were at Times Square counting down the clock to the new year planned to be there.

“Hundreds of thousands of merrymakers witnessed the descent of the kaleidoscopic New Year’s Eve ball in Times Square at midnight on Sunday, celebrating a century-old New York tradition … many from overseas…” Frank McGurty, New York

Millions more around the world tuned in online and watched this iconic event that takes a mere 60 seconds.  In what seems like a mere blink of an eye since the ball dropped, 604,800 seconds have flown by as  of this writing.

Trite as it is, time does indeed fly and while it is true that we have no control over the future, we can and should set goals, make plans to reach those goals and schedule actionable tasks that consistently take us closer to reaching those goals.

In December I reviewed the year in passing and set goals for the one approaching; took note of what worked, what did not work, what to do more of, what to ditch and what new beginnings to introduce.

This of course is not original.  Indeed it is one of the hallmarks of  successful companies and people.  In my own way I like to plan for success too.    I thought today would be a good time as any to share my strategies to reach the end goal.  Hope you find them interesting but more importantly, useful and something that you would be able to apply to your own coming 365.

In the Rear View Mirror: Where I Make My Living

My bread and butter is my digital media marketing agency.  It is where I spend most of my time. From the time I first entered the internet in 2006 with a blog to now, I have grown a boutique digital media marketing agency offering a potpourri of online services ranging from web development, video production and marketing, social media, inbound marketing and more.  I learned from the masters, Rich Schefren, Dan Kennedy, Frank Kern and many more.  The mainstay of my success is the integration of old school experience with new online disciplines.  Typically I work with SMB owners, professionals and solopreneurs who want to ante up their game.  This is where I spent most of my business hours last year and in the years before.

A Not So Shiny Object

A few years ago in between running my digital media marketing agency,  I returned to my love for writing, published several books and then shelved the  project when the platform I used for publishing made a major change in their system and my royalties took a dive.  I refocused on my agency.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum.  Even after totally neglecting my books, every month like clockwork, I continue to receive royalty deposits in my bank account.  One day, as I was logged into my bank, there it was again … four deposits from four countries where my books had sold. I wrote about this episode in On Becoming an Accidental Publisher

That’s when the penny literally dropped.  My entrepreneurial-self kicked in.  This was residual income!  The holy grail of all entrepreneurs.  I decided to look further into the world of publishing and found that my short foray into this world had not even begun to scratch the surface.

I registered for several courses … each building on the other and put in play that which I learned with a small group of pre-beta clients.  Good results.

Once again I felt excitement when working on this new project.  I loved it when my students were making progress.   What time I did not spend on my agency, I spent here.

It took me a while to decide on the exact direction to take, on topic and niche for my business, and on the domain – I switched a few times but in the end decided on iPublishbooks.com

Into the Future

Simplification

In the past I would draw up a laundry list of things that I wanted to accomplish in that year. It was a tossed salad with no thought to the final outcome.  Just keep adding ingredients.  It will all be good in the end.

The end result was always a good number of outstandings that I carried over into the following year.  When reviewing 2016 I found that once again, there were items left outstanding.  I took a close look and asked myself exactly what did these items support?  What I found was that indeed I had concocted a salad of a sort.  It was a good salad.

There were things that got done, and they were important, but I missed the mark for the ultimate year end goal. In spite of my detailed plan for the year, I noticed that while much got done, just as much did not.  Carry over just did not make sense to me.  I envisioned myself at the end of 2q017,  sitting in the same chair looking at the same view.

This year I decided on a slightly different tack.  Dug deep into my past and my digital library.  One of my mentors created a system he call the Octosuite.  In short the Ultimate Year End Goal telescoped into quarters, magnified to the current month, laser focus on every week and day. Prioritize and segment.   I thought I’d try it.

The Ultimate 2017 Goal

I made mine financial.  Unapologetically I believe that money does matter, not for the sake of money itself, but because it does make for an easier and more enjoyable life.  Financial success reduces stress and by default enables us to provide for ourselves and our families. Statistics show that the number one cause for divorce is the friction caused by lack of money.

Money of and by itself is neutral.  Managed wisely it can provide for a healthy lifestyle now and in retirement.  And by the way, I’m perfectly OK with a bit of self indulgence … a treat or two is good for the soul and for your body too!

My Ultimate Long Term Goal is to live a life of freedom, prosperity and abundance while positively impacting the lives of thousands of people.

For my Ultimate 2017 Goal I simply replaced the bold print in the above paragraph with a dollar amount.

Three projects drive that end goal:

– my digital media agency
– iPublish Books and
– personal

Each project has an end goal that needs to be achieved in order to reach the Ultimate Current Year End Goal

Each end goal has a list of of actionable strategies and tasks that can be accomplished in a short periods of time, review, correct, continue.

