Generating Leads Through Books With Ellen Violette

Did you know that you can write a book use it as a powerful tool to gain more leads? In today’s episode, award-winning book and business coach Ellen Violette talks about how she uses her book as a lead generation magnet to gain more customers for her business. Ellen is the host of the Books Business Abundance podcast, a bestselling author, and the CEO of Create a Splash. Today, she talks about how she got into writing books and how she’s generating leads and sales through them.

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Generating Leads Through Books With Ellen Violette

My guest is Ellen Violette. Ellen, how are you doing?

Good. How are you?

I’m doing great. For those of you that don’t know her, Ellen is an award-winning book and business coach. She is the host of the Books Business Abundance Podcast, multiple number one best-selling author, and CEO of Create A Splash. She helps entrepreneurs become number one best-selling authors using her three-day authoring system so they can reach big audiences, gain credibility and expert status, get more leads and clients with less effort and grow businesses to bigger profits and more impact. We’re excited to talk to you. I know you have a bunch of VA horror stories. First, let’s take a gigantic step back. Talk to me about what you were like growing up. Were you a straight-A student? Were you a rebel? Did you know you want to be an entrepreneur and author?

I was not a straight-A student, but I was a good student. I graduated with honors in high school but I did even better in college. I love to study and learn. I was always a bookworm. I wasn’t popular. I got bullied as a kid. I was fat as a child and my name rhymed Ellen Watermelon, so that was not cool. I had to wear glasses by the third grade, so I was a mess.

Where did you get the confidence to become an author?

First of all, I come from a family of writers. My grandfather was the night editor of The Herald Examiner in Los Angeles. My mother was the editor of her high school paper. My grandmother was an English teacher, so some of that is in my genes. My father was an attorney but he was an entrepreneur on the side. He always had these little side deals going, things that he did. I grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s. In those days, women did not have many choices. My mother was a bright woman. Her degree hung in the kitchen over the sink. That was her rebellion, putting it there. I looked at my mom and my dad. I was like, “My mom is unhappy. I’d much rather be like my dad.” My dad worked for himself. Because I had a painful childhood, I retreated into music. Music was my thing.

When I grew up, I wanted to please my parents. I come from a professional family of judges and doctors. When I was in college, I was looking for what I’m going to do with my life. I ended up going to graduate school in architecture. I got talked into it. I was there for two years and I was miserable. It was out of my element. The reason that I got into it was because in those days they said they were looking for people from the social sciences to make it more humane and all that. It was complete crap. Once you got in there, it was all about art and building these little models. They would have these panels and they would judge you. I would have these massive panic attacks and I ended up in therapy. My therapist said, “Have you ever thought of being a songwriter?” because I had poems and journals and things I’ve been writing since I was eleven. I said, “No.”

That wasn’t in the realm of in my world. That wasn’t even possible. I started exploring it. I was living in Westwood and it was right near UCLA. I went to their extension program. They had a great music program. I was hooked. I’m a Grammy-nominated songwriter and that was it. Creativity is my thing. That’s how that led me to books because I was winning a lot of awards as a songwriter but I wasn’t making much money. My parents were subsidizing my career. My husband and I built a world-class studio in the house I grew up in. He became an audio engineer when he met me. My parents passed away within eleven months of each other. We had to sell the house. With the house went our studio and our way to make a living. After that happened, we started buying, fixing, and selling houses.

In order to sell our house, we had to fix it because it was damaged in the Northridge earthquake. We did well. We got a bunch of money. We lived on that for quite a while. It was like, “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?” I thought, “I’d always wanted to write books, so now is the time to explore that.” That’s what I did. I got online. At that, point it was 2004 and I found eBooks. I went, “This is amazing.” I didn’t know that you could also do it with books at that time. Traditional publishing was still looked on as better, but I thought, “This is cool. I like these eBooks, so I’m going to write one.”

In writing it, I looked for a coach and there weren’t any. I was like, “How could there not be any coaches. This is crazy.” There was one book and one email course. I went through the book and at the end, there were three pages on marketing. I went, “What do I do?” I hired a regular coach and it didn’t go that well. I thought, “I’m making the mistakes and then he’s telling me there’s no system. There was a better way to do this. I’m going to figure it out.” I did that. I figured it out. I created my program and I started making money right away. That was it in 2004.

