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Michael Stewart
Hello, everybody, it’s Mike Stewart with Mike Stewart dot live. And I’m so glad that you’re here
Michael Stewart
watching me live because I believe in audio and video marketing and I believe that live streaming is a massive opportunity in future for all kinds of applications. So today I’m going to be talking about something that’s right over my shoulder over here right there. You can see I’m pointing my finger at it, something I’m very proud of something I’ve been working on in Nashville for the last year so it’s doing Kindle books. And and of course, my expert who’s in the green room, who I’ll bring on here in just a few moments, is my good friend Daniel Hall, who I consider to be the number one premier Kindle expert in the world. Now, kinda how does this fit in with audio and video? Well, number one, to me, ebooks, and especially Kindle books are like selling websites. In other words, one of the things that you can do inside of a Kindle book, and I’ll show you this overlay is you can have blue clickable links. In other words, you can link to video, you can link to audio, you can link to software. In other words, you can sell links inside of ebooks. We used to do PDF ebooks, Adobe Acrobat ebooks back in the day, and we would put links in it. And then one of the things that you can do in printed books and one of the things that that has really been a resurgence is QR code marketing. In fact, this is in the Kindle book that Daniel helped me put together. For this music project of mine, Pac Man fever, we have the ability, if you point your cell phone at a Kindle at a QR code, you don’t even need an app anymore, it just immediately goes to the link that program that QR code. So so you know when it comes to Kindle books when it comes to ebooks. Um, you’re basically if you think about it, in fact, my good friend years ago, Armand Morin, made $4 million selling links to things that people didn’t know, he just, that’s what he did. He put together, I don’t know, a couple hundred 200 popular links as early on in the internet. And he sold as an E book was just an E PDF file full of links. And those links were valuable. So, you know, that’s how video and audio can tie into Kindle. But there’s a whole lot more to kindle marketing than just that. But that’s one of the things that has happened because of my good friend Daniel Hall, who’s gonna be on the show here in just a second. He helped me build this livestream back in May, about my project of Pac Man fever. And what we witness from this video marketing strategy was, we sold Kindle books and in fact, this created a whole lot of PR we got a huge article in Yahoo music, and we just got a lot of press from doing this. So when you think about you know, being an author, but more importantly tying it back to audio and video marketing, there’s a whole lot of opportunity. So that’s kind of how I want to lay the foundation here. And so what I’m going to bring to the stage right now is my good friend, Daniel Hall. I see Daniel is there Can you hear me wave at me Daniel, if you can hear me? He can. So here we go. Daniel. So good to have you here on Mike Stewart dot live.
Daniel Hall
Hey, Mikey, how you doing? Hello, everyone.
Michael Stewart
Good to be here. All thank you for being a part of my you know, one of the things that I’ve gotten excited about and in fact, I believe that you are the person who really helped me see the missing links that I had. I got excited about live streaming probably three or four years ago, when Facebook Live came out. And then YouTube Live kind of was followed after that and we tried Periscope and all these other Difference situations. And one of the frustrations I had with it was to, you know, to multicast to multiple platforms, and then also encasing your live stream on a website. And when you told me about the software that we’re using right now, stream yard that was the missing link. But, but that’s not what today’s about, you know, my audience is interested in audio video marketing. But, you know, I want you to talk about Kindle marketing and your experience and what you do with with authors to help them be successful in Kindle. I mean, it’s, it’s, there’s never been a better opportunity in the world to be a publisher or to be self publishing. And of course, it’s it’s one thing to create a great piece of content or a great project and get it up on Amazon. It’s a whole lot more to make it successful. So why don’t you take the floor here for a minute and talk about some of the things that that that tie into audio and video kind of like what we did with the Pac Man project, but but you know, your perspective Things that folks need to know, when they’re creating these types of projects. And yeah, obviously, if we’re not successful with it, it’s a it’s a time consuming hobby and I’ve had lots of time consuming hobbies in my day but but it’s it’s one thing to make it successful with, with profitability. So, Daniel, just share a little bit of your wisdom here for a few moments.
