Interview Notes: Sarah Wilson

Last night, I listened to the recording from Darren Rowse, of ProBlogger.net fame, interviewing Sarah Wilson. 

Sarah is an Australian, best known for her Sunday Life column and hosting of the first season of Masterchef. She now earns 100% of her income through blogging and the connections she has made through her blog - a major components of her income are the sales of her ebooks and requests for MC'ing functions. These requests most often contact her through, and because of, her blog.

About two years ago, Sarah became obssessed with sugar - or more to the point - learning how to live without it in her life. She wrote many posts on the subject and after a while, it was suggested that she pull all this information into one place. Sarah's ebook 8 week program and ebook How I Quit Sugar sold more than she could imagine, and she learned a lot about self-publishing along the way.

eBooks:

  • Decide on format - there is a different skill set required getting a book ready for ePup/eMobi compared to publishing to PDF. Seek and pay for expertise - it's worth it in the long run.
  • Write in chunk-sized pieces with more graphic/images you would use in a blog post. 
  • Cut the guff! get to the point quickly.
  • Use heading and sub-headings to organise your thoughts.
  • Value yourself and your ebook: don't be greedy when pricing, but don't undervalue yourself either.

One lovely part of Sarah's writing process is to "draw" out her ebook. She grabs a pen and paper, draws out sections, comments, speech bubbles, arrows etc to get the shape of what she will write and when. Loved this idea - creating a map for the writing is really appealing to me. 

Marketing Tips:

  1. Read Shayne Tilley's book on marketing - it's dense but has all the information you need.
  2. Make marketing your primary job after release (of your ebook or product)
  3. Network with other bloggers - offer your book or product for them as 'give-aways'
  4. Be generous - it works!

Each time I find out more about how other bloggers work, the same stories come through:

  • heart and passion
  • routine
  • work hard

Recorded Webinar over at ProBlogger.net

Did you like that? you can check out my previous notes from Darren's interview with the amazing Ana White too.

Interview Notes: Ana White

Yesterday, I listened in on Darren Rowse, of ProBlogger.net fame, interview Ana White.

Ana is an American living in Alaska, and blogging about her passion for home improvement, with a particular emphasis on carpentry. After discovering what a blog was, she created one over at blogger.com and started sharing her plans on line.

After only a few months, she was linked to by the popular Apartment Therapy site, and her traffic increased dramatically. With high quality content, Ana's site community grew and grew, and today she has over 3 million page views per month.

With so many readers-eyeballs, the advertising she displays on her site now supports her family and lifestyle in Alaska.

Isn't it great that ordinary people who work hard and share their passion online can sometimes get to make it their day job? Her site is really helpful and the community that has grown around it are also passionate about DIY and improving their lives and style.

Ana seems to be a down-to-earth, hard-working, honest-to-goodness person. It makes me super-happy when I find successful stories like this happening to ordinary, extraordinary, people. Check out her site - she's going through a chicken-coop phase at the moment, but I'm thinking of giving this laundry hamper organiser a go.

[PS: