Tenth Income Report – January 2014

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.

---

January 2014 was a month of hassle.

I am incredibly lucky. My editor, Chris, not only offered me his superb editing services for free; he was just starting his indie-supporting business and he wanted to learn the craft on my book. He offered to make a full-out marketing campaign for me, free of charge.

---

Do you know that words? They are the beginning of my popular post from February 2014, describing the launch of my time management book. The preparations took me a good chunk of my time in January. I don’t won’t to spoil the surprise, so I don’t redirect you to that post, but I copy a good chunk of it describing my activities that month:

---

“I jumped at that chance.

4th of January we had our first Skype call when we basically got to know each other better. Chris asked me several questions about my up to date marketing strategy (almost non-existent).

He went back to me 2 days later with the marketing plan for the book launch. It was detailed, 4-page long document with many tactics, including the creation of a pre-launch mailing list, social media, networking with other bloggers, the usage of my blog and more.

8th of January Chris established the Trello board, a crucial project management tool for our launch.

The whole launch was broken down to the specific tasks. The tasks were divided into time sequence and assigned between two of us.

OK, on 10th of January I contacted my mentor S.J. Scott and 3 bloggers with whom I had some previous relationships and I thought my book was relevant to their audience. My mentor and Timo Kiander, the owner of Productive Superdad, were aware of my book and had read it in advance, but I didn’t discuss any help from them before.

Anyway S.J. and Timo agreed to help me, both of them wanted to arrange my guest post on their blogs. The one for S.J. had even been already written.

Lidiya from Let’s Reach Success also agreed to help me out. The last blogger was willing to help, but our schedules didn’t fit very well. All of them gave me some helpful advice about my upcoming launch.

There was a few days confusing period when I waited for the info from Chris on Trello, which already has been posted. It was then when we decided to [przyporządkować] specific tasks to one of us.

Till 15th of January I managed to set up a new list, a SignUp form and a page to put it there. I sent a broadcast to my list (48 names, 13% open rate).

16th I tackled Trello and communication process between me and Chris. I started to reach out to the bloggers he found.

I also published the first teaser post on my blog.

In the meantime, I formatted the book, got four versions of the cover and posted them on a few FB groups for crowd voting. Judging by the results of my promo and the sales afterwards it’s a very effective tactic.

Then the shit hit the fan at my work. On Friday 17th I worked from 12:30 p.m. till 12:30 a.m. I worked throughout the weekend.

I was discouraged like hell. Chris was very supportive. From that moment on he took the initiative. I was just reacting for his instructions.

19th I uploaded “Master Your Time in 10 Minutes a Day” to Amazon and got the ASIN number. From that day on Chris was posting the info to the freebie sites.

I managed to send a couple of emails to bloggers on Monday 20th of January. I also finished my guest post which was scheduled for Wednesday. Chris did some emergency editing of it.

I was also busy making several instances of the landing page for the bloggers who agreed to help me.

21st I was visiting blogs and preparing my pitch in advance till 2a.m. At 22nd I took a day off at work, sat down and sent 14 personalized emails within 2.5 hours.

The pre-launch period

All our efforts were starting to bear fruits. 22nd of January my guest posts on ProductiveSuperdad and on EarningFreeMoney went live (the second one was composed by Chris and edited by me). Several people subscribed to the launch list.

At 23rd Emily from FreelanceLady.com published an enthusiastic review on her blog. The list grew further.

On the 24th I’ve published a blog post sharing my sand-grain method from the book’s and I sent the broadcast to my list. Both items were prepared by Chris, I need just to format and edit them a bit.

The broadcast was sent to 67 subscribers and had 15% open rate.

25th Lidiya’s published post on her blog sharing with her audience the news about my book. Very generous of her!

On 27th of January I sent an email to David Allen, who invented and perfected the Getting Things Done productivity system. I was super stoked to get his answer the very same day, some excerpts:

“Thanks for your lovely e-mail. I’m always delighted to hear when someone takes GTD to heart and actually implements it–it always works! (…)

And thanks for the link to your book. I’m rather stretched in my own time resources to do anything but work on my own next book project (updating GTD); so no promises that I will get to it anytime soon.”