Daniel Hall
Yeah, man. Well, first off, I really appreciate you taking the time to to bring me on and have me a part of what you know what it is you do. But before I actually launch off into any of that what I just wanted to kind of tip of the hat and acknowledge you Mike, because many people know me as somebody that does webinars relatively well. And the fact of the matter is, is that I’ve made a lot of money doing webinars. And the the the point that I want to make sure everyone understands is that Mike Stewart, the guy that’s presenting this, this Very live stream. He’s the guy that first taught me how to do a webinar back, I don’t know, a decade ago now. So, you know, the fact that you are listening to Mike Stewart is is a very, very wise thing on your part because and because I listened to Mike, literally I’ve generated millions of dollars in in revenues doing webinars first and then and then he kind of led me into doing podcasting, and then push me sort of into live streaming. And every time I’ve listened to Mike, I’ve made money and not only that, but I know that I’ve reached a whole new community, a whole new group of people and I’ve been able to help them. So thanks to you, Mike on on all that. Now, the one of the things that I love about this age that we live in, is the fact that you can have have an idea for a product or a solution. And you can get that solution to the marketplace in a variety of different ways. Now, Mike wanted me to share my wisdom on, you know what, what it really takes to to make something successful. And the very, very first thing is to make sure whatever it is that you are thinking about bringing to the marketplace actually has a demand. In other words, people actually want it it’s not that they need it, but they but they want it and and also that they have demonstrated a, a thirst a hunger for, for buying whatever that solution is, which is one of the reasons why I love to use amazon.com as a way to do some market research because if you have have an idea for something, a, you know, some some solution in your baileywick. Right and your core expertise, but you don’t know whether there’s a market for it? Well, you can go to Amazon, for example, and look to see if there are books on your subject or audio books on your subject or other products or courses that revolve around your subject matter your core solution. And you can tell by what people already in the marketplace are doing and how their products are doing and the number of those products, whether or not there is a demand. And how do we know that? Well, we know that because, number one, the number of people that may have a book, let’s say on a particular subject, or it was in addition to so it’s and
Daniel Hall
what the BSR or best seller rank of that particular product is so Mike want me to address this? Hey, you gotta you know, do you, if you’re going to bring something to the market, you know, to to ensure that it’s going to sell? Well, this is the very first step. Now I will just tell you here that nothing is 100% so this is this is both art and science, it’s it’s it’s metrics and, and a bit of, you know, inner guidance, creativity. So I just want you to understand that but it certainly is really, really helpful if you see four or five or 10 different competitors that are basically are selling similar solutions to whatever it is you’re trying to bring to the marketplace. And, and the bestseller rank on that particular book, for example or product is relatively low meaning that there are lots of people buying that product right Buying that particular solution that should inform you that Oh, okay. Other people are out here selling similar things, similar types of solutions. Of course, Yours may well be much better. But at least you know that the solutions that are being brought to the marketplace are being consumed, people are actually shelling out money, okay to get whatever it is these people have in exchange, and that’s really what it comes down to, you know, people could say, and that’s the other thing that that kind of gets me a little bit about market research is that, you know, you can have this, this market research and you could be asking survey questions to two people, but people will tell you one thing, and then do another when their money is involved, right? So they’ll say yes, yes, yes. But when you ask them to actually pony up Their their actions may be altogether different, which is one of the reasons why, again that I refer you back to a website, like amazon.com, which you should, you should think of in terms of it being essentially a buyers search engine. Because when you go to Amazon to buy something, or when people do go to Amazon, they understand that there they’re going to have to buy something, unlike Google, for example, to do market research. So that would be my first sort of big big tip for you is to make sure before you come to market with something that you are investigating how well that particular type of solution is doing. And it may or may not just be Amazon, okay? It can be other marketplaces as well. For example, perhaps your type of solution does well in Clickbank or Etsy, okay or any of the number of other Other places where that particular type of solution may well sell. Once again, it behooves you, it benefits you, in other words, to, to run down the whether there’s any demand for whatever it is you’re bringing to the marketplace. And this the key before you actually put out the project, okay, before you take the time, effort and energy to, to bring a project to the marketplace, even in minimal in minimal, minimal viable form, because, as you well know, and I know I’m I’m just like this as well, let me know in the chat if you can relate. But I only have a certain amount of bandwidth mental bandwidth that I can expend. It’s it’s like a it’s like a bank account. I don’t I don’t have just constant creativity and constant energy to put out on something that um, that that actually you know, I can I can do Over and over again. So I’ve got to be very selective and you have to be very, very selective in what you are bringing to market. And once again, knowing knowing this, knowing that there there may well be a aperture in the in the market is going to help you hit more baseballs, it’s going to hit you, it’s going to get you on base more often. We’re just coming into this really weird baseball season right now with the whole COVID thing. So yeah, it’s like, you know, hitting not hitting the ball and getting on base and, you know, moving along to you to actually get some runs scored in the form of money made with your projects. So yeah, that’s, that’s what I would say there, Mikey.
Michael Stewart
Well, you know, this is all great information. And the thing that you know, that you’ve taught me, is that you know, that I believe you were one of the first people to tell me that, you know, I ask people all the time, what is Amazon to you? And usually the general answer is it’s a store Well, yes, it is a store it’s an e commerce platform. But it is a search engine. And the the if people are searching it in Google, if they’re searching in Bing or whatever, search engine, they’re probably searching it in Amazon. But the difference is, and I and I’m living example, especially in these crazy days of COVID is that it’s really easy to pick up your cell phone, pull up the Amazon app and tap tap and something appears at your, at your doorstep. Amazing, you know, it’s amazing. So, so, the world has really become more search engine crazy with Amazon, in the last, you know, several months of of this pandemic, but more importantly, you as a marketer, you know, you have to ask yourself, are you leveraging the power of digital distribution through Amazon, if Amazon is a search engine, if Amazon is the ability to sell, you know, I’ve actually told people you know, a Kindle book is like selling a website membership, full of content. It has that potential. Amazon has the best delivery platform that people can consume Kindle content on their phones or tablets or computers. You don’t have to buy a Kindle device to it to consume this content but the thing is, you can link it to multimedia and of course that’s my wheelhouse is the creation and the marketing with audio and video content. And and and of course, that became the passion. You know, I was out in Austin with you. Just, I guess less than a year ago, I think was last summer that we were out on those beautiful lakes having a great time, masterminding. And I said can you know, can you embed and sell multimedia content and a Kindle hearing it here? I’ve been doing multimedia for almost 20 years. And I didn’t realize oh my gosh, what you can do? And of course, what we did was is we proved it works. And in fact, I’m going to put up the web address of one of mine and Daniel’s partnerships. It’s called digital music ebooks.com and You know, that’s one of the things in fact, we got one of my good Nashville friends here on the call or here on the call. Well, I’m going back to teleseminars or I’m dating myself there. On the live in our I’m calling these, it’s kind of like a webinar, but it’s live television. Jason deer with a national tribute band. And of course, one of the things that we’re trying to prove and we will prove Daniel, you are a Kindle expert, there’s a whole lot of cross marketing, you know, there’s a lot more to it than just throwing it up on Amazon and, and a wish and a prayer. There’s cross linking, there’s a resources for promotion. Um, and of course, one of the things I think every author in the world should be live streaming. You know, the the reason that on live streaming is I, I teach live streaming to my clients, but it’s also a content repurposing opportunity. When we get done with this particular livestream, it’s going to become a podcast. It’s going to become a YouTube video. Do it’s going to become a transcription, it’s going to become, you know, we have my good friend Jeff herring talks about medium calm. In other words, in 30 minutes time here, I’m gonna have a whole lot of content that I was guilty of not creating. And and so what I love the commitment to going live, makes a commitment to be creative. And then of course, when you have the ability to interact with folks, we’ve got people here live, which we’re going to take some questions. That’s my mantra for the world of everyone, and especially Kindle authors. Anybody who creates anything that that they try to build a business online with, is when you go live, you repurpose that content content and it becomes archived on the internet forever. And, you know, one of the things I’ve been teaching for years is making content. But my gosh, I was not archiving. I mean, I knew how to do YouTube channels, and I’m sitting here going, I don’t have any subscribers and I don’t have that many videos, and I’ll tell you what, It was Daniel is procrastination. Procrastination is that thing you know, I want to get I’ll get to this one day is when I get around to it. So I got myself around to it.
Unknown Speaker
There you go.
