Key Tasks for the Successful Indie Author
Welp, you did it. You quit the day job and are now working for yourself. No annoying boss telling you what to do, when, and how to do it. Screw those mindless meetings and soul-sucking reports you had to put together every Friday. You can take as long as you want for lunch, you can even leave "work" early if you want to. You have the whole day to do whatever you want.
Or at least that's how I felt the Monday after I quit my job. I had done all the pre-planning and visualizations. I had my ideal day written out so I knew that I'd get up at 8 am, spend the next two hours on a carefully crafted morning routine, then at 10 am, I'd settle in to write for a few hours. Next up would be a lovely lunch, then after, perhaps a nap. At 2 pm I'd get back to work doing the business-y tasks that all good business owners must do in order to run a successful gig.
And that's exactly what I did for the first few weeks. With the exception of the nap and afternoons filled with business-y stuff. You see, I had no idea what the business side of my writer's life was going to look like. As the days wore on, I found my afternoons looking more like this...
I was getting the writing done...mostly, but I wasn't selling any books, booking any clients, or generating any content. This brings me to the key task I believe each indie author needs to complete on a regular basis, aside from producing books. And that is marketing.
Marketing 101
Marketing is going to be as unique a task to you as what and how you write a book, but please note, it must be done, and on a consistent basis. Take time to determine your marketing strategy then schedule the corresponding to-dos into your work day.
Marketing for me prior to 2020 was fairly easy. I was fortunate enough to get quite a bit of exposure via a few friends who either booked me to do readings and book events or became my first clients and then referred me to their friends. But when Covid hit and everything went virtual, I was at a loss as to how to get the word out about my books and services.
Social media to the rescue. I had launched my YouTube channel in 2019 but it had gone nowhere. I was randomly putting out vlogs with no real substance or cohesion. I was limited to recording on my long commute home and occasionally on the weekends. Video editing was brand new to me which slowed down my output as well. I was blogging fairly regularly on Wordpress (you can still see my old posts HERE) but as it was with the video, my output was random in both timing and content.
Not only did I need to change how I marketed myself, I needed to schedule time in my day to do it consistently. Here's where I sing praises for one, time management "guru" who did not disappoint, and that is Amanda Warfield. Her approach to content generation (or content marketing if you will) is to "simplify". Of course, this caught my attention. After all, I coach the Simply Self-Published process. Anything that keeps the work simple to understand and complete is right up my alley.
I joined her Club Content Batching (<---- click for more info) group and took the course on how to plan, write/record, edit, schedule, and reuse a MONTH'S WORTH of CONTENT in ONE WEEK!! I'm emphasizing that for obvious reasons. Because it's amazing.
Using the process I learned in CCB, I'm able to create:
my monthly newsletter (goes out the first Tuesday of the month, usually)
four to five blog posts (that post every Wednesday)
four to five videos (that post to my YouTube channel every Thursday),
over the course of six days. Having that one trick up my sleeve helps me put the rest of my schedule together with little worry that I'm not doing enough to spread the word about my books and services.
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While this is not sponsored in any way, I do highly recommend Club Content Batching by Amanda Warfield. Click HERE to learn more about it and to sign up. This is an affiliate link so not only will you gain the ability to simplify your content marketing creation, you'll also, low key, be helping me reach my business revenue goals. It's a win-win.
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And with that, I'm going to end the post here. Stay tuned - next week I'll show how I put my work schedule together for the month. If you're a planner geek, then the next few posts are for you :-). Until next time, sending light and inspiration,
Dana
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PS - if you're reading this on Wednesday, August 10th, before 8 pm, then set your timer and meet me on YouTube for my first ever live 'broadcast'. It's my 2-year YouTube anniversary and I'm celebrating by figuring out what the "LIVE" button does :-). I'll be pressing it at 8 pm sharp. Hope to see you there!