All projects will be based on a quarterly basis.  The concept is based on speed of action which accelerates positive results at each quarter.  Both the digital media agency and the personal goals are private, iPublish Books Project goals and  actions will be shared in greater detail on this blog.  Register here if you would like to be kept updated.

 

YES VALENTINA! SEND ME THE UPDATES!

To a joyful, healthy and wealthy 2017 and beyond!

Valentina 

 

 

On Becoming an Accidental Publisher

by | Personal Development, Self-Publish

iPublish Books is one of those businesses that was conceived accidentally.  My bread and butter is earned in the digital media marketing space working with small, mid-size business owners and solo professionals.

A few years ago I was at a local Meetup.  Our guest speaker was a young entrepreneur.  Not yet 30, he was raking in big bucks in the business of publishing ebooks and was fast approaching the magical 7 figure income.

I should mention at this point that not all his income came in from royalties on the books he published, although at $10K+ per month it wasn’t exactly chump change either.

His publishing business was the catalyst for several other business models that shared the same touch points he wrote about.  He expanded his reach and spun off businesses in both vertical and horizontal markets.

He had my attention.

I was galvanized by the notion that within a relatively short period of time he had managed to create a six-figure residual income from his books alone.

“Why not?”

Said the little voice in my deep seated conscience as I pulled out my plastic and bought his course.

Using a nom de plume I quickly polished off six short nonfictions and published them on Amazon.  Three of those books in particular did rather well.  I also published a few books for another author in a different genre.

I learned a lot.  It was easy.  It was simple.  It was fun.

Royalties appeared like magic in my back account at the end of every month.

As often happens things changed in the digital publishing world, notably so in the publishing and distribution platform where I sold my books.

My royalties dropped.

The honeymoon was over.

Writing was very much a part time effort for me. I had a business to run so turned my attention back to that which was filling my fridge and cupboards with groceries and providing me with warmth in my home and clothes on my back.

Several years have flown by since I decided to shelve my short lived writing career.  Yet month after month, regular as clockwork, royalties, albeit significantly reduced from their heyday, are automatically deposited into my bank.

Residual income!  That is the most desirable of all types of incomes.  It’s so powerful.

One evening as I logged into my bank account, there it was again.  Four deposits from four countries where my books had sold.

My entrepreneurial-self kicked in. The penny dropped.  Literally. And I asked myself:

What if I actually worked at this?

What if I made it a business?

What if I shared my experiences with others who may be on the same journey?

What if I actually marketed my books?

What if actually published more books … my own and those of others?

Back I went to see what was happening in the publishing world.  Reconnected with some of my colleagues and reached out to others in publishing.  Looked at different models and platforms, distribution channels, and more.

Dang!  I had only scratched the surface of publishing!

Writing still coursed in my veins. The more I thought about it, the more I experienced a churn in my stomach that took me to that moment when, at a reunion, a classmate recounted how for a long time she would look for my name in magazines as a contributing journalist or, that at the very least I should have written a book or two by now.  “What happened”  she asked.

What happened indeed!   I wrote about that moment in my blog My Story Writing Come Back to Me

A gauntlet had been thrown my way again.

I picked it up.

As of this writing, I have helped one of my students write and create a book which will soon be self-published. I have the privilege of co-authoring a book, soon to be self-published as well; and most importantly I will be dusting off those old books, updating them and applying new strategic marketing practices that I’ll be sharing with you here.

It is true.  No blood flows through my veins, only ink.

Valentina 

You Don’t Have to Get it Right, You Just Have to Get it Going

by | Entrepreneur, Personal Development

“You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going” Mike Litman, Conversations with Millionaires.

Mike Litman was my first internet marketing mentor. Under his guidance I launched my first internet business – a blog about dogs.  The image above is a screenshot of the header image and an excerpt I picked up on the internet.

I liked Mike’s story.  As a teenager he and a buddy, Jason Oman, set up a local radio station and broadcast live interviews with millionaires. The show did not last but now Mike and Jason had those recorded interviews.   Years later they transcribed them and published Conversations with Millionaires which became a New York Times best seller.

The rabbit trail between my reading that book and my buying an online course from Mike is somewhat sketchy … it was some ten years ago. At the time I was looking at a way to market a consumer direct business.  I had achieved a major benchmark and was looking for ways to advance to a higher level.  The internet seemed like a good place.

I began by downloading all kinds of free info on how to create an internet business.  My idea was to digest all the info, create a system and market the opportunity or product.  Several things happened.

One:  I became a freebie information junkie.  I swear to this day that I have the largest virtual library of free content. There are others who lay claim to that fame too.  But, smart as I thought I was, I wasn’t smart enough to come up with a system that generated leads or cash for me.

Two:  What I did though was start a blog.  That initial step connected me to other bloggers.  We learned from each other and I began to make some money with Google’s Adsense.  It wasn’t a lot of money, but enough to get me hooked on internet marketing.

Three: Somehow I got on Mike Litman’s list and received an email from him.  He had a course that would teach me how to create an online business and would help me set up an online store. I jumped at the chance.  The short of the long of it was that I had a website that sold natural doggie treats that were baked by someone in Indiana and were shipped to visitors that came to my site and bought the treats. It took me months before I had all the bells and whistles in place.  I was often frustrated, discouraged even.  I just could not seem to get it right. And to this day I will never forget Mike Litman’s reply:

“You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.”

One day I was ready to throw in the towel and ditch this internet thing.  But something inside of me stopped me.   Something urged me  to give it one more chance.

I gave up trying to get it right, I just got going.

The site was Sit Booboo Sit. I put up a blog on the site. Boo Barkley became the editor.  I created an online dog personality based on my own dog and wrote in the voice of a dog.  The blogs were about dog products, toys and services.  Boo wrote about visits to the dog spa, the groomer, doggie boutiques, and even about the road trips he went on with his “mommie.”  Every blog had a review of the places “we” visited, gave tips on how to choose toys for your dog, what to look for when buying pet health insurance and more.

Traffic began to grow. Boo opened a Barkery and began selling healthy doggie treats made with natural ingredients. I found a woman in Indiana who was baking these treats for her own bricks and mortar store and began to sell them online. We struck a deal. Within a week we had our first online purchase from someone in New York.  Two pounds of our signature treat.  Two weeks later a reorder, this time for more.  Little by little we gained more customers.  Customers paid me, I paid my Indiana connection and the treats were drop shipped directly to the customer’s door.

How good was that?  All I had to do was market.

The business never became a blockbuster.  My own dog, Darby, went to doggie heaven.  Writing in the voice of my dog became painful and I just lost the motivation.  I shut the fledgling online enterprise down. It was fun while it lasted. I got a taste of online success. I learned that indeed, you don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.

That has been my mantra as I continued to navigate my way on the internet to where I am now an owner of a boutique digital media marketing agency. It’s a different online business model. Months back I set to thinking about Boo Barkley, about all the online knowledge and experience I have collected over the last ten years.  I thought it time to start another online business, teaching people how they can create their own digital business built around their knowledge, experiences and expertise. It was time to create a course.

To get this off the ground properly, I bought a course … yes, I am now a firm believer that if you want to start something the best way is to buy a course that guides you through the process.

My mentor, Yaro Starak suggested that I create such a course with actual, live, students and create a pre-beta course.  Three of my clients jumped on board.   What a learning curve!  You know, I didn’t learn anything that I did not know, but knowing and doing are two different things.  Lots of blood, sweat and tears and now I had a responsibility to my students who paid me good money so as to be able to work one on one with me.  They knew that the process was one where it was a win win and good naturedly christened themselves the genius pigs!

Each student was in a different field but all three agreed that they wanted to publish a book or two about their specialties.  As a published author with Amazon I was on familiar ground, in an area I loved.  And that is how, iPublish Books got started.

The bridge between Sit Boo Boo Sit and iPublish Books spans many years, years of experience and knowledge gained.  The site is up, It’s not quite right, but I got it going and,  … and yes, there is a course in the works!  Stay tuned.

In the meantime, hop on over to my FaceBook Page

Writefully Yours

Valentina

PS… The image above this blog is one I cut and pasted together for this post.   The header with the dog was designed for my website by a member Mike Litman’s team.  The text below I found online in the WayBack Machine.  I put the two together to create the image.  As you can see I am not a graphic designer and the outcome is a testament that I still adhere to “You don’t have to get get it right, you just have to get it going.

 

Three Forks in the Road

by | Personal Development

My Story Part II: The Three YESSES

Someone once told me that between the ages of 18 and 21, there are three times that you say YES or NO to something that set the wheels in motion that run the little engine that could called your life.  As far as I know there is no evidence to support this – no psychology studies, no neurology thesis, nothing.

But the very idea that three YESSES or NOs between the ages of 18 and 21 is an interesting talking point in small group conversations.  It’s a game that I’ve played many times with friends. Inevitably everyone comes up with three threshold moments in their life when they chose YES or NO and that decision  set them on the journey of their life.

Some have NOs, some have YESSE, and others have both. I have YESSES.

My three YESSES

    1. YES to a position in business
    2. YES to a dinner invitation
    3. YES to immigration

YES to Business World
In my last post I wrote about my “writing.”  I know that I could have parlayed my way into a full time position writing for the Daily Mainichi paper, but I was offered an entry level secretarial job with a major shipping company, the pay dwarfed anything that I could have earned as an apprentice working for a newspaper and there was a certain cache working for a major foreign company. I was 18.  Boy!  Could I strut my stuff! Of course, I took it. What 18 year old wouldn’t?

