Why I Fire My Email Subscribers

I love having a list of subscribers that I can keep in touch with.

But sometimes I have to fire them and unsubscribe them from my list. And if they're really persistent and try to re-subscribe, I block them too.

But why would I do this? Isn't having thousands of subscribers the way that writers make money?

Yes...but...

Using an email marketing service isn't cheap. And I get charged for how many subscribers I have.

So to protect myself and keep costs down, I sometimes (regrettably) have to fire subscribers.

And below are 3 types of subscribers that I fire.

1. Bad Customers. These are people who buy my products but don't even know how to download them, so they repeatedly email me about it, and not in a polite way either. Sometimes they send several abusive emails in less than an hour, while I'm asleep (different time zones). 

2. Too Friendly. Sometimes I get subscribers who think they're my friend and every time they receive an email or blog post, they reply to it as though I sent them a personal message, and they tell me all their private family business. They also get annoyed if I don't become email buddies with them.

3. Clickless. Now and again I check my email stats and look at anyone who hasn't clicked on a link in one of my emails in over a year. This usually happens because the someone is deleting all my emails unread, or they're not interested in anything I provide a link to, not even the free ebooks, audios and other freebies. Either way, they don't want my emails so I unsubscribe them.

But like I said earlier, I love having subscribers that I can keep in touch with, but it comes at a high price and I don't want to pay for verbal abuse, email pen pals I don't want or those who have no interest in hearing from me.

Thankfully, 99.9% of my subscribers are decent intelligent, hard-working writers.

And THEY are why I don't mind paying a yearly fee to my email service provider.

And if you have an email list and some of the people on it don't really want to hear from you, but for whatever reason they don't unsubscribe, don't be afraid to remove them from your list. Because not doing so is costly.

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Get two free ebooks to help you with your own email marketing by clicking on the two images below.

3 Reasons I Sell More Books With Email

Selling books can sometimes be harder than writing them.

I love to sit and write books, to be 100% focused on my work and write thousands of words a day.

And as a novelist, Dean Wesley Smith so eloquenty put it, "Sitting alone in a room and making shit up isn't work. Sorry. It's play."

But after the writing comes the marketing.

And because I'm a writer, marketing my books by writing emails, isn't difficult.

All it takes is more writing.

But why email?

There are other ways like online marketing, social media and press releases (just to name a few), and these should all be done too.

But email marketing is more personal because you're writing to people who already know you.

And email heps me to do 3 other things.

1. I can announce that my books before I even finish writing them.

2. Announcing books early gathers interested readers long before publication.

3. Books sales are immediate because people are already waiting to buy them.

If you're serious about making money from writing books, using email can not only hlep increase sales, but help you to get more sales faster.

Readers want to know when your next book is going to be published, and email can help.

You can read my latest article about How to Sell More Books With Email over at my website. 

And click on the images on this page and download 2 free ebooks to learn more.

Earning Money As A Writer

"How much money do writers earn?"

This is a question I get asked a lot.

And I always give the same answer. "I don't know. How much do you earn?"

It's funny how people don't care about asking me how much I earn but don't want to talk about their own income. Hmmm...

Anyway, I can't answer that question even if I wanted to because different writers earn different amounts of income.

When I first quit my job to write full time I was a bit worried about tax and other income related things and I had to get an accountant - and pay her!

This was scary at first because I didn't understand all the tax laws but it turned out that I didn't have to because that is what I pay my accountant for.

But when I first started writing I didn't worry about the money side of it because I was still working at my job.

It wasn't until I quit working that I went to see an accountant who explained everything to me.

All I had to do was keep an Excel spreadsheet of my income from all my different books and other sources, and of all my expenditures, and she did the rest.

At first, it's scary because writing income isn't regular.

But it does arrive in my bank account several times a month and I've learnt not think that I can spend a lot of money just because I earned it.

I have to make it last because the amounts can be so different.

And earning money as a writer means that I have to write every day, 5 days a week, and sometimes more.

But it's worth it.

And even though the money isn't as steady as having an income from a paid job, I do get regular payments every month from places like Amazon.

So I guess in a way it is a steady income.

But I still don't know how much money other writers make.

