Episode 98
In this show I talk again to Paul Teague, this time about two of the hottest topics in Self-Publishing at the moment, InstaFreebie and Vellum.
Tim Lewis: [00:00:36] I have been mindful that I have been doing quite a few more marketing and maybe less self publishing shows recently.
Tim Lewis: [00:00:45] So I thought I’d get on fellow self-publishing podcaster and former guest Paul Teague to talk about two new interesting things that have developed in the self publishing area specifically, that is InstFreebie which I know everybody’s talking about and I kind of feel that I should probably be involved in some way.
Tim Lewis: [00:01:08] But clearly haven’t been. And Vellum which is a formatting program for eBooks for the Mac computer.
Tim Lewis: [00:01:17] Now Paul Teague is interesting in that I know he’s a very anti-Mac person but he’s also uses Vellum so I thought I’d get to the bottom of how he’s managing to use a Mac product to a format his books and how he’s getting success with instaFreebie for getting leads.
Tim Lewis: [00:01:37] And also to see how he’s getting on with his move in to the world of fiction writing away from the old world of Internet marketing and non-fiction. So now to the interview. Hi Paul welcome to the show.
Paul Teague: [00:01:52] Hi Tim. Thanks for having me again.
Tim Lewis: [00:01:54] Okay. So I’ve got you on to address my sad lack of self publishing specific stuff in the last few shows. So we’re going to be talking about InstaFreebie and Vellum today. Why is InstaFreebie and why is it the hottest thing in self publishing circles at the moment?
Paul Teague: [00:02:11] Well InstaFreebie’s one of these things that’s doing the rounds you know if you listen like you know you do to podcasts and you’re always looking at social media.
Paul Teague: [00:02:19] It’s really good for just getting the temperature of what’s going on in self publishing and I’ve heard a lot about InstaFreebie and Book Funnel and interestingly Book Funnel is actually the one I used first.
Paul Teague: [00:02:29] So I was a very early adopter with Book Funnel I just use that to to give out review copies to people. I think I used I can’t remember what I used it for at the beginning but basically it was really good just to send out copies securely rather than sending .mobi files in emails, I mean she’s not very good.
Paul Teague: [00:02:45] And the other great thing about book funnel is that it kind of gives you instructions so when people are saying I don’t know how to do this Book Funnel take the strain with that. So I used Book Funnel first and I wasn’t really sure about the difference between that and InstaFreebie.
Paul Teague: [00:02:56] All I knew is that instaFreebie was paid and in Book Funnel I was able to use for free. So I came to it quite late and it was just one of those things where I had so many people talking about it, I’ve got to give this a go.
Paul Teague: [00:03:08] I can’t remember what inspired me to take part in a giveaway. But you know sometimes the penny drops doesn’t it.
Paul Teague: [00:03:14] You do it so is that the penny finally dropped and I realized what was going on with these things called InstaFreebie Giveaways. You can use InstaFreebie if you want to a free level just to give your book away and that’s kind of what I thought it was about at first.
Paul Teague: [00:03:27] But actually if you upgrade on InstaFreebie you could do things called giveaways.
Paul Teague: [00:03:31] Now I think I’ve told you before Tim in my evil Internet Marketing past, several years ago, the way I built my list it took me a year to get 25 subscribers when I first started list-building in 2008-2009.
Paul Teague: [00:03:47] and then I discovered things in Internet marketing called joint venture giveaways and joint venture giveaways and Internet marketing terms very similar to what we doing with InstaFreebie giveaways.
Paul Teague: [00:04:00] And that is that people in Internet marketing are giving away usually ebooks. They usually books about how to use YouTube, how to be fantastic on Facebook and things like that.
Paul Teague: [00:04:10] And what happens is people team them up. They send e-mail traffic to this giveaway. People load up with freebies and everybody builds their list. And I got my list of 25 in something like a nine month period up to 5000 and beyond.
Paul Teague: [00:04:25] And when I started taking part in those giveaways because I’m a little bit technically geeky, like you, I don’t have any trouble with the websites. I thought the place to be with these things is not taking part in them. It’s running them.
Paul Teague: [00:04:35] And organising, that’s where the action is. And then you make money you get affiliate income, all sorts of things. And also you build your network because you’re the go-to-guy all of a sudden for giveaways.
Paul Teague: [00:04:46] And with these Internet Marketing giveaways I did those for a while and actually my first product on ClickBank which we sold about 9000 of was all about how you do that and then subsequently turn that into online income.
