Michal Stawicki's Blog, page 28

Free Personal Development

I always find the idea of spending money in order to make you rich a little bizarre. Books, audio programs, seminars and courses can cost you a fortune. There is a whole ‘personal development industry’, and maybe it is doing a good job—I am curious about your experiences in that matter. Please comment if you wasted your money or got tenfold, hundredfold return on such investments. Detailed life examples are welcome!

No motivational program can motivate you if you won’t motivate yourself. It is your actions that will change your life, not anybody else’s actions, advice or good intentions.

According to 80/20 rule, 80% of success is depending on you, it isn’t sensible to allocate 80% of your budget to a 20% factor of training materials.

My experience was that I had attended events, read books, listened to tapes and nothing significant happened, and it made me suspicious about the results of any paid programs. It also made me close-minded. I was looking for ulterior motives first and then for some useful knowledge.

When I was learning from free personal development materials I was open minded and it drastically improved my effectiveness.

The devil’s advocate arguments

People who encourage you to spend your money on their products have two main arguments against free:

1. You don’t value free, so you won’t pay attention to the material and it won’t change your life.

What a stinky argument this is! I claim that if you need to spend a load of money on an item to value its worth, there is something wrong with your personal philosophy and no amount of money can fix it. First you need to shift your mindset before spending money on any paid program.

If you appreciate only things that can be represented in monetary value it indicates your attitude toward money is seriously flawed, probably in the range approaching worship. You don’t need to spend thousands to value the materials you work on. You just need to implement and distill the value out of them.

My personal experience is that the amount you pay for a tool makes exactly zilch difference to the actual implementation of the material.

I received a copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen on the free training at my job. It was the first personal development book I read in many years. I was captivated by the ideas and tried to implement them, without much success. But at least I started doing something and it made me come out of my dormant state.

I borrowed the book Slight Edge from my sister. The book’s message has changed my life.

I have borrowed many other books and audio programs since then and many times they were very fruitful:

I listened to an audio version of The Ripple Effect by Darren Hardy and started a gratitude journal about my wife.
I got Start Over, Get Rich for free by subscribing to David’s Bach email list; results: $7k saved in 2 years, I was able to buy my first house.
I was involved in a few free online communities. No paid program could bring such intimacy, encouragement and deep friendships, like The Transformational Contest did. I learned most about self-publishing in the free authors’ Facebook group.

Of course, if you are a busy executive or a successful entrepreneur, spending money on personal development materials is not a big problem and certainly beats searching such materials on the Internet in your scarce spare time. Nevertheless, an ordinary mortal needs a different strategy. Having not much money to spare, he can find an hour a week for research.

2. Free is low quality.

This argument is, in fact, an implication that paid is high quality. And it’s not. While learning about self-publishing I bought an eBook for $7. It was the first ever info product I bought. And it was lame. I found better information on setting up the account on Amazon and formatting the book in a free eBook provided by Amazon. The marketing info was of some value, but Steve Scott’s book was much better and cost half the price of this first product.

I bought a Kindle keyword and profitability research tool. It cost about $100 if I remember correctly. The help section was a joke. Basic functionality was flawed, because the tool was connecting using my proxy and presented prices as I saw them on the Amazon store, with VAT tax fee, not how my American customers saw them. All profitability calculations were thus false.

In December 2013 I tried the paid Get-Rich-Quick-on-Kindle program. It cost $50 a month. I can’t imagine how they wanted to justify the price. I learned very few things from the initial 16 videos. After self-publishing 3 books I already knew 90% of the material. The videos themselves were not high quality either.

The quality-price dependence died a long time ago. Now you don’t pay for the quality of a product, but for the quality of the marketing or brand. Shoes produced by Nike, Puma or no-name small company all are manufactured in the same production process somewhere in East Asia. Their prices vary solely based on the perceived value of the brands.

Free MAY be low quality, but the same goes for paid products. The only way to check the quality is by making an actual purchase and checking it empirically. In that case, I prefer not to spend money on the unknown.

Study for free

Nowadays knowledge is free. That’s a fact. Even the biggest self-help gurus provide a lot of free materials to attract people to their products. I’m on Brian Tracy’s email list. He bombards me with discounts of his books and audio programs, but he also often sends free samples of his work—a short PDF on setting goals, a 30-minute audio about building self-confidence and so on.

On YouTube there are lot of great videos, whole Jim Rohn seminars, Brendon Burchard’s videos used in his products launches packed with useful info, great Les Brown motivational speeches and much, much more. And with modern technology you can download these videos, convert them to your preferable format and consume in any way you want. I hate learning from videos, it’s a waste of time for me, the content is so unsearchable. But I have quite a lot of time to listen to audio—my morning workout, commuting, chores. Learning from audio isn’t my preferred way, but I’ve listened to Cultivating The Unshakable Character by Jim Rohn dozen times, I know it by heart.

Amazon is full of free books on every imaginable topic. Bookmark the free parts of a few specific categories and visit them daily. There is a lot of crap produced by Kindle Gold Rushers, but from time to time you can find a real gem. The classic self-help titles, like Think and Grow Rich are available in public domain.

Gutenberg free library holds some precious classic works like Meditation by Mark Aurelius or The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

There are free communities of like minded people ready to support and encourage you for no pay whatsoever. You can join them and lose weight, develop new habits or learn self-publishing.

There are some excellent self-help blogs out there, written by practitioners who are progressing themselves and provide nonsense-free detailed guidance. A couple that I can think of, just off the top of my head, are BasicGrowth by Simon Somlai and StartGainingMomentum by Ludvig Sunström.

There are blogs about everything, where people wiser, or just more diligent, than you research specific areas. You can learn about how the human brain works or how to maintain the hormone equilibrium of your body for the optimal fitness results, all for free.

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” — Jim Rohn

Only your imagination restricts your use of these various sources of knowledge.

You are also solely responsible for implementing this knowledge in your life. Dry facts are not going to change your life, your action will do that.

You can achieve extraordinary things just by committing yourself to such study. Matt Stone, a blogger (http://180degreehealth.com/blog/), has studied health (he admittedly bought quite a lot of books, so it wasn’t exactly a free study). He decided at one point to get a Master’s degree at university to formalize his knowledge in that area. He quit after one month because he already knew more than his professors. He now earns a 5 figure income from his blog.

Free personal development is possible

The access to knowledge is not a problem. The problem is information overload. You don’t need to pay for books, seminars and programs to progress. You need to decide what your values are, what your purpose is, and focus on them. You don’t need a credit card to grow, you just need the right personal philosophy.

The post Free Personal Development appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Cooperation with Archangel Ink

 

 

Since I signed the contract with Archangel Ink quite a lot of indie authors approached me asking if it is worthwhile.

I answered them here and there, but I intend this post to be an ultimate answer for all such questions.

I’m very satisfied with our cooperation, however there are some drawbacks and I’ll start with them.

Drawbacks
1. Deposit.

Publishing a high quality book costs money. Editing services, a cover, proper formatting… The list goes on.

