How to Best Turn Your Book Into an Online Business - BM344

 Today, my special guest is Ellen Finkelstein. With over 20 years online, Ellen has created websites with high search engine rankings and over 3000 visitors per month, over 220 subscribers and many followers on social media. She's also an author published with major publishers such as McGraw Hill and Wiley and Suns, with books ranging up to 1200 pages. She's successfully created and sold dozens of online products and courses and uses her expertise to help experts turn their knowledge into online products so that they can create positive change for as many people as possible. Ellen, it's a pleasure to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest, expert and mentor.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. Let's do it.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 Ellen, I know that you really enjoy helping experts turn their knowledge into online products. Let's start at the very beginning, as they say, which is obviously a very good place to start and look at some of the basics that we need to know. When we've got a book and we want to turn it into products and online business, how would we even start to think about doing this?
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 I think that actually, when you write your book, you should be thinking in terms of what kinds of products or courses will come out of it, because usually the book itself isn't enough to really make a living on, but you can make a living with online products and courses as you write the book. And you might have already written the book, but now you could go back and think about it. 

How could you put this in a different format that people could maybe benefit from even more than reading or in a different way? In a very typical example, of course, is to take your chapters and turn them into videos. Basically, think of your chapters as a kind of script and make a video of it. 

Now, a course is a little bit different from a book, and one of the main advantages is this kind of interactivity that you can create. So at the end of the video, you can summarize what people have learned and then you can say, here, I have some questions for you to answer. And then you ask them questions that will help them apply what they've learned to their own situation. That's the basic process of turning a book into a course. Now, you can turn it into other types of products as well. For example, depending on what you're talking about, you might turn it into a PDF with, let's say, some templates or some worksheets, almost turning it into a workshop and actually live events like a workshop. Or another way to turn your book into online programs.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 That's so helpful. You've already given us, what, three different ways of doing this, or maybe even four. So the courses, the PDFs, the templates, the workshops. Wow. And as you rightly say, thinking about this beforehand and not just thinking of the book, well, hey, I've got a book. And then the traditional way is to put it up on Amazon or go to the bookstores. And as we know, that's a hard way to sell books. But turning it into other products, which I absolutely love, I mean, I love the idea of cutting and dicing and slicing books up into as many different ways as you can share that information, your knowledge, your expertise. Yes, and you're brilliant at that. So, I know talk to us about templates, because I know people really love templates.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Well, again, it depends on what your book is about. But for example, I could write a book on PowerPoint. It's one of my areas of expertise, and I could bundle that with some PowerPoint templates. There are some different ways of doing slides that would help people avoid death by PowerPoint, which is usually the basics of what you're trying to teach people. And for let's say you're doing something about trading dogs. So you could have some scripts that you might use in terms of what you say to the dog and when and how you do for very specific things like barking or biting or different problems that the animal might have. 

So, whatever it is, a template or a worksheet, it's something that people can actually interact with and use themselves. They might print it out or they might use it in software like a PowerPoint template, but they use it to implement what they read in your book.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 I know that one of the first things that I did with my first book, my exhibiting at trade shows, tips and Techniques for Success, was literally put together checklists and tip sheets, which people absolutely loved. Yeah, that's more for those than they did for the actual book.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Yes, absolutely. And first of all, they seem really quick, so they're very irresistible. And second of all, they do help people get a positive result, implement that knowledge very quickly. And so they're very, very valuable.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 You talk about online courses and then workshops. Now online courses. I think one of the most challenging things with online courses is the fact that people start something, start a course. So enthusiastic, motivated, oh yes, I got to do this. And then somewhere along the line, it sort of peters out. Life gets in the way and you don't get to finish the program. How do you get people to finish a course that you would put out there?
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 I guess there are a couple of ways. And one of the typical ways, time-tested ways, is to do it live the first time, as opposed to prerecording. And that puts you on the spot because people are showing up and so you have an obligation to give them that material, that time. 

 So, you might set up a course and say, I'm going to have eight lessons and I'm going to do it Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. My time. And you invite people and they pay for it and then they show up. You could do it on Zoom and record it, for example, because people are there live. This is called in the online world, a learning world. It's called synchronous training. They're there at the same time you're there. It really forces you to have that material. And you can start with just your first lesson, plus an outline, I would say, almost like a table of contents. It's book authors know what that is, so you would know what would be in the rest of the lessons, but you might not have them very specifically fleshed out yet. So you start with the first one and you promote it and people come. Hopefully people come and then in the next week you have to finish the second lesson. And so you finish that and you deliver that and so you do it over time with people coming. It just puts pressure on you to have to get it done. And then you record it and then you have your whole course.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 It sounds so simple. Yes, and there's a difference when you're doing something live. I think your energy level is very different when you do it that way versus, as you say, sitting there thinking, I've got to record this, and then you're forcing that energy level. It isn't quite the same. So at least for me, I know when I do something live versus when I want to record it independently.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Yes, you're right. The energy when somebody is live is much greater. And maybe there's interactivity, people ask questions, and that's a wonderful thing. But you have to be aware that you will probably also need to edit that video to make it a little crisper. People don't want to listen to five minutes of you saying, hi, everybody coming in. Let us know where you're from and what the weather is, you know, for five minutes. So you're going to want to cut that out. You have to get the positive of that interactivity and that energy and then you're going to have to make it a little crisper by editing it.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 That's a really good point, because you're right, when people have just put up a Zoom conversation is nothing worse than, as you rightly say, having to go through all that trivia stuff that you've got no interest in. Give me the material, tell me how to do it.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Right.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 Ellen, I know that an area that you love to talk about and you're very invested in too, is email marketing. Let's talk about that and how our authors can benefit from email marketing, what that really means, and I'll add on to the whole idea of also building a list as part of that email marketing journey. So that's a lot to COVID but let's start with it.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 It is. One of the disadvantages of putting a book on Amazon is that you don't get the email address of the people who read your book. And so you need to ask for it in the book. Again, if you have a strategy that the book is supposed to lead to some kind, of course it could be coaching, for example, or consulting, whatever you might have on the back end. You need a way to follow up with people. And so the way you do that is you offer something for free, like a template would be an example, or a tip sheet, or it could be supplementary videos. 

Whatever it is in the book, you ask people to get this free thing, whatever it is, and they have to put in their name and their email address on your website to do that. And you have to set this up with an email service provider. And in that service you get a form and that's on that page that you're sending people to. And you want to have like a simple link, as short a link as possible if they will be typing it out. And so you put that in as many places as possible. 

One of the tips is to make sure that you have your free offer in the first few pages. So on Amazon, where you have the Look Inside, I think that's what it's called, they show you just the first few pages of the book and it's good to have the offer right there. So even people who don't read the book might sign up for your email list. But the value of having people on your email list is that you can email them and you can help them get to know what you know. You can give them more free information, you can kind of nurture them in a relationship with you. It's a little similar to the old days when people used to go around to bookstores and sign books and there was that personal connection. So we usually do it that by email now, then you can make people offers. And so this becomes a crucial part of your strategy to bring people from reading your book to buying products or courses or signing up for your coaching or consulting.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 That is such an invaluable tip you gave us, is that in the first little segment of the book that gets shown on the Look Inside pages of Amazon, that you have something that you're offering people, and that's a clickable link, as you say. They may not buy the book, but they may sign up for your list, which allows you then to get their information, which you're not going to get if they buy the book via Amazon. So that's invaluable. Now, of course, QR codes as well. You can stick a QR code in there and that would lead people straight to your website or a sign up page or whatever.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 You absolutely that's a great idea. QR codes went from like nothing to being really popular and they died again, and now they're really popular again. Not everybody knows how to use QR codes, but they are a great idea. I would definitely put both a QR code and the actual text link in there so people can use whichever one they want, and not only in the first few pages. You should repeat that link several times throughout the book. And certainly don't just put it only at the end of the book, because not everybody gets to the end of your book. Unfortunately.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 Yeah, I mean, you're lucky that they read it and it's not meant as a disparaging comment. However, again, I know just for myself, I've got shelves of books. I love books. Have I read them all? No. Would I like to have read them all? Yes. Many of them I like to have as a reference, or I might listen to them and then I want the actual physical book because maybe there's something in the book that it's too hard to write down because I'm listening to the book while I'm driving or I'm doing something else. So having the printed version or the e book version is very helpful. So I like to consume books in many different ways as well. And people think you have a hardcover, or that people aren't going to buy an audio, or they're not going to buy an ebook as well, but they might buy all three versions.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Some people do that. Absolutely.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 I know that another area of expertise of yours is blogging. Sometimes I think of blogging as old school. Help me with this. What's blogging all about these days?
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Blogging is about showing your expertise, creating authority by what you write. And so blogging is just such a perfect thing for authors. You can actually take pieces of your book and turn them into blog posts. You can also take blog posts and turn them into a book. You can do either one, but it's a permanent way for you to put on the internet so that anybody can find it what you know. And I think that anybody who is writing a book based on expertise, based on knowledge, should be blogging. 