Paul Teague: [00:04:59] So when I started seeing actually what these InstaFreebie giveaways were all about, I thought hang on this is exactly what I was doing in Internet marketing but it’s for authors.
Paul Teague: [00:05:08] And you know just like in Internet marketing I thought right okay I need to get a feel for this very quickly and there might be something here if I actually organise these events and start to host them and run them as I used to do in Internet marketing.
Paul Teague: [00:05:21] Because it’s the same old game frankly: you’re building a list, making affiliate income and generate a lot of traffic. So that was my sort of initial interest in it.
Tim Lewis: [00:05:29] How do you go about hosting an InstaFreebie Giveaway? I mean how does it all work? How do you get the hosting to work?
Paul Teague: [00:05:38] Okay so there’s two ways to do this. You know if you really don’t like building websites, the idea of installing even a Wix site or a WordPress site horrifies you you’re probably not going to be able to host an InstaFreebie giveaway.
Paul Teague: [00:05:55] But I know we alway get a resources page when we do interviews with you Tim. One of the resources I’ll be grateful if you could go on there is my alliance of independent authors video where I show you how to create a WordPress site for free within an hour (https://paulteague.com/wordpress-in-1-hour-alli/).
Paul Teague: [00:06:08] So that because it’s specifically geared to showing you how easy it is actually when you know how.
Paul Teague: [00:06:13] But you need to be able to the website so if you can’t do that you’re probably going to have to take part as something lists there or you’re going to have to take part in the give away thing send somebody who’s hosting it your image and your author picture and your link to InstaFreebie.
Paul Teague: [00:06:27] And they will do the technical stuff. I think I took part in one or two as a contributor just to get a feel for how it all worked. And then I held one of my own.
Paul Teague: [00:06:37] And so to do that I had to build a WordPress site. And I had to figure out how I could put lines of book covers on there and buttons that people could click download to access the insta freebie pages.
Paul Teague: [00:06:49] You got to have that skill at least. When I held that because you know as I say with evil Internet Marketing past to me this is just is traffic generation is all it is,massive traffic generation.
Paul Teague: [00:07:01] So if I think I had 35 people I think on my giveaways. And so you were sending a lot of traffic to a page over a week. So the other thing I did which I’m sure you like because I know look at Facebook advertising is I’ve created a custom audience from it.
Paul Teague: [00:07:16] So I put all the pixels on for Google, for Twitter and for Facebook.
Paul Teague: [00:07:21] And my aim of hosting these things was you know number one get out our traffic to a site, number two was building a network of other authors getting to know other authors, number three because I used tracking links on my give away I worked out who were the big hitters there.
Paul Teague: [00:07:37] I want to know I’m sending all the traffic the thousand plus clicks, people sending one a thousand clicks in a week and then I’m skimming those off to do a kind of Supergiveaway to just send traffic to my book when it’s free on Amazon and when I’ve got a promo on for it.
Paul Teague: [00:07:52] So you know it works in all sorts of ways. And I built a custom audience over a week I think it was 7200, a crime custom audience in Facebook which then of course I can create a look alike audience for.
Paul Teague: [00:08:07] So again it’s a fantastic way to create very very fast a targeted by genre Facebook audience.
Tim Lewis: [00:08:13] Winding back a little bit, if somebody is like well I’m not too sure about doing the whole hosting thing, how do they find these it’s the free giveaways to take part in?
Paul Teague: [00:08:33] Well I’ll give you the names of a couple of sites, their Facebook groups really. And there are quite a lot of them about. And probably again it’s probably best because these are Facebook groups and they don’t have neat URLs, probably best if I share them with you for the notes page.
Paul Teague: [00:08:47] I can tell you what they are called and just a Facebook search and you’ll find most of them. Instafreebie promo’s is a great site. It’s run by a guy called Dean Wilson who is very very switched on to this.
Paul Teague: [00:08:58] I think this is one to learn about them. This is the first place to go in to freebie promos. Another one I use is called the authors group giveaway meeting.
Paul Teague: [00:09:13] There’s another one called the prolific reader. Another one called InstaFreebie share group and the other top tip for this actually is that Mark Dawson who runs the self publishing formula podcast. Mark Dawson has actually set up genre groups for many InstaFreebie giveaways.