On the other hand, there is quite a time lag between publishing a book and reaping the benefits. Archangel Ink will get their investment back no sooner than two months after the launch. Here’s a real life case to illustrate this point:

My book, Learn to Read with Great Speed, was republished by them on 11th of August 2014.

Up to the end of August it had sold a few hundred copies and earned a couple hundred bucks for them.

Amazon paid them that money at the end of October 2014, but they still had to pay their people in August, September and October, not to mention fixed costs of running a business.

That’s why they need a deposit for the initial investment.

They estimate a $250 deposit for the book, which is already on the market (the performance is known, the risk and investment are usually lower).

They charge about $500 for investing in the new release (more work and higher risk).

“Charge” is the wrong word. It’s a deposit and, as such, it will be returned after six months to the author.

They are confident bold enough to know that they will easily make such a sum on the book within six months.

 

Let’s do some math to drive the point home:

They invested about $250 in my book at the end of July 2014. They will get exactly three payments – at the end of October, November and December – before they will return my deposit. They expect to make at least $83.33 monthly out of it.

Assuming a $2.99 price point and $0.07 delivery costs, they would make about 63 cents on a single copy. We would need to sell at least 136 copies a month so they could break even.

My biggest sales of this book were in the month of launch: 113 copies. And the book was priced at $1.

Bold assumptions, aren’t they?

 

Disclaimers:

They’ve recently changed their politics extending deposit period up to 12 months.

The actual level of deposit is individually estimated for each book. They are not set in stone.

My reflection:

I love Archangel Ink’s guys for this deposit approach. I need to spend money on releasing my books anyway; with my mediocre English I need to edit them, anyway; I have no graphic skills, so I need to outsource cover creation anyway; I need to launch my book anyway and it works better if I spend some money on it.

And they share the risk with me, something no other service provider does. That’s especially frustrating with external marketing services: an author pays them upfront a fixed fee, sometimes a very lavish fee, and then crosses his fingers in the hope of a return on investment. The provider doesn’t care a whit about the author’s results, he is in a secure position.

Archangel Ink does care very much about your results.

2. Sales tracking.

Quoting my friend Anita:

“Also wondering… if you don’t have access to sales charts – do you just have to wait until the quarter is over, and they send you a check, to find out how you did? Doesn’t that drive you crazy?”

Well, it drive me insane and that’s the drawback. You have no access to these wonderful Amazon sales reports. I miss them so much!

When you publish with AI you will be kept in the dark about your sales. It’s not some kind of vendetta, they just have no human resources to provide you with sales reports on a regular basis.

From time to time Matt Stone shared some numbers with me, but in comparison with the luxury of having my sales at the reach of a mouse’s click anytime, it now feels like data starvation.

It drives me insane. Hopefully, after a few authors will go nuts, Archangel Ink will implement some reporting process. I just hope I won’t be among these nutcases.

3. Control of the publishing process.

Or rather lack of it. You hand it almost completely over to them. We, indie authors, are spoiled beyond imagination in that regard.

I was so used to overseeing every step: edition, cover creation, formatting, marketing, choosing categories, everything! I could tweak anything at a moment’s notice.

Not any longer.

I still have some influence on it, but it’s constrained first by the cooperation model (there’s only so many things you can discuss via email), time zones and the sheer size of their team.

Archangel Ink is run by three founders and they have dozens of employees and freelancers to coordinate, and dozens of authors to serve. I’m just one of them.

The absolute control will slip out of your hands, it’s unavoidable. And you suffer the consequences:

a) see point 2; it’s one of them.
b) you could do something better than your publisher.

If you’ve been in business for some time, you probably have some well developed skills which helped you along the way. Maybe you can design mind blowing covers or write compelling book descriptions.

I can hop through Amazon categories like I was born in this virtual environment.

It’s not that Archangel Ink can’t. They are just overwhelmed with the tsunami of projects so they take a ‘good enough’ course. They don’t spend hours researching categories for each book and then painstakingly track if the change has driven some effects. It’s not their 20% which brings 80% of results.

So I watch helplessly how my books have only one category or have one that feels utterly wrong for their topics.

c) they don’t know your books in the intimate way you know them

How could they? You are the author, it’s your creation. Sometimes it elicits trouble.

For example, in my book, Learn to Read with Great Speed, at the beginning I changed the font of a fragment of text giving my readers a speed reading test. During the formatting process this change was overlooked and the book was published without it. Quite a fail if you ask me

4. Communication issues.

Archangel Ink has their own process and company culture, needless to say, a bit different than mine. It caused us some troubles and I’m sure it will make more till we learn to work hand in hand.

For example, overlooking of the font change in my book was caused by their attitude toward book formatting. They are in the business of mass production. They simplify the process as much as they can, so they use the same font style and size throughout the whole book. If you produce dozens of books monthly it saves a lot of headache.

And I didn’t know that. I formatted my books myself and I wasn’t afraid to give it a personal touch. Our views on the subject clashed in this regard, thus leading to misunderstandings and a problem in the final product.

The same goes with categories. I was used to squeezing the last ounce of exposure from Amazon. As an indie I had no other choice. You probably know this: exposure or death. With my non-existent marketing skills, tweaking categories to perfection was my way to squeeze out an ounce more of exposure. But Archangel Ink has not such problems. They launch the book using their massive list via Buck Books and, suddenly, the book is everywhere on Amazon. They can afford not to worry about each single book and each single category.

My reflection:

We will adjust to each other. It takes time and practice, like any other cooperation. I had more serious problems with freelancers in the past and I still was able to figure out how to finish the projects positively.

Benefits.
1. They have good enough control over the process.

You don’t have to micromanage if your business partner knows what he is doing. The second biggest complaint indies have about traditional publishers (the first is unfair model of compensation of course) is that they are fossilized. It takes them eons to introduce the change into a book or the process.

Archangel Ink founders are indies themselves. You don’t need to micromanage them. They know what they are doing and are doing it well.

My six books were republished within six weeks since I provided them manuscripts. They all went through a professional publishing process, were proofread, formatted, their descriptions were tweaked and so on. They all sell better than when I had absolute control over the publishing process.

My reflection:

The biggest benefit of this situation is that it freed up a lot of my time to take care of writing and my life. I had been spending a lot of my time on formatting, researching categories, outsourcing cover design, preparing launches and free promos… I signed the contract a week before starting renovation of my new home. I could give this activity appropriate attention without the burden of tackling each step of the publishing process on my shoulders.

2. Nuances.

They may not know the nuances of your book, but with a much bigger data set they know all kinds of publishing tricks you just can’t know. For example, I brought to Matt’s attention that there are no links to the book page in request for a review at the end of my books. It’s common wisdom to do so, I’ve heard it many times in authors’ groups and forums.

He told me that they tracked the efficiency of this solution and it is just not worth it.

I’m sure they know a lot more such tricks.

3. They understand indies and go the extra mile.

One example which says it all: Matt offered to make for me a dedicated landing page for my subscribers. By the way, free of charge. Of course I was interested, my subscribe page on the blog was far from pretty and I knew it. I just never had the time and money to come up with something better.

I set one condition, however: that the subscribers will be signed up to my Aweber account, not some list in Archangel Ink’s abyss. When I signed the contract with them, the only resources which stayed really mine were this blog and my mailing list. I just couldn’t resign from the control over my list.

Matt just said, “All right, no problem.”

A web developer who works with him made this beautiful landing page for me. He was so flexible that, when I contacted him to ask for some further improvements, he did it on his own, without consulting Matt. (BTW, kudos to you, Josh!). I don’t know his deal with Matt, but it works perfectly for me.

My reflection:

This attitude builds trust between us. I don’t hesitate to refer my readers to their list.

4. They are vitally interested in the success of your book.

I touched on this subject talking about deposits. They finance the initial investment and they want it back. They are paid not by the promises, but by results. If my book won’t sell they won’t earn a dime.

I may not have an instant view into my stats, but they have them and they track them. Once again, it’s more a question of micromanagement and my old habits than the real need for data. They have data and they do all in their power to make good use of them.

Because it’s to their advantage too. This cooperation is mutually profitable.

5. Marketing.

Within several months, Archangel Ink built their marketing machine from scratch. Within a year I was able to get about 250 subscribers on my own. The disparity between their skills and mine is enormous.

The best example of their mastership in marketing realm is the Buck Books tool. Here is what it offers for readers and here are the results it provided to me.

The results

In the end it’s the ultimate determinant of any cooperation. Archangel Ink delivers results for indie authors. In July 2014 I earned about $390 on my own. The same six books published by them in August and September brought me about $1000. It was the same content, just repackaged.

And do you know what I like best? Not bucks. These numbers mean that I have more readers. MANY more, in fact. My readership expanded significantly. I sold 434 copies in July. In the first month of cooperation with Archangel Ink I sold 630 copies of Learn to Read with Great Speed during a couple of $0.99 promos alone.

My list grew by 20% in this period.

The ultimate benefit of cooperation with Archangel Ink

I want to be a full time writer. Cooperation with Archangel Ink accelerates achieving this goal.

The ultimate benefit of that collaboration is that you spare yourself headaches. You can focus on the author’s job – writing – and outsource the rest to them. You can still market on your own if you wish to and have the resources. I don’t and I haven’t.

My best marketing comes through developing relationships with my readers. Now I can spare more time for email communication. It already brought the fruits. My previous book, From Shy to Hi, was read by six beta readers. The next book by twenty-seven.

 

In my absolutely non-biased opinion, signing the contract with Archangel Ink is the best thing that can happen for an indie author struggling to stay afloat. If my results haven’t convinced you about it, then there is no power in the universe which would accomplish that.

The post Cooperation with Archangel Ink appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Seventh Income Report – October 2013

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

On the 1st of October I started writing my time management book. I was doing it parallel to writing blog content the whole of October.

Strangely enough (The Law of Attraction?) the sales reflected my comeback to writing Kindle content.

I had another record day (3 sales) on 24th of October and once again reached a monthly record (31 sales). In the whole month I had no more than two consecutive days without a sale.

I did another experiment. I put the fitness book on a free promo for the first two days of October with no advertisement whatsoever. It was downloaded just 84 times. That’s about what an organic Amazon traffic is worth in regard to the free promos. Well, that month the book did better than in previous months selling a whooping 4 copies.

I was also working on publishing my speed reading book. It went back and forth between me and my proofreader. I once again ordered a cover from Fiverr. It was again ugly, but this time exactly according to my wishes (I have almost non-existent aesthetic sense as you can see).

I uploaded the book on Amazon, scheduled the free promo and paid $35 (Fiverr again) for spreading the word about a promo.

I also posted the info in about a dozen freebie groups on FB (about 30k members put together).

In the two last days of October the book was downloaded 448 times, which was a promising result.

I also started this blog. The first post was published on 5th October 2013. I felt like talking to myself many times and mostly I was. I had no idea about blog launches, so I began from scratch with no following whatsoever. I remember that I changed the blog’s WP theme at least 3 times before I was satisfied with it.

The learning curve associated with starting and maintaining a blog consumed much of my energy.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income: zero.

Well, 31 sales summed up to $7.44, but it was received into my bank account 2 months later. That’s how this business works.

Lesson:

That’s it. End of October. In the middle of April I started writing. Six and a half months of hassle. Three and a half (one public domain work) books published. 159 days have passed since publishing my first book.

I sold 145 copies of my books. 85% of them were my first work about creating a personal mission statement.

I’ve received one single money transfer so far — eleven euros, less than a single hour of overtime from my employer.

What would you call it? A failure? I tended to use the word ‘disaster’ in my mind.

You need a personal philosophy which will keep you going. Disaster or not, giving up was out of the question.

I earned something else, something more valuable than money. I gained experience.

I learned a lot.

Just in the first half of 2014 I earned about $300 from those first three and a half books I published before the end of October 2013. I sold over 1250 copies of them in that period.

I signed the contract with my publisher in July 2013; they refurbished and re-published them. Within just a couple of weeks of September 2014 I sold via my publisher more than 800 copies of those books and earned about $280.

They were the same books. It was the same content I created struggling in 2013 at the beginning of my career.

Your past does not equal your future. You are good enough. The world may not recognize it yet, but it will.

Cost: $19, Aweber services.

$35, free promo marketing service from Fiverr.

$5, a Fiverr-made cover.

Net result: -$59

Previous Income Report: August 2013

The post Seventh Income Report – October 2013 appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Buck Books for Authors

What Buck Books has to offer to indie authors? Exposure. A factor which is priceless on Amazon. The biggest hassle with starting on Kindle is getting the initial traction. I remember how I observed my mentor with jealousy just a year ago. He was launching book after book and they all stayed in the top #10k, #20k, #50k or #100k. When I did research on his books some time ago I found only a couple titles which were above #100k on the bestselling list. And these were the titles from his old catalogue published about a year prior, which he mostly left alone.

 

The biggest difference between my struggle and his success was the size of a mailing list. At the beginning of January 2014, my list consisted of just 27 people. He “lent” me his list promoting my book to his subscribers (about 1800 at that time). It wasn’t the only marketing tool I used for that launch, but I credit many of the results to that ‘lease’. Master Your Time became a bestseller in a very competitive niche and stayed on the first page of bestsellers for the next few months.

 

The initial exposure is the king on Amazon. It keeps your book afloat for months to come. And Buck Books gives indie authors exactly that.

It is my publisher’s service and my books have already been promoted three times using it. Let’s discuss the results and compare them with these books’ performance from the past.

Book #1

A Personal Mission Statement: Your Road Map to Happiness was my first work ever published. As you can check in my income reports, it wasn’t a smashing success at the beginning. But with growing exposure it started to sell quite well. It sold just 99 copies from May 26th 2013 to the end of October.

Since then it became a solid position in my catalogue and before the beginning of September 2014 it sold 1038 copies overall, at $1, earning me about $245.

