How Writing A Book Can Boost Your Online Business

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You started your blog or online business but you’re looking for a way to make it grow. You want to reach that next level but aren’t sure how to make that happen.

One way to consider that often gets overlooked is writing a book.

Many people write off this idea for one of two reasons:

1. Fear it’s too hard

2. Doubt having anything valuable to share

And to be perfectly honest, I fell under both of those categories. Until the day I decided to write a book to boost my online business.

Yes, YOU CAN Write A Book

Now that I’ve gone through the entire process of having no clue what to write about to publishing a book that’s been for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and more, I can say this with complete confidence:

“Anyone who wants to write a book can and should.”

You can check out my earlier post to learn the steps that will take you from rookie to published author. Fun fact: writing a book is even a job you can do to make money while pregnant or during your maternity leave.

Build Your Email List

We’ve all heard it before: the #1 advice from many successful online bloggers and entrepreneurs is Grow Your Email List. Social media can change at any time, but your email list of people who want to hear more from you? That’s gold for growing your biz.

A book can help you grow an email list in a few ways:

• You can give away 2 chapters of a published book as an opt-in

• You can send readers of your book to your blog to gain new readers (if they find you on Amazon before finding your blog)

• You can easily contact past readers about future books you write (if they liked the first one and signed up for your list, odds are they are SuperFans and will buy another one from you)

• You can give away a free eBook in exchange for email addresses on your blog (This works especially well when your book is so valuable you could sell it for money but you’re giving it away instead to build your list)

Earn Passive Income

If you want to self-publish a book rather than have an eBook that’s only on your blog, you earn the potential for passive income.

Having a book for sale on Amazon—the world’s largest bookstore—you can make sales anytime, any day. Yes, this means you can wake up in the morning and earned money while you were sleeping from your book sales.

My all-time favorite part of publishing my book is all the emails, messages, and reviews from people who are changing their life and attacking debt.

My second favorite part? The passive income! Of course, anytime you’re earning money yet not directly trading hours for pay (ex. Earning $15 per hour), you have the opportunity to scale your business and reach new levels of growth.

Build Your Authority

Anytime you have a website or blog online, whether directly or indirectly, you’re growing your “authority” in that area. Blog about saving money? You’re sharing that you’re an expert in that area and people can use your tips. Share paleo recipes? You’re becoming a go-to person in that area.

Blogging and writing articles definitely builds credibility, but once you publish a book on your topic and have that on your website, it’s an automatic sign that makes you stand out from all the others in your niche. This was a tip I learned from You Must Write A Book by Honoree Corder, which I read before publishing my book.

Grow Your Business

You can also massively grow your business if you write a book if you’re a:

• Coach

• Freelance

• Course creator

• Speaker

• Direct Sales

For example, let’s say you’re a baby sleep coach (because babies not sleeping is a maddening and exhausting thing and people will pay money to have someone coach them through how to get a baby to sleep).

If you have an amazing blog and testimonials from happy clients, that’s a great start. However, if you have an amazing blog, testimonials from happy clients, and a book on the subject you’ll stand out as THE expert instead of AN expert.

Since I’ve published a book, I’ve also been contacted several times about being a speaker. Honestly, more than I want to!

I’m a complete introvert but even so, I’ve agreed to a few speaking gigs because I know it’ll help people and help my business. So, if speaking is part of your personal or professional goals, I highly recommend writing a book to boost your authority in the area.

Finally, I’d love to have more evidence for this but I have a strong hunch that writing a book could even improve a direct sales business.

If I’m curious about essential oils, I’m going to be much more confident buying or even signing up as a consultant under someone who has published a book on the topic versus someone who only sells the product. (Maybe this will be one of McKinzie’s next book ideas ;))

Upselling

Writing and selling books is a nice supplemental income, however, very few authors make a living from writing books alone. You can make a living from having other things to sell in addition to your book.

Let’s take courses, for example. Courses have exploded over the past few years. Having a course makes you appear to be more of an expert just like having a book does. However, courses usually sell for a lot more than a book.

So if you can get someone interested in your topic with your free content, then get them to purchase an eBook or paperback book at a little higher price, you’ll be more successful selling a course too (as long as you have awesome content and really help people).

As you’ve probably seen, courses now can easily run from $50 to thousands of dollars. And having a book is one step that could make you more successful selling a course. You can even refer to your course in your book to reach even more people.

More Resources About Writing A Book

I get two questions all the time about writing a book, so I’ll go ahead and share my favorite resources to answer those questions for you right here:

How much does it cost to write a book?

How do you market a book and get reviews?

If you want to learn more about writing and self-publishing your own book to boost your online business, you can find me at TheCommonCentsClub.com.

About the Author:

Val Breit is a school counselor turned stay-at-home mom. She crushed over $42,000 in student loans in less than 3 years with her simple rules to win with money. Now she uses nap times to show moms like you how you can make money working at home, pay off debt, and create your best life at TheCommonCentsClub.com.