Paul Teague: [00:09:32] In fact I’m talking about. This is probably where I got switched on to the idea of InstaFreebie, so Mark has all sorts of genre groups , so I’m in crime and thrillers, dystopian I think I’m in non-fiction, it’s got all sorts of genre groups.
Paul Teague: [00:09:44] So search out Mark can get involved in his genre groups too. There are loads of groups there but I would recommend that if you want to just learn going to the InstaFreebies promo’s group run by Dean Wilson.
Tim Lewis: [00:09:58] Obviously you’ve got WordPress. It doesn’t have to be a brand new instance of WordPress does it? Can it just be on your existing site in a different section or is that something you recommend against?
Paul Teague: [00:10:09] No it’s up to you. When I started hosting them when I was testing because I kind of got that I could build all these audience things. When I was testing is I used to host the giveaways and I was trying to work out what can I can I charge people to do this at a price of our make enough money to charge for the service.
Paul Teague: [00:10:29] Can I say to people that would be 200 quid thank you very much, I’ll set up and run your InstaFreebie give away for you on my domain. And in the meantime I’ll be harvesting lots of this information.
Tim Lewis: [00:10:45] All of this is of a return to your evil internet marketing ways?
Paul Teague: [00:10:47] I am providing a service. What I did you do because I’m a little bit geeky, I used this as an excuse to create multi-site where I can very quickly just clone a sign and create new InstaFreebie giveaway. I was just trying to work out whether I could scale it.
Paul Teague: [00:11:09] You know, what price I could charge, what value it would create for people and whether I can make some cash out of this.
Paul Teague: [00:11:23] I never wanted to see how much work and hassle was involved in that you know whether it was you know what my hourly rate would be frankly having tested it now I’d be there or flipping burgers at McDonalds it’s not it’s not something that I’m going to be doing commercially.
Paul Teague: [00:11:36] But actually I’m very happy to do it for myself. It’s a great value to me personally but I’m not going to sell it to other people. You know it’s too many hours too many hassles with it. It’s not something I want to do. But yes you can just do an existing site to answer your question – just do it.
Paul Teague: [00:11:50] It doesn’t matter. You just need a page. Have you got my blog dot com just create a page my blog dot com slash crime giveaway and off you go, it’s fine, it easy. Just add the book covers as pictures and very very simple level just add the book covers as pictures and just click here link to the InstaFreebie. That’s really as simple as you could do it.
Tim Lewis: [00:12:12] So it kind of like book funnel but it’s more about the community aspect in terms of doing the giveaways and things?
Paul Teague: [00:12:22] There’s the community aspect, it’s great for the authors and it got me talking to the authors and I’ve got some lovely feedback from my giveaways actually because you know again I have got air miles on this and I’ve done this before.
Paul Teague: [00:12:34] And one of the things I used to do is I provide training and support for authors. I used to do a lot of training and tell people how to get the best out of giveaway. What I do on my giveaways is I have a leader board and I have prizes and people get really competitive.
Paul Teague: [00:12:47] I send an e-mail out every night telling people who’s at the top of the leaderboard and people get really competitive and start really thrashing their lists trying to get to the top of the leaderboard. So what that does is it stops big week fatigue setting in on the giveaway.
Paul Teague: [00:13:01] And people get really competitive about it so you squeeze the most juice out the lemon from your marketing. The other point of view is there’s no real relationship I don’t think with the with the audience.
Paul Teague: [00:13:12] I think my view of it is there to get loaded up with freebies. And I got to tell you you know if I were loading up with 35 freebees off a page it would drive me spare going through signing up for all those e-mail lists and getting all these cheery welcomes from authors.
Paul Teague: [00:13:25] You know when you get the first book so I think that the motivation of the person going for the freebies I can’t understand. Personally I can’t understand what makes somebody go through that sign up process so many times it seems such a rigmarole.
Paul Teague: [00:13:39] Now maybe they just pick off the best ones and there’s another discussion to have about the quality of the person that you’re then subsequently adding to your list. But the bottom line is Tim, I’ve known what it’s like to build the list of 25 over a period of a year. It’s like pulling teeth. It’s terrible it’s really hard.
Paul Teague: [00:13:55] And you know there’s nothing like InstaFreebie. I’ve done Facebook ads to, I’ve been through all the things everybody’s been through. There is nothing like InstaFreebie for getting you a list from zero fairly safely to 5000 in a very short period of time.
