Blogging, Writing, and Publishing

One of the great benefits of being a niche publisher/author is your customers' recognition of you as the subject matter expert. This leads to more book sales and teaching and speaking opportunities. This year I am teaching a security course at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and several security seminars. The following is how I planned for and got the job of teaching at university and professional organization hosted venues. This is a great way to gain instant credibility, earn an income and teach without having to worry about the administrative responsibilities. When sponsored, the space, advertising, registration, payment and graduation certificate requirements are already taken care of. You can also negotiate a good salary. I teach a 24 hour course over a few weeks and one of my books serves as the textbook. That adds up to a nice paycheck. The process is already institutionalized and all you have to do is show up; sort of. The following is the proposal method I have ...

You can find suppliers on the internet to fit almost every need and Google is a great search resource. This will help you find a vendor who provides resources to a broad customer base. Once you find a capable vendor, you can design the product specifically for your niche base. Remember that you are creating a product to sell and not a publicity gimmick or marketing campaign. For example, I use a vendor to make magnets. Since the magnets are an industry "best practice item", I can address needs of a  built in niche market. I am not providing magnets for a campaign or featuring Red Bike Publishing’s logo for give away items or door prizes. Those ideas are expensive and are marketing efforts for those with big budgets. To find a supplier, search by key word. For example, to find someone to make magnets, I enter, “magnet, signs, two sided magnet”. After selecting search, you will find many of the available providers. Compare t...

Does your specialized market have written guidance or requirements such as state or federal regulations, policy or procedures or any other publication of rules? If so, you might be onto something. So, you've got backing at a certain level requiring an action by your audience. You can piggy back on these necessities to bring a compelling need for your market to "act now". 1. Research the most significant points of the regulations, policies or procedures. Write them in bullet form so you can easily put them to use. Don't try word for word, most regulatory language is just too lengthy to work with. You just want to skeleton to build your body around. For example, a regulation states that sensitive government information is to be stored in an approved save (this is a paraphrase). 2.Search for implied opportunities. Regulations spell out requirements, but there are also some soft guidance or other opportunities as well. In my experience, people seem to work under best ...

Blogs are another way to connect with your customer. However, they are harder to maintain because more regular input is required. Think of a blog as a diary or journal type of entry. More input and shorter articles are better so save the longer messages for newsletters and your book. For simplicity and efficiency, consider having multiple media social networks. For example use newsletters, blogs and books to feed similar content and material. You can get your own blog by setting up an account with www.blogspot.com, www.wordpress.com or any other provider that fits your needs. I run two blogs using wordpress. com and blogspot.com. I like the features of wordpress.com because you can make it look like a website and add as many pages as I need. I like BlogSpot because I can customize the blog to look more like my current website. Both are very popular with great looking pages. When you start your blog, be sure to include as much i...