The Rainmaker Solution: An Expensive Date That Turns Out to Be a Priceless BFF

The Rainmaker Solution - a BFF which starts as an expensive date.

Have you ever been in this situation? Having a significant other who is costing you a mint in maintenance - only to find out they are actually so priceless, that you could never let them go?

The biggest problem is that I already know how to publish a book for little or nothing. And here I am with a very powerful tool which is costing me money every month and is just sitting there.

I'm frugal by upbringing. If I'm paying for something it should be earning its keep.

The easiest thing to do would be to cut my losses and go back to what I already know.

But the old saying, "begin with the end in mind" tells me if I'm ever going to turn over this business, it has to be a great success, not just a very profitable hobby. Putting what I already have onto a system would leverage it into something that will take my income into a "comfortably well-off" range.

The main problem is that Rainmaker comes off as just too damned complicated. Everything has multiple parts to it. It's incredibly powerful (like I said already) and can do just about everything except brush your teeth for you after it woke you up on time and has your coffee ready.

I thought it was because I'm too used to Blogger, and not used enough to Wordpress.

In my current model: I simply create a blog post, upload an image, tweak the text, add in the Ganxy script for that product, tweak the meta-data to fit - and then publish.

But I can't do memberships. I can't do discounts (much less offer 50% off of everything I sell.) If I want to do discounts, I should put in a Sellfy link - which is essentially uploading a complete new set of ebook files and descriptions, etc.

And while I dither, all the link-love I'm accumulating for livesensical.com is just piddling away - while I pay another monthly fee for a site which isn't ready. All that I've been building up for months would be for nothing at this point.

Some things you have to see through, no matter what.

It's the learning curve which is killing me. Because I needed all this done yesterday.

Too many products as a problem.

Right now on GooglePlay, I have about 215 books. On Lulu, I have over 400 various versions of books - in different formats. On Amazon, I have about 70 or so. Itunes, Kobo, and Nook are somewhere in between.

Out of these, somewhere around 70 books sell regularly, so these are the ones I need to get up and running on my site - selling these directly in order to get higher royalties and also to build an audience. All of these have been extracted from sales data, and are on a spreadsheet.

All the old pages have been transferred (uploaded from backups) and very few have to be created - all the data for these is already on Calibre, so that's really just copy/paste.

And that's the rub - should I cut/paste to Ganxy to get these books posted on Rainmaker fastest - or figure out how to get it built using Rainmaker itself? Going with what is familiar would be faster - but it would cost me more.

In the end, my frugal side won out. I need to make Rainmaker pay for itself - so I invested some more time figuring out how to get things done.

Enter: Setup Wizards.

Now, if you are happy with Ganxy, this isn't a section that may thrill you. On the other hand, it's how to get your stuff on a site which will enable you to scale your existing content into 7 or 8-digit income - by all reports.

Because what we need to be doing is building an audience with the existing content we already have. At least, that's my problem - and has been for years. Getting sales through ebook distributors only disguised the problem by throwing money at me.

Rainmaker has simply opened up paid hosting for a tool they are themselves using. And they are useing to make 8-figures currently.

Set up wizards - these are for single products and also libraries. We'll do the single products to catch up with the existing (selling) pages we already have.

And it's quite simple, actually. It integrates with AWeber (my autoresponder service, but will also do MailChimp and others) and also is tied directly into the memberships. So the two targets here - of building an audience and having a free membership to host my content - are both integrated every time I post a new product.

When I've done it once, the settings are the same. At this point, I'll only need to copy/paste from Calibre to get everything posted. (Yes, if I ever leave Rainmaker, I'll have to do this all over. So I'm committed even more to getting this to pay for itself.)

Starting a free download library

This has always impressed me with Copyblogger - all those great ebooks available for nothing. (No, I haven't had time to read them all as yet.)

How I'm going to use this is simple: give away the PDF's and sell the other versions. Seems counter-intuitive. But it's also a way to see where the demand is. I'll also be able to email those people directly to give them a special offer on epub/mobi/hardcopy versions and the bundles I can make with podcasts. These same viewers might be interested in courses to help them study the book - and special books which accompany the course.

The point is - this will help me sell more books. And Amazon can't access these prices with their search bots, so it won't affect any price I have on their site. This gives me exclusive value to offer members - a great way to build audience and where I've been headed for some time.

This is also the key to leveraging material and escaping the glass ceiling which the distributors enforce.

But can't you just do all this for free?

Well yes - and no. Ganxy and Sellfy - no. Gumroad comes closest to handling memberships.

Technically, you can make a membership with nothing but an autoresponder and Paypal. You don't need anything in between. Just get them to pay, and AWeber (the one I'm most familiar with) will send them their first download. Then password protect part of your Blogger site (or the whole thing - a great description of how to do this is at BlogsByHeather.com )

The drawback is that once a year or sooner, you'll need to change the password for the site, since everyone gets the same one. But it's free, so...

Note: Free means you spend your time. Paid means you pay someone to take care of the backend so that you have more time to be creative. It's called leverage.

The deal is: start frugal and get your publishing to pay it's own way. Reinvest your profits back into the business. Once your self-publishing business is paying it's own way, as well all your living expenses - Congratulations! You're now financially independent. Probably somewhere in the middle, you'll either need to cut back on living expenses (like debt) and invest in some services to free up your time to be more creative.

Along the line, your passive income does start paying everything and you can start socking away reserves as well.

This is the goal. At that point, you can play the game of getting as rich as you want.

Rainmaker is our new BFF.

Well, as long as they keep improving it and it keeps having more bells and whistles than I can use.

I'm into the "getting rich" mode now - which essentially means leveraging my time to improve my income.

It can be done. And that's why I'm telling you that when someone living in the farm belt can do it (or even someone in India) then you can, too.

With today's breakthrough, I'm back to hopeful again. Even though this summer has been mostly overcast and rainy, it seems that there's some bright sunshine breaking through all around.

I hope that yours is going as well.

See you next time.

- - - -

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Reverse Book Marketing - Audience First, then Book

The guide to reverse book marketing exists.

I found this great talk between Robert Bruce and Brian Clark which has a reverse take on how authors should start out. Of course, there's no transcript, only a podcasted MP3. And we don't know the original date of this, other than a single comment which dates this as before July 2, 2013.

What this podcast is about is answering submitted questions.

One question was simply along the lines of "if you were to start a book today with no audience, how would you start out?"

Clark's interesting response (about 19:20):

"I would create in essence a video-book trailer. I'd write a script about the most fascinating elements in that book - if it's fiction, it would be the story, if it were a Malcolm-Gladwell-type book, it would be about the most fascinating elements I could display. I would make that [video].

"I'd promote it to try to get it to go viral to a certain degree. I would have an opt-in that says, 'Get the next installment in this video series' - I wouldn't even mention the book.

"It wouldn't be a typical trailer as the trailer sells the book. It would be an extended video serial, where there would be installments where people would want to see the next of. It's an art form in itself. Maybe have 5 episodes and then sell the book.

"The other strategy is to do the hard work of finding [and curating other's] great videos with emotional appeal...

"One way or another you've got to get them to opt-in and follow you, whether your making these videos or curating the videos that tell a story about the ultimate book you're going to sell.

"You've got to get an audience. They've got to look forward to hearing from you each time. When you do announce that book, if you do it correctly, it's a no-brainer - they're buying it.

"...It's all wide open. Just don't do what everyone else is doing - do something fantastic, and get people to sign up to get the next fantastic thing. That's content marketing - right there.

...If you do that, you're just getting started with the book. The book sales are a foundation for an entire brand. Of course, it depends on what the topic is - whether it's fiction or non-fiction. I always think very big from the beginning, and if all you end up doing is selling the book - hey, 'mission accomplished' - that was your goal. But if you do it the right way, you'll often find there are boundless other opportunities from what you've done - because you were doing something incredibly remarkable while building a direct audience."

This tosses out ALL conventional wisdom

You can see that this is logical and a very lean, kickstarter approach to bootstrapping your scene together.

Brian Clark built Copyblogger into a multi-million-dollar business and brand with just that same audience-first approach.

Of course, our problem is that this means you digress from your writing in order to script, edit, and polish a video series.

This also changes your job-description into something greater - an authorpreneur.

The book is no longer anything except a container for ideas that need to be said, need to be given voice, that need to see the light of day (and quit shouting in your head so much...)

But the formats the book comes out in is no longer limited to print, or even an ebook. It now spreads to every format you can find and publish into.

This is again, that multiple-eyeballs theorem: 

Write once -
publish as many ways,
to as many formats,
through as many distribution points
as possible.

You aren't dependent on traditional publishing to get your selling job done. (They've always required the author to do their marketing, anyway - which just cuts into your writing/production time.)

As an authorpreneur, you're no longer limiting yourself to someone else's suit-tailor and their ideas of style and fit. You cut your own suit from your own whole cloth and it can be Elvis Presley wild, or perhaps something that looks like a Hobbit outfit. 

While you're producing your content, it's in multiple medias - and you're thinking all the time about the visuals and keeping careful track of your cutting room floor scraps which people would love to see and hear and read (and would go great on your DVD as bonus extras. 

Because your production is now:

• a series of blog posts,
• an ebook,
• a trade paperback,
• a premium special edition hardback,
• a podcast series, 
• a series of PDF transcripts,
• a video series.
• a DVD...

This also doesn't include guest blog appearances, guest podcast appearances, guest Hangout appearances, and so on. (You'll have to make that decision based on how much time you want to spend away from your authorpreneur media production.)

The reason you want to do this "multiple eyeball" approach is to get in front of as many searching audiences as possible. Every distribution point you use has a different audience.

Marketing before Book Writing

This changes our marketing to be out in front, instead of after the book is written. Because you are building the audience so they can tell you how to write your book and what they want in it. 

This finally gives you a reason to be on social media. But in our case, you are not there to make friends. You are their to syndicate your great content so they can opt-in to your mailing list and earn the right to your friendship. 

Yea, that's a funny point. I have a lot of work to do. And a lot is an understatement. I don't have time to read about people's cats and great sunsets and cute animated GIF's about cats playing in the sunset. Much less people's children and who got sick from eating what last week.

I have no time for "news" media or politics. I have no time for organized religion. 

I have time for getting all these inspired ideas out to the world. And I will talk to anyone about these ideas. But the mundane and trivial just take time away from getting those ideas out so they can help people improve their lives.

My job has now expanded to becoming an authorpreneur and learning to effectively and efficiently operate a media-production-machine.

There are no companies which do this right now. (There should be, and maybe they are, but in a different category from where I'm searching.) 

Until that point - it's up to you and I to follow the Copyblogger pattern and build up a paying audience which will enable us to afford managing a business which will do those things for us.

You can do this.

All I'm saying here is that right here and right now, with no more than the computer and Internet connection (plus a decent microphone) you can get started getting that book in your head out to the world at large. In all the many and fascinating formats it richly deserves.

And the faster you do, the better income and lifestyle you'll be able to earn for yourself. 

- - - -

Make sure you're opted-in so you don't miss a single episode of white-knuckled excitement in our cliff-hanger series on Selling Your Book Online.

See you next time...

(photo: Nevit Dilman)

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