Paul Teague: [00:14:10] Now what happens after 5000. I do think it has an upper limit in that you get people start getting InstaFreebie fatigue. You start to see the same books doing the rounds. So I think it very definitely has a lifespan. Very definitely.
Paul Teague: [00:14:23] But I would say to all new authors this is the way to get your list from zero to five thousand within, it’s not unreasonable to say, within a three month period.
Tim Lewis: [00:14:32] So InstaFreebie’s one of the big things but changing tack slightly. The other thing that’s been around for a while is a package called Vellum that people are using to format eBooks. Now it’s considered to be like a Mac product. But you’ve recently started to use in it from your PC haven’t you? How are you doing that?
Paul Teague: [00:14:54] Are you a Mac user?
Tim Lewis: [00:14:56] Well I’ve got a Mac but I don’t use it no.
Paul Teague: [00:14:59] So I can insult Mac users – that’s okay! You know I had a Mac, I bought a Mac must be five years ago now and I hated it and I just won’t touch Macs. I hate them.
Paul Teague: [00:15:08] So you can imagine my sort of rage when you hear all these authors saying well Vellum’s fantastic but oh by the way good to have a Mac. And this was kind of agitated was hearing that bell and now I have formatted my own books in the past so the experience to me when I did my first books was to upload the word file into KDP.
Paul Teague: [00:15:33] And then I downloaded the HTML files and I made my corrections in HTML because that was much simpler for me to do.
Paul Teague: [00:15:40] And that’s how I did my first book. And I you know again I’m immersed in blog posts and podcasts. People keep talking about Vellum.
Paul Teague: [00:15:59] And I’d been using a tool called MacInCloud. I can’t remember for the life of me why I started using it. MacInCloud is effectively a service that you pay I think it’s 30 dollars for 30 hours.
Paul Teague: [00:16:20] But I think you can pay as you go but I don’t buy 30 dollars at time. That gives me 30 hours. And what it does is it creates a virtual Mac machine on your PC so you log in to MacInCloud you pay you 30 dollars and effectively what you then see on your PC screen is a virtual Mac.
Paul Teague: [00:16:43] It’s your virtual Mac, so if I save a documents on it the next time I log in my document will be there it’s my secure Mac area.
Paul Teague: [00:16:53] I wish I could remember why I started using it, it wasn’t for Vellum originally.
Paul Teague: [00:17:05] I had one of these eureka moments where I thought, hang on a minute. I can download Vellum onto my virtual machine. I want to licence it properly. You know it needs to be licenced. I don’t do any cheats are in it because I want to pay for the software download and licence it. And I could use that on a virtual machine.
Paul Teague: [00:17:22] So the minute I thought this I downloaded it, paid for Vellum and it works brilliantly.
Paul Teague: [00:17:28] It’s absolutely superb which means I don’t have to own a Mac and I just have to go on half an hour at a time. The first book I ever formatted in vellum is as good as they say Tim. Have you done anything in Vellum yet?
Tim Lewis: [00:17:40] No I haven’t yet, hence the interest.
Paul Teague: [00:17:44] It’s brilliant, I’ve done two things recently. I’ve just today taken a delivery of three of my my first three thrillers and I’d pay to get those formatted to CreateSpace and it cost me was it two hundred and fifty dollars or something for three you know 90000 word books and they’d look fantastic.
Paul Teague: [00:18:00] And it was the same as Vellum. Honestly it is astonishing it’s every bit as good as people say in that I really don’t know how they do it.
Paul Teague: [00:18:17] Vellum is almost like sentient – you pretty well import your document, your proof-read Word documents into it. It’s just amazing. It puts all the indents in, it puts all the chapter heads on it, it senses them automatically, the minute you drop the book in, it looks incredible.
Paul Teague: [00:18:46] And then you just go through a few steps where you just say I want my chapter headings with the swirly bit at the top or a straight bit below or whatever you want just a few stylistic things.
Paul Teague: [00:18:55] You export it and export the final for KDP. for Google Play, for Kobo, separate files that are perfectly attune and you could be done with a format quite literally in half an hour.
Paul Teague: [00:19:08] And it’s an absolute breeze and the minute you do one book you never go back. I’m never ever going to mess around with HTML ever again. I just bought the software. Forget the trial just buy. I mean I’m well in and I can’t wait for them to produce the next version which is apparently it’s going to allow you to format CreateSpace books which will just be phenomenal.