 

This book was launched on the 11th of September and it sold 135 copies with Buck Books.

#1, 702 in paid store:



Hot new release in Self-Help-> Self Esteem category:



1st in search results for “personal mission statement” keyword:

My publisher checked on the numbers 9 days later. The book was set at the higher price point of $2.99 and was selling 4 copies per day on average. It matched its best performance in the past, but being in a better royalties threshold it makes me 4 times more money. Within three weeks it made 30% of the aforementioned $245 generated in the 14 previous months.

Book #2

I launched The Fitness Expert Next Door on 14th of July 2013. It was my second work ever published. I had no mailing list at that time. I used a free promo for the launch.

Up until the middle of October 2013 it sold only 17 copies. I think the ugly cover had a lot to do with that.



Another promo, a new cover



and the success of my other books (exposure, exposure!) increased this number significantly. This book sold 259 copies up to the re-launch with Archangel Ink.

I priced it at $1. To make the picture whole, I confess I made it a permafree book at the beginning of April 2014. By the end of August 2014 the free copy was downloaded from Amazon 8149 times.

I must admit that this level of performance was not particularly impressive.

On 4th of September 2014, three of my books were published and promoted to the Buck Books mailing list. I was promoted as a ‘featured author’.



My fitness book was one of them.

It reached just below #2k in bestseller rankings during the promo.



A fancy bestseller badge:



Hot new release in Health-> Exercise & Fitness category:



Hot new release in the main Health, Fitness & Dieting category!



#1 in Health, Fitness & Dieting Short Reads:



It sold 136 copies within 2 days. It bounced back, but only to #20k-ish places within first 10 days.

A month after the promo, its lowest rank was around #114k. The Fitness Expert Next Door was also priced at $2.99 and made me $55 in the first month after Buck Books promo.

Book #3

The first book I published together with Archangel Ink was Learn to Read with Great Speed. I launched it for the first time in October 2013, starting from 5-day long free promo. I paid $35 for a Fiverr marketing service. They submitted my promo to 20 freebie sites and a few Twitter and FB accounts. I also used freebie groups on Facebook to spread the word.

The results were quite impressive (for me). In November I sold 74 copies on Amazon.com and 39 on Amazon.co.jp. To give you some comparison: in October 2013 I sold just 31 copies of my first two titles (and 40 in November; exposure).

Since the launch to the 9th of August 2014 Learn to Read with Great Speed sold 762 copies.

For all that time this book was priced at $1.

Buck Books event

The book was re-published and promoted with 15 other books in the Buck Books event.



To participate in the event, each author must:

1. Drop the price to 99 cents

2. Drive traffic to the site on the day of the event with an email broadcast to his/her subscribers.

It’s a way to unite indies’ dispersed powers.

The site was hit just over 16,000 times during the event (including the whooping 34 visitors from the broadcast to my tiny list):

The book reached #520 in the paid store



and stormed to the #1 place in all its subcategories:

It was 6th in the whole Short Reads category (including fiction)!!



It sold 357 copies during the promo at $0.99 and then the price was increased to $2.99. It stayed below the #20k rank on the bestsellers list till the next promo on 4th of September.

A fancy badge:

Within the first 25 days of its time with Archangel Ink it earned us about $650. Not too bad, I doubt it earned me $50 any given month prior.

Icing on the cake

Learn to Read with Great Speed was promoted once again, together with my fitness and parenting books. During these two days at $0.99 it sold 230 copies, topped with a dozen borrows. It dived below #1k on the whole Kindle store.

Book #4

Comparing to this book, The Fitness Expert was a smashing success.

On the 23rd of December 2013, I published my 4th book – Release Your Kid’s Dormant Genius. I did everything in my power to promote the book including several free promos with paid advertising on freebie sites. The results were invariably disappointing. This book sold just 20 copies in the first full month of its life and only 155 copies in the whole ‘before-publisher’ period.

It wasn’t the problem with a cover, which was decent;

it wasn’t the content, because reviews didn’t reflect any problems. It was just the lack of appropriate exposure.

The Buck Books promo went similarly to the fitness book: it reached just above #2k rank;



sold 135 copies during the promo and about 30 copies within the 10 days after increasing the price.

A fancy badge:



Two books in Hot New Releases in Education category:



The lowest rank it got within a month after the launch was #77, 518. By contrast, Release Your Kid’s Dormant Genius was regularly at about #300,000 when it was in my hands.

In the first month after the promo it made me $47, comparing to the $37 it made since December 2013.

Book #5 – my bestseller

On February 1st 2014, Master Your Time in 10 Minutes a Day transited from the free promo to a paid store. On the first day it sold 74 copies.

It was the first book I priced at $3. That one day I earned more than in the first six months of my writing career.

This book stayed on the first page of bestsellers in the Time Management category for the next few months. It has never left the top 100 in that category.

Before the beginning of September 2014, more than 2500 readers bought it. I was selling 12.5 copies a day. I earned on this book more than $3300 in seven months.

However it was just 7.66 copies in June, 5.8 copies in July, and in August the average sales dwindled to just 3.5 copies a day. The book was definitely losing its steam.

It was promoted on the 11th of September 2014 via Buck Books.

It dived below the #1k rank in the whole Kindle store. It occupied #1 stop in the Time Management category.





and it was high in a main business category:



It sold 199 copies during the promo and about 100 copies within first 10 days after the promo. It slipped to the second page in the Time Management category only after 3 weeks. It earned me $148 just on the USA market in 20 days.

Conclusion

Granted, it’s not just the promo effect.

All books were proofread by pros; all received superb covers. All have now paperback versions and on the listings they show as deals with the “You Save: $4.31 (54%)” message.

Those are all the factors which positively contribute to their rankings and sales.

 

But I have one interesting case to prove that Buck Books promo makes the difference: From Shy to Hi went through the same refurbishing process, a paperback version was also published, but in this case it also took Amazon a lot of time to bundle both formats on the store.

So the guys from Archangel Ink decided not to promote it with other books. It hung silently on the Book Bucks website and was available on Amazon for the minimal price. When my other books were promoted on the 4th of September it sold 22 copies and about 20 copies more up until its own Buck Books promo a week later.

At $0.99 it got the highest place at about the #15k rank, however it was also close to the #80k rank a few times.

Book #6

From Shy to Hi has been a solid position in my catalogue in the past. I launched it on my own at the end of June 2014 and before the beginning of September it sold 102 copies at $3 (and was borrowed 19 times).

It was ‘blasted’ with my last two books on the 11th of September 2014 and it sold 137 copies during the promo.



Interpersonal Relationships category:



Hot New Releases:

After the promo it was set back to $2.99 and was selling 5 copies a day on average. That grossly exceeded its previous performance.

It earned me $82 in a month.

 

The blast to the mailing list made all the difference.

That’s the power of Buck Books for authors.

Exposure, fool!

My mentor always says, “Write great books.” But it’s not everything. It’s only a prerequisite. The great books can lose against the trash with superior marketing.

