How to Write a Book Without Writing

Too many people are still impressed by people with books published. I am going to let you in on a dirty little secret.  Writing and publishing a book is easy.  Very easy.  And you do not have to write it, nor spend a fortune on a ghost writer. Whether you are tweeting, FaceBookin’ or G+in, you are a writer.  You have simply not packaged your stuff well yet. So lets explore some ways people get books written or assembled, which may not make them a fortune, but having a book does add to your credibility and generates more opportunities in many areas.

1) Recording and Transcribing

This is a very common technique for people that do not want to record.  You can write out a good outline and record yourself talking about the various points and then have it transcribed and edited into a book.  Literally within a few weeks your book can be ready to go.  And this does not have to be expensive.  Audacity is free recording software and transcription is usually about 50 cents per minute.  You can then edit it yourself or hire someone to do it for you.

2) Ghost Writing

Much like recording your voice, you can hire a ghost writer to get you a decent rough draft often for a few hundred dollars.  If you go with a cheap ghost writer you may not be able to publish it as is, but you can use it as a starting point and make it your own.

3) Aggregate Your Content

If you have been writing blogs or articles for a while, you can easily find some nice articles that go together on a particular topic and string them together into a book.  You may want to tweak them and create better transitions, or you can just sell the book as your best posts of 2011 or something.

4) PLR Articles (Private Label Rights)

You can buy packages of articles that other people have written and use these as the basis for a book.  I will warn you there are a lot of bad PLR articles out there and you may really have to dig and rewrite to get a good book, but it is one popular method for book writing.

5) Hiring Chapters

You can also use a writing service like textbroker.com and probably pay around $20 per chapter for writers to write on topics.  I use this service for articles that I do not want to write, but you can easily use it for segments in a book. There are more methods of writing without writing.  I do not believe you will get a perfect book from any of these methods, but you will get a nice rough draft for under $500 (maybe under $200) and then you can either edit it yourself or pay someone to edit it and make it nice.

Make Money with Google Plus

A lot of people see how fast Google Plus is growing and they want to make money from Google Plus right away.

You can make money, but you are not going to have as much luck as you would with automating other social networks.

Here are some tips to make money with Google Plus.

1) Do not start spamming products and using affiliate links right away. No one will circle you. You must build an audience first.

2) Do not use an automated Google plus script. Engagement is higher and you will simply not get results.

3) When Google Plus business pages are released, do not use them like FaceBook fan pages right away. Learn what makes them different.

4) Develop your expertise on Google Plus and it may lead to new consulting and speaking opportunities.

Probably the best way I have seen to make money with Google plus is to write a really good article or blog post that the Google Plus audience would like and have an affiliate link or sign up on the page. Then use Google plus to post about the page and get people talking about the topic. That will drive traffic, and you can monetize the traffic on your webpage without needing to post affiliate links in Google Plus.

Google Plus Traffic Trends

I know I have been writing a lot about Google plus over the last week, but it is very valuable and it is news.  Now I want to write about what I am seeing with Google Plus traffic trends, which is fantastic.

First, I do not expect it to stay this good.  Great Internet traffic is fickle and as soon as the Google Plus system becomes more open and more spammy, the results will decrease.

However, right now in July of 2011, I can tell you that Google Plus is driving web traffic terrifically.  I did a comparison of my much bitter twitter and Facebook followings compared to a much smaller group I am involved with on Google Plus and Google Plus drove 10 x the traffic on a much smaller following.

Not only that, but the quality of engagement is incredible.  I am meeting people, talking to people on the phone, chatting via Google Hangouts and more all towards building my brand and generation Website traffic with Google plus.

So the #1 best way to get Internet traffic with Google plus is to get involved as soon as possible.  The longer you wait, the harder it will be to build a quality network.  Also, you want to join Google Plus and then start adding people to circles fairly fast.  Weed out the ones you do not want later.  If you have a lot of people circle you back after you circle them, then you will have a group that will see your post and check out what you have to say if it is intersting.

I do think that Google Plus web traffic will be more quality oriented then other networks.  The people on there now are very savvy creative and technical folk and they are not going to click on everything in their stream.  In fact, they are more likely to uncircle you than other networks.

