Tag: Funnel builder

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Five Steps to Creating an Amazon Kindle eBooks Business

Kindle publishing has the potential to create a six-figure or more business. With Kindle Direct Publishing, any writer can now publish their books, grow their audience without an established publisher, and still generate large profits. In fact, Amazon allows writers to create the stories they want and keep control of their products. Making Kindle Direct Publishing a powerful business model to choose if you are a writer or desire to become one.

 

These five steps will help you to create and run a profitable Amazon Kindle eBook business.

 

Step One: Find Your Amazon Kindle Books Category or Niche

Research through the top sellers in the Kindle store to see which genre inspires you the most. These genres let you know what products are in demand. While you want to create your own story, you still need to find and develop one people search for on Amazon to build a profitable business. Even if you author a terrific book, you won’t have a great time selling it if people are not interested in the genre.

Step Two: Create an Amazon Seller Account

To sell your books on Amazon, you must own and pay for an Amazon Seller Account. This costs about $39.99 a month plus any royalty fees, depending on the size of your book. For example, if you price your book below $2.99 and above $9.99, you will be charged a 30% royalty fee for using Amazon’s services.

 

Step Three: Develop Eye-Catching Book Covers

The first thing readers see is your book cover and title, so make it eye-catching. Your readers should get a basic understanding of what genre they will read just by looking at the cover. For example, a romantic novel will have a couple cuddling, while a beginner’s guide to cooking will want to have food and cooking equipment to draw in the right readers.

 

Step Four: Write Quality Content and Descriptions

The most crucial step of all is to create a story or book worth reading. To make a profitable Amazon eBook business, you need to create a series or more than one book on related topics. This way, you create fans of your work who will read your new books no matter what as they know they will enjoy your genre.

 

Step Five: Tease and Promote Your Books

Before your book officially launches, let your readers know what is about to come. Take parts of your book and create short stories, guides, or templates that can be useful or valuable to your audience now or until they can purchase the full book.

 

Follow these five steps to launch and run a successful and highly profitable Amazon Kindle eBooks business. The more quality content you write and share on the platform, the more revenue you will generate.

 

Common Community Building Obstacles that Can Hinder Your Success

 

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How to Grow a Profitable YouTube Channel

Multi-millionaires are being created every day on YouTube. With nearly one billion hours of video being consumed on YouTube daily, there should be no surprise that money can be made on this platform. It is estimated that one of the top YouTube channels generated nearly twenty-six million dollars in 2020 alone. There are many ways to grow a successful channel on YouTube as long as you have the desire, understanding, and tools to do so.

 

Here are six ways to turn your YouTube channel into a profitable business:

 

Pick a Niche and Consistent Schedule

The best way to grow a business on YouTube and any online market is to niche down. This way, you can use your time to create a consistent schedule of valuable content to share with your viewers. When viewers find your channel and notice you talk about a certain topic, they are more likely to join or subscribe rather than be confused by what you have to offer, as each video is about something completely different. Baking, cooking, financial, and travel channels are just a few of the popular niches to choose from.

 

Join the YouTube Partner Program

Once your reach one thousand subscribers and four thousand watch hours within a year, you can join YouTubes partner program. This is when you can get monetize your channel with advertisements using Google AdSense. Depending on your niche or topic, you will be given a certain CPM or cost per million views of those who watch the ads that display before your video. After YouTube takes their share, you will then be paid out by YouTube or Google monthly.

 

Create and Sell Your Own Merch

Once you build an audience or community, you can develop your own merch or clothing to sell to your audience. When you grow a community that values your content, they will want to give back and want your content as they have grown to love or need your brand and business.

 

Add Sponsored Content to Your Videos

Find brands or products you admire to share brief information on their products in exchange for a flat rate fee or commission through an affiliate link.

 

Get Paid by Your Fans

Include a donation button once you reach a certain subscriber count. Then, ask your audience to join your YouTube membership content or Patreon account, where a small monthly fee unlocks exclusive content.