Well, not much in terms of help, but a gigantic amount of encouragement. Just in time, as I was approaching the point of total exhaustion.

I published the last post on my blog in the pre-launch sequence.

THE LAUNCH

Compared to the crazy amount of work we put into preparations, the launch itself was a piece of cake.

On the day of the launch my guest post on my mentor’s blog went live and it was the first guest post ever on Develop Good Habits. I swelled with pride 😉

What is more S.J. sent a broadcast to his list, which is considerably larger than mine. At the end of the day he informed me that over 220 people had clicked over to my book.

I also sent the broadcast to my list (72 people). It had 27% ctr.

I posted daily on freebie FB groups using my list. I tried to keep my announcements always present in the current feed. Almost 48 hours after the launch I’ve sent follow up to those from launching list who didn’t open the first message. 39% ctr.

Chris did everything what was in his power to sustain the momentum. He sent a broadcast to his list. He also secured a guest post on FreeBookDude in my name. It went live 30th and I think it has something to do with the great results in the last day of the promo.

Chris is a very resourceful guy, this post had been rejected by another blogger and he managed to utilize it!

To boost up the downloads in the last day Chris came up with the idea of the review contest, but my list’s response was very weak, only 3% ctr. I think they were tired of this email bombardment 😉

I posted last time on FB groups urging readers to download before the promo expires and went to bed anticipating the results.”

And the results of the promo were quite impressive. On the 28th of January “Master Your Time in 10 Minutes a Day” was downloaded 580 times. Not too shabby, especially for a new release, but I had similar results in the past and I wasn’t impressed by them. The next day the book was snatched about 670 times. Again, not a big space for excitement.

On 30th I got 690 more downloads. Combined together, it was a nice result exceeding twice any prior promo of mine. Almost 2k books downloaded. I felt a small pang of anticipation. My book was hovering at about #200 place in the whole free Kindle store where none of my books have never been before.

I went to sleep at the last day of January not knowing the full results, but expecting at least some sales the next day, when the promo would be over.

I felt comfortable about my progress.

Not only time management

The launch of Master Your Time consumed a big chunk of my time in January, but it wasn’t the only thing I was doing then. The world didn’t froze because of my genius 😉

I was lost in my writing. In the first half of the month I wrote some guest posts and posts for my blog. The other half I used to re-work my concept of internet marketing book I intended to write. I was scheduled to publish a guest post on Firepole Marketing next month and I wanted to use it as a leverage for getting some feedback about my ideas.

The sales

January 2014 was another good month for my business. The overall sales grew to another record level- 197 books sold! Almost 18% growth, very nice.

My daily average “jumped” to 6.35 sales a day. About 15% of that came from Japan and another 15% from various other markets. That was some diversity.

In autumn 2013 Amazon started to pay royalties for even the tiniest sales, so those numbers meant real (but small) money on my bank account after two months.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income: 25.07 euro, so about $32.84.
The money for my November’s breakthrough came. Not a big bounty, but it was nice to receive it and brag about it in front of my wife 😉
197 sales of $1 books for the guy from Europe whose tax withholding is 30% summed up to $47.28. I would receive them at the end of March.

Cost:
$19, Aweber services (aff. link).
$62.31, 2nd month of 6FKC program

Once again I didn’t spend a dime on my book’s release. Chris very generously didn’t charge me at all, the same did Hynek who made me a cover for the time management book.
My prenting book launch based on 6KFC teachings was a fiasco. I decided to discontinue it (I mean program, not the book). I got some value from them, so I didn’t demanded a refund.

Net result: -$48.47

If not ‘get-rich quickly’ temptation it would have been a second month in a row above the red line! The whole venture started to look like a business at last.

---

Previous Income Report: December 2013 || Next Income Report: February 2014