Paul Teague: [00:19:29] If it is as good a job as it does on the e-book. A couple of little tricks Tim, if you are going to do it because you’ve got this virtual Mac so you create these files downloading them to a virtual Mac. So it’s on your computer but it’s not connected to your computer.
Paul Teague: [00:19:45] So the ninja trick here is to set up a drop box folder or One Drive or whatever you use and then to make sure that I have a MacInCloud folder that syncs between virtual space and my computer.
Paul Teague: [00:20:02] So the minute I save it in MacInCloud it pops up on my real computer.
Paul Teague: [00:20:29] Now I drop it into the Dropbox folder on my PC and it pops up immediately.
Tim Lewis: [00:20:40] Okay so we’ve talked about InstaFreebie. We’ve talked about Vellum. I suppose we should follow up on how are you getting on from your move away from non-fiction to fiction which we talked about the last time you where on the show.
Tim Lewis: [00:20:55] How would you say that’s going? I mean obviously I listened to your diary shows and you’re writing a lot now. How is the transition to fiction going for Paul Teague?
Paul Teague: [00:21:07] Well it’s just very interesting you say that really and I’m pleased you did ask because I have made an executive decision in the last week actually that I’m no longer, I’ve unpublished and I’m no longer supporting my Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter books.
Paul Teague: [00:21:21] Reason for that is I’m cheesed off with them changing every five minutes. You know it’s like a it’s like an albatross. I’m not playing that game anymore. In actual fact you know I do a lot of corporate training. I know I’ve said I’m not doing certain things anymore because I’m just fed up chasing my tail to keep up.
Paul Teague: [00:21:37] And I should have learnt this lesson a long time ago. You know I built a Facebook software five or six years ago. And the lesson I learned from that was never built a software in somebody else’s platform because this was when they changed.
Paul Teague: [00:21:50] I don’t know how long you been on Facebook but they changed the width of the panel that they use from whatever it was 500 pixels or whatever it was and then they didn’t warn anybody.
Paul Teague: [00:22:00] So instantly overnight your software doesn’t become obsolete. You’ve either got to decide either is it time to call it a day or am I going to extend my Facebook panels to the new length it’s just like it’s a mugs game. You just chase your tail all the time and Facebook is like some temperamental child.
[00:22:19] So I should have learned that lesson then. But I persisted but I have now unpublished those. What I am going to do non-fiction. I put my eggs into different baskets.
Paul Teague: [00:22:28] I do a lot of corporate training for WordPress and I am going to update my WordPress guide and I’m going to produce that as a paperback and I’m actually goint to sell that when I do corporate events and I am thinking actually I’m going to the sort of expert positioning I’m going to boil it down to areas that don’t keep changing every five minutes.
Paul Teague: [00:22:46] So there are three things I know a lot about. One is email marketing. One is webinars using GoTo webinar and the other one is WordPress. So those are going to be my three non-fiction channels.
Paul Teague: [00:22:58] I’m going to update the books that I’ve done in those. And I’m going to turn into paperbacks. I’m going to flog them alongside my corporate training because I’ve got a natural ongoing renewing audience there. And actually they’ve always sold pretty well anyway on Amazon.
Paul Teague: [00:23:14] So the fiction I think when we spoke had probably got about six fictions or did I have three fictions and then maybe I was just about to publish the last three, I can’t remember.
Paul Teague: [00:23:25] I’ve got six sci-fis now and then what did last year was I transitioned to thrillers and crimes so I’ve got three thrillers out 90,000 words. I wanted to write up to that to sort of stretch my exercise muscle.
Paul Teague: [00:23:42] So I did a trilogy of 90,000 words last year. I’m about to publish 40,000 worder it was 50,000 but my editor edited it to death and it is now 42,000. So that’s going to be a freebie that’s going to be the sausage on a stick to get people to buy the bigger thrillers.
Paul Teague: [00:24:01] And I’m writing and it will be released in August my fifth thriller and I’ve done that specifically to set up a sales funnel. So I want to have free, 99p and then I’ll have a £1.99 and I’ve set it up so I make my money on the trilogy and that’s where I want to make the money.
Paul Teague: [00:24:23] And so I’m sort of softening them up with the shorter cheaper books. But the trilogy’s specifically where I want to make my money and I’m going to keep the prices of those higher as well so slightly different to what I’m doing in sci-fi.