So you can produce huge Google Plus Website Traffic if you sign up, develop a group that circles you and put out quality, interesting stuff.  Spammy stuff, not so much.

Google Plus Avatar

As I go through my Google Plus account and circle people (follow) I tend to circle people bases on a few things.  The first thing that can immediately cause me to not circle someone is the Google Plus Avatar they have in their profile.

The avatar is the little picture that represents you.  If I see someone make an interesting comment, I look at the avatar, then if it meets my criteria I hover over it, if they have something interesting in their mini profile I will then add them to my general follow circle and later organize them based on what they are saying.

Now the first thing I am going to say about avatars is that it really depends on the audience you want to attract. Currently Google Plus has a lot of tech and creative people in it.  They are a savvy group, and spamming at this point would get you no where because they are just too experienced and will shut you out.

Here is my option of what is important with your avatar.

  1. You MUST be able to see your face or you will hurt your circling.  I am currently not circling many brands as I understand they are not even supposed to be doing that.  Plus, I am in Google plus for interaction, not constant news.
  2. Don’t show a pet unless you only want circled by other pet owners.  Actually, your pet picture is a great warning to me NOT to circle you because I do not want to see a steady steam of kitten pictures all day long.  My 6 year old does, so I am not knocking it.  Just not my thing.
  3. Be creative, but not too creative with your avatar.  In Google Plus I am just not circling things that are too odd.  I do not mind close ups, half behind the camera, etc.  But if you just look like a freak I may leave you to be circled by the guy that runs the carnival.  (Harsh, I know)
  4. Be careful how sexy you are.  (A problem I have too.)  Yes, you will attract attention with a more sexy picture but I followed one person that was an author and actor but she kept feeding through a lot of really hot pictures of herself and as much as I appreciated them, I did not want them in my streams.  I am married with kids.  Had to uncircle – but I am sure a lot of single people are keeping it in the circle of “People I want to meet.”
  5. If your name is even slightly androgynous, you do not get to use a photo of you and your significant other.  Sorry.  If I am confused from the picture on who I am circling (even though it should not matter) I will hesitate and not circle you.
  6. Standard social media rules apply here too.  Your future boss and spouse will see what you do here.

People are making split second decisions in Google Plus based on the Google Plus Avatar.  If you care about having a good experience there and maybe developing a higher level of influence, you need to pay attention to the little things.

Did you like this Google Plus article?  Lets discuss issues like this in Google+ – Add Ron McDaniel to a Circle.

WordPress SEO Basics

This WordPress SEO Basics article is a beginners build to getting WordPress set up for better SEO results.

First, this is a basic guilde, so I better let you know what WordPress and SEO are.

WordPress is Opensource [Free] Blogging software that will allow you to publish articles on a domain and manage them well.  It is simple to set up, and most hosts, such as Bluehost, have a quick install button in the hosting account.  Hosting the WordPress site is not free, nor is the domain, but the software itself is.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  This is the ability to get information to rank well in search engines so that you get more free, high quality website traffic.  Boiled down to the basics, it is producing good content, optimizing the content, doing keyword research and getting links from other sites back to yours.

WordPress is a very powerful SEO tool for several reasons.

  1. It is easy to set up so that it optimizes pages automatically.
  2. It has tools that make links easier.  Namely, the RSS feed can be used to integrate your articles into other sites to generate backlinks.
  3. Powerful WordPress SEO Plugins exist.  These are usually free things you add to the WordPress install that will improve SEO.
  4. Easy Article Creation – Because it is so easy to log in and create articles, you can do a better job of steadily creating articles and constantly improving your SEO results.

On top of all of that, WordPress integration features make it possible to buy products that make things even more easy.  I built a powerful WordPress Lead Generation system that many people and businesses use to attract leads to their WordPress lead generation site.  There are many 3rd party WordPress tools and programs you can use.

WordPress dominates the Internet and is the tool of choice for almost everyone that wants to get results from SEO.

Here are a few quick and easy WordPress SEO tips to get you started.

