Alyice Stops In to Answer My Questions!

Alyice Edrich is taking a blog tour, and fortunately, my blog is on her itinerary! While she was here, she agreed to answer my marketing questions.

Alyice is the author of several work-from-home e-books, including Tid-Bits For Making Money With E-books — where parents earn hundreds of dollars selling information they already possess.

My three questions (just off the toppa my head, of course) were as follows:

Me: There is so much information out there about how to succeed making money on the Internet, with a lot of conflicting information. Is it better to focus and spend my time on one good niche (with content-rich website, e-zine or newsletter, e-books, etc.) or is this putting all of my eggs in one basket? Should I instead be creating as many sites and products in as many good niches as possible to improve my Internet presence and income possibilities, as recommended by many of the gurus?

Alyice: When people spread themselves too thin, they cannot successfully create an income to live off of or they spend all their time working that they simply do not have time to enjoy their lives. In my opinion, I think people should start one website at a time. Build that website up and when it generates a certain amount of income, steadily for a set period of time, then move onto another website or develop products and/or services to enhance your current website.

Having your eggs in more than one basket is vital these days, but that doesn’t mean that you need more than one website to do it. If you pick a theme that you are passionate about, you can develop several departments within that niche to build on.

Lets say that you love photography. You take photographs of families for a living, but you live in a small town with the nearest town 35 minutes away. You want to increase your income so you decide to go with what you know and develop a photography website. You start by building quality content: teaching your readers how to take professional quality photographs, pick the right camera and equipment, and eventually you add content on selling photographs to magazines.

But you realize that while this hobby has brought you name recognition, which has caused people in other towns to drive to you for their family photo shoots, it hasn’t generated the income you had hoped. You think about closing down the publication, but you love what you do so much you just don’t have the heart to do it.

That’s when it hits you! You can add advertising to your publication through affiliate programs. A quick search on http://cj.com helps you locate products that match every article in your publication. A month later, you begin to see an income and as time progresses your income increases and so do the private emails.

Because of reader feedback, you discover a need for certain products you cannot find through your affiliate programs, so you get a resale license and you buy wholesale. You then open up a shopping cart and begin selling those items through your publication and your income increases again.

Eventually, you realize you have a lot of wonderful photos sitting in your studio collecting dust so you decide to find a publisher to develop a few coffee table style books. With the left over photos, you open up a stock photo area in your shopping cart.

Now, you still have one website, but you’ve just created multiple streams of income. And you aren’t spreading yourself too thin, because you only have to promote one domain.

Me: I don't really understand the point of finding an e-book publisher. I thought that writing an e-book, converting to PDF (which anyone can do with free software), and marketing through a self-designed website, were the great advantages of selling an e-book. Other than the digital delivery service and PayPal fees, (and affiliate fees if you use affiliates), you stand to make a very nice profit from each sale. What are the advantages of using an e-book publisher?

Alyice: Personally, I don’t like the idea of signing a contract for exclusivity to an e-book publisher. But there are many people who just don’t want to deal with the whole entrepreneur side of things. When you sign a contract with an e-publisher, you get royalty checks and don’t need a business license (in most states).

Me: I have recently written a how-to e-book in a specific niche, establishing myself as an expert and featuring the e-book on my website. I have submitted articles to a few free e-zine content sites and have shared links with a few websites. I also send out a content-rich newsletter to a growing subscriber list. What else should I do to market my e-book and website? (Am I on the right track)?

Alyice: You are definitely on the right track. Many people think that because you have an e-book you cannot send out press releases to traditional media outlets. This isn’t true. While some media outlets still do not understand the concept of e-publishing, many do. Take your chances and contact radio stations, local news outlets, and cable talk shows to discuss the theme of your e-book. And don’t forget to advertise in print publications.

You can visit Alyice Edrich at Dabbling Mum Press to order a copy of her e-book, Tid-Bits For Making Money With E-books, today!

Catch up with Alyice by making another stop on her blog tour… Here.

Strange (Indoor) Weather We're Having...

I've found that cold winter temperatures bring about strange indoor weather patterns.

Since moving here from California, I've discovered that when it's cold outside (I mean really cold like -10F, not California cold like 45F), you're not so inclined to open up the windows to air out the house. Now, I like fresh air; I like to sleep with the window open. During winter, however, that's not really an option. The furnace is on almost constantly, recycling the same stale, dry air throughout your firmly sealed house. What do you suppose is floating around in that stale, dry air (and lots of it)?

For one thing, dust.

An evergrowing accumulation of dead skin cells, animal dander, dust mites, and other such lovely things that form a thick coating on everything because it has no place else to go. The mirrors, the TV, the table tops, the book shelves, and computer screens begin to take on a dull, gray finish and you eventually realize there's nothing wrong with your vision. You also realize that you now have to dust every day or your lungs will look like your TV screen.