 

Promote With Your Blog, Email, and Other Social Media Platforms

Even though YouTube is a powerful search engine, it is always a clever idea to promote your channel outside of YouTube, especially when you first start. It takes the YouTube algorithm a while to recognize your content and see it as valuable. If others watch your content as soon as you post it, it triggers the algorithm to share your content.

 

There are several ways to create revenue with your YouTube channel to grow into a sustainable and highly profitable business. First, the more quality content you post consistently, the more your audience will grow, increasing your revenue potential and success on YouTube.

 

 

How to Use YouTube Stories for Business

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Essential Community Building Statistics to Know

If you want to grow a community or build one around your brand, you must know the facts. Statistics show that if you’re going to start a business, building a community around it is vital if you’re going to succeed. Fortunately, many consumers are looking for more information directly from the source to build relationships with honest and valuable brands. They seek trust and validity before they can make a purchase or commit to a brand.

 

The following are some essential community building statistics to know to further promote and grow your brand:

 

  • Nearly a 1/3 of Users Follow Brands Using Social Media – Because so many social media users and those who love being part of communities follow brands using social media, it tells you that if big brands are doing it, it can work for you too. So, you really don’t have to be Red Bull to benefit from building community.

 

  • Ninety Percent of Buyers Report Using Positive Online Reviews to Make Their Purchase Decisions – Reviews work according to buyers’ own words. They like reading positive reviews to help make their choice.

 

  • Almost Thirty Percent of Online Customers Report Using Brand Communities for Research – Many people who want to buy things feel more comfortable going to a community run by the brand to find out what customers are saying and get a sense of the integrity of the creator.

 

  • The Common Community Objectives Include: Customer retention, lower support costs, and innovation – People who create communities cite these reasons for spending a lot of effort developing engaging and informative safe communities for their customers and interested parties.

 

  • Only 40% of Small Businesses Compared to 75% of Large Corporations Build Communities – This is likely because it can be a lot of work to set it up and keep it running. However, with the advent of so many options, it’s getting a lot easier to do it.

 

  • Over 95% of Adult Smartphone Users are Using Social Media and Brand Groups – Because so many people in the USA (77%) have smartphones having a mobile-friendly community will pay off since most users love being involved in brand groups using their technology.

 

  • Almost 90% of Business Leaders State Community Building is Essential to Growth – The main reason for this is that it’s one more way to help lead your ideal customer through the buying journey successfully.

 

The fact is, online or brand communities are what sets you apart from your competition and can further solidify your chances of success. If you want increased awareness, recognition, and loyalty, then running a community is vital. Overall, these statistics prove the power and benefits online, or brand communities can provide to businesses.

 

A Comprehensive Social Media Influencer Checklist

 

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Brand Community Examples and Why They are So Successful

Building a community around your brand is vital in today’s marketing and consumer world. Consumers are looking for trust, credibility, and authenticity. Without these factors, you are unlikely to make any sales or make an impact within your industry, which is why many of the top brands today work hard to build a specific community around their values, products, services, and more.

 

Dissecting how the top brands take advantage of their communities can provide you with more tools and resources to grow a winning brand community of your own. The following are four brand community examples to emulate and why they are so successful:

 

  • Airbnb – You know all about this community because everyone talks about verified hosts. Verified hosts take part in this private community to learn how to make the most of their Airbnb business and rentals.

 

  • Once they make it to a certain point, YouTube- The creators on YouTube are invited to a private creator’s community that gives them motivation, tips, and more to make their channels better. In some communities, this is taken outside the online community right into co-working hubs.

 

  • Lego – This community enables enthusiasts to share what they are creating with Lego and helps drive product creation and innovation. Members can submit ideas, and they can win prizes and contests.

 

  • Airstream – They offer owners or wishful owners a community that allows them to share the interest and love of their airstreams. They can also learn about events and places to stay less expensively.

 

  • Harley Davidson – This close-knit community offers a sense of connection to Harley riders and their loved ones. They use the group to inspire loyalty, market the latest items, and more like big events and gatherings.

 

  • Trader Joe’s – You can join a discussion board, listen to their podcast, and find all about new products and how to use them before they come out. People love TJs so much that even in areas without a store, yet they build a fanbase using communities so that before they even break ground, they know they have enough customers to make it work.