Michael Stewart
And I started going live. So let me let me ask, I’m gonna ask you a question and then we’re gonna take a few questions because I try to keep the show two half an hour, because I respect people’s time. If this is not meant to be a webinar, it’s meant to be a relationship building. Introduce folks to my friends and my expert guests, and then just kind of whet your whistle. I’m going to put up this URL. I’m going to leave it here for a bit. I did a little research if you go to Daniel Hall presents calm, you can pretty much find everything you need to know about this brilliant friend of mine. I mean, he’s a brother from another mother, but my gosh, brilliant, brilliant marketer, very, very successful. And you just if you don’t know Daniel, you need to go to Daniel Hall presents to see all the crazy things he does, but let me ask ask you this what do you do different with Kindle that most people who who put up put up Kindle books? What do you do to help people become more successful what just maybe give you four or five things that you did differently that most people don’t even know need to be done not asking how to do it what are they what are those things?
Daniel Hall
Yeah So the very first thing I would say is that most Kindle authors believe that the job is done when they hit Publish. When the when the point of the fact is that when you hit Publish is when your job begins. That’s when your job begins. Because as you well know, Mikey books that already product that just sits up on on Amazon or anywhere else, for example, they it’s not it’s not a Field of Dreams thing. It is not even even if even with the best market research. You have got to get out and let people know that Your solution exists in other words you have to market whatever it is that you are bringing to the market including books on Amazon or any anything else that you’re bringing. So one of the one of the things is to do basically what we’re doing, where we’re taking a time to chat. We’re letting folks know that we exist that we perhaps have different solutions that may that may help them we we’ve entered their consciousness, their awareness, which for some people are there it’s going to lead eventually to as sales people go to Daniel Hall presents calm and they can get any number of freebies for me and then get on my email list and eventually probably buy something from me. I mean thousands of people have so that’s that’s the very first thing I would say is no going in that the the creation of your solution and the publishing of that collusion is not enough. It is just the beginning, not the end.
Michael Stewart
When you build, you know, one of the things that I see I’ve gotten several Kindle books lately. And I noticed that in the Kindle books, they don’t do very much cross linking. In other words, they don’t even tell you that they have other books. And I was just just while you were talking there, I went to Amazon and I searched your name Daniel Hall, and a lot of stuff came up for that. So I mean, that’s that’s one thing that that you know, I would think you would need to tell people is just, you know, how, how to make it easy to find you. If I were to ask you, how can I find your library? Because I know you have a lot of Kindle books and a lot of print on demand books on Amazon. How would somebody search Amazon to find your books and see your catalog?
Daniel Hall
Yeah, so that this is another really important thing. First off, if this is one of the one of the main reasons to actually have a book because as A author on Amazon with a book on Amazon. Everyone has the eligibility to have what is called an author central account. And an author central account on Amazon essentially is valuable, because it gives you additional real estate on one of the largest, you know, most traffic site in the world. And that is your Amazon, your Amazon author central page. So for example, if you were to go to amazon.com, forward slash author forward slash Daniel Hall, I believe that’s the URL. Then you will see all of all of the books that that I’ve either published or co wrote, or otherwise written myself. So the key with this is Using the different platforms, and I’ll pull it up here, because because if I do, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Because what this is a super underutilized tool that that most authors don’t really ever, ever use or don’t use correctly. And that’s the other thing I wanted to just show you here is that with it, you have the ability to put stuff up on your author central page, that um, that that gets that gets noticed. So, if you if you allow me to have the screen here, I’ll just show you what I’m talking about. Um, and let’s see, can I share my screen? I think I can hear I think you can. Yeah, let me do that.
Daniel Hall
Alright, and hopefully, you all be will be able to see this
Daniel Hall
Right. Can you go? Cool. All right, so here’s the Amazon author central page and a couple things I just want to point out. So these are all books that I’ve either as I said, published or or, you know, have have had some hand in in some way. The first thing I’ll just show you sort of from the very top to bottom here is that you should if you are an author, you should in fact, have really good headshots, not just something you know, Polaroid or you know, something in the backyard, go get a professional headshot or preferably head shots. The next thing you should do is make sure it’s kind of coming down here. Make sure that you have a really well done thought out considered an interesting bio, right, the go that goes right down here, so you can see that that’s what’s going on there. The other thing so coming across here, here, here are all the books that you that I’ve published. And you’ll notice a couple things. Like there’s a lot of these, these books with sort of the same sort of motif, the same sort of branding. These are the get the real fast results. So this is the other thing about about Kindle that you can certainly do is I have a, I have a podcast called the real fast results. com podcast. And what I did that’s different than than just about anyone else that I know, I don’t know any other podcaster or for that matter marketer that does this, but I take and make Kindle short reads out of every single one of my Kindle podcasts. So that’s what you see here where there’s I think over 100 hundred plus on books here from and I think yours is in Hear to Mike if we look for it when you when you are on the podcast, but but they’re all out in working for me, that’s, that’s that’s the point. And after every 10 of them going back to your earlier point, I cross promote all the rest, I cross promote all the rest of those. And that’s a very, very cool thing as well. Right? Um, and so that’s the other thing you can use your, your Amazon author central to do is you know, create and publish books like this. And all of these make money, okay, they all make money and they do it pretty much all on autopilot which is kind of cool. Now the other thing I wanted to show you here it looks like I’ve not put my screen back up here. There we go. A couple other things I wanted to show you here is the author updates. So back here, these on Amazon author central you You can put up your RSS feed for anything from your, your YouTube channel, your blog, your podcasts, so that when you do a new piece of content, it auto updates here on Amazon author Central, which is very, very powerful because that way, if somebody is interested in you, they’re looking at one of your books and they click over to your, your Amazon author central page, they could see that you are active that you are that you are doing stuff today that that affects them, you’re keeping up with what’s going on. The other thing I wanted to just show you here
Daniel Hall
is, for example,
Daniel Hall
like like we were showing you right here, you could put up images, like if you were to take this image right here, um, and point your phone camera at it, it would actually take you over to my My YouTube channel, where By the way, you should definitely go subscribe because I’m making great you know, tutorial videos over there and it’s completely free to subscribe. But the point being is that people I can take people off of Amazon and bring them over into another platform where I can continue to build a relationship with them right. The other thing that you can do here and should do is like like Mikey put up a little commercial there for his dot live secrets you can do he can put that up as a video here as well and have and have people access it write directly from from Amazon author Central, so there and of course you can add all of your books here to to you know, that you’ve published and people can buy them directly from here, etc. So, um, yeah, that’s a little bit of a little bit of a lesson here on Amazon author central kind of going back to what you can do To cross promote, by all means you’ve got to you’ve got to build this out because this is this is one thing that gets a lot of traffic, people find you and if if you’ve got it looks like you’re active here, then you know what it’s it’s going to attract new attract new people over to you then may not have no not otherwise knowing that number one you exist. And number two, that you have a bunch of different solutions that can make their life better. And then that’s really what it’s all about.
Michael Stewart
Well, you know, I’ll tell you what, it’s amazing how fast these shows fly by. I mean, I try to keep them around a half an hour and we’re already past a half an hour. So I’d like to take a few questions before we close because I know your time is valuable and so is the listeners. Um, let’s see here.
Daniel Hall
A lot of people just making up given us some great here’s a microphone A Superman mentality was helpful, you know? So there you go. I mean, you’re just getting a lot of kudos here. This is your chance. You This is your chance to ask some questions. Here’s Carlin. I got to tell you about my good friend Carling Carling owns the URL Grand canyon.com. Right? And he Carlin has been a mike Stewart of customer and Fran for more years than I care to remember. In fact, because of Carl, I got to see the Grand Canyon. So I’m going to give him this afternoon. What are your top five things you do to promote your Kindle books once you got them published? Well, we kind of talked about a little bit they’re calling before we started questions. Maybe if you can give a quick five Daniel.
Daniel Hall
Sure. Get get on and get other influencers to promote your your books for you. And that that means getting them involved early in the process as as you’re writing them on and including, you know, promotion to some people that you You want later in two to promote your stuff. The second thing you certainly can do is write some guest blog post. Third thing you could do is do some live type of, you know, live stuff you can get on by the way, that’s another another cool thing that you could do is you could do a short serialized podcast series and I use Mike has another opinion on this but I like for that sort of thing. I like to use anchor.fm to to do that. And the and I’m glad that just hit me. The number one thing you can do and anyone, the very first thing that you can do to promote your Kindle books, focus on not marketing, but getting lots of reviews for the book. Get rid of For your book, get reviews for your book. Okay, that’s what’s going to sell more more of your books. Okay, I can just tell you that it is really, really helpful and you do that by finding people here on Amazon that that review books like yours. So look for other people. It’s I’ll show you what I mean or I don’t know we have we have time to show this Mikey here. Sure. Okay. So what what’s Carlin’s um his his his niche branding, obviously.
Michael Stewart
Well now his his niches is selling tours at the Grand Canyon.
Daniel Hall
Alright, so Grand Canyon, so let’s look at a Grand Canyon
Michael Stewart
tours. And he may do other things that he hadn’t told me about but
Daniel Hall
all right. So here’s some tour books right on on the Grand Canyon. So here’s what over the edge death in the Grand Canyon. So if I were to go Hear Carlin and look at this has 300 373 ratings you see this. And what I would do is I would actually start looking through these people, especially those that gave it a five stars, I would go here and I wouldn’t go look for PLP mo and go over if you just click their name, you’re going to see not all of them, but some of them will have ways to reach out and connect to that reviewer. So, um, I would just go through this list. And, in fact, and here you go. So here’s Deborah Porter and her site here is that breath off a breath of fresh air press dot dots, ce o m.au. And I would find her there and write her and say, I’ve got I noticed you You know that you did this book? right yet you did a review on this book. I have a book on on tour in the Grand Canyon, I would really appreciate it if you would consider reviewing my book as well. And there you go there you can find her here. Here’s your contact. That’s how that’s how you find people to review you. Okay? Yes, it is. It’s a numbers game. Not everyone is going to answer you and not everyone that answers you will actually do the review. But if you do enough of these and you can get 10 1520 100 reviews in this way, selling your Kindle books is so so much easier. So with that, I think that’s
Daniel Hall
about as much as I could say.
Michael Stewart
Hey, we I just have to mention we have a marketing hero and legend Mr. Willie coffered Crawford is here. Hey Willie. Willie. Willie years ago, I’m telling you folks, thank you. It’s an honor for you to be here sir. I hope hope that if you saying this is excellent food for thought. Appreciate you being here and saying those kind words. And my good friend wall Gifford wall is just what a supporter and a sweetheart of a man he’s been all these years 335 in New Zealand right now, but he’s up watching us live. Yeah, you know, you could have watched it on a replay brother, but I appreciate you being here. Well, you know, we’ve taken if there’s no other questions, you know, we’ve gone about seven minutes over. Daniel, have you got any final thoughts before we close the show out, but thank you for being a guest of this show will be archived for forever. At Mike Stewart dot live. It’ll be in social media and YouTube for as long as those people let it stay there. And the purpose like I said, the purpose of this is I just want to create and spotlight good people with good information at my television show and then of course, the way you can support us is check out Daniel Hall presents calm Daniel had I checked it today he has links to all his products. He has so many great solutions that you just need to if you don’t know about Daniel, go there and check it out. And of course at Mike Stewart dot live I’ll link to all the things that I do that help people. In fact, here’s Carlin cart, you know, fat Carlin just recently purchased dot live secrets. So, Carla, I think I think that’s going to be a great show that I’d like to see about the beauty of the Grand Canyon and all the things that he’s doing there. So thanks for being here, everybody. Any final words before we close out this show here, Daniel?
Daniel Hall
Yeah, man. First off, thank thank you so much for the opportunity to to chat with your community, Mikey. And just remember that if you stay at the core of actually trying to help people, then in like not hiding your life, in other words, marketing, that you have a way to help people that’s going to do you Really, really well because even though you may not be always perfect and you make people off sometimes what you do, most people are going that that resonate with you will continue to resonate with you and and you’ll get more people attracted to you that were meant that you were meant to to help. So just don’t don’t hide your light market and come from a hardest service. And that’s gonna, that’s gonna help you the most.
Michael Stewart
And just as a final thing here, there if it wasn’t for Daniel Hall, my dream of making the first ever music Kindle book, Pac Man favorite the story behind the unlikely ad set. It would have never happened without Daniel Hall who is the Kindle expert. And of course, he was the guy who told me to make these QR codes. So until two weeks from today, we’ll have our next Mike Stewart dot live