YES to Dinner Invitation
An invitation to a dinner introduced me to a group of Canadians.  As is so often the case at such dinners, mostly made up of expats, people are encouraged to talk about who they are, where they are from, and what they do.  Of course if everyone already knows each other, this is skipped.  At that dinner I was the only unknown.  Attention and friendly questions were asked. This was the first time they had actually met someone who was a “man without a country.”

A little bit of backtracking here.  I was born in Japan of Russian parents.   You could say that my real story began in 1917, when the Tsar of Russia lost his country and his life.  My grandparents too lost their country but escaped with their lives as they boarded rolling stock that took them to the Far East, first to China and eventually to Japan.  Officially we had no country.  Japan does not grant citizenship to other than the Japanese.  We were Stateless.

The Canadians at the dinner were aghast … why, Canada would be happy to welcome me as an immigrant and I could even become a woman with a country, I could become a Canadian citizen.   But of course!

YES to Immigration
The next day I schlepped on over to the Canadian Embassy, picked up immigration papers and within the week sent in my application.  Ta Da!  A year later I arrived in Vancouver as an immigrant.  Being stateless I had no country passport to travel with.  The Red Cross issued me a passport so I could travel.  On arrival in Vancouver I produced my Red Cross passport and showed it to the immigration officer.  He welcomed me to Canada and wished me well.    Five years later I became a Canadian citizen.  As soon as I could, I got my Canadian passport.  At last, a woman with a country.  Good or good?

So, how about if we play the game?  What were your three YESSES between the ages of 18 and 21 that put you on the rolling stock that became your life to date?  Today I would change the age span, as I find that young people are not quick to make major decisions early on in life, many “wander” around for years before finding their groove.  So how about if we make that from age 18 to 25.  What are the  three times when you said YES or NO (or combo) that were pivotal to your life so far?

My Story: Writing Come Back to Me!

by | Personal Development

For as long as I can remember writing was in my blood. In school I was the child that made extra effort to create longer sentences, descriptive paragraphs and learned how to tie it all up with a nice bow as an essay.  Gold stars stickered my homework assignments.  How I loved those gold stars!

I began to submit my little essays to children’s magazines.  They were published.

Encouraged by my success, I tucked a few of those magazines under arm, took the train to the Big City, walked in to the offices of one of the major daily English Newspapers, asked to see the editor and guess what?  I did! 

It just never occurred to me that that just does not happen.  I did not think there was anything extraordinary about that. Nor did I think it extraordinary that at age 16 I was given the chance to write a weekly column on the comings and goings of the expat community I lived in – Yokohama.  Yes, I was born in and living in Japan and that was a long time ago. 

While my classmates made pocket money babysitting or tutoring I scribbled on the comings and goings of their parents, the local country club and visitors who came from far away.  I was paid by the columnar inch and you can bet your bottom dollar, my sentences were as long as I could make them.  The editor, Mr. Shibata, the man who hired me and was now my boss always printed the full meal deal. Payment was in cash, stuffed into an ordinary envelope and delivered by the local mailman straight into the mailbox at my home.

Long before it became trendy and fashionable to “do what you love” and get paid for it, I was doing that. Life was good even if it meant that some mornings I was up at 4.00 a.m. to write the column, fold the typed pages, stuff them into an envelope, address it to Mr. Shibata at the Mainichi Daily News in Tokyo and leave it for my mother to mail that day while I was in school.  Yes!  Can you believe it?  Snail mail … and yet it always got delivered in time for the column to appear on time.

Many, many years later, at a class reunion the bunch of us were chatting over the good times, the teachers, the school in general and where in our lives we were on that day.  Suddenly, one of my classmates looked me in the eye and said “Valentina, for so long every time I picked up a magazine I would look for your name.  I had images of you travelling or living on some exotic island writing, I thought that by now you would have been a famous journalist or written a book or two.  What happened?”

What happened indeed.

Instantly I was struck with one those moments when the world stops.  Suddenly my subconscious regurgitated years of forgotten dreams and that seminal moment when I stood at that proverbial fork in the road and chose the road well-travelled.   

We laughed, but later that night I returned to that conversation.  The question that loomed in my own mind was did I squander my natural gift?  I rationalized that hey yes!  I could write.  But I wrote in English where few spoke the language, in an environment with a friendly entry level, that my talent fell far short of that of the journalists I admired and read, that I could never write like that. 

By now I was a success in a different realm, the business world.  So what was the big deal?

The big deal was that eventually I found myself at yet another fork in the road.  This time I took the road less travelled which has brought me to where I am today.  Now I write and I publish … and more.

If you’re still with me at this point, perhaps my story resonates with you.   Are you an author?  A publisher?  Or on reflection, did you too take the tried and true path at that juncture of life and now once again find yourself at another?   Join me on these pages as I take you on my new journey … the one taken on the road less travelled.  Perhaps you too have a story that you would like to share?