I wrote Master Your Time in October 2013, when I sold just 31 copies with a couple of titles. My marketing sucked so I didn’t sell a lot of copies at the beginning of my publishing career.

But once I refined my marketing a bit the same content was selling better. In January I sold 83 copies of those two books. And in February this number climbed to 161. In September, with the help of Buck Books, it exceeded 350.

Folks from Archangel Ink know their craft. Their marketing is far superior to mine. That’s why I’m more than happy to ally with them. I provide them content; they provide their marketing machine. Together we multiplied our effectiveness.



Those are facts supported by numbers. This alliance is the way to triumph over those who game the system by stuffing keywords, changing the release date every 3 months to get to the hot new releases section and so on.

Want more numbers details?

Take a look at the detailed numbers about the results of my Buck Books promotions and get to know my arguments why you should jump on the bandwagon.

And I invite you to participate in the Buck Books events mentioned at the bottom of that note.

The post Buck Books for Authors appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Why Info Products Fail to Deliver

You don’t need ready formulas, quick fixes, out-of-the-box programs to fix you or fix your life. Well, you may be in need, but they won’t help you. They work only for those who really follow their instructions both in the letter and in spirit. For those who do the job. But the willingness to do the job comes from within. From your personal philosophy. If your philosophy is not compatible with the program, you will abandon it sooner or later.

Anyone who claims otherwise is stupid or greedy. Stupid, if he thinks that can impose his concept on you no matter your personal situation. Greedy, if he doesn’t care much about your results and is focused solely on convincing you, that his magic pill will solve all of your problems.

Ideal get rich quick program

At the beginning of 2014 I joined the program for Kindle publishers. Its core idea was to find hot trends on Amazon, outsource the book writing and produce as many as possible as quickly as possible. The readers get a passable book on the interesting topics and because there are hundreds of thousands people in the target audience the pseudo books get some sales. Even one copy a day adds up to about $60 a month. Multiplied by 10 or 100 books it creates a nice stream of income.

As long as Amazon tolerates such practices, this business model will continue to work. You can outpace the attrition of your not-so-perfect books as long as you publish more and more of them. What is more, I could see, that I could make it work for me too. I had already published five books. I was familiar with the process. I needed only to learn the outsourcing. I could easily see that after about a year of hard work, investing about $20,000 and publishing about 100 new titles, quitting my day job would be feasible.

Compatibility issue

But it was against my personal philosophy. My main goal in life is my personal growth. If I had dedicated all my spare time to Kindle publishing my personal development program would be severely restricted. Of course there is the argument that once I quit my job I would have 10 hours a day to pursue my passion, but still it’s one year of my life. The time cannot be reclaimed. And what if it would have taken me two years? And what if I would have died in three? I don’t know the future. Part of my personal philosophy is not giving my time to anything that I wouldn’t have wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Also, making money as fast as possible is not my top priority. I have nothing against making money, but I much prefer to do it via providing value. I see little to no value in publishing another Paleo diet cookbook. There are already hundreds of them out there and if someone is interested in Paleo recipes, he can easily pick one of them and have his need satisfied.

I should rather channel my focus on the areas where I can give most value using my unique perspective: writing books on how an ordinary busy guy can improve his life using 10 minute long disciplines or recognizing the importance of personal philosophy. Nobody else seems to notice that this is a fundamental need in our society and nobody else wrote a good book solely about it.

Where gurus fail

So pursuing this program was not an option for me. It was not compatible with my personal philosophy.

That’s where most info products fail to deliver. They are not marketed to the right people. They are marketed to the people with thick wallets, not to the people with the right personal philosophies. “Gurus” who produce these products are interested only in revenues. Or they fall into the illusion that purchases equal results (however the disclaimers available on many sites suggest that they don’t).

If you are broken, the ready how-to solutions can only provide further damage. Sometimes it’s tiny, when you just buy three dollar book, skim it, and give it no further thought or action. But tiny or not, the damage is done. You’ve lost a few bucks, several minutes of your time and a bit of self-esteem, because you stayed passive. It’s more dangerous if you take the advice to heart with enthusiasm, start implementing it, and give up after some time. You invested much more in the latter case and you enforced all the negative beliefs you had before. “I just can’t do it,” “I’m no good at this,” “I’m a failure.”

I remember how I read a lot of personal development books in my teens and tried to apply everything I found in them. My existing personal philosophy didn’t let that happen and I decided that nothing great could come from me. I quit attempting conscious self-improvement for the next 16 years.

Develop the right philosophy

Once you develop the right personal philosophy you will get more clarity whether or not any given program is for you, whether or not you are willing to pay the price in time investment and sacrifices, not just in money. And you will be able to implement almost anything you decide is worth pursuing.

The post Why Info Products Fail to Deliver appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Sixth Income Report – September 2013

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

September was a quiet time and simultaneously rich in events that deeply affected the next months.

I focused my writing on my philosophy work. As soon as I started my transformation around September 2012 and met with new ideas about wealth and abundance I felt that I needed to confront these ideas with the teachings of my Church. I felt tempted to pursue the ideas blindly, but I also felt deep inside that it may be in vain if in reality they are opposite to all I believe.

All in all, those ideas made me study the Catholic Church’s official documents. It appeared that the Church has nothing against progress and wealth per se. While studying I decided that I needed to write a compilation of the Church’s teaching about personal development. I put myself together and started the work at the beginning of August. But I did the main bulk of that job in September. I finished the first draft about 20th, before the deadline I had set for myself.

Finishing this work gave me a peace of mind. I grounded my beliefs about success and wealth in my religious beliefs. I ditched doubts and fears. It empowered me to keep plugging.

Lesson:

You need a balance. Theoretically I wasted a few weeks on writing something which probably will never be published and will never bring me money.

Wrong! My sanity required me to fix those issues in advance, before I committed myself too deeply. It was time very well invested.

Profound events

First, I joined Lift. It was an amazing experience. I described it in detail in this post. It later opened many paths for me.

And I started my Writing Progress Spreadsheet. I did it due to my mentor’s advice.

In this writing log I track all my writing activities. I note a date, a project name and type, whether I write in Polish or English; I mark the start and stop time and word count. I also track where I write (mainly home, work and train).

I decided not to count as ‘writing’ the things I wrote habitually, like my journals or daily entry in TPJ (I wrote 50k words in it since September 2013). I counted only blog posts, outlines, books, guest posts, articles and business messages.

It helped me immensely with maintaining my writing habit. Joining Lift and this tracking tool combined together allowed me to write every day since 23th of September 2013 for at least 30 minutes. It increased my output by at least 10%.

After some time I had enough data to compare my speed when writing in Polish and English. I thought I write significantly faster in Polish, but the results were about the same!

 

On 30th of September I wrote down the first words of my time management book’s outline.

I wasn’t writing a new book to publish it on Amazon, but I didn’t abandon my publishing venture. I was in constant contact with my proofreader. We worked on the parenting book and on 12th of September I finished editing the first draft of the speed reading book and sent it to her. I also hired a developer on Fiverr to create a couple of speed reading tools for my readers.