But that's not all. Within this same atmospheric cesspool are germs, germs, germs. We bring them in from school, church, Walmart, friend's homes; and then they take up residence on doorknobs, countertops, and everything else that we touch. The problem is, we tend to contract those germs more easily and get sick during wintertime, not because of the cold weather, but because of the warm dry weather in our homes! It's true! Ever notice how your sinuses tend to dry out during the winter months? Mucous is what your body uses to flush germs out of your system. In a warm dry house where other people's cold germs have made themselves at home, you pick them up on your hands and then you touch your nose. Bingo! You get sick.

Then, there's "winter lightening." It's that snap-crackle-and-pop that goes on 24/7, but is most noticably at night, when you're tossing and turning in bed. It's dark, but you lift the blanket and see a dozen or so little sparks of light. Snap! Crackle! Pop! It's in your bedding, your clothes, your hair, your carpeting, and your cat. Those little dryer sheets are worthless, unless you can throw your whole house in the dryer. We finally found some anti-static spray at Radio Shack. We sprayed down the carpet, furniture and mattresses; and washed and dried all the bedding (with a double dose of dryer sheets). Then we were relatively static-free --- for maybe a week.

Now I understand where cabin fever comes from.

Not (Usually) a TV Fan

I’m not a big TV fan. I have old favorites like I Love Lucy and the Dick Van Dyke Show. I loved Carol Burnett’s and the Smothers Brothers’ variety shows. I enjoy good comedy. But my taste for TV watching dwindled when I left for college. There was one television in the dorm lounge, and although it was always on, no one ever watched. We were too busy studying, partying, and growing up.

One weekend I went home and found my family gathered around the TV for a new show called All in the Family. Was this what people were watching? All that whining and arguing about ethnic and social issues was not entertaining to me. I was glad to get back to the dorm.

I stayed another five years or so, leaving the dorms and sharing apartments with various roommates. We had TV, but again, it was almost never on. We’d rather listen to music or sleep or have friends over or be out and about. Or in class or at the library studying, of course. Watching TV was synonymous with “stuck at home.”

Eventually I became acquainted with a new show called Saturday Night Live. Now this was funny TV! To this day, I think those original SNLs are priceless entertainment, classic comedy. However, a bit later on a show called Married With Children brought TV down to a new low. It was so bad that we (I was married now) banned it from our viewing menu. Another show, In Living Color, seemed pretty clever and funny at first, but then a little weekly sketch called “The Buttheads” ruined it for us. (If you never saw it, use your imagination.) Now I know this show launched the careers of Jim Carrey the very talented Wayans’ brothers, but the Buttheads sketch was in such poor taste, we shut it down too.

During the eighties and the nineties, I was so busy raising my family I had little time for TV. I had no “spare” time, so to speak; and because TV had deteriorated so much, I preferred reading, sewing, or maybe even jumping jacks to watching television. I was so far removed from the TV habit that it never occurred to me that I might be missing anything good. Maybe I was wrong.

We have this new gizmo on top of our TV now called a “DVR.” You can program it to record a certain show whenever it comes on, even if you don’t know the TV schedule. It’s called a “season pass.” My significant other knows all about that stuff, so he has it set up to record his favorite semi-oldies that I guess everyone (but me) was watching at one point in time. These were serial dramas, sort of. There were new problems and dilemmas in each episode, but with recurring or continuing issues as well. Our current season passes include ER, Boston Public, New York Undercover, City of Angels, and Judging Amy. Believe it or not, I am now seeing these shows for the very first time, and with the added advantage of seeing one episode right after another instead of having to wait!

Okay, I’m impressed. I’m finding some good writing here; imaginative, intriguing storylines, interesting characters, and pertinent issues brought to the forefront. So maybe I am a few years behind (and many of the issues ten years old or more). And, it appears to me that the students on Boston Public seem a bit too mature for high school kids (I’m guessing most were not actually teenagers), and the emergency rooms are busier than any I’ve EVER seen (I have experience here; I raised three active sons).

My overall favorite is Judging Amy. My DH says he’d dump me for Maxine in a minute if the opportunity presented itself. Okay, I’m soft and wishy-washy; she pulls no punches and stands up for herself. And she smokes. I’m not so sure he realizes what he’d be getting himself into…

As far as the programs currently showing on television (except American Idol, of course)… I know just about as much about them as I do about stock option trading. Nada.

That’s okay, because we have one more season pass to fall back on for really great classic entertainment - - - But wait! We're traveling through another dimension; a dimension of sight and sound and also of imagination.... Look! There's a signpost up ahead!

Next stop: THE TWILIGHT ZONE!