A lot of people have their bestsellers. I know Amazon has their own thing. What is that process after you have the book out to generate sales? Are you still making money on the book? Are there certain sales numbers or sales amount that you’ve been able to hit?

First of all, I love writing books, so I don’t even look at it in those terms. Secondly, I’m using them as lead generation and getting people to take the next step with me. In that sense, I was never that concerned with the numbers. I’m more concerned with the process. Over time, the more books you write, the more money you do make. The better that you are at marketing, the more money you’re going to make. I’ve been doing seller launches for my clients since 2012. I have a 100% success rate getting them to number one. There are a lot of benefits besides getting it to number one. When you get it to number one and you keep it there, you become a number one new release. When you become a number one new release, your book shows up a lot more in Amazon in their marketing. You can get that for the first 30 days and it helps you jumpstart.

You will not get one thing perfect for the first time.

What works well, which I wasn’t aware of in 2012, was free plus shipping offers. You’ve got a number one bestseller. You put it into a free plus shipping offer. If you’re like me and you have programs, you sell your programs on the back end of that. You use your book as a lead generator, so you’re not concerned with making money with the book because you can make a ton of money on the back end. If you want to make money on your books, you’re better off doing AMS ads or Facebook ads and send traffic to the book. People think, “I did my launch and that’s it. I’m done.” No. If you keep it in KDP Select, you have to give an exclusive to Kindle and Amazon. You can do it every 90 days. What I do is do a free one first. In 90 days, we don’t do a free one. We do a countdown. You make it $0.99 instead of free, so you’re making some money and you’re still getting the 70% royalty, which you wouldn’t get if it were not in KDP Select.

If you only put it in there and make it $0.99 regularly, you’re only going to get 35%. I found with a lot of my clients and myself. We were making more money doing a free launch then we made doing a countdown launch. The reason is that if you do a free launch for a couple of days and then make it $2.99 after that. If you’re doing it in a countdown, you’re only getting $0.99 for the price. At 70% of $0.99, you’re getting $0.70 a book. On $2.99, you’re getting $2 a book. I ended up getting about the same number of people but I made way more money from the free one because I was getting $2 book instead of $0.70. It’s counterintuitive.

What happens is a lot of people don’t understand how to use Amazon the right way. I did a rant on this because this guy came to me and he wanted us to format his book. I was asking him, “What formats do you want it in? Do you need an ISBN number?” ISBN is a barcode that Amazon will give you for free if you’re using Amazon. He goes, “I don’t think I’m going to publish my book on Amazon because I read this article on it.” I go, “What?” I go and I look at this article. It says, “You can’t make any money in Amazon. Too many books are selling for $0.99. It’s a race to the bottom and you have to compete against other books. When your book comes up Amazon will promote other books.” I was like, “No.”

First of all, if you put it in KDP Select, it’s not $0.99. The lowest you can put it in for is $2.99. They have a pricing tool and they’ll tell you what the optimal price is and what the books are selling at. It’s not $0.99. I go, “That is completely wrong.” When they bring your book up, they’ll bring up other books. Guess what? When they bring up other books and yours is on the top, they’ll bring up your book. If you write a great book and you hook people, you want them to show your book with other books. You don’t mind if they show other books with your book because you have confidence in your book. You’re marketing your book. There’s a lot of ignorance out there and it frustrates me.

Can you share the VA story? There are risks when working with anyone.

Everybody’s doing summits, but when I started, nobody was doing them. I was doing them. This must have been the third one. I had this VA and this goes back to that thing about how difficult it can be with outsourcing because the first couple of times I was way more hands-on. This third time, I was like, “Here’s the template. Here’s what to do.” It still ended up being a mess. She felt like she put a lot of work into it. I refused to pay her because we lost money on the third one. I made $20,000 on one of them, $16,000 on the other one, and then we lost money on that third one. I said, “You were incompetent. You didn’t do the work.” She sued me.