Testing

The sales were low. I sold only 18 copies of my personal mission statement book and two copies of my fitness book. I did an experiment and changed the first book cover for the one I received from a Fiverr designer. I didn’t notice any difference in sales, so I brought back the cover I liked more.

I also changed the headline of the fitness book’s copy at the beginning of September.

It was fun to undertake this project, to not feel helpless, but with such low volume it just didn’t make the difference.

Lesson:

Higher sales volumes do not guarantee any meaningful information. Once my speed reading book sold 9 copies, whereas on average it was 2-3 copies a day. I had absolutely no idea why.

I heard the wild stories from other authors about how they didn’t know why their books took off. Stories like forgotten free promo with no marketing whatsoever which resulted in 20k+ downloads; or a new release in the same niche published under a pen name with no following, no email broadcast which broke the bestseller ranks.

I the same manner I had absolutely no clue why Master Your Time became a bestseller and stayed on the 1st time management page for 5 months.

However, it’s easy to experiment with digital publishing. It won’t take you much time and maybe you’ll get something out of it.

The lowest point

I had an eight-day long streak with no sales from 22nd to 29th of September. This was the lowest point in my publishing career ever. Exactly in this period I decided to launch my blog to make my publishing more of a business.

I took the massive action toward starting this blog and making my online presence congruent. I updated my 1$tips site and The Progress Journal blog with my bio and books, updated my bio on Amazon and wrote several blog posts to keep the ball rolling after the launch of EBY.

Quitting crossed my mind and it was immediately dismissed—what would I gain if I quit? NOTHING!

At the beginning of September I noticed that it took me 104 days to sell the first 100 copies of my books.

Lesson:

This is a part of my personal philosophy: you never know what results you could achieve if you do nothing. Sitting on your hands is the only fireproof method to achieving no effects at all.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income: 11.28 euros.

WTF? Euros? Welcome to the international publishing world.

The explanation is simple. Amazon pays European non-UK citizens in euros. With typical American arrogance they are not very picky about local currencies: Europe? Then you are paid in euros!

For my beloved American readers I will use a 1.3 exchange rate as a rule of thumb to provide them with the amount in USD. My costs were (and mostly are) in this currency anyway, so it won’t be possible to compare profits and costs without it.

So it was roughly $14.66.

11.28 euros came into my account on 27th of September. I published the first book on 26th of May. It took me four months to earn less than the equivalent of my single overtime hour.

FOUR MONTHS!!!

Lesson:

If you are into writing just for money, it’s not likely you will persevere. Find another vocation or reason other than just money to keep writing.

Cost: $19, Aweber services (aff. link).

$30, developer from Fiverr.

Net result: -$34.34

Previous Income Report: August 2013

The post Sixth Income Report – September 2013 appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Review: Journey Within My Heart

I appreciate the title of this book very much. It says all about its contents.



It’s a book about Journey.  Starla Rich was 50+ when writing this work and she had quite a life journey behind her.

The word Within indicates it’s about our internal world, not some travel guide. It talks about the things which are most basic and valuable for humans: emotions, memories and experiences.

I had the most problems with the My part of the title and the book. Starla doesn’t preach about generalities. It’s a book about her life, her journey and her experiences. It unfortunately may narrow the circle of readers, but it provides the level of insight into the human soul impossible otherwise.

And it’s all about Heart. Her transparency is beyond amazing. She opens the gate to her heart and shares what’s inside. She is not afraid to become vulnerable in order to encourage others in their life journey.

And in this era, such a reflective title is so rare! As an author myself, I know all too well the temptation to use tricks and slogans to enchain potential reader’s attention.  Starla Rich is above that.

Why “My” may cause the problem…

Let’s go straight to minuses of the book, so we can delight in its positives later on.

This book is deeply personal. So deeply in fact, that it may thwart a reader from wading across the ‘personal’ part to the ‘universal’ one.

This is the first book of this author and it shows here and there. The paragraphs are much, much too verbose for my taste. Many times I was desperately looking for the break in the stream of words to catch my breath and just ponder what I’ve just read. In fact that was my biggest issue with this book.

Maybe it was just the impression provoked by the length of individual paragraphs, but in my opinion, Starla rambles too much. She could cut some corners here and there and go to the point sooner.

Those two issues make it relatively hard for me to through the beginning of the book. And it is the most important part! If the reader will be willing to wade through the introduction, he can endure some wandering about and linger for what’s later on.  But if not…

I went through this initial blockade only because I knew something about the author in advance, before reading the book. If I hadn’t, I don’t think I would have found the motivation to do so. For me, the “My” part was the reason to keep reading. For someone who doesn’t know the author, it is more likely to stir “And who cares?” reaction and giving up on the lecture

And that would be a shame, because this book is good. No, it’s not good, it’s wonderful. No, it’s not; the proper word is “Great.”

Language

English is not my first language, but even I can appreciate the skillful craftsmanship Starla has over words and sentences. Her language is artful, subtle and beautiful. Reading this book is like listening to soothing music. She doesn’t just tell the story, she paints it with her words, so vividly that I couldn’t help seeing it happening through my own eyes.

She narrates a few times abject events from her past in the way that you can feel her pain and simultaneously be far away from it in time and space.

She is an artist of the written word. Reading “Journey Within My Heart” is a joy in itself.

By the way, I fell in love with the South just imbibing its pieces through the author’s writing.

Layers

But it’s just the first, superficial layer of this book’s virtues. The other one is openness and transparency. Starla shares her personal story with total strangers with courage and divine lack of fear.

I’m a “self-analysis” fanatic. I spend at least 10 minutes every day writing down an analysis of my own self. But I’m amazed by the depth of Starla’s thoughts about seemingly trifling encounters or scenes from the movies. Mundane, daily situations for her are inspiration to ponder the greatest mysteries of life.

This personal approach separates the book’s message from resemblance to a stiff sermon. Many times I couldn’t help but nodding in agreement with her conclusions drawn from these personal tidbits.

Wisdom

And all I said about the book so far is just another layer. Because the core of “Journey Within My Heart” is wisdom. The further you go into the book, the greater enlightenment you experience.

I believe wisdom is transforming one’s own experience into meaningful lessons. The author experienced a lot in her life, both good and evil. She encountered it in others and in herself. That makes her so relatable to us all. However her ability to digest a meaning from these encounters is extraordinary.

She taught me about the realms of the Heart: relationships, self-love, self-pity, courage, self-examination and divine providence through her own example. She provoked me to search for similar lessons in my past, in my soul.

And in the end she fulfilled her mission. She encouraged me.

The post Review: Journey Within My Heart appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Buck Books for Readers

The disclaimer first. I will receive a tiny amount of cash if you subscribe to Buck Books email list. It’s the service of my publisher, so my opinion about it is far from non-judgmental. Having said that, my opinion is not for sale. If I thought they might abuse their relationship with their subscribers I would never promote this service. It just is a great deal for readers.

Buck Books is a secret weapon of Archangel Ink. The idea is very simple. You never pay more than a buck for the book.

They claim on their site that they promote both fiction and non-fiction, but they are heavily skewed toward the latter. However they cooperate with many authors from different genres and they are growing rapidly. Variety will never be a problem with Buck Books.

Service for readers

First of all you can visit their site anytime and check out what they are promoting.

Secondly you can ‘fire and forget’. Subscribe to their list and when they will have a book (or several) on the promo, they will send you a message straight to your mailbox.

They use this tool to promote my books, so I subscribed to check on them. And I’m super-stoked with what they do. There is exactly zero fluff in their communication. Each and every email from them is about cheap or free books. Nothing else.

There are no tricks involved, no changing sender address or shoddy affiliate offers promoting other products.

I received exactly one affiliate offer within the month I’ve been one of their subscribers and it was book-related AND it had a one year money back guarantee. Bearable.

I found it super easy setting the filter for their newsletter and putting all their correspondence in one neat folder.



As a reader I couldn’t ask for more precise and direct form of book promotion.

And it’s quite important not to miss their emails, because each promotion is just that—a promotion. The timer at the top of the page is not just for show. Usually you have less than one day to grab the book for the discounted price.

Quirks and perks

To live up to the current internet marketing standards, Buck Books is not 100% integral. What a surprise, isn’t it? I caught them once selling a book for $1.99, but it was a bundle of 20 books and they forewarned about it in their email.



It’s forgivable.

I have more problems with the scarcity timer they use on their site, because it’s not always true to its meaning.

What it really mean is that they may or may not take the book off the promo at the end of the indicated time. For example, my book From Shy to Hi has been displayed on the site for the whole past week. So it is not exactly true that after the time expires you won’t have a chance to grab the book for the lower price. They may extend the promo into the next day, and next and next…

Back to the integrity issue

This ‘timer thing’, however, applies only to the books that they display on the Buck Books page. I have never caught them promoting the title to their mailing list and then extending the promo beyond the deadline. They are deadly serious about this.

If you get an email saying that you have until midnight to buy the book for the buck, then at midnight they will remove the book from their page. The price may still be $0.99 for a couple of hours, because the price changing mechanism on Amazon is all but precise and timely. However you can only find this out by going directly to the book’s page.

A word about the publisher

I know I’m biased in this case Nonetheless, their service for authors is as excellent as their service for readers. They are a truly modern kind of publisher who doesn’t steal from authors, who doesn’t cheat in agreements. They work solely with indie authors. And they are paid from the author’s royalties.

What does it mean for you? That they are vitally interested in cooperating only with the best authors writing the best books. If they promote trash they will lose their reputation … and in the end their profits.

You won’t get any garbage book hastily written by a ghostwriter from Pakistan. Everything they publish is top quality.

Quite often they promote indie books not published by Archangel Ink, but they are always rigid about the quality of works they decide to share with their subscribers. You can check their requirements for authors at the end of this post.

Watch your wallet!

It’s true they inform you only about minimal priced books, but believe me, it can accumulate! I signed up to their list just to check on them, but within less than a month (shame to admit), I’ve bought several titles and downloaded a few free ones.

They know their craft and promote very convincingly. Beware!

Buck Books for readers

I wholeheartedly recommend Buck Books service for all readers interested in getting valuable books for a reasonable price. No fluff, only focused communication and lots of books from the real indie authors is the ideal deal for you.

Go to the Buck Books for readers site and subscribe to their email list today.

The post Buck Books for Readers appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Fifth Income Report – August 2013

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

In August I ran 2 free promos. The first was a 3 day long promo of my fitness book. It started on 2nd of August. The results were disappointing, just 199 downloads on Amazon.com. The direct effect was 2 copies sold on the first day after the promo.

On 22nd of August I started the second promo of personal mission statement book. It was 2 days long and the results were similar – 207 downloads.

Writing

I was writing a parenting book that month. This book proves that you can write about anything. In October 2012 I discovered that my son had problems at school. He was lazy and unfocused in his education which resulted in poor grades. I took care of tutoring him. I found he read very poorly, that his knowledge of English is almost non-existent and a couple of other issues. I addressed them via daily disciplines and he finished the school year with honors!

Ta-da, the book’s story was ready.

Writing it took me about a month. It’s my worst performing book ever, by the way. I didn’t do much market research prior to writing. But I don’t regret writing it at all. Teaching others automatically makes you focus on what you are teaching and as a result I become a better parent myself. In 2014 my son also finished his school year with honors.

Public domain

I also finished another side project that month—publishing 365 quotes from the Science of Getting Rich book. I wanted to learn how to publish a public domain work. And I did. I also discovered that you can’t sign up such work to the KDP Select program and you are eligible only for 35% royalties from it.

Another failed get-rich-quick scheme

So I learned a few valuable lessons and maybe one day this pseudo-book will return my time investment (in the next 10 to 20 years). I also got a few subscribers through this work, because I offered to send those quotes every day straight to the subscriber’s mailbox.

Prices

I did some price testing. People are supposedly more likely to purchase items priced with the ending .99, because they perceive them as cheaper. So I priced my personal mission statement book at $0.99 and left it at this level for almost two weeks. I didn’t notice a significant change in sales and went back to $1.

I hate .99 endings. I was in the supermarket yesterday trying to clear a prepaid card with 5,2 balance. Almost all the products were priced with that effin ending! I hate them. I hate the fact that I need to add 0,01 to everything I buy to get some meaningful summary. For me it’s like red rag to a bull. That’s why I give all my books a round pricing point: $1 or $3.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income: Still zero.

Three full months and I didn’t earn a dime.

August 2013 was my best month in my publishing career so far. I sold 31 books. I had 3 days with a record 3 sales a day.

I earned a virtual $7.44.

Cost: $19, Aweber services (aff link).

Net result: -$19

Previous Income Report: July 2013

The post Fifth Income Report – August 2013 appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Universal Success Rate Is Lower Than You Think

Jim Rohn said once during the seminar that only a small part of the audience implements what he teaches. He estimated that 10% of people who attended his seminars actually read the books he recommended. He also provided other examples: only 3% of people have a library card; only 5% of people in America are financially independent on retirement.

Jeff Olson in The Slight Edge states that only about 5% of people are successful in life.

Both gentlemen used their experience to estimate this success rate and it was more the rule of thumb than any definite number.

The 21st century with its extensive computing power and a new demand for transparency connected with the Internet era allows us to take guesswork out of such estimations. Various companies are publishing their results to be viewed by everyone. I researched several Multi-Level Marketing companies’ data plus any other I could lay my hands on in the quest to get the universal success rate.

Why MLM companies?

Well the concept of MLM is that anybody can have success with it. Distributors are looking for business partners among their acquaintance and friends; among average people, not some business geniuses. So it is as universal branch as you can get. What is more, MLM depends heavily on personal development. Not everyone is capable of giving presentations, being a salesman and building a business network, but anyone can become one if he takes some effort to learn those skills.

