The first time I published, I went with Ingram Spark because I heard it would be easier to get into bookstores and libraries. That claim is false. While theoretically your books can be ordered by libraries, it’s unlikely they will – you need to get them reviewed by MG/YA book reviewers or big organizations. You can advertise in magazines and …

A few years ago I started publishing nonfiction ebooks to boost my business. I still recommend ebooks as a simple and easy way to generate leads, get more traffic, dominate your industry and establish yourself as an expert. It’s relatively easy to get your Amazon page to rank well in Google. The problem is that it’s hard to earn good …

I just wrote up a case study of my first course launch (which made 18K in 48hours). Although I did pretty well, I could have done much better. I actually wrote this post several months before my course launch, because I was already dealing with anxiety and lack of confidence. For several years I’ve run this blog as a side project, a …

Even though I don’t consider myself an expert at doing online courses, I did pretty well with my first one. So this is an (epic) case study explaining everything I did to make 5-figures with my first course launch – without any affiliates promoting it for me, and without doing any webinars. I hope it will be useful for anyone else thinking …

Whether you’re an author, artist or entrepreneur, you’ve probably heard “the money is in the list.” Building your email list gives you direct access to your clients, customers and fanbase. For the past several years I’ve used Mailchimp, and I continue to do so despite it’s problems (which I’ll discuss down below). I usually recommend it to authors because I …

It’s almost November, which means Nanowrimo (national novel writing month) is coming. The rules are simple – start and finish 50,000 words of a new project in 30 days. Although it’s supposed to be fiction, many people use the momentum for non-fiction or to edit previous projects. As I mentioned in this article I wrote for the Nanowrimo blog, “Why …

I’ve blogged before about the book giveaways I’ve been running – they work well and build a targeted list quickly – but the added value in book giveaways is that the authors you include are likely to share your giveaway with their following. This week I put up a new giveaway, and got Lauren Kate (author of Fallen) to share …

I just learned something new from Ryan Deiss and I’m putting it here in case I forget it. It’s a simple rule to online business that rings true for me. “You don’t have a traffic problem.” What you really have is a problem with motivation and conversion. If you knew that you’d get $10 per visitor to your site, A) You’d …

Since I started Creativindie I’ve been running it as a personal blog. Sure I try to get some traffic, and want people to sign up on my list, and maybe eventually hire me or buy something… but it’s been sloppy and haphazard. However, since I’ve decided I want to be writing fiction full-time, that means I need to stop working …

In several groups this week, a lot of my author friends started reporting worst-ever months and a drastic drop in income due to a sudden drop in page reads. For authors in Kindle Unlimited, page reads could often be as much as half the income generated from Amazon Kindle. Today, I saw a *hypothetical* explanation that seems on-point. Amy Hopkins …