 

  • Gone With the Wynns – This YouTube sailing couple spends a lot of time within their communities on YouTube publicly and privately within Patreon. Due to their active community, they have raised money to help animals and clean up the ocean.

 

  • High Carb Hannah – This YouTube star has a fabulous community based on her website where she has generated enough income through her offerings to build a house and live a very happy and active life outside of just work.

 

  • Apple – This community is very large and full of users and would-be users who love everything about Apple products. The community offers peer-to-peer support and a place to hang out with other like-minded folks.

 

Now that you think about it, you can find many communities for any product or service, or problem that you have. The advantage to creating a community yourself for your brand is enormous to you and the customers you want to help. The more they know about you and feel safe with you, the more likely they will buy and become repeat and long-term customers.

 

Top Influencer Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

 

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Communities Foster Customer Success: Here’s How

Building a community around your brand may sound like a personal choice and more valuable to your business than your customers. However, it is quite the opposite. Your community allows your customers or members to be more successful in many different ways.

 

Well-run communities are packed full of valuable information and engagement to enable your members to feel more important and empowered. In addition, maintaining their loyalty is easier in a community as you can provide both traditional and self-serve support — meaning you no longer need to rely on normal business hours to value your customers.

 

Here are five ways communities foster customer success:

 

You Provide High-Quality Relevant Content

 

By using your communities as a distribution platform for your most relevant and high-quality content, you’ll be keeping your customers engaged every single day and, more importantly, twenty-four hours a day by giving them access to the vital information they need to solve their problems.

 

You and Members Build Strong Human Connections and Relationships

 

The exchanges with your members and the interactions members have together build strong connections and even develop relationships outside of your membership, forum, or group. When your members become attached to everyone else in the group, you truly will build brand advocates who will tell others about your community.

 

You Can Develop Improved Products and Services

 

By hanging out with your ideal customers, you will receive the most amazing insight into what they really need. When you see problems that they talk about, it will generate more ideas. Make it simple for your members to ask questions, comment, and discuss all the issues relating to why your community exists, and soon you’ll have a never-ending supply of product and service ideas.

 

You Can Provide (and receive) Inspiration and Empowerment

 

Having a captive audience via a forum, group, and community is one of the most powerful ways to provide your ideal audience inspiration and to empower them with the knowledge they need to use your products and services (or the ones you recommend) to create the life they want based on your particular niche.

 

They Receive Daily Communication and Motivating Interaction

 

Finding a way to stay at the top of your audience’s mind is another reason community building is effective. When your members receive daily communication from you that encourages them to act on their goals and dreams and to brag about it or ask questions about it within your community, it’s very motivating to everyone.

 

When it comes down to it, brand communities support your customers more while also taking your business to the next level. The improved customer support, daily interactions, and communication through publishing unique and useful content drive your customers to success. What is even more important is that communities prevent you from ignoring your customers. The more you listen and prove that you are hearing, the more successful your business will be. Likewise, the more successful your customers are, the more successful you are.

 

 

How Community Member-To-Member Engagement Grows Your Business

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How Communities Promote Lead Generation

Did you know that brand communities pull nearly seventy percent of traffic from search engines? In other words, communities due to SEO attract larger audiences from the search engines as they have the power to reach more customers and provide more value than other resources.

 

As time goes on and you share more content or encourage your members to interact, developing user-generated content, you increase the keywords or data you need for search engines to find you and your business.

 

Not only that, but people also thrive in communities—people like feeling connected to others. Even self-professed introverts are online and participating in online communities. When you have a wider reach and get more members, you are also more likely to easily sell more products with the generated social proof — which is exactly what online or brand communities provide. So, the wider your reach, the more engaged your communities, the more you can grow.

 

Here are five ways online or brand communities promote lead generation:

 

Superior Quality Content

 

The content generated in your communities will naturally be more relevant than anything you can produce on your own. Even if you are a member of your own ideal customer base, there will always be things that you’re just not going to know to ask. Having a community will reveal inside information from your group members about what type of content they want to consume. Hint: Once you have this information, you can use it to generate content outside of your community too.

