Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Useful Fluff

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fluffy1.jpgAre you holding back a product because you think it doesn’t have enough content? Although there is no set length for a book, ebook, audio program, home study course or other content, people do make judgments about the value based in part on the amount of content provided. Size matters.

Some people deal with this by adding fluff: They make the margins extra wide, double-space everything, use a large font and make what they have written take up more space. Others add pages of useless garbage, such as one product I bought that had page after page of photocopied junk that added nothing of value. Or they bonus the offer with a collection of ebooks that have nothing to offer. People see through these stupid content tricks.

Several years ago, I coined the phrase “useful fluff,” meaning stuff you can add to fill out a product and make it larger, but only if it is useful and of value to your customers. One client who used this advice doubled the price of her manual, and doubled the number of sales, too.

The idea of useful fluff is to add more volume without adding a ton of extra work. Here are some examples of useful fluff: [Read more…]

Do It Once – Profit Forever With Passive Income

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passive_income.jpgWe all have a limited amount of time available to grow and run our businesses. So how can you decide where your time is best invested?

I have been giving this a lot of thought lately. My conclusion: Investing time in tasks that create long-term value is the way to go.

That might seem obvious to you, but is that how you operate? Or do you spend your time on “right now” tasks–going from doing repetitive jobs, such as filling orders and paying bills, to putting out “fires”? When you do productive work, is a large portion of it work for which you will only be paid once? If so, you need to make some changes. [Read more…]

Building Your Expert Platform

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crowd.jpgIf you want to market yourself as an expert–author, coach, consultant or information product producer–you need a platform. “Platform” is simply the current buzzword for being visible and having an audience.

In fact, most major publishers will not consider a book from an author who does not have an established platform. Even if you do not plan to seek a traditional publishing contract, however, having a platform will make it easier to profit from the content you create.

So how can you create a platform for yourself? [Read more…]

Profit with Checklists

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checkmark.jpgWho doesn’t love lists? Checklists help you to get organized, buy equipment and supplies, plan an event, get your finances in order and lots more. You can create lots of checklists for your market, no matter what that market is.

I live near the Texas coast, and every hurricane season we get checklists of hurricane supplies  and preparations from local media, grocery and hardware stores and elsewhere. To see some examples of checklists, look at the free lists available at http://www.PrintableChecklists.com/.

Although checklists may be given away as promotional items, you can also sell checklists. What ideas for checklists can you come up with? [Read more…]

Seven Ways to Profit by Giving Away Your Ebook

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free.jpgWant to make money with an ebook? One way is to sell it. But you can also do well by giving away your ebook, if you do it right. Here are seven of the best ways to profit by giving your ebook away for free.

1. Upsell to another product or service. Use your ebook as a preview of something you have for sale: a longer ebook, a printed book, consulting services, a workshop or event, an audio product, etc. Give customers a sample of what they get in the paid product.

2. Drive traffic to your web site. Then convert that traffic into cash through product sales, affiliate links, advertising revenue, etc.

3. Include affiliate links in the ebook text, so readers click and you earn commissions. If your ebook tells them how to do something, link to relevant resources they can use. [Read more…]