As the author of over 40 ebooks, I have had my share of mistakes. I have wasted thousands of dollars trying to learn how to create, publish and promote my ebooks. I wanted to quickly share with you the top 5 mistakes I see new authors make.
Hopefully you will avoid these mistakes at all costs! They are:
– #1 Trying to Do Everything at Once
– #2 Focusing on Product Creation Instead of Selling
– #3 Creating a Pretty Website Instead of One that Sells
– #4 Not Staying for the Long Haul
– #5 I Will Tell You At the End of This Article (it is a surprise)
Now that you know the biggest mistakes, let us cover them in detail so you know why they are the biggest mistakes and how you can avoid them.
#1 Trying to Do Everything at Once
When you are just getting started, there is so much to learn. You head online and try to read up on how to write an eBook and you get conflicting information. Then you come across an article on online promotion while you are writing your first draft, so you buy a product or two on marketing and making money online and guess what happens?
You get distracted. You lose focus.
When you try to learn and do everything at once, you are destined to either quit and give up or waste a lot of time and money in the process. Instead, the best advice is to first create your ebook, then learn how to market it after you have written it.
If you cannot wait, then I would suggest that you make sure you get your daily writing quota done before you visit any blogs or read anything on online marketing. This way you know the first draft will get written and you will actually have something to sell in a few short weeks from today.
#2 Focusing on Product Creation Instead of Selling
There is a huge learning curve involved with becoming a published author and an online marketer. There are two sides to the equation – producing a great product and selling your product.
You cannot sell what you do not create, but if you focus too long on creating the product you will never have anything to sell. Most would-be authors get hung up on creating a work of art – they research, write, rewrite, edit, do more research, write, get a case of writer’s block, get frustrated, research some more – and they never finish their first draft.
Instead, focus on just getting your first draft done and then spend the rest of your time on learning how to sell it and actively marketing your ebook. You will make more money online if you focus on the selling part and not so much on the product creation piece of the equation.
#3 Creating a Pretty Website Instead of One that Sells
I highly recommend that you not waste your time and good money on developing a pretty website with all the bells and whistles of your favorite website. Newcomers to online marketing think that you need a website like Amazon.com in order to sell your products online.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Take a moment to go to Clickbank.com and look at the websites of the bestselling e-books and you will see that they are dead simple (often only one page, the sales page) and some are even ugly. Ugly sells because it is the sales copy on the page that matters, not the blinking, flashing banners or cool graphics.
#4 Not Staying for the Long Haul
Simply put, this mistake has to do with expectations – big expectations and the wrong expectations to be exact. You probably have read some inspirational story about how some writer wrote a tiny little eBook and it became a bestseller almost overnight and they got rich in the process.
That can happen and I personally know authors it has happened to, but they are in the minority. Selling ebooks and becoming a bestselling author takes time and effort.
#5 Not Investing in the Right Tools and Resources
When I first started online several years ago, I tried to locate all the free information I could. I did not want to spend any money. So I went about doing research, reading articles, visiting blogs and forums and learning everything I could about eBook writing and making money online.
The result? I learned how to do it all for nothing, but I wasted hours and hours that I could have spent writing. A simple $20 or $40 in one eBook or maybe even $100 to buy a few more would have saved me hours of going down the wrong path.
The point is you need to make sure that you are not “penny wise pound foolish” as the cliche goes. Be willing to spend a few dollars in order to save yourself valuable time, time that should be spent writing and not surfing the internet.
Source by Fabio Marciano
