Jeff Smith I think you’ll agree, we all secretly want to have our own book or e-book. In today’s society, having your own book means prestige, added income, and appeal that makes getting the nicer things in life that much simpler. You may think that writing a book is well beyond your capability, even though you have dreampt about seeing your name in print in the past Imagine overseeing large orders being filled as your market races to place new orders for your highly successful book. Perhaps you are looking to escape your suffocating job by quickly building another source of income? It could be that you already have a great career, but really want to move up within your organization or business, and for that, you need to do something different to set yourself aside from the crowd. Maybe you already sell products or operate your own business or operate a profession such as a lawyer, chiropractor, real estate agent or accountant – writing a book will become your tool to generate leads and a buzz around your business. Get the idea, here are 7 reasons for you to write a book right now. 1. Generate revenue. Regardless of whether you take the traditional publishing route or choose to self-publish your own book – you can earn extra income, sometimes SUBSTANTIAL extra income by marketing your own books.
2.
Lead Generation. If you operate your own business or rely on leads converting into sales for your living, then writing your own book can make a fantastic difference to your take home pay. 3. Branding. As your market gets more cluttered, getting your message out becomes tougher and tougher. Launching your own books, e-books, courses, or reports is a terrific way to build up your perception in the marketplace. 4. Seting A Solid Foundation. Everyone who operates their own business knows that marketing your own products gives you more control, more leverage and more profit in the end. Information-based products such as books, e-books, and reports set your foundation for a real, high-value business. 5. Massive Publicity. Some of the biggest names in the world understand the power that writing a book can give you in terms of publicity. Books not only allow for reviews, exposure, opinions, interviews and other formal publicity, they also can be the launchpad for a social networking, word-of-mouth campaign that can truly become viral saving you hundreds of thousands on publicity. 6. Highly profitable. In the case of self-publishing, publishing digital e-books, downloadable information products, 95% of the price is retained in profits which goes directly to you. A terrific no-charge, e-book writing formula is available here: http://www.
infoproductcreator.
com/ebook/ 7. Attract Positive Activity. Its difficult to explain, but when you have your own book e-book, report or course available to the public – it can take on a life of its own attracting experts, partnerships, synergies, co-marketing offers beyond anything you may have considered. It suprises me how most people underestimate the power that writing your own book can bring to their lives. What’s more, it is astonishingly simple and fast to put together your own book, e-book, report or course to market to your audience. Thousands have succeeded in writing their own self-published book in as little as a few weeks when they understand the basics of what their market wants and how to outline and organize their writing – and even more amazing….the ones who succeed the most are those that have the least writing experience. If you are looking for a highly profitable alternative revenue stream, a home-run hitting marketing tool and publicity tool, or just would like to finally live your dream of seeing your name in print – then its time to break through the untruths and get working on writing your own book.
Are you using procedures in your business? If not, you need to get to work. But first, let me make sure your understanding of a procedure is the same as mine. A procedure should always be written down in recorded some way or another. On paper, or in a video, as long as it exists somewhere besides in your head. It should be in a step-by-step like guide so it can be accomplished by anyone whether that be your employees or the future owner of your company. If you don’t think that your business can run on procedures or making procedures is a waste of time, think again. Any task you do on your business can be made very easily into a procedure.
Even writing a press release, article, or e-mailing a client needs to be turned into a procedure. Not only is turning that task into a procedure beneficial to others, if you continue to follow the same procedure in your business, you’ll gradually notice everything getting a little bit easier. One benefit to following your own procedures is that you won’t accidentally forget an important step. Another benefit is that you’ll be able to have a better look at each step you are doing, and you might even be able to weed out any unnecessary steps and eliminate wasted time. Do yourself a favor and train yourself to spot areas where time is leaking. If the fax takes too long, maybe step X should require an e-mail? Improving and making modification to procedures is just as important as having them. Once they are the structure of your business, changing the procedures is making a change to your business. Here’s an example of a process I’ve used in my business: 1. Record video product 2. Purchase domain 3. Purchase hosting 4. Upload product to website 5. Write sales page 6. Set up payment processor I made some changes to get reduce time, and not effect sales: 1. Make video recording 2. Add video to CD 3. Add video to the disk manufacturing service 4. Provide product link to possible customers Those procedures are for two different types of products in my business. The first is for downloadable products, the second is for physical products. I learned that if I eliminated the first procedure, using only the second, I saved X amount of time (a lot of time) and made sure it didn’t have a negative impact on my sales (It didn’t). Most of the top businesses in the world are run using procedures. As a matter of fact, I can’t think of a major business that doesn’t use them. So, it’s now time for you to get started! Imagine if you sell you business down the road. Do you think you’ll get a better offer if you have a nice binder full of every single procedure that your business runs on? Of course you would! Make a few procedures for your business.
Train your workers and team to follow them. Better yet, have them brainstorm ways for improving those procedures. Down the road when your business is automated with procedures, you can take a hike from your business for a while.
Look! You are going to steal any timeshare you buy on the resale market anyway. The resale market is just starting to come into it’s own. Prices fall in a market vacuum and there has been a market vacuum in resales since the timeshare industry started twenty-five years ago. Now, people such as us are starting to make a serious business of resales. This means that the least expensive weeks are going to get sold first. Like harvesting apples, you shake the tree and pick up the apples. The next time you have to shake the tree harder.
The long-term prognosis is that resale timeshares will increase in price.
