What Have You Got To Sell, Part 2?

Have you ever heard of “passive income”? Quite an interesting thought, isn't it? A little (or not so little) stream of income that trickles into your account and, after the initial setting up, requires nothing from you sounds good, doesn't it? With the internet it is possible. Here are a few examples:

Sarah is a motivational speaker for a popular course in spirituality. In the 1990s she traveled the country lecturing and selling tapes of her lectures at the retreats where she was a speaker. Now she is retired and doesn't want to continue traveling despite many offers to do so. However her tapes have become a significant source of income for her and this is how she did it.

With the help of the engineer who originally recorded her lectures she had them all reformatted into MP3 recordings. These files are in a database on the internet linked to her web site which describes the various lectures. Those wishing to purchase the lectures can do so for a modest fee which they pay for by credit card or bank card through PayPal. The site is set up so that as soon as a customer pays for a lecture they are automatically redirected to a page where they can then download the MP3 file to their computer, MP3 player, or any other device. Simple as that.

There are several advantages to this system. 1.) Anyone, anywhere with computer access and a bank card or credit card can purchase from her. 2.) It doesn't matter what time of the day or night they do it and doesn't need Sarah to be involved. Plus it is instant gratification for the customer. 3.) Once a week Sarah checks her PayPal account and transfers the funds that have accumulated into her bank account. That's all she has to do!

Brian is a composer. Over the years he has written dozens of original pieces as well as created arrangements of well-known songs. With a web site that describes his work, which includes small audio clips that can be listened to, Brian is able to sell his composition and arrangements in PDF format. Like Sarah Brian did all the work when he created his pieces and scanned them in to his computer. Now musicians can just pay for the music they want and be immediately taken to the access page where the piece is downloaded. Brian's job is to transfer funds when he feels like it.

Bonnie loves to cross-stitch. For years she designed her own cross-stitch patterns and friends often begged her to share her designs --- which she usually did for free. When she started sorting through her patterns she had over a hundred of them all drawn out on graph paper and colored in with colored pencil. Like Brian, Bonnie picked her favorite designs, scanned them into the computer, and created PDFs. By creating a web site and using the simple pay/download technique Bonnie's designs are available to needleworkers around the world.

Knitters, quit pattern designers, crocheters, and other fiber artists are finding the internet a rich market for selling what they used to give away!

Whether it is music, audio and video files, photography, designs, instructions, lectures, stories, poems, songs, or more, if you have created a body of work you could be earning money from it. At Valentine-Design we have helped a number of creative individuals get started generating streams of passive income. What can we help you with?

Okay, I'm Embarrassed....

One of the things I harp about, both here and and to clients, is the importance of "branding" your endeavors. Branding is important --- it helps create an identity for you and/or your business, services, products, etc. This is particularly important for small, independent and micro-publishers who are trying to establish themselves in a gigantic marketplace. One of the best examples of branding I have seen by a small publisher is Level Best Books' covers for their annual crime anthologies.
Like a lot of small publishers I started out with a web site for my small press, www.ParlezMoiPress.com. Then, on the advice of several authorities on marketing, I purchased the URL for my name, too, www.KathleenValentine.com and set up a page for that. After that I acquired the URLs for the books I was either publishing or promoting through Parlez-Moi Press. Every time I did that I set up a web page to go with it. All well and good except..... As I talked more and more to clients about establishing their "look" I became increasingly aware that I was not practicing what I was preaching. It got to the point where it was embarrassing. So right after Christmas I set myself the task of re-designing my own conglomeration of web sites.

Since the site I liked the best was www.KathleenValentine.com, I decided to use that as the model for the rest.

First I re-did www.ParlezMoiPress. I still have content to add but at least I'm not embarrassed by the look of it any more.

Then I went on to add the pages for my four current books --- two of which are published and two of which will be within the year. The first of these is my collection of romantic short stories, My Last Romance and other passions at www.MyLastRomance.com.

Then came the page for The Old Mermaid's Tale. I had a rather extensive site for that and I realized that most of the stuff I had on it was just fluff. I trimmed it down to one page and it is now at The Old Mermaid's Tale:

Since I am frantically trying to get The Mermaid Shawl ready for press (it is with an editor at the moment), I wanted to get that updated because it is getting a lot of visitors. It can be seen at www.MermaidShawl.com:

And, finally, my soon-to-be-published novel, Each Angel Burns, which is going through the final set of editorial changes, need to be added. It is now at www.EachAngelBurns.com:

So, that's my current effort to do for myself what I do for others. I discovered I am an unruly and impatient client! But I think this is a big improvement. Now to get the books out!