 

Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

 

We keep mentioning word-of-mouth marketing because it’s imperative that you understand how important this is. It’s a big deal to know that you can speak to your customer directly, and they are essentially holding you in the palm of their hand.

 

They may even read your group content while taking care of their personal business, waiting on kids, or even while drinking coffee. As a result, they feel relaxed and can engage when they want to on their time which makes them feel good about you, so good they tell others about you.

 

Insights and Analytics

Home Office Automation Tips

You know that everything is about data today. All the choices you make in your business, and your life, are affected by the information you collect and the data you generate. Just reading this, you are generating data because your IP address is almost always recorded when you go to someone’s website to read it. Likewise, you will know when your audience members read your content and even where they go next, and if they leave a comment, you will learn even more.

 

This information can help you develop sales material, new products, more services and give you ideas about problems and solutions that your audience needs.

 

Feedback and Reviews

 

For some reason, group members are much more likely to provide feedback and product reviews than people who buy the same thing but never interact with the community. If you want more feedback and reviews, hosting a community is a sure-fire way to make it happen. When you get this feedback and the reviews, it’s on you to use them to improve.

 

Member-To-Member Engagement and Interaction

 

Watching your members interact and engage with each other is also a really big deal. In the old days, you might have to form a focus group, but in these modern times, all you need is to create a vibrant and active community to find out what your members think of your products and services.

 

As you can see, communities are attractive to consumers. They provide the social proof and trust they need to join your community and potentially increase your revenue. In other words, the larger and more engaged the community is, the easier it will be to find people to market to. So, if you want the potential of endless leads, starting a brand community should be at the top of your priority list.

 

 

 

 

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Five Important Ways Communities Increase Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is what makes the effort of building and moderating an online or brand community so important. Member-to-member interaction, social proof, and the quality content provided within the groups inspire them to stay around and seek more.

 

These relationships also fuel them to share your communities or become brand advocates. Thus, saving you even more money while also increasing your potential to reach more people.

 

In other words, brand loyalty is essential to not only solidify current success but future success too. To grow a profitable and sustainable business, building a branded community is essential.

 

The following are five important ways communities increase brand loyalty:

 

Business-To-Member Communication

 

Communicating with your customers directly is an amazing invention of modern times. In the old days, you had to advertise on TV, radio, or various print means and wait to see what happened. So, it could be hard to tell if it worked for the reasons you think it did.

 

Now you can simply tell your members directly about your offers without the go-between. You can see when they view a message or respond to it and even see them talking to their friends in the group. But most of all, getting to send them a message right now that they’re going to get directly from you is an amazing thing and will keep you at the top of their mind.

 

Valuable and Engaging Content

 

It’s very important to understand that publishing anything just to put it in your community is not the goal. You want the content you publish and share with them to be valuable and engaging. You want them to look forward to seeing the latest content you share every day.

 

You want them to wait for it, excited for it to appear. However, that will only happen if you take the time to create desirable content based on what you know about them and how it relates to their need to use your solutions and products.

 

Member-To-Member Communication

 

This is one of the most important parts of building a community that will change everything for your business. Once your members start talking to each other about their lives, and your products and services, and how they help or don’t help, you’re going to end up getting the most invaluable information ever that will help you improve your products and make them think you’re a mind reader.

 

Special Offers or Member Discounts

 

If you promote outside your membership group or community, a terrific way to make the members feel special is to offer them some form of reward or a loyalty program. So many big businesses don’t understand how much it harms their relationship with their customer when they offer the new deals only to their new customers. Offer your members things you don’t offer anyone else because they are important.

 

Superior Customer Experience and Service

 

When you engage and spend time with your community every day, you provide customer care directly. As a result, they will perceive their customer service as better because they feel heard.

The more you nurture your customers and seek a relationship with them, the more likely they will become loyal customers or followers of your brand. Loyal customers advocate for your business and ensure the success of your brand now and in the future. Work always to keep your community engaged, be involved in the process, ask for feedback and reward them for improving your brand loyalty.