I believe that anyone buying a resale in today’s market just isn’t going to get hurt unless they are entirely unknowledgeable about current market value or they are not looking for good product. At these prices, buy the best! It’s affordable. So how do you find out what you should pay for a given property? This publication is certainly a good start, but not everyone advertising has a realistic idea of what their property is worth. The Internet also lists weeks for sale, but it is still young, therefore imperfect. The resort itself should yield some information and is always worth a call. Although it sounds self-serving, the best bet is to call a Real Estate Broker if one is involved with that property. Normally, people in general real estate are simply not yet knowledgeable about timeshares. Seek out a broker specializing in what you want. They are going to want to make a deal and will tell you what you will actually be able to purchase at the lowest price. They will also give you accurate detailed information about the resort itself. Further, a good broker will counsel you about your needs and try to direct you to the product, which will actually end up best serving you. They are not emotionally tied to any specific week or project. They know that if they do a good job for you, you will refer others to them and return for more yourself. The most important criteria is to buy into the project you like the best.
If you are buying just to exchange, this is still important. If you think you can buy a cheap February week in Hog’s Breath, Idaho and exchange it for the Whaler at Maui over Christmas, think again. It might happen once every 50 or 60 years, but generally you are not going to get great exchanges using an unexciting week to trade. It seems almost redundant to say, «Buy Quality!» but it needs to be said here… particularly at these prices. You can buy quality resort timeshares today for 20% to 30% of replacement value! Why would you not go for the best? Another thing just coming into the business is resale financing. We offer 80% four year loans to our customers so immediate cash requirements should not be a big problem. All we require is good credit and a good resort with the timeshare being purchased at a realistic resale price. After you have selected your week and have obtained a good price, there are still a few things you should do for your own protection: Get a policy of title insurance unless you know the history of the timeshare week. Sometimes people get a «great deal» only to find that there is a tax lien of several times the entire value attached to the week. In others, the original loan was never satisfied. The Seller might have paid it, but they never received a reconveyance. The great Savings and Loan debacle was famous for this. By the time the loan was paid, the SL was no longer around and there was no one to sign the reconveyance. Some resale brokers do not bother with this. Our advice is that if they do not, don’t bother with them. In some cases, the title policy is so expensive relative to the price, it just doesn’t make sense to buy it. If that is the case, you should still research the title to make sure there are no visible defects. Go through an escrow. Unless you are buying from someone you know, (and not often even then) you will be better off having the neutral third party holding the funds and deed until it is time to make the swap. In the east, attorneys perform this function. The Seller is required by law to disclose anything wrong with the property, but how many know that? Further, what guarantee do you have that the Seller even knows that something might be wrong? Your best bet to protect yourself is still the Broker.
Get references. Check with the usual agencies including the Real Estate Department to make sure that the Broker has a license. The resort itself might be able to refer someone who has had no problems. Title companies are also a good reference. Have you picked up a trend here? Notice that as the industry matures, resales will start to look more like resales in the regular housing market. A fledgling resale marketing system will mature, develop good standards and the boomers will leave. As that continues, price of resales will start to stabilize at higher levels. The timeshare product is incredible. It really enhances people’s lives and saves them a fortune on truly splendid vacations. As more understand this, more will purchase. The truly smart ones will purchase a resale through a licensed Broker just as you would a house. They will have many years of enjoyment and eventually probably get their investment (or at least most of it) back.
Introduction: This is a series of articles about marketing and advertising. There are different ways you can reach an audience of millions of individuals all around the world. I show you on this series how to implement profitable strategies in your marketing career. It has been said that “what matters is not what you sell but how you promote it.” So, the secret to success lays within your marketing techniques. That’s why it is very important for business owners to develop skills which allow them to increase the sales of their products. One of the most important skills you must have is the ability to reach a lot of people quickly. To do this you need to realize how powerful media is an how it can drastically increase your revenues. – Good content – One of the simplest yet most overlooked methods to advertise to millions in the Internet is just content itself.
Whether you own an e-zine, blog, newsletter, or web site, what really matters is what you offer your visitors once they get there. What motivates them to browse through your pages and keep coming back for more? No matter how effective can your marketing strategies be, if your potential clients do not receive anything valuable to them once they get to your pages, then they will leave and go somewhere else. So, whatever you do, make sure you never bore your visitors. Make their experience as pleasurable, unique, and joyous as you can, so they keep coming back and reading your ads, then eventually after a few visits they will start buying from you. Most successful web masters offer a lot of free valuable content on their web sites. Surfers find their sites looking for free information, but they see the ads and many of them buy the products. Think about it, content is anything that could be valuable to your prospects. It can be images, sound, music, information, orientations, reviews, etc. You don’t have to give away your best pearls for free, but by providing good, free content to others you cannot imagine how much your exposure will increase Online as well as Offline. Furthermore you will get word of mouth advertising which in my opinion is the most effective of all. Then where do you get that excellent content which could bring you lots of potential buyers every day? Well, there are many things you can do. For example you can borrow some articles from article banks as described on other articles of this series. It is free, easy and will improve the quality of your pages, newsletters, etc. If you check the www.bravenet.com website you will notice they offer many tools for web masters and Internet marketers which could be of your interest. One of the best ones they have there, is the possibility for you to set up your own customizable forum on your website.
To have your own discussion group is wonderful because your visitors keep coming back to check if someone else have posted a reply to their messages. That keeps an interactive community withing your site to which you can advertise to regularly. They may also read other reviews or articles that you may include on your pages which can lead them to specific products or more direct advertisement. Search engines like forums too, because forums provide fresh valuable content to surfers on a daily basis. So, Bravenet web master tools can help increase the quality of your pages and your exposure on the Internet. Remember, give your visitors good free content and they will keep coming back. They will also tell their friends about you and link to your pages so you will receive free advertisement.
As you can see, this technique can increase your exposure and help you get more clients.
You can read about other effective marketing techniques from my other articles on this series. EasyWebRiches © 2006