Besides, MLM industry is unique in its transparency. It’s hard to find any meaningful data about individuals’ results in any other industry. MLM companies are vitally interested in the success of their distributors, because it translates into their success. They try to advertise their way of doing business, emphasizing their members’ personal successes, thus they publish aggregated and averaged data about their distributors’ results.

A pinch of salt

You need to use your best judgment while analyzing MLM’s data. Rohn and Olson weren’t wrong with their rule of thumb. Success is not common. Companies publishing their members’ incomes try as hard as they can to embellish reality. There is no standard methodology in the reports of various companies. Some of them use weekly data, some monthly, some annual. Luckily most of them also give an annualized average income no matter which methodology they employed.

They use different nomenclature; I chose to call partners of MLM companies “Distributors”.

They also disqualified as many distributors as they can from their statistics, providing their own definition of an Active Distributor. Usually it’s someone who does the business: has some sales, has some distribution network etc.

I tried to standardize those different “standards” to obtain meaningful and comparable metrics.

Success metric

It’s not some contest between MLMs. I don’t try to determine which of them is best. Doing this research I was focused only on finding the universal success rate, not only in developing MLM business, but in life.

I add to the mix as many data from outside the industry as possible. It’s just uncommon for any other ventures to publish such information, thus they are sparse in the research.

There is a lot of guessing involved in forming my conclusion, but it’s guessing based on numbers, not just on gut feelings.

% of reasonable success is a rule of thumb metric providing the percentage of the population who made a few hundred bucks a month. All in all, MLM is usually a part-time business, so part-time results are not something to be frowned upon.

% of significant success is the percentage of the population who reached the level of full-time income (or at least close to it)

Company: Amway

Year: 2010

% of significant success (over $55k annual income): 0,45%

Comment: Amway abstained from publishing the whole ladder of incomes several years ago. The latest data I could find were from 2010 and they detailed only top earners.

Company: MonaVie

Year: 2011

% of reasonable success (over $4k annual income): 10%

% of significant success (over $53k annual income): less than 1%

Company: Nu Skin Enterprises

Year: 2012

% of reasonable success (over $4.8k annual income): less than 6%

% of significant success (over $62.9k annual income): less than 0.37%

Comment: Active Distributors are about 40% of all distributors. Their methodology was confusing; I couldn’t comprehend how the percentage of Active Distributors adds to 100% or at least 40% of all Distributors.

Company: Herbalife

Year: 2012

% of reasonable success (over $5k annual income): 8,2%

% of significant success (over $50k annual income): 2.55%

Comment: Another confusing methodology. They divided their members into “pursuing a business opportunity” (27%), “single level” Distributors (71% of these 27%) and Active Distributors. The above numbers apply only to the Active members.

Company: Orango Gold

Year: 2012

% of reasonable success (over $4k annual income): about 20%

% of significant success (over $30k annual income): 1.4%

Comment: Comment: The above numbers apply only to the Distributors who reached a leadership rank (17% of all Active Distributors).

Company: Vemma

Year: 2013

% of reasonable success (over $3.6k annual income): about 13%

% of significant success (over $42.8k annual income): 1.46%

Comment: Numbers apply to Active Distributors (which were 30% of the whole population).

Company: Young Living

Year: 2013

% of reasonable success (over $3.1k annual income): about 17%

% of significant success (over $78k annual income): 1.4%

Comment: Numbers apply only to top 8% of Distributors, ranked as Stars and above.

Company: Empower Network

Year: 2013

% of reasonable success (over $4.1k annual income): about 5%

% of significant success (over $42.9k annual income): less than 4%

Comment: Empower Network is not the standard MLM, it works exclusively online. The numbers apply to all Distributors.

Infoproduct

I also found the results of The Keyword Academy—an online program for people who want to make money online via niche sites and SEO skills. The premise of TKA is that anyone can start it; there is no skill set or capital required upfront—similar to MLM.

It’s interesting to analyze their data, because it’s a whole different realm. In MLM you need social skills. Even if your business is done through impersonal means, blogs, shopping carts, etc., once you recruit some partners it becomes “people’s business”. The TKA’s students work mostly alone, use sophisticated technical means and a completely different set of skills among which analytical thinking is the most important.

Company: The Keyword Academy

Year: 2011?

% of reasonable success (over $3.6k annual income): about 9%

% of significant success (over $60k annual income): 0.84%

Comment: The detailed rules of tracking the students’ results are not explained. I only know that 837 of them provided their numbers. I have no idea how many of them took part in the Academy and what the exact percentage of those who provided their results was. The numbers above apply to those who did it.

Universal success rate

Success is less common than we are inclined to think.

In both MLM and TKA cases it heavily depends on individual effort and grit, in other words, on personal development.

The word “personal” indicates it depends on a specific person.

And only from 0.37% to less than 4% people are successful. That’s why, even in such a technical challenge like driving SEO traffic to sites, less than 1% succeeds.

Conclusion

Let’s make this ratio higher. This is my dream. Jim Rohn said that the numbers throughout the years are the same, only the faces change. But I want to change the numbers.

It may be impossible to change them overall. Maybe they are coded into the fabric of human society. Maybe just 0.5% can be on the top of things no matter what. Who knows?

But I’m against this point of view. Every kid has a creative genius potential. It’s later in life that we lose it. Every one of us has the potential to expand beyond our wildest dreams. It is just hidden very deep inside of us.

It’s not that your fate is already determined, that you are a success or failure because of your past. We all know the sad stories of people who made it big and slipped back to obscurity, we hear about rock stars, sportsmen or actors who achieved a lot only to waste it by alcohol or drug abuse.

We all know rags to riches stories, the media are very fond of them because they speak vividly to our imagination — talent shows, multi-million businesses started in garages, a newbie beating the master in a prestigious tournament.

But neither great failures nor rapid successes are common. In his book The Millionaire Next Door Thomas J. Stanley tells story after story of ordinary people, who built their wealth methodically through the years, who were firmly grounded in their values and didn’t let their success affect their mindsets in negative ways.

Gradual growth or decline is common and normal. They are caused by consistently practiced disciplines or small errors in judgment repeated over time.

Personal philosophy

The power behind all the successes and failures is an individual’s personal philosophy, an operating system for his life. It consists of all his experiences gathered from the various sources through sensory and mental inputs plus his self-talk. Two people can see exactly the same thing, but their interpretation of what they see may be totally different. The internal dialog matters.

In order to increase the ” universal success rate”, the overall awareness of the importance of personal philosophy must be increased.

You can do it

Incremental development of your personal philosophy is possible. It happened to me. It happened to Jim Rohn and many others. In fact, any transformation story is likely to be a result of adjusting one’s personal philosophy. Whether it’s a businessman who went from a struggling to a thriving business or an alcoholic who dealt with his drinking problem, the results they got were the effect of changing the way they thought.

You don’t have to wait for an enlightenment or breakthrough. You can start where you are with what you have. Change the media you consume, the people you interact with, pay attention to your internal dialog and in the end you will increase the success rate by becoming a success yourself.

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