 

Six Ways to Use Communities to Promote Your Products

 

 

 

 

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Community Building Equals High Return on Investment

According to the stats, it only takes most membership communities and groups about four months to break even on the initial investment when starting and running an online brand community for business.

 

In addition, a 2014 online communities benchmark report found that nearly two-thirds of companies manage some form of an online community, and the bigger your company is, the more likely you are to have one. However, don’t let that intimidate you. Bigger isn’t always better.

 

These communities are used to test and improve their products to serve their target audience better. Thus, allowing the business to save more money as they take fewer risks due to the helpful information they get from their communities.

 

The brands focusing most of their effort on their communities can see an average return on investment of 6,459% — showing you just how important community building is for business.

 

Building a community for your brand provides a high return on investment due to the following reasons:

 

  • Low Acquisition Costs – The technology that exists today to build your community is available for free. You can also use paid solutions if you prefer or want to overcome any restrictions other branded platforms have inexpensively. You can use Facebook Groups to get started. Once your community is large enough or you’ve tested the concept enough, you can then build a community using any number of platforms, from plugins to your shopping cart software to full-fledged active social networks using software like Mighty Networks.

 

  • High Engagement Potential – When you are running your own community, you are in charge of the tone, the engagement, and the mood. The noise created by outsiders will be eliminated so that you can focus on the best engagement possible with each member.

 

  • Quality Content Ideas Generated – Once your group gets moving and people get to talking, you’re going to find so many quality content ideas just in the comments and discussions of your group members. Customers will tell you what they need from you if you just ask them and listen to the answers.

 

  • Brand Loyalty and Retention Increases – When your members see you interact with others in the group, even if it is just printed on a computer or smartphone screen, the immediacy and personal responses you give will make them stick to you like glue. Since it’s easier to keep a customer than getting a new one, this is golden.

 

  • Increase Marketing Potential – Sharing your content and products within these communities provides another space to put your information into the hands of the people who need it but in a more captive way. You only have to promote the community and not each individual product if you don’t want to when using this method.

 

Overall, starting a community around your brand is likely to produce your best return on investment. The low acquisition costs and high engagement created work together to make it happen. You gain so much insight into your customer that you can develop amazing products and solutions for them. The more you get involved and keep your community members engaged, the more value you provide, the more you will increase your return on investment.

 

 

 

 

 

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Six Ways to Use Communities to Promote Your Products

Using communities to promote your products is by far one of the most effective ways to increase your revenue and loyalty to your brand. Sharing products within your community, or similar ones as an affiliate, is successful because the people within these groups are already interested and likely looking to purchase.

 

However, just because you share the products doesn’t mean it will automatically be successful. Sometimes you need to think creatively to promote your products without being so direct. Over promotion or creating content that looks too much like normal advertisements won’t get you anywhere. In fact, that will likely turn your audience away.

 

The following are six ways to use your brand community to promote your products and services more successfully:

 

Run a Giveaway

 

This is an effective way to just get the word out about your products without having to spend money on an advertisement or even a sales page. What you do is host a giveaway that you ask for entries too.

 

The entry can just consist of them providing their email address and name or other information that you decide. You can make this work using your email marketing software like Aweber, a Google Form, and your website to host the form.

 

Please keep it simple, but every single chance you can promote the contest, which is also promoting your business since entries are completed on your website where they can clearly see your offers. Plus, once they enter, they are now on your email list too.

 

Then when someone wins, promote the winner too, and again, this gives you a chance to go over what the product is and why it’s so great in public. You can then take this chance to give everyone who submitted a coupon and then everyone who is currently reading, a different coupon to buy.

 

Host a Contest

 

You can run the contest a lot like the giveaway in terms of the technology you use. You just need to make a form using a form maker like Google Forms, Gravity Forms, or even Acuity Scheduling. The concept is much the same, but you’re asking for something more than email addresses to participate this time.

 

The prize you offer should always be one of your products, services, or an affiliate’s products and or services so that each time you promote the contest, you are also promoting the product or service.

