Hi everyone! We’re moving on to Part 8 of my review of Geoff Shaw’s Kindling course – an Amazon Kindle direct publishing membership site that has FAR surpassed my expectations so far. Let’s get started, but by the way – those of you who’ve been with me awhile – do you notice something?

With most of my reviews, they drag out months because I get bored, distracted, etc. Not with this one! I can’t WAIT to get in there every day and learn and take action. That’s a very telling sign, isn’t it? Quick update: With sales as they are now, I expect my Vegetarian guide to bring in between $300-600 a month, minimum if it stays ranked where it is now. That will be nice!

I’ll keep branding it too so it becomes a top vegetarian book.  I’ll have to expand it into something bigger. With some colorful pictures. Working on all that

We’re on to the cool marketing part of the Kindling course now!

Branding

Again, click on the main page, not just the subheadings. Geoff gives us a good lesson on not ignoring this. I go in and take action on what he tells us to do. For my business non fiction, I can do that here. But I got a spot for my fiction pen name. Also did it on private registration.

Got the next item done. Woot! This is making my fiction efforts real! Got the next step done. Love that I’m action taking here because otherwise these tasks would have been back burnered. So far I have all 5 bullet points created!

With the last bullet point, I’m confused. I thought somewhere else I read that we can have more than this? I’m all confused on pen names. Complete confusion. I hope someone walks me through this start to finish. I don’t want to get something uploaded accidentally in my own name when it needs to be in my pen name.

He talks about what some of you may be thinking. I agree with him. And look, I did all this just now in less than half an hour while taking phone calls.

Covers

I am SO persnickety about this. I have my own idea of what is professional and what’s not. I see too many unprofessional book covers out there and I don’t like them at all and would never buy them. A pro book cover on Amazon makes me think a publishing house did this – an amateurish one makes me think someone self published.

BIG difference in who I buy from and even with fiction, I have bought a TON of books based on the cover alone. IE: Firefly Lane. I had NO clue what it was about – didn’t even read the back. Why I bought it was because it showed an open jar with fireflies coming out, and two friends or sisters walking in the background – reminding me of my childhood catching fireflies.

Turned out to be an AWESOME contemporary novel that I devoured. So yeah, covers are IMPORTANT. Here’s an example of a HORRID ecover in my opinion. Don’t do this.

Geoff has a good warning about covers. The part where he says “As this training is all…” – THAT is what I’m saying! How many courses or advice have we seen saying the polar opposite? A lot.

Ha! The example he gives of the color is funny. I’ve seen stuff like that too. Love the Get Unstuck advice!

Making note of the name tip because with my fiction, I’m all about that! At the end of the section it has a More Here link but that makes you skip a section in the sidebar, so I’m going back to the sidebar to click on the next section of the Kindling course.

Cover Creation

Okay he has a little text and then a video showing us how easy it is to take the DIY route. But I just paused it because I had a little fiction writing tip spring to mind that I want to share with you!

Tiff’s Tip: What if you didn’t know what kind of story to write? You had no clue where to begin. You could open up a site like iStockPhoto and browse through the images to see what sparks an idea in you. Geoff uses the word danger. So I go to my image site and type in danger. (Well first I typed in denger and wondered why 4 really weird images showed up, so then I spelled it right).

Not only will these possibly spark an idea, but if you come up with one, you already have a perfect match for your cover! Look at these (they’ll open in a new window):

What’s he running from?

What tragic event just happened?

This one looks awesome – some mystery thing!

Love this one – and its title!

So that’s just a little inkling of how we can come up with ideas. Back to the lesson… with the one Geoff shows us, I can immediately feel and see and hear and smell the setting just through the picture!

Oh WOW! Such a GREAT tip about doing this yourself! Holy cow! I’m testing it with a free image on a stock photo site just to see how it works. It does work!

Okay I followed the steps in his video – just to see if the STEPs worked. Mine looks amateurish because I didn’t play around with it long enough but it works anyway. See my example here. NEAT tip, though!

Why Brand

We have some reassuring words here. He’s good at that! He has some text and audio. He tells us the two MOST important niches that branding is crucial in, even though everyone ought to use it. He says we can go to a different section for more branding instruction, but I’ll get there soon anyway so I’ll wait.

I like his tips and tricks in the audio. That’d be a good way to build an audience.

Relationships

He has two audios right off the bat. We agree on what he has to say. Oh. My. God. What does he say in that first audio file that I say about YOU? THIS is why I love Geoff Shaw. Wow all marketers need to hear this. This is good! And he’s good at it and it’s WHY, as you’ll notice, all of you have been boasting about how great Geoff is – not just me doing this review! <3 <3 <3 <3 (those are hearts cuz I’m in love with this course!).

The second audio talks about more benefits to relationship building – good tips. Nothing I didn’t know, but it’s true – and the word of mouth works well for me in my responses. It’s how my business has grown.

Love both green arrows. Fits me perfectly. Then there is a short video about 2 mins long about the relationship topic and its viral nature. He puts your mind at ease – this is NOT the exhausting endeavor that all the other Internet Marketing stuff has been! It’s just NOT!

He has a good tip for finding potential buyers on Twitter. This is so doable and not at all overwhelming. It’s a step DOWN for me and my usual output for promotions. Less work.

Okay I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this section of the Kindling course by Geoff Shaw! I’m all about branding and relationships. This was fantastic for anyone – Kindler or not.

Tiff

Find Part 1 Here

Find Part 7 Here

Find Part 9 Here

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