Around that time, I had a serious illness and I had to have surgery. She took me to small claims court. I was stressed out. She was trying to say that she wanted a percentage of whatever I made down the road if I made any money from all the audios that I had. I can’t remember what I offered her, but I offered something that was more than generous in mediation. She refused because she wanted to get future money out of me from what might come later. I tried to get it postponed because I was sick that day. Her argument was, “You’re still working so you can’t be too sick.” The judge said to me, “Did you have to pay anyone else to do her work?” The truth is I did have to pay someone else $600. I owed her $800 and I said no because my brain was foggy. I ended up paying her the $800 that I withheld. The judge said, “There’s no way you’re getting future earnings. Forget it.” She ended up getting what I offered her in the mediation anyway.

You still hire people. That didn’t stop you from hiring.

It did for a while because after her, I had another VA and she was terrific. My clients loved her. She was great. I had an emergency on a holiday weekend at Christmas and I sent her an email. She flipped out and said, how dare I contact her on a weekend, on a holiday. She quit. I was like, “What was that all about?” It turned out that she was frustrated about some other things that she never brought up. I couldn’t fix them because I didn’t know. She was also taking on more without getting paid for but not telling me that she was doing that. I have not hired a VA again. I have other people that I work with that I would always ask in an emergency, “Are you available on a weekend or on a holiday? If you’re not, forget it.” Sometimes in this business, that happens.

I have a web person. I have podcasting people. I’ve had an audio guy that I’ve been using on Fiverr who’s terrific. I found somebody who can do everything that I need to be done for the podcast, so I’m going to try that out. I’ve got somebody editing my videos. I’ve got somebody that I’m going to start working with upgrading our process or when people sign up for a free consult. I work with people, but for a long time after those two, I didn’t. I did everything myself for quite a while, I was just gun-shy.

I appreciate you sharing those stories. People know about the different risks that they are involved in. I can’t think of something worse than ending up in court against someone that you worked with. You’re still here, you survived. You’re still using people, although it probably took a little bit to get over it. Sharing those stories helps people. If they’re reading, they know to protect themselves, maybe have a contract or a better agreement. If you’re working with someone and you like them to establish the weekends and holidays upfront to maybe ask for feedback. If they do have those concerns and they’re not bringing them to your attention and they are too shy to do it and you’re not asking, that builds up over time.

Something that’s minor ends up blowing up.

If you are a writer, then write!

There’s a lot of lessons in those stories and I appreciate you sharing that.

I also have a graphic guy that I’ve used for years on Fiverr. One of the cool things about working with somebody over a long time is when they get to know your style and they get to know what to do. It’s the same thing with my audio podcast guy. When I say put the music on, he’s got the music and he knows what to do. Afterwards, it can get to be easy. I would say in hiring. I’m not familiar with Freeeup. I tried to use it once and we didn’t quite find the right person that I needed for that so I’m not quite sure. I’m sure you guys have a process for making sure that they’re good people. The whole thing, when you find somebody who’s good. Even my graphics guy, he doesn’t always get it right for the first time. When you work with someone for a long time and they appreciate you as a client, they’re willing to work with you until you get what you want. They’ve made a lot of money with you or they plan to make a lot of money with you. When you find those people, they’re gems because they’re going to work to make it right.

What advice do you have for people that want to build a business around a book, using a book as a lead gen magnet?

One thing I would say is to write a great book. More than writing a great book, unfortunately, what people do is they’ll write a great book and then they were exhausted. They don’t do other things. You have to think about how somebody buys a book. The first thing they look at is women, which is 80% of the buying public, look at the title first. The men look at the cover first and the women look at the cover second and vice versa. The cover and the title have to catch their attention. They have to be awesome. On top of that, you’ve got to see who else is out there.

You’ve got to see what books are out there and how is yours going to be different because people say, “There’s too much competition. My niche is saturated.” If you have a different approach and can capture their attention, it doesn’t matter how many books are out there. Look at how many weight loss books there are. There’s always one or two at least on the bestseller list because people want to lose weight. Most of them can, most of them are looking for the magic ball, but a lot of them are looking for a diet that will work for them. You’ve got to figure out what that is, what your audience wants and then how to give it to them.

