AP 0827: Should I Create a Website to Promote My Book?

AskPat 827 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 827 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week. We have a great question today from Andre, but before we get to his question I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks, a company that his helping me and millions of other small businesses manage our business finances. Tax season, it's coming soon, just around corner.

It's made it so much easier to just organize things and keep track and see what's going on with my business. Plus, they help with invoicing too, so if you do any coaching or you have any clients of any kind that you bill it just makes it really easy. They literally help you set up a professional looking invoice in less than 30 seconds and they help you keep track of who opens them as well, which is really, really handy. If you want to check out FreshBooks for free for thirty days, head on over to freshbooks.com/askpat and make sure you enter AskPat in the “How did you hear about us?” section. All right. Now here's today's question from Andre.

Andre: Hello, Pat. My name is Andre. I'm a follower of yours. I've been listening to this More than Passive Income podcast for about a couple of years now and AskPat, I really appreciate what you're doing, man. The content is lovely. You're supplying a great need, man, that is much needed out here because the things you teach on is not taught in school, man. Without people such as yourself, we'll be left to fend for ourselves and figure it out like most people are doing right now anyway.

My question is this here. I wrote a book called $100K and basically it's about the three things that I have made $100,000 or more in throughout my career. Quickly, I'm a barber by trade. I've been cutting here for 21 years with license, and I've been owning my own barber shop for 20 years. I'm actually a barber that makes a $100K a year or more. I also own real estate that creates a passive income that I collect monthly. I have multiple properties and also, back in 1998 I started by own T-shirt line called Riders Wear and I was targeting motorcycle enthusiasts or people, just anybody in general. It did very well for me and I print my own T-shirts and all that.

All that is included in my book, so I touch on them three points, to maximize my credibility with people whatnot, so if you're in each one of these fields, real estate, barbering, silk screen and design, selling T-shirts, what have you, then hopefully this book will appeal to you. But my question is, should I have a website for this or not?

I have tried websites in the past on two different occasions. Once back in the late '90s when everything was real different from today. Then again about a couple of years ago and it wasn't too lucrative for me. I found I generated more sales through word-of-mouth and dealing directly to the people and that's been beneficial for me.

I'm just wondering, now since I have this book, should I do a website for it? I don't want to give up on thought of that website because this is the future, this is here, this is now and technology isn't going anywhere. I understand dealing with a website I'm dealing with the world. It's a global economy besides just local and word-of-mouth and people that you know. Anyway, thanks again, Pat. I appreciate you and keep up the good work, son. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Andre. Thank you so much for the question. First of all, awesome job. You're killing it, man. You're doing all these different things. I just agree with you completely It does add to your credibility I hope. That's a good lesson for everybody in terms of hey, if you want to teach people stuff, having done them already and succeeding with them makes it a lot easier for you to teach those things. It's similar to how a lot of people see people teaching online business and then they try to teach it themselves just by absorbing other people's content and putting their own voice to it, which is a good idea to put your own voice to stuff, but they don't have the proof, right? It makes if very difficult to earn credibility, build authority, especially when other people who have proof are putting themselves out there and sharing that same information as well.

That's partly why, when I started my businesses back in 2008 with Smart Passive Income, I already had a proven business in the architecture world that was helping people pass an exam and that was an online business building passive income, so that definitely qualified me and helped me climb the ranks of the people who were teaching online business quite quickly because most people didn't have successes under their belt. Anyway, enough about me, more about you.

Let's talk about this website thing that you had. Yes, the environment has changed obviously since the '90s and even since a couple of years ago. If you're selling a book it's really interesting that you're having success selling a book by word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth, obviously is great, but it can only scale by so much. A website is great for scalability and even if it's not going to be there to directly sell your book, it can be there to directly capture people's interests after they have your book or wherever they find you or wherever they do business with you. That's where you can bring people to, right? That's going to be your home. That's where you can start building an email list, so when you want to build another $100K business somewhere else you can kind of show people the ropes and something new and how you weave your way and journey through that and it becomes your home.

I think a website for your book specifically is a good idea, but I would also recommend a website for you. You have an amazing personality. I can tell here on the other end you're a hard worker. It might be kind of cool to … Don't let it be a distraction, I would say. You don't have to go full-on with it. You could just have it be a place where your book lives, other information about your other businesses live and then whenever you want to create new content you can do that. I think just having that there to promote within the book to share when you are talking to people and you're meeting people like you are already, they're going to visit the website and be there to potentially subscribe to your email list.

All that being said, too, I want to ask you about Amazon. Is your book on Amazon, and if it is not, why not, because that is the world-wide audience of people who are grabbing books and those books can then lead to sales or leads that can join your email list. When you think about it, yes, word-of-mouth and handing it out in person is fantastic. It's probably the best way to sell a book in terms of actually getting people to say yes because they're talking to you in person, and like I said, you have a great personality. It's easy to listen to and and easy to talk to, but you don't have the benefit of an algorithm and the website and search engines and Amazon, which is just a search engine of buyers literally, plus the recommended books, people who read this book also read this one, and the reviews. Where can people go to see review of your book? Where does your book rank among other books? You'd be quite surprised about the engine of Amazon of what it can do for your business from there.

I would recommend definitely continuing to explore a website for yourself. You can start with a website specifically for your book and then I would recommend collecting email addresses from there, hopefully driving people from your book to that website if possible. Then building sort of a brand and a personality, from there a personal brand is what I would recommend based on all the different things that you're talking about. It's similar to what I do based on all the different things that you're talking about. It's similar to what I do in terms of the different experiments that I'm running, the different successes I have under my belt that I've been sharing.

I don't know exactly what your book is about, but I'm guessing it's about how you started all these different things and tips for people and that's what I talk about. You have a number of different successes under your belt that you could talk about that are much different and very interesting. How did you make $100K as a barber? That's awesome. I think there are other barbers out there who would want to do that, too, so you could potentially branch off and with that website you could discover, “Oh wow. I have a huge following of barbers now. I'm getting emails left and right from barbers specifically. Maybe I can create a website or an online course that helps barbers, or a video course,” or whatever. There's a number of different ways you can go about it, but I would definitely start with a website that's going to be your home where you can then discover new things about who your audience is, who your readers are, and promote you and your other products quite highly.

Andre, thank you so much for the question. Wonderful job. Keep up the great work and I look forward to sending you an AskPat T-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd love potentially featured here on the show as well, just head on over to askpat.com and you can ask it right there on that page. Thanks so much. I appreciate you all. I also appreciate FreshBooks for offering a thirty-day free trial for everybody. Again that URL is freshbooks.com/askpat. Make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Finally, here is a quote to finish off the day by Sara Teasdale. “I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.” Cheers, guys. Take care and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Oh, and hey, if you have a sec, head on over to iTunes and leave a review for AskPat. I read every single one. I appreciate them so much. Bye, guys. Take care.