Now, besides the advantage of just showing your expertise, when somebody comes to a website, let's say you're a coach or a consultant and you've written a book, if people don't see from your website your expertise or further explanation of what, you know, they're less likely to sign up. But if they see the blog they go through and they read, they go, yes, yes, I agree with this, I agree with this. It's just an amazing sales tool, actually. 

So blogging needs to be fairly regular. For example, most authors, just expert based authors, really have all of this information. And blog posts don't have to be long, they don't have to be technical. I mean, you can read all these different things about how many words it should be and search engine optimization and all of that. And it's good to know all of that stuff. It really helps. We were discussing before we went on how one of my websites, I blog about PowerPoint and how easy it is to get people to those blog posts because I have, I don't know, five or 600 blog posts about it. And people need to know how to use PowerPoint when they're using PowerPoint. And so they search and they find my blog post and how that grows my email list automatically because there is a form there for them to fill out and an offer. 

But not everybody has such a specific thing that they're writing about. And so usually it's a little harder than that to get people to come to the blog post. Another thing is that once you build a list of people as you write a blog post, you tell your own subscribers about it. It's a great way to just continue to show your expertise and the authority you have in the area to give something to write about in your emails that connects people to you. 

So it just has a lot of different purposes. And blogging, when it first came out, was the first way that anybody could write something and make it available to the whole world. Remember before that you had to like go to a publisher and get a publisher to approve it before you could write something or a newspaper, maybe something like this. But this is your way to make it public what you know, and it's pretty amazing.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 So if I'm listening to you talking about this, Ellen will go through my mind. What's the difference between a blog, let's say, and an article that you might write on your website?
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Articles will take the format of a blog. A blog stands for weblog and it's just like a journal dated. You know, it's a little article, but that's a blog. Now, the word articles would usually apply in this case to writing something somewhere else on social media. So LinkedIn has articles and Medium is a great place. And so you can then take your blog posts and post them on LinkedIn and on Medium and other places as well on, for example, industry websites that might be willing to take your articles and they are just a different way for you to reach people.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 Now, you talked about fairly regularly, if we quantify that a little bit. What, like fairly regularly be?
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Ideally it would be once a week. I used to do that, but I don't manage it anymore. I would say anything less than once a month isn't good. When somebody goes to your website and they see the last blog post was six months ago, it just looks like you're not active. And here's a little tip. Once you have some blog posts, let's say 20 to 30 blog posts, you can take an older blog post and republish it with today's date and put it at the top so it doesn't look like you've been ghosting your website.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 Yes, I mean, I know that I've repurposed articles, I call them articles, but they could potentially be blog posts. I mean, who remembers what they read six months ago or twelve months ago? You've got maybe a different audience at this time. Now, looking at your material, I know sometimes when I'm short of a podcast, I've got 340 podcasts. I could repurpose a good one when I might be a bit short of material, and it just sort of brings it to life again, because the material itself is evergreen, it hasn't dated. Why not reshare it?
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 And Susan, maybe you want to go on vacation occasionally too.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 Yeah, that's what happens. In fact, funnily enough, I was talking to my assistant the other day and I said, well, I'm going away for a few weeks. We're going to need to have blog posts. And if I don't have enough, then maybe we may be looking at some previously published ones that we're going to give some new life to. So, yes, it's absolutely right. On your website, Ellen, you talk about unusual ways to grow your list. We love unusual, the first one.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 And I'm going to start talking about partnering here because I do really want to make the point that authors can tend to be introverts. They like to just sit and write by themselves. But when you want to make a business out of it, you need to reach out to people. And one of the best ways is to partner with other people. One easy, easy way of doing this, which is you could read about it in many different places. It's not like I made it up or anything, but it's unusual because people don't do it enough is what's called the freebie swap. What that means is that you have something for free, I promote it to my list, and then I have something for free. And you promote it to your list. You just send out an email. It could be part of an email or a whole email, however you want to do it, and you promote each other. And so basically, you're sharing each other's lists. I help you grow your list and you help me grow my list. And so that's one example of something that is unusual only for the sake of the fact that people just don't do it enough.