So don't ask me.

If You Want To Earn Money From Your Writing, Don't Do This

I write a lot of articles and blog posts about how to write quickly.

This isn't because I think that speed is the most important thing (although it is really important), but because I find that the faster I write, the better I write.

I believe it's because when I write quickly it turns off my internal critic, the little voice in my head that wants to edit as I write and keeps telling me that I'm going off track or that my grammar isn't right.

But when I start writing and don't stop, the inner critic in my head can't be heard.

I also set a timer when I write, for about 25 or 30 minutes, so that I'm writing against the clock which helps to keep me going.

So when I talk about writing quickly, I'm talking about writing well, not writing badly.

By all means write as fast as you can, but never EVER write badly.

Don't think that fast writing is good writing. Fast writing simply means you can write more and turn off the inner critic/editor at the same time.

Bad writing is one of the things that ruins writers' chances when they think that just because they can self publish everything they write, they can write garbage.

Don't ever do that.

The Internet is full of book reviews and if you get a lot of bad ones, no one will want to buy your books.

If you want to know if your writing is good, ask yourself if you'd be satisfied with it if you were sending it to a publishing company. Would you send them your manuscript, or would you have written it better or edited it more?

So when you write, do your best writing, do it quickly, don't edit as you write, edit and proof it professionally, and then publish it and get on with your next book.

Writers write, so keep on writing and remember, never write anything but your best.

Selling One Million Books

I think I might have mentioned it lately (perhaps a dozen or more times a week) that I want to pull back on the online writing and write more books.

Changing what kind of writer we are can be scary because we don't know if it will work and bring in the same amount of income as our previous writing does.

And now is not a great financial time for me to mess with my income because I am the only wage earner between me and my husband, Dean, who is busy renovating our house. (Oh the expense of it all!)

Anyway, just when I needed a bit of inspiration and something to let me know that I'm on the right track, I came across an article about an author who writes supernatural thrillers.

His name is Scott Nicholson and over the last 7 years he has written and self published 30 novels and has achieved over one million sales.

I read it and immediately got out my calculator (well, my phone app that works as a calculator) and worked out that if this author earns just $2 per sale, his one million sales means he has averaged an income of over $285,000 a year.

$285-thousand!

Naturally he earned less in the first few years because he had less books published, but still, his sales are amazing. And he publishes his books as ebooks, paperbacks, and audio books (he mixes it up a bit).

What I took from this article is that it is possible to make a really good living as an author, as long as you're a good writer, can write compelling stories and are good at marketing and selling.

And because I've had so many years practise at all this, I'm sure I'll do fine.

Now...back to book writing.

You CAN Have It All

Recently I decided to change the type of writer I'd become.

You see, I had somehow become an online writer, working on my websites, writing articles and selling my own products as well as affiliate products and earning money through advertising.

This meant that I spent my days working on keywords and always checking on what my online competitors were doing.

But I wasn't happy.

So I decided to shut down most of my sites and concentrate more on book writing.

But...then I wondered if it's the right thing to do because mine is the only income and my husband is busy working at home everyday on our house renovations (which is a huge task). So we need enough money to not only live on, but to pay for the renovations too.

So was this a good time to follow my dream of being a full-time book author?

Then a read a really inspiring article written by one of the most prolific writers I know, Mridu Khullar Relph. This woman has one of the most amazing hard work ethics that I've ever seen.

Her article is called Writing Saved Me and in it she talks about how we are told (and we always believe) that we can't have it all. We can have a great life or a great career. Or we can write what we want and be as creative as we like, or write for the majority, but we can't do both if we want to earn money.

She says that none of this is true and that we can have it all.

But...we must own it on our own terms and own it all, the downs as well as the ups.

Where we are in our lives and in our writing careers is through the choices we have made so far, and if we're not happy where we've ended up, then we have the freedom and the control to change things.

But we have to be true to ourselves and forget about societal obligations, because we CAN have it all, if we want it badly enough.

And I do want it badly enough.

I want to write many books and earn money as an author.

And I do believe that if I'm true to myself and work hard, then the money will come.

So here I go...

How about you?

Are you living your dreams?