Posted by Canadian Dream on November 25, 2010
As blog writers we tend to be guilty of fixating on the cost cutting side of the equation for the majority of our posts. We talk of ways to pay off debt, live better on less and frugal tips instead of looking at the other side of the coin: earning more. Why is that?
I will speculate that writing on living better on less is easier. There is a large body of tips, tricks, books and theory developed on living frugally. Meanwhile many people just don’t have any experience of their own to speak of on earning more money. After all the concept of working even more strikes people as silly since when you are looking at early retirement you typically have some dislike of your current job.
Yet for a good lot of people earning more offers three potential benefits that are often overlooked:
1. You can expand your skill set and learn something new and interesting to you while earning money.
2. You expand your income base so you will be at less of a risk from a job loss.
3. You might actually do so well at earning more you can be ‘free’ of the job you dislike earlier than you predicted.
So earning more can be a good ground to test out income producing hobbies or even earn extra money to take some extra trips, dinners out or buy some electronics (what ever turns your crank). The point of the matter is earning more can offer you several different benefits that could out weigh you initial reluctance to ‘working’ more.
Now this is where earning more divides itself into two main camps of thought: 1) you can just pick up a second job with flexible hours or 2) you can start a small business. The first method is by far the more common when you speak of earning more. Most people don’t go looking to start a small business since they fear the amount of work involved and putting their own money at risk. Yet what is over looked in that fear is the potential to earn significantly more after all the tax system is designed for business and investors. After all where else can you take money you have earn, pay no tax on it and turn it around and expand your business and the government is ok with that.
Yet small business is really a very flexible thing that can encompass most activities that you can do to earn money and many of them can be done with minimal investment of your own money. Often people just fall into a small business idea because it is something they like to do and they happen to be good at it. Also I run into a misconception that people have to expand a business, which strictly speaking isn’t true. You can choose to say no to new customers and clients and keep your business small if you want.
I know in my own experience so far with this blog is I’ve fell into some things I was never really planning on doing when I started writing it. I never really planned to self publish a book. That idea developed when I realized that I was never really going to find the book I wanted on early retirement. I was going to have to write it myself and I came to realize that it would likely have limited appeal to a traditional publishing company. I certainly didn’t plan to get into freelance writing at this point in my life, but when the opportunity came up I decided to take it. Yet both in the end I hope will result in earning more in the long run.
So what is your reason for not trying to earn more? Or if you do earn more could you please share what you do?
Posted by Canadian Dream on September 2, 2010
There is a new frontier coming along to the world of publishing: the new self publishing model. It used to be self publishing was a fringe event that only the desperate did to get a book out, but more and more it’s becoming a place where even the smallest niche market can have a book aimed at them. I’ve personally been working on my book for a while now, so as I’ve researched options I thought I might share a little of what I’ve found out.
Self publishing comes in basically two major forms: hire a company to be your publisher or become your own publishing company. Neither way is wrong, it’s basically a matter of how much control do you want and how much profit are you willing to give up.
The first method of hiring a company to be your publisher is the most simple. You can create an account at a company like Lulu.com which will then outright just print your book if it is just for you. Or depending on what you are willing to pay they will contract out editing work, cover design and even assign it an ISBN from their inventory to make it a ‘real book’. If you want to sell the book at a physical store you are going to need an ISBN. Lulu can even do order fulfillment and shipping for you for your customers. It all depends on what you are willing to pay for the service upfront and how much of your profit margin you are willing to give up. Also it is important to note they will be the publisher, not you.
The second method of creating your own publishing company is much more involved but gives you complete control of the end product and costs, but its a lot more work. You will need to get a company name, register to get your own ISBN number, submit the data to get your CIP information, hire your own editor and contract out cover design. Then get printer quotes and still decide on your distribution model. Which can be either let the printer handle it for a fee or have them ship a few hundred books to your house and you can ship out each order. The advantage in the second model is you are the publisher so you get to keep more of the money from each sale which makes your break even point a lot easier to achieve. It’s also useful if you plan to publish more than one title since you can fix your mistakes from the first time.
Now complicating the mix is you can also have your book in an ebook edition. Which basically consists of getting the file in the correct format and selling it electronically. That isn’t even an easy process since you need to decide how much security your want on the file and who you want to distribute it through.
Yet regardless of which method you choose or even if you use a regular publisher, the majority of the marketing work is going to be done by you the author. You have a product and you are expected to sell it. This is where I think most authors get uncomfortable. We write things, we often don’t consider that some marketing is going to be required to sell it. Since unless your a top tier author at a major publishing firm you are going to have to do the majority of the work.
So my advice more than anything else when you are considering self publishing is: can I sell my book? If you can’t, don’t bother you will just lose money at it. If you can, get writing and start pulling books from the library to learn more about publishing to choose the right model for you.
Posted by Canadian Dream on August 11, 2010
I was reading this post the other day about how blogs really don’t treat themselves as publishers, despite that is exactly what they are. We produce content ourselves or use guest bloggers to generate content and then publish it. A number of bloggers that would like to go “pro” and be able to live off their blog income but a lot of us don’t treat our blogs as a micro-business, despite the fact that is exactly what they are.
As such we tend to not think with in terms of all the hats we have to wear when you run a blog including:
- Editor: Guess what folks, editors at major newspapers don’t spend their time fixing a lot of other peoples crappy writing. They fix the obvious, cut the any word that isn’t required and send it back for a re-write if certain parts don’t make sense or it wasn’t what you were looking for. The writer is SUPPOSE to fix it and then send it back. Unfortunately, I suspect many bloggers are way too nice about rejecting crappy guest posts and end up doing too much re-writing themselves. That isn’t your job as an editor so stop doing it and hit the reply button instead.
- Marketer: You can have the greatest blog in the world and no traffic. You have to get out there and strike up some interest in your blog. Submit to carnivals, comment on other blogs, do guest posts for other blogs and be helpful to others in forums. All of those can help to drive traffic to your blog without paying a cent in ads.
- Sales: Want some income on your blog? Then don’t just stop with Adsense you need to consider affiliate programs, paid link ads and perhaps launching your own product like an ebook/book, software or something else that people will buy. Income from a blog to be useful has to come from many sources.
- IT: I recently had my hosting company’s tech support try to tell me that they weren’t hosting my blog and that some other company was doing it. Needless to say I freaked out and then dug into it. Guess what? They were wrong and I had to figure that out what the hell was up. Like it or not you need to know a few basic items on how websites work and then have a phone number or two of friends you can call in when you get in over your head. You are the Help Desk like it or not.
- Accountant: Do you need a GST/PST/HST vendor account? Can you write off your hosting costs if you don’t keep a separate account for your blog income? When did you get your last Adsense cheque? If you don’t know the answers to those questions, then you need to find out.
- Writer: Then last, but not least, all bloggers are writers. We often start off doing just that role and forget we need to expand out into the other ones. Great blogs at their heart have good writers, but what makes a blog really great is how well you wear those other hats.
Now if you aren’t good at a particular role it’s ok to get help. Pick other people’s brains or even hire out sections of work. I know my weak points are IT and marketer. I’ve have to beg for help once and while from others with IT and I know I don’t do enough marketing work. I’m just starting to get better at the editor role with Robert and Dave doing regular guest posts.
So if you blog, what hats do you need to get better at wearing? If you don’t blog, which of these hats do you wear in your job? Any tips for the novices out there?