There are a few things with that. One of them is that people get confused. They think their books about one thing and it’s about something else, so they write a title. For instance, I had a woman come to me and her title had death in it. Her book wasn’t about death. It was about the afterlife. We were able to change one word and it worked. Sometimes, it doesn’t work and you’ve got to scrap the whole thing. I always suggest people come to me before they start writing their books. We can set it up so that they know what the title is, they know what the topic is, they know what they’re doing, and then staying on track so that everything funnels to whatever that title was. Also, you get seven keywords in two categories in Amazon. You can get up to ten but they only give you two slots for two. If you want more, you’ve got to contact them. You’ve got to know what those are. You’ve got to get clear on how you’re going to market before you write the book if you are serious about selling the book.

It’s true with self-publishing but also with traditional publishing. I did an episode with Susan Harrow on how to get a six-figure advance from a traditional publisher. It’s the same thing. They don’t even want a book. They want a book idea. If you have a great idea, you can possibly get that. It goes back to having something different and unique that the market wants, you can sell and that’s what they want too. They want to know somebody that you’re going to be able to sell books. Why are you the best person to write that book? It’s important to do that and unfortunately too many authors.

I started out the same way. When you’re a creative person and you start out and you go, “I want to write a book.” You’re just thinking about writing the book. A lot of authors don’t even market. They go, “I don’t want to market.” Marketing can be fun when you understand what you’re selling. What is my marketing? I write for a medium and it’s been cool. I started doing it regularly. I’ve already gotten two other companies wanting me to write for their big niche newsletters and my podcast. I get to do things that are fun and I’m not selling. Every once in a while, we’re promoting something. I’m doing what I love. I was saying to my husband, “It’s a good thing I love to write because I’m constantly writing. I’m writing every day before I was working with you.” I was working on my newsletter, so I’m always writing. If you’re a writer, write.

Ellen, this has been great. Can you tell people where they can find out more about you and what you’re most excited about?

They can go to my website at www.BooksBusinessAbundance.com. From there, you can get to the podcast and the blog. You can also find me on Medium. That’s a good place, too. What am I excited about? I’ve said I love my podcast. I started and then I thought I was going to start it back up after the holidays. It was several months before I did, but we’ve got that going again. The interviews are just awesome. I want to write another book. I’m meeting with my web guy. We’re working on upgrading the website because we’re going in a different direction. I don’t know if I should say this or not, but it’s like we’re moving towards being a book digital marketing agency.

We’ve already been doing bestseller launches for people that like to do it with you. I walk people through certain things. We do the launch for them. Write books for them, and set up funnels for them. We also have the do it yourself home study courses and stuff. Most of my books are on Amazon, but you can find all of them on my website. I’ve been in the One Funnel Away Challenge with Russell Brunson. I’ve been working on my first funnel and so I’ve got a lead magnet for that. That’s going to be coming up and two new programs. One is on writing bestseller titles which I’m excited about. I don’t see anybody who has that. That’s like my superpower, these titles.

I had a client who sold 4,000 books her first weekend using my Bestseller Launch program. She said it was because of the title and I wrote the title. I loved that. That is fun. I want to get my funnel done and then hopefully do more funnels, but I also like to write another book that is then going to explain my entire process because I don’t have one like that. I have these books on writing, these books on marketing. One thing I’ve done that has been helpful is stepping back, went into meditation and got off the internet for a month. What do I like to do, what do I want to do, and what do I want my business to look like going forward? Once I figured that out, I was able to focus a lot better and that’s how I’m able to write more for Medium and do more podcasts and focus on the things I want to do and still have time for my clients.

Thank you for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

Important Links:

• Ellen Violette
• Books Business Abundance Podcast
• Freeeup
• Medium – Ellen Violette’s Medium page
• www.BooksBusinessAbundance.com
• Susan Harrow – previous episode
• One Funnel Away Challenge

About Ellen Violette

Ellen Violette is an award-winning book and business coach, host of the Books Business Abundance Podcast, multiple #1 bestselling author, and CEO of Create a Splash. She helps authorpreneurs become #1 bestselling authors using her 3-Day Authoring System, so they can reach a big audience quickly, gain credibility and expert status, get more leads and clients with less effort and grow businesses for bigger profits and more impact.

Ellen is also a multiple International #1 bestselling author, 3-time eLit award winner, former contributor to Published! Magazine, and Grammy-nominated songwriter, which gives her a unique edge. Songs, like books, require that you hook in your audience and Ellen has been doing just that for decades.

She is all about results and she gets them for her clients!