  • In settings on the lower left of the admin panel, choose the permalink structure and use custom and add /%postname%.html to the custom box.  This will optimize the URL of the article titles to get better ranking for words in the title of the article or page.
  • Install All In One SEO plugin and activate it.  This will automate most of the SEO for the on page site.  Look through the settings of the plugin and make adjustments as needed.  I usually take out the site name from the way it does the title of posts.
  • Install Google XML Sitemap plugin.  This will automatically build a sitemap for the site that will help search engines index the site better.
  • Use keywords in Titles – this can be very effective.  Use your keywords in the title and in the first sentence and you will rank better.
  • Tag with Keywords – To get better WordPress SEO, be sure to tag using keywords as the tag, for your articles.
  • Keep writing – people often give up too quickly.  SEO takes months to start kicking in and you need to write very regularly to build the site up and start seeing results.

These are some of the Wordpess SEO basics that I share with many people.  Be sure to check out our WordPress SEO videos in Buzzoodle.

Google Plus Spam

I just started messing with Google Plus and in the first hour got a lot of Google Plus Spam.  Don’t worry, I like Google Plus so far and I just changed a setting and the problem went away.

I thought I would do this quick post though because people give up on new things quickly and it would be a shame if you gave up on Google Plus just because you got a burst of 100+ emails in an hour like I did last night.

The solution to reducing emails from Google+ is to go to the upper right corner of the screen when you are logged into your account and click on the little gear.  This will drop down Google Plus Settings.

Click on that and then uncheck the box as seen in this picture for email followups when people reply to a post when you have commented on it.  That feature is fine if you do not comment much or if you do not follow and comment on popular people, but I commented early on a Chris Brogan post and ended up getting flooded with email from Google Plus and I was not interested in them.

If you did not find this, it would have made you less likely to participate in discussions because no one wants too many emails from Google Plus that they have to delete.

I will keep posting more tips about Google Plus in my Google Plus Account – Visit my profile and add me to a circle here.

 

How To Increase Website Conversion

How do you increase your Website Conversion?

I am embedding 4 videos from my favorite SEO tool, Market Samurai, to this post to help you increase your Website conversion. Watch each video and learn how to test website conversion and make sure you try out Market Samurai to increase traffic.

Market Samurai will help you do keyword research and increase quality traffic that will help you increase sales.

To get the Website Conversion Checklist, click here. Then go download your copy of Market Samurai because they will help you increase traffic to your website as well as the fact that they are always putting out great information like the Website conversion videos on this page.

How to Get Paid Speaking Engagements

It would be great if I could tell you just one way to get paid speaking opportunities.  However, there are a lot of different markets for speakers and this means there are a lot of ways to generate speaking engagements for yourself.

The first thing you need to do is commit to the long term.  This rarely happens over night.  It is a continuous improvement effort that includes always improving your speaker marketing materials, your speaker website and the speeches themselves.

Often the best source of speaking engagements are the people that have just seen you speak or hired you in the past.  If someone in the audience really likes it and they are involved in putting on other events, this can result in great speaking opportunities.  Also, if your presentation gets good results then you have a good chance to be invited back in the future.

It is also not very difficult to build a speaker lead generation website that will rank high in search engines when meeting planners are out doing research for the meetings they are preparing to do.  While these are easy to set up, they do take regular writing and a commitment to improvement over time.

Another good source is to work with other speakers that compliment your topic.  Then when there is a bigger event that you get to speak at, you can close the opportunity and then ask the planner if they need any suggestions on other speakers.  When you share these kinds of speaking opportunities with a small group of professional speakers you will all increase your business.

You will find that the web and referrals from past audience members and event planners is the best source of speaking opportunities for Small Business Speakers that I get.  Speaking engagement opportunities for Marketing Speakers are surprisingly easy to come by with a good speaker lead generation engine, for example.

The ultimate key is that a paid speaking business is a slow growth effort unless you manage to get incredible PR and exposure.  You need to be comfortable promoting yourself or have a great speaking agent to quickly make money speaking.  For many people, slow growth with referrals and targeted web efforts will provide a steady supply to work with.  Then continue to grow from there.