Rock Star Lifestyle Design

Last week I had the opportunity to co-host a teleseminar with #1 Amazon SEO author Michael Fleishner. We had a chance to talk about SEO, getting your site primed, how to get some links and good ways to kick start your site. While you didn’t get a chance to listen live, I will send you a copy of the 80 minute MP3 by signing up here.

On the call I mentioned that guest posting was one of the most important things bloggers can do as it kills a few birds with one stone. So in the spirit I wrote a guest post on his marketing blog about Gen-Y entrepreneurs and he came back with a great post on publishing a book, something I always want to know more about!

One of the keys to achieving financial independence and proactively designing your life is to create automated revenue streams. As someone who has been doing business online for over a decade, I can share with you plenty of successes and failures with trying to find sources of steady income that provide the freedom you need for truly effective lifestyle design.

Recently I was invited by Greg to speak to a group of young entrepreneurs. Although the topic was really focused on search engine optimization, I believe what people were most interested in was learning how to get their web sites generating multiple streams of income – on auto pilot. It is true that once you achieve #1 organic ranking on search engines like Google, it takes a lot less to generate qualified traffic and generate a stream of potential buyers that result in ongoing revenue. But there many ways to generate income that have nothing to do with search engine ranking.

What does publishing have to do with lifestyle design?

Knowing how important lifestyle design is today, I asked Greg if I could share my experiences in publishing. And no, I’m not talking about publishing online content (although I do that too). Rather, I’m talking about traditional publishing - writing a book. In this post, I’m going to reveal how I’ve used a small 120 page publication to generate multiple streams of income and design a life focused on helping others.

I’m not your typical author. In fact I’d argue that my writing skills are weak at best. But that didn’t stop me from writing a book and achieving top selling status. You may be wondering how a guy with hardly any writing ability could produce a book with legs. Well, I think the answer to that question is rather simple - I wrote about something I care about, enjoy, and wanted to focus my time on.

My book, “SEO Made Simple” is the number one ranked book for “SEO” on Amazon.com, the world’s largest book seller. I wrote to share my knowledge with others who wanted to learn about search engine optimization, saving them time and struggle when learning about this exciting area of Internet marketing.

Unlike other books you might read, I took a slightly different approach. Instead of writing hundreds of pages with lots of theory and worthless advice, I thought I’d be direct. If you ever have the opportunity to read my book, you’ll find that’s it reads more like a set of directions (do this, then do this) than anything else. I decided to take this approach because that’s what I needed when I starting in SEO and was unable to find a resource that met my needs.

How I used a book to launch my career

What’s great about this book is that each time Amazon sells and ships a copy for me, I earn a royalty. That’s right, I earn a small royalty on each book sold but never have to deal with printing it, warehousing it, selling it, shipping it, or running a customer service center – sweet! But it gets better than that.

When individuals pick up my book, I not only tell them what to do, but how to do it. And you know as well as I do that having the right tools makes all the difference. So I drive readers through a secret URL noted in the book which brings them to a special page on one of my many web sites. On that page, I list all of the tools I personally use to help me achieve top search engine rankings and which work well with the techniques I reveal in the book. When users buy these products I earn a commission. Not only am I earning royalties on the book, but I’m earning affiliate commissions too!

And it doesn’t stop there. In addition to offering affiliate products, I drive users to my web resources, which I monetize (such as an Internet marketing forum) , allowing me to grow my online businesses. The book has been a tremendous source of traffic as more and more users go online to check out my website, access my secret pages, additional content, and other resources noted in the book.

As you know, not everyone is a “do it yourselfer”. In fact, once starting down the search engine optimization path people frequently don’t have the time or resources needed to implement all of the techniques they need for search engine ranking success. While they are on my secret page, I let them know about my SEO training and consulting services. This helps me grow my business and generate inquiries while I sleep. This is the key to designing the type of life you want when you want it.

If you’ve considered publishing a book or simply communicating what you know to a larger audience, I suggest that you put together an outline and start writing. Commit to 30 minutes of writing per day and make a commitment to keep writing, rewriting, and editing until you have something you can publish. This can be a long and arduous process, or can happen quickly. It all comes down to your commitment and time frame. Once you have a manuscript, consider self publishing. This route worked for me and is pretty easy to implement.

I suggest using CreateSpace for self publishing. This site is owned by Amazon.com and can help you get ranked on Amazon quickly. Ranking is based on sales numbers in addition to title and description so be selective when choosing your title and uploading your description through Createspace.

Once you’ve published your book, be patient. Tell your friends, order copies that you can personally distribute on your own, and promote it wherever you can. I’ve used my website, blog, and social media to get the word out. Whether you are promoting through webinars, blog posts, or email, always focus on your audience. Let them know what this book will do for them. If you content is good, word of mouth will be your best sales person!

This post was written by Michael Fleishner, a marketing expert and author of SEO Made Simple with more than 13 years of hands-on marketing experience. His blog, the Marketing Blog is currently ranked #1 for, you guessed it, marketing blog. Follow him on Twitter, @mfleishner.

Disclaimer: This post features affiliate links to buy Michael’s book, SEO Made Simple. After being on a call with Michael last week, I would recommend his SEO services and think his book is a great place to start. If you end up buying the book on Amazon after clicking on the links, I will be compensated.