 

The other way to host a contest, with a required entry fee. For example, let’s say you’re an art teacher and your main product is courses for doing art in some way. You may want to offer your students a chance to win prizes that you can either buy with the fees collected or that you can ask vendors to sponsor, or you can pay for yourself. The press you get from promoting the contest, and the participants and winners will be worth it.

 

Hire Someone

 

One way to keep your community hopping is to hire people to work in the community. For example, you can hire a VA who will run your contests, promote your products, and drive engagement on your behalf. Outsourcing and reducing your workload will help you earn more money by freeing you to create more products and services and participate in engagement more.

 

Develop an Affiliate Program

 

If you have even one product, especially if it’s digital, consider having an affiliate program. When you set this up, you can promote all your products and services individually, or just some of them, or just the membership community itself. Again, it’s up to you, but having this type of system will increase revenue exponentially, even if it’s only used as a referral system for your members.

 

Ask for Feedback and Reviews

 

Use your group and the discussion boards you create to ask for feedback and reviews on your products and services that you can use on your sales pages, in promotions, and more. If you sell your products anywhere outside your group, you can even use the group to point out all the places you sell them, so they will feel free to give you reviews on those other platforms, too, where permitted.

 

Run a Live Demo or How-To-Presentation

 

A really fun way to use your brand community is to “go live,” as they like to say on Facebook to demonstrate your product, talk about an issue, or give a how-to presentation on using something you sell or are promoting as an affiliate. People love participating in live events, even if they’re unplanned and last minute. The good news is that they are recorded and can be enjoyed and repurposed at any time.

 

If you plan to build a community or use other communities to share your products, you need to create content that doesn’t feel too pushy or promotional. The more you understand your target audience, get them involved, and provide real value, the more you gain more revenue. With these six selling techniques, you can be sure that your promotions work every time.

 

 

 

 

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Building a Community is The Competitive Advantage Your Business Needs

Research and statistics show that you must have a competitive edge to make it in business. No businesses succeed without fierce competition, especially with the advancements in technology and online communication.

 

The truth is, many of these exciting advancements destroyed common barriers to entry that most businesses had in the past – meaning you can start a business with next to nothing. Unfortunately, due to that, the competition only gets worse as more tools and resources are created.

 

Building a community around your brand will provide you with a competitive advantage because customers are increasingly dissatisfied with the kind of customer care they are receiving. A branded community can help you provide better customer care because as you build a community, you’re also building relationships that advance trust, which increases your ability to influence sales.

 

The following are a few ways community building helps you stay ahead of your competition:

 

  • Through Strong Member Connections and Relationships – People like feeling as if they belong to a community. Unfortunately, building community in our private lives is harder than ever. Everyone is busy, but creating these customer-centric communities can make your customers feel more connected not just with you but with the other customers as they converse and comingle.

 

  • By Being a Source of Endless Lead Generation – Every single person you get into your group is a source of more members. Because of this, once you start building a community, your reach will increase as your leads grow.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Landing Pages

  • Word-of-Mouth Marketing – Even if your customers only talk about your products and services inside the group, new members will still see the discussions, which will reduce their fear and help them make a purchasing choice for the products they see discussed within the group community. However, once a member becomes your loyal customer, they will start asking their friends to join them in the community because it feels good to share what’s good in your life.

 

  • Through Community Feedback and Engagement – One of the most important aspects to you, and from your viewpoint as a business owner, is the ability to read your customers’ minds. Of course, you really can’t do that, but by watching the discussions take off that you prompt and experiencing the feedback generated, the information you glean will become invaluable. Eventually, your customers will start claiming you can read their minds, and then you’ll stand far out from your competition.

 

  • By Being Unique, Fun, and Helpful – Face it, most businesses are not unique, fun, or helpful. But you have this amazing opportunity to stand out and be that for your customers in a way that benefits you both.

 

Overall, community building shows your target audience that you want to support them and their needs. Your community shows, and the information you provide shows them that you are willing to listen to them and serve them instead of your own needs. The more you focus on your target audience, the more you can easily stay ahead of your competition. Which is why building a community around your brand is the competitive advantage your business needs to be successful.