One last job. Then she’ll retire. But this job just might kill her. Isn’t that always the way?
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There are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of ways out there to “build your career”. You could spend tens of thousands of dollars trying them all if you wanted. I know, because that’s exactly what I did for many years. I tried everything, and while I still try a lot of different marketing tactics, there are a select few that have consistently worked for me over the years.
I’ve been doing this a while, and I’ve tried a lot of things, so I thought it might be helpful for you to see an exhaustive list of things that have helped propel my career forward in the most effective manner. Additionally, these are things you can do without breaking the bank. Most of them cost money, but they have the best ROI of anything I’ve ever tried, and are worth doing, even if they cost money.
If I were to go back and do it again, I would focus on these things first. Everything else I tried over the years certainly taught me lessons, but were both expensive and time consuming. I wasted a lot of time on other actions. Time I will never get back.
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Without a doubt, my mailing list is the #1 thing that has helped propel my career forward quickly. Every time my mailing list grows, I make more money. It’s as simple as that. When I’m not growing my mailing list, my list becomes stagnant.
However, mailing list growth is usually quite expensive, which is why I have joined and also run so many mailing list builders. This is a group of 20-30 similar authors who all sponsor a giveaway of items for a brand more popular than theirs.
By doing that, we can gather 5,000+ emails in one week and then add them to our lists and make them fans of ours as well. I try to do these 1-2 times a month, or more. In 2018, I was part of over 50 of these campaigns, including 18 that I ran, which has led to more than 80,000 new contacts and 30,000 engaged fans.
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Though a mailing list is nice, it is only one way to engage with my fans, and I only communicate through email once a week. During the rest of the week, I engage through my Facebook reader group, where I post funny memes, upcoming releases, and more. My group is funneled from my email list, which means it’s filled with 4,000+ people who have joined my list and want to have a deeper connection with me
Additionally, I run a Facebook group for authors, where I run my group builders and courses from, which has over 2,000 people in it who help each other level up their marketing. Through my groups alone I made more than $40,000 in attributable sales in 2018.
Both groups are invaluable to me.
I am judicious as to the groups I join, but other people’s Facebook groups are also incredibly helpful for branding and market awareness. I am part of a few targeted author groups, a Lovecraft group, and a couple other groups. These are not as helpful as my own group, but they are very effective in engaging with the community.
I do not, for instance, join groups where you can promote free books, or anything like that because there is no real engagement. Instead, I focus on groups where engagement is high and where my expertise can be valuable. Barring that, I join groups for different fandoms where I can learn what people like and communicate with fans, hoping that they might also like my books eventually as well.
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This is the most expensive item on this list, and the most dangerous. There are many failure points in Facebook ads, and for that reason, it is definitely an advanced technique. Most of my Facebook advertising is done through my group builders, but through them, I have been able to get tens of thousands of fans onto my email list, where I can engage with them on a deeper level.
Facebook advertising can be expensive, but it can also be the gasoline that makes your career burn brighter. I don’t recommend it until you get the rest of the above things down, and until you really know your brand.
I have not tried AMS, Google, or Bookbub ads, so I cannot speak to those, but Facebook advertising has been extremely helpful for my career.
Whether it’s through an anthology, or newsletter swaps, or group promotions, working with other creators on projects has helped leverage all of our successes and taken me to the next level.
Anthologies made me a USA Today bestseller, and broke my career open twice, once with the Monsters and Other Scary Shit campaign and again with the Cthulhu is Hard to Spell campaign.
On top of that, group builders and newsletter swaps have introduced me to tens of thousands of potential fans, and book bundles from Instafreebie and Bookfunnel helped get thousands of new readers onto my mailing list when I started growing my mailing list quickly in 2017. Before using group promotions, I had 2,000 people on my list. After a couple months of using them, I had 8,000.
Additionally, by working with other brands during my Kickstarter launches, I was able to attract hundreds of new backers and thousands of dollars in additional funding for my projects.
Finally, being on other podcasts and writing guest blogs helped established my authority as an expert. You might not think of this as cross-promotion, but it definitely is one. However, this tends to be a low ROI activity at the beginning. You should not be focused on blogs and podcasts until you have high-value things to sell or many products on the market. When you do focus on them, make sure to target the right ones which have the ability to drive real traffic to your product.
As you grow your list and your brand, you will be able to work with larger brands as well, bringing even more potential eyes to your projects.
The only thing I ever regretted giving up in my life was my podcast. My podcast drove more engagement and rabid fandom than anything else I have done in my career. My audience wasn’t large, but it was rabidly devoted to listening to my shows. I look forward to having the bandwidth to start up my show again because it was a great marketing device. In fact, I’m bringing my own podcast back because it was such a great tool. You can find it at: www.thecompletecreative.com/podcast.
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Writing a blog is a great way to build up a database of questions so that when people ask you things, you can easily reference them. I repurpose everything I can as a blog post, less because it creates traffic and more because it saves me time by allowing me to send people to specific resources when they ask a question. Even if you don’t have a lot of traffic, you can have a lot of success with a blog as a repository for information which you can reference later.
There is no substitute for getting out in front of humans and talking about yourself and your products. Not only are in-person sales easier than online sales, but you can also see the eyes of your fans when they connect with your work. Conventions are also a great way to meet other creators and realize that you are not alone in the world. I worked with an artist at a couple of shows and after both she told me that it was the first time she didn’t feel alone, and that there might be a place for her in the world. That is what a convention can do for you, as well. It’s a place to celebrate your weirdness with other people, and get new fans in the process.
I almost didn’t include this, but it’s important to list that launching products consistently and often, whether on Kickstarter, or Amazon or my own website, helped me more than anything else. 10% of my revenue comes from services. The rest comes from products, and launching products consistently allows you to build up a fanbase of people who like what you do.
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This is an exhaustive list of all the things that actually worked for me over the first few years of me growing my business from a couple thousand dollars to six figures a year. I’ve tried hundreds upon hundreds of things, and over the past decade, these are the only ones that have stuck around and continued to deliver year after year. Are there other things that might work for you? Sure, but these worked for me, and created the best ROI on the least money spent.
Most people ask me about social media channels. I don’t focus on social media at all. Yes, I have been able to build up my other social channels as well, but they were an ancillary benefit to the things above, not a driving force behind my growth. Social media is important, but the ROI is nothing compared to my email list.
Will all of these work for you? Probably, actually. I’m not a special snowflake. I would expect a few to work at least, if not all of them. However, they might not. You need a strong voice and identity before you can grow quickly, so until you have one you might not have fast success.
Additionally, it is using all of these together which will make your career take off. Having a Facebook group, for instance, without working to rapidly grow your audience means you won’t have many people, if any, in your group. If I had to pick somewhere to start, I would absolutely start with building your email list. It is the easiest and most cost-effective way to build your audience quickly and has the best potential to give you a positive ROI.
Take our free audience building seminar and learn how to build your audience quickly…today!
We value your privacy and would never spam you. We will send you relevant offers, though.