Make It Happen

Making Money In My Sleep? You bet!
By J Parfitt

I’m going to be honest here. The reason you are seeing some changes in my Inspirer lately is not because I just thought perking it up would give me something to do! Believe me, I have lots to do. Too much. In fact, being overly busy is one major reason why I am putting my energy into spending rather than earning money at the moment. I’ve said no to all new clients for a whole month so that I can invest in growing my business. And the way to go I believe is through the ezine.

The reason I first started to write my Inspirer was not just to make money and stay connected with everyone who knows me. At first it was because I am passionate about making a difference to people’s lives and I think I have lots to share that is of value. When I was editor of Woman Abroad magazine I felt truly blessed to be able to share what I knew with 20,000 readers worldwide. But when the magazine closed in January 2002 I lost my mouthpiece. Two months later The Inspirer was born as my solution.

You know, one of the reasons I became a writer, speaker and teacher is because I love to share what I know. The more lives I can touch the better. The more people I can inspire the happier it makes me. I believe in blue sky and it is important that I can find a way to encourage others to do so too.

I’ve been writing the Inspirer ezine for more than three years now and for half of that time it grew to about 300 subscribers and then plateaued. Then I went on Nigel Risner’s (www.nigelrisner.com) ‘The Sound of Money’ workshop and he told me about ‘the funnel’. Nigel said that we should imagine our database of contacts as taking the shape of a funnel and that we must keep on pouring new contacts into it, and in addition, we must keep in touch with everyone regularly. He gave me one stupidly simple (so simple I had never done it) idea to boost my database – to invite people to subscribe every time I did a keynote, seminar or workshop. So I did, And then I went one better. I began to ask the audience to give me their business cards with the letters MI written on them if they wanted the Monthly Inspirer and with ‘notes’ written on them if they wanted the notes from my presentation. In one fell swoop my photocopying bill shrank as my database doubled in the next three months.

Over the following months I thought of more ways to get sign ups. People can sign up at my website and when they download one of the free gifts I have available too. And whenever someone contacts me about an area of my business, any area, I offer them a subscription.

I have been pouring people into my funnel for about 18 months now and it’s working. They come from almost every country in the world and mostly I hear little from them – until they decide they want to ask me something, or buy a product.

What I want more than anything is for my ezine to pop up in the inboxes of my subscribers once a month and, whether they read it or not, I want them to be reminded of my existence for a moment. That’s what I want – to be remembered.

Some of you love to read my ezine. And I have deliberately made sure that I write you a piece of editorial that comes straight from my heart, that exposes me a little and that is totally honest. It’s not all about selling you things, The Inspirer is about me and all the things I hope may inspire you.
I loved it when I received the following piece of feedback from someone I had met six months earlier:

‘Congratulations on another fine newsletter! When it arrives, I don't read it immediately. I do some unpleasant task that I've been putting off, then read the newsletter as a reward. Eating my peas so I can have pudding, so to speak,’ wrote Resli Costabell. I was delighted when, six months later Resli offered to run my Release the Book Within workshop at her house in London. Thanks Resli.

So you see, in a roundabout way, my ezine really does make me money in my sleep.

Only this morning I woke up to two bookings from ezine subscribers to attend my writing courses. One for Holland and one for England. Yesterday the president of the American Women’s Club in Amsterdam (www.fawco.org) contacted me to ask me to speak at a meeting and then the editor of the Speakeasy magazine for the Professional Speakers’ Association (www.professionalspeakers.org) invited me to write a piece for the next magazine. Then Debbie Jenkiins of Lean Marketing Press (www.leanmarketing.co.uk) asked me to write the foreword for her latest book. All this because my Inspirer reminds people that I exist and puts me in ‘top of mind awareness’ once a month. Oh, and I sold a couple of books too.

Back in February I could see that my ezine was my most effective marketing tool. But I wanted to make it even better. And that’s when I heard about The E-zine Queen.

Alexandria Brown is The E-zine Queen and I heard about her product ‘Boost Your Business with your own E-zine’ from Stephanie Ward, who has been receiving the Inspirer for a few years now.

‘My ezine is my number one marketing tool,’ writes Alexandria, who explains that the ezine allows you to build ‘a long-term relationship of trust with your readers’.

Determined to improve my ezine by learning from the experts, I bought Alexandria’s book. And you will be glad to hear that it was worth every penny of the $197 I paid for it. Over the next few months, as I put her principles into practise I’ll keep you posted on its success rate.

If you think you might be interested in finding out more about this too then click through here to The Ezine Queen.

Thanks to my ezine, much of my business comes by referral and word of mouth. I never pay for an advertisement. So, the fact that I am investing time and money in my ezine instead makes perfect sense.

If you recall from last month’s Inspirer, I wrote a piece on achieving goals. My goal was to spend five hours a week on ways to create money in my sleep. I am delighted to report that I have kept it up. You can see the result in the May Inspirer Ezine and the two new products that are for sale at Bookshaker, bringing my total at the site to five.

Writing books is a great way to make money in your sleep. But you will only make money if you find a way to market your books too. Which brings us back to the ezine.

Let me just recap on five of the reasons to have an ezine:

Five reasons to write your own ezine

1 You can keep in touch with your clients
2 You can grow your network and your database
3 You can share what you know
4 You can market your services or products for very little capital
5 You can retain ‘top of mind’ awareness with your subscribers

I hope I have convinced you. Good luck with yours.

Jo Parfitt
Believe in blue sky

© Jo Parfitt 2005