Paul Teague: [00:24:34] With sci fi the first book is free and I make money on the next two. And frankly that’s sort of self-perpetuating and still works because they’re long and took you know 90000 a lot of words. I didn’t want to give those away. I wanted to make some money from those.
Paul Teague: [00:24:50] But I tell you interestingly what I’ve done with those as well is I’ve done two box sets: I’ve done a box set of book two or three and I’ve got a box set of one two and three and I’m doing really well. I haven’t really started marketing it yet, the marketing for real start when I’ve got the five book funnel.
Paul Teague: [00:25:09] But I’m selling lot our box sets which is good because I make good money on those you know, five or six pound a time on those. So it’s sort of early indications are it’s going O.K.
Tim Lewis: [00:25:20] With the Instafreebie giveaways, what books are you giving away on them? You’re giving away your free one or do you give away what would be the 99p copy or something along those lines?
Paul Teague: [00:25:32] With the InstaFreebie what I have done I’ve taken a couple of dystopian ones. So I’m giving away the full version of the free book on those.
Paul Teague: [00:25:43] With the crime giveaway. I have got Don’t tell Meg which is my first 90,000 word thriller that is on KDP Select. Here a top tip for you actually, so on KDP Select you’re allowed to give away 10 percent of the book for free. So what I did there was I gave away a sampler of 10 percent of the book, I adapted the cover and put SAMPLER on it that’s what I gave away because I wasn’t allowed to give away the free book.
Paul Teague: [00:26:11] Now I’m only going to give it away for free once I’m doing a promo. And it’s going to be the only time it’s going to go away for free and I need to do this just to get some traffic going through it while I’m writing the other two books.
Paul Teague: [00:26:24] I’m writing as fast as I can but it would be available for about five days of one KDP Select promo and I’ve loaded about five or six free book giveaways on the list of things. And then I’ve also coincided my InstaFreebie Promo for then as well.
Paul Teague: [00:26:41] And I’m just going to drive a shed load of traffic at it for five days just to get people moving through it.
Paul Teague: [00:27:01] So I just want that to just keep going until I can hit August when I’ve got three books and then I can start do some proper marketing with the funnel set up. The problem of books is it takes so long to write and proof and produce. There’s only so much I can do at once.
Paul Teague: [00:27:17] But I don’t want to diminish Don’t Tell Meg I want to keep the price high on that. So it’s only going to be five days for free. Then it’s 3.99 after that. And I want to stick to that because I will make some money out of this rather than keep giving stuff away free or cheap.
Tim Lewis: [00:27:32] And the other question is all these email addresses that you’ll getting from InstaFreebie giveaways: How do you kind of maintain that list. Are you sending them weekly emails or are you just basically just waiting until you’ve got something to sell? How are you dealing with the lists?
Paul Teague: [00:27:50] Am I allowed to use the word crap on your podcast?
Tim Lewis: [00:27:53] I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s allowed or not! I’ll just bleep it out on iTunes!
Paul Teague: [00:28:00] But that’s how I’m doing. For somebody who’s done internet marketing for so long, I’m terrible at e-mail. I’m not really a kind of a you know Facebook group person which is a bit anti-social. It’s just not my environment that.
Paul Teague: [00:28:14] And so you know I know I want to be emailing and I do have automatic e-mails set up but I’m just rubbish and I don’t do it when I know what I’m supposed to be doing.
Tim Lewis: [00:28:24] I know all the tricks but I just not good at it. I just don’t want to do it. I’m just lazy with it. This is one of those things I can’t get to doing. So no, you don’t get some automated follow ups. You get all the bits and pieces that you expect and move you into social media and things like that.
Paul Teague: [00:28:41] But I’m rubbish. I’m rubbish at doing the cheery hello every Friday and giving you all my news. I’m just not my natural environment or natural way to communicate.
Paul Teague: [00:28:54] As soon as I get these lists I stick them in Facebook I’m creating custom audience I create a lookalike audience you know I know all the things I’m supposed to be doing but I’m not doing them.
Paul Teague: [00:29:04] So that’s my problem isn’t it? I don’t know what it is. I was I was talking to somebody I was interviewing somebody for my podcast last night and I said you know there must be a point on social media and things like that where you feel that people are kind of really interested in what you say but at the moment they’re not.
