This post, by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, originally appeared on Copyblogger on 12/5/13.
Most independent authors and content creators aren’t thinking in terms of building product funnels when they write their books and stories.
That is a mistake.
Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, smart writers who know how to build their catalog around funnels will always make more money directly with their words than writers who publish their work using the old “hope and pray” business plan.
Here’s how you do it.
Be a smarter publisher
We wrote for our own sites and blogs like Copyblogger for years — about business, entrepreneurship, marketing, you name it. But we both made a major shift during 2012 and 2013, and we spent the last year writing and publishing 1.5 million words of fiction through our company Realm & Sands.
In the two years since Copyblogger ran this post about serialized fiction, Sean has also published another two million words at his other company, Collective Inkwell, with David Wright.
But none of those millions of words were left to sell based on chance.
We wanted to make our full-time livings as authors — and since have — so we opted for something more certain.
Our words are our art, yes. But once those words are scrubbed in the editing process, they became products for sale. And what do smart marketers do with products? Well, if they want to sell any of those products, they arrange them into funnels.
Each week, we host the Self Publishing Podcast. In a year and a half of our show, the most frequently visited topic is how to build funnels.
Why?
Because applying proven marketing principles to independent authorship is how successful indie publishers turn a “luck of the draw” marketplace into a sound enterprise with a stable income source.
In our opinion, putting your work into product funnels is the very best (and most important) thing an author can do to increase sales … assuming you’ve created an excellent and professional-looking family of products.
Ready to sell some books? Well then, let’s take a look at “Funnels 101,” starting with exactly what they are and why you should care.
What is a funnel and why does it matter?
Click here to read the rest of the post on Copyblogger.