Sherman Cox Dot Com

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Another method related to the “Seminar-book Method” is the “Let Experts Write Your Book” method.  This is a powerful and easy method to write a book that requires very little investment from the “author,” but you still become well known as an expert.

There are a couple of ways to do this.  One is to send a list of questions to a number of people in your chosen niche.  Take the answers and compile them into a book.  This is an effective way to create a book.

However, a better way is to take a page out of the “Seminar-book” method.  Here you do either a web seminar or simply record a conversation with 10 experts.   10 30 minute conversations will give you 5 hours which should easily translate into a 130-150 page book.  Simply have the presentations transcribed and there you go.

You cannot beat this method for a number of reasons.  First, you have big names in your products which can easily sell the books.  Second, it makes creating books very easy.

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The “Seminar-book Method.”  This is how I have written all of my e-books and ultimately will be how I write my first book paperback.  Here you simply do a seminar on a subject.  If you do 4 related 1 hour seminars and then have them transcribed you will end up with your 110 pages.

And if you don’t have a venue to do a seminar, why not do a “Webinar.”  Let me tell you what I mean.  The nice thing about this method is that you are now able to create a number of products from one product.  I did a seminar in a niche on Christian preaching.  I recorded the video using screen capture software.  I took the audio turned it into an audio CD.  I then took the video and turned that into a Video DVD.  I then had the seminar transcribed which became a 30 page ebook.

I did approximately 5 seminars in the niche which means that I have 5 audio CDs, 5 video DVDs, and 5 30 page ebooks which are about 150 pages.  Now putting together PowerPoint slides is a ton easier than writing a book.  But more than that, this method creates a line of related products that can be reused.

That is the key to this method, reuse your stuff!

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The dripping method is problematic because it requires such a long time without much interaction from others built in.  A slight modification of this would be the “Blog Your Book” method of book construction.

Here you split up your book into pieces and you simply post these pieces to a blog.  As you build up an audience more and more people will read and comment on your material.  This will help you to refine it.

Because others are reading the material, it will give you an added incentive to continue posting.  Another great benefit of this method is that when the book is completed you will have an audience who might be ready to purchase the book.

So you blog daily about your book and then you edit the pieces together into a book.  You can then send the book to your list or post it to your blog so that people can comment on the whole thing.  There is some disagreement about whether such a practice should be followed, but in any case, you will have people to help you write your book.

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One of the easiest ways to gain “authority” in a niche is to write a book. However, writing a book can be a very difficult endeavor for most of us.  So how do you do it?  I have found and implemented a very effective means for writing a book.  We will discuss three of these methods in this series of posts.

First there is the simple “daily trickle” approach. So let’s see you plan on writing a 120 page book.  Taking out the front and back-matter let us say that you end up with 110 pages of text.  What that means is that if you write one 250 word page a day for four months.

So each day, write a page and edit it.  Every 10-14 days you will have a chapter done.  It works because most of the time you will not write just one page.  The forcing yourself to start is where the power is located.

If you are going to follow this method you should do a few things.  First, you need to split up your book into pieces (chapters).  Then split up the chapters into smaller pieces (sections).  you will seek to write a section or half a section a day.

Four months is a long time, but after four months you will now have something solid to market your business.

This website is about one thing.  How to use the Internet and other technologies (webinars, teleseminars, blogging, membership sites, amazon.com, facebook.com, etc) to build authority which will help your business.

I have used the internet to create a name for myself in a couple of niche’s.  I have used webinars, teleseminars, amazon.com, and other technologies to create a business.  I believe that the way to build a long-lasting business is to build authority.  So that is the thrust.  How can we use these things to “make a name” so that we can have a solid business.

Now there are other methods for building a business online.  There is the “micro-niche” formula where you target a very small long tail keyword and build a 5 page site around that.  You then link to products that are out there.

That is a viable method, but that is not this one.  I seek to build authority in a niche and build a site that has people coming back.  I then wish to leverage that authority-status to make money.

That’s what I did.  I have used these techniques to build a solid side business.  I am sure that you can build the same kind of business as well.

You have an article or blog post that you have in mind. What can you do to turn the idea into a post?

1) Write short posts – no one is going to read your 1K word article. Well someone might, but the majority will skim. Some brave souls may print it out and then never read it. The majority will simply skip it. A blog post should be short no more than 500 words (give or take). Let people consume your point and move on. They will come back tomorrow if it is effective and valuable information.

2) Add pictures – Pictures pull people in. I have added pictures to all of my blog posts on all of my blogs. It grabs people. I would encourage you not to fall into the trap of copyright infringement. Don’t just copy pictures off the web.

3) Turn it into a how to – If possible, have how to posts. These move people forward quickly. My blogs most successful posts (in traffic) are always “how to ” articles.

4) Good Title – I am very bad at titles, but you really need to get good titles if you are going to have effective articles. A good title draws people in and also has the words that you will address in the article.

Do the above and you will be one step closer to a growing ministry blog.