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 That's a really good one, because it's easy to do, as you say, maybe one email.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Yeah, right. And other ways are things like guest blogging and what we're doing right now. Podcasting is a type of partnering as well. Those are not unusual ways, but the freebie swap is definitely overlooked. And I think part of the reason is that people feel uncomfortable promoting somebody else. But I will tell you that if you want to maintain a connection with your email subscribers, you can't just sell the same course or product whatever you have or your book over and over again to the same people. After a while, whoever is going to buy has bought. And so you need to have somebody else promote those courses for you, and you need to bring in more people on your list. So that partnering thing is something that I think authors may feel a little uncomfortable about at the beginning if they're not used to thinking in terms of having a business and it's really essential.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 Yes, that uncomfortableness, I think, can be easily overcome if you have, like, a conversation with that person beforehand, you get to know each other a little bit and feel that you likened and you trust them, and then it's a whole different relationship. I mean, you and I are in a group together, a joint venture marketing group, and I've been in it for well over a year now, and I've built up this trust and this idea of how can we help each other? Because that's obviously the premise of the group. But not everybody on there is right for me and vice versa. I'm not right for many people, but, you know, slowly and surely I'm picking the people who I feel I could help and who could potentially help me as well.
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 Right. And being intentional about partnering like this. Whether you're in a group or you just take the lead and find people who might be good partners and just reach out to them and have that little meeting, as you said in advance, have a zoom meeting with the person to get to know the person and work out how you might want to partner together. You might want to sign up for that person's freebie first and just make sure that that's something you want to promote. But being intentional about partnering on an ongoing basis is really important.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 Yes. And that's an important word. So thank you, intentional. Allen if our listeners wanted to find out more about you and the services you offer to help them build businesses online, how can they do that?
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 My main website is Changetheworldmarketing.com, and I chose that name because I wanted to work with people who have knowledge that can help other people, help make the world a better place. But they need to market it. They need to create products, they need to grow their email list. They need to figure out their messaging, all of those things. That's where I have a lot of different things, a lot of different products and free offers that people can use to figure out how to get a business online based on their book.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 Fabulous. And we'll put that in the show Notes so that people who want to learn more can do that. And as you know, Ellen, we always end our podcast episode with a golden nuggets. What's one thing that you would really love our listeners to take away from this conversation?
 
 [Ellen Finkelstein]
 I wanted to actually recommend a specific thing to pick up what you said. You also put the link to that in the Show Notes, which is called Reach More People by Speaking on Podcasts. I think authors need to speak, and this is a bit of a difficult concept because some people feel more comfortable writing and some people feel more comfortable speaking. I feel more comfortable writing, but here I am speaking, and I've actually had to teach myself to feel comfortable doing that. One of the best ways to get people to know about your book and whatever else you might be offering is to speak on podcasts, like we're doing right now, and to speak in any environment. It could be a summit, it could be at a conference, whatever it is. But speaking is really valuable. And if you feel a little uncomfortable about doing that, start by writing out a script of something and then just practice it. Go on to zoom and record yourself. I know when you don't have an audience, as we discussed, it's not as lively as it might be with an audience, but it's really a great way to practice. You recorded it, you look at the recording, you see what sounds awful, and then you just do it, fix it and do it again until it's better. So I think speaking is a really valuable way to reach out to potential readers.
 
 [Susan Friedmann]
 Yes, I would endorse that 1000%. That yes, if you want to get known quicker, speaking, any speaking opportunities that you can have, talking to your target audience, that's key here. Not just to everyone, because everyone is not your market, but to specific target audiences that's invaluable. Ellen, you've been amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. 

 By the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected it to, let's jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. You've invested a whole lot of time, money and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. Go to BrainstormwithSusan.com to schedule your free call. 

 And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

 Connect with Ellen at https://Changetheworldmarketing.com

Schedule your complimentary 20-minute brainstorming session with Susan, go to BrainstormwithSusan.com