Mark McGuinness is a writer and coach whose eBook Time Management for Creative People has been downloaded 80,000 times and led to the start of Lateral Action, a joint venture with Brian Clark and Tony Clark of Copyblogger. I was thrilled to interview Mark for this continuing case study series on eBooks as business building tools.
How did you decide on eBooks as a buzz and traffic building strategy?
I wrote my first couple of eBooks as guest series for other bloggers (Liz Strauss and Catherine Wentworth). The articles were well received so it seemed like a nice idea to wrap the series’ up as pdfs and make them freely available. I’d been reading the Ideavirus by Seth Godin, where he says ‘ideas that spread, win’ and the best way to get them to spread is to remove as much friction as possible. So giving them away seemed a great way to eliminate friction!
What has been the biggest benefit(s) from writing an eBook?
Traffic, links, reputation, new business opportunities. That’s the chronological order – when I launch an eBook it generally attracts a lot of traffic, which in turn leads to inbound links (and more traffic), which in turn gets my ideas in front of a lot of people, which in turn leads to coaching and consulting work.
And my eBook on Time Management for Creative People was one of the things that led to partnering with Brian Clark and Tony Clark to found Lateral Action. Little did I know that they were thinking of starting a site about creativity and productivity — Brian told me my eBook was ‘bang on target’. If I hadn’t put the eBook out there, I might never have got on their radar for the project. So magical things can happen when you release something valuable for free.
Which was your first eBook, how long is it (pages or words) and what did it do for your traffic and your business overall?
An Introduction to the Enneagram, which I wrote as a series for Liz at Successful Blog. 26 pages. The blog series attracted a lot of attention as Liz has a busy blog. The downloads of the eBook have been OK but not spectacular. I think the title has a lot to do with that – most people have no idea what the Enneagram is, so the title doesn’t give them an incentive to read it.
Lesson: titles are important! Make sure you pick one that attracts attention.
How did your time management eBook reach 80K downloads?!
Well you could say it was an overnight success that took a lot of preparation. Firstly, it was full of solid, practical advice that solved some big problems. Secondly, the title – Time Management for Creative People – was descriptive, included a clear benefit, and was slighly provocative (several people told me I shouldn’t use the title because creatives don’t think they need time management).
Plus I released it after two years of blogging and building relationships with other bloggers. That meant that I could send it to lots of people with sizeable audiences who would know who I was and be reasonably likely to link to it (which they did). The tipping point came one Sunday morning, when I checked my web stats and saw that I’d had thousands of visitors over the weekend. It turned out Brian Clark at Copyblogger had devoted an entire post to my eBook which led to a stampede. I think it reached 20,000 downloads within the first month and it’s been going steady for the last 3 years. I checked a few months ago and it was over 80,000 downloads. The nice thing is that it took me a week to write, and it’s been working hard for me every since.
How do you decide on the topics for your eBooks? i.e. did you poll your audience or just went with your favorite topic.
They usually start off as solutions to problems I encounter myself, and also problems I see my coaching clients struggling with. When I see the same issues crop up over and over again, I realize I’m onto something.
I wrote the Time Management eBook because I was getting tired of explaining the ideas to every individual client – once I’d written it I could say “OK read this, then we’ll do a coaching session!”. My eBook on How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself) came from working with managers who were feeling powerless to motivate their people when the recession started to bite, as they couldn’t offer bonuses and pay rises any more.
I think it’s very important that if you want your eBook to achieve your goals, it needs to deliver a lot of value, which means solving big problems for your audience. Coaching and consulting is a great way for me to identify the real ‘pain points’ for my audience.
Your eBooks are no opt-in necessary. How do you think that’s affected your business?
As I said, I wanted minimum friction, so that the eBooks spread as far as possible. And also because I was pretty unknown when I started publishing eBooks, so the exposure was more important than collecting e-mail addresses. I may well change that tactic in future, depending on the topic.
You mentioned moving from free to paid. Can you tell me how you’ve decided what to give away for free and what to put in the paid product?
Well until recently I’ve been selling services rather than products, so it was fairly easy to give most of it away for free in order to attract coaching and training work. Last year I released my first paid product, an in-depth e-learning program which I created with Brian and Tony at Lateral Action. And I’m currently writing a new eBook which I’ll charge for.
The great thing about charging for an eBook from a teaching point of view is that you can justify spending a lot more time on it and creating a more in-depth product. And from a business viewpoint, I have a bigger audience than when I started out, so that gives me a better chance of succeeding with a commercial eBook.
What do you like about eBooks vs. other media (audio, video) and do you have any plans to add those types?
eBooks are nice because I love to write, and I can produce them myself pretty easily. The Lateral Action Entrepreneur Roadmap is an e-learning course featuring a lot of audio lessons, which definitely added another dimension, but it was a much bigger project than an eBook. I’ll definitely be doing more audio as well as eBooks in future.
We also did some animated videos at Lateral Action (here I am as a cartoon character) which was great fun, but obviously you need a video or animation wizard like Tony Clark for that, so it’s not so easy to do on your own.
What advice would you give people thinking of writing an eBook?
Firstly, decide on your goal. If you’re just starting out, you might want to release something for free to get your name out there and attract links and traffic. And if you’re selling a service or other products, that could be another reason for giving it away. If you’ve got an established audience and/or you’re not selling something else, then it could be easier and more attractive to charge for it.
Whether you go for free or paid, I’d suggest:
- Identifying a serious problem that people in your audience want to solve, not just writing about something that happens to interest you
- Delivering a ton of practical advice, that they can use immediately, without having to buy your other products or services. As Brian Clark says, if it feels like you’re giving away too much, you’re probably on the right track!
- Nurturing relationships with bloggers and other thought leaders in your niche – these people can be valuable allies (or affiliates) when it’s time to launch.
What would you do differently?
I’d choose a different title for my first eBook! Apart from that, I’m pretty pleased with the way they’ve performed, so no regrets.
Mark McGuinness is a writer and coach who helps artists, creatives and entrepreneurs create remarkable things at www.lateralaction.com. For bite-sized inspiration follow Mark on Twitter.