Paul Teague: [00:29:20] You know it’s like well if I tweak my wise words it’s like a little bit of tumbleweed rolls by. And so it just doesn’t feel like you’re really talking to anybody at the moment. I think that’s the bit I struggle with that kind of really close connection I don’t really feel like I’ve got it.
Paul Teague: [00:29:36] But then that’s chicken and egg. No I haven’t earned it have I? So yeah I know what to do, I know all the theory. I know how to do it but don’t do it.
Tim Lewis: [00:29:44] So are you worried that when you get down to actually wanting to email this email list to say like buy my book that they’re just going to be “who is this person?” and unsubscribe is that a worry for you or do you think that it’s worth it just having the list anyway even if you haven’t got the ability necessarily or the willing to email them regularly.
Paul Teague: [00:30:07] Yeah. I don’t know. I’m just know I ought to e-mail them more regularly. They don’t sort of unsubscribe and I have a reasonable open rate with them. It’s fine I don’t get complaints or anything.
Paul Teague: [00:30:30] You know everybody says you should get an assistant. I should get an assistant. I really should get an assistant to do things like my social media scheduling. I do it every week and I hate doing it.
Paul Teague: [00:30:41] I mean I think I wish I had an assistant to do this and it’s the same with my e-mail marketing. You know I wish I could just say you know here’s this week’s campaigns make it so. And just walk away and have a cigarillo or something.
Paul Teague: [00:30:53] They are just not jobs I enjoy. They don’t feel like creative jobs to me and so I’m not good at them.
Tim Lewis: [00:30:59] Yeah. Well that’s something. I’ve got a few people in mind to try and interview about VAs and virtual assistants and the like because that’s something that I know I need to do more, which is outsourcing stuff but it’s always very hard.
Tim Lewis: [00:31:14] When you’re not necessarily making huge amounts of money to think I’m prepared to pay somebody else to do this stuff even though I know I should be doing it. So it’s kind of understandable. So you think well I’ll just e-mail them when I’ve got something to sell.
Paul Teague: [00:31:27] And you know that I’ve done a lot of work with VAs. I’m doing a lot studying I’ve done courses and I know the game. I know that you should get a VA. Everybody says get a VA before you actually need one.
Paul Teague: [00:31:37] And actually to be honest with you I was having conversations about a VA around Christmas time and I nearly got one and she had to go off, somebody increased her hours or something so she couldn’t do it or maybe she hated me or whatever.
Paul Teague: [00:31:49] But it didn’t happen, but it very nearly happened at Christmas. When I went back to sort of work three days a week. I thought it’s fine I’ll get somebody in. But I do need a VA definitely. And I think it’s because the other thing I did in Christmastime of systemize the whole thing of systemize my whole business ready for. So.
Paul Teague: [00:32:34] It’s already it’s all set. They’re all ready to go. But I didn’t just take that final step but I know it ought to be done.
Paul Teague: [00:32:49] You know because really as writers we should we should have people doing all these things that we do like processing podcasts, interviewing guest and we should just run up and do the high value task which is the creativity. That’s what we should be doing. It’s hard to get there isn’t it. And there are bills to be paid and book covers to be paid for and proofreaders to pay as well.
Tim Lewis: [00:33:09] Well who knows maybe at like episode one hundred and fifty we shall bring it back and we can find out how you’re doing then.
Paul Teague: [00:33:17] You might find I’m dead and buried by then – episode 1000.
Tim Lewis: [00:33:22] But anyway so we obviously discussed this before but how can people find out about you and your podcast and everything else?
Paul Teague: [00:33:31] Best place and the place I’d really like to go to Self Publishing Journeys which is my podcast because we can all do with more podcast listeners and Tim and I got talking because I like Tim’s podcast and Tim listens to my podcast and whether he likes it or not he listens to it!
Paul Teague: [00:33:47] We offer something different to the same kind of listener I think. So yeah drop by my podcast and from there, like all good internet marketers, I will send you off spinning in all sorts of different directions to different things that I do. So SelfPublishingJourneys.com is the best place to find me.
Tim Lewis: [00:34:03] It’s great to have you on the show again!.
Paul Teague: [00:34:05] Thanks Tim always enjoy. I’ll join you when I’m of 70 or something next time!
Tim Lewis: [00:34:08] Probably!
If you liked this show then you might like Moving from Non-Fiction to Fiction with Paul Teague, Revisiting the Reedsy Book Editor April 2016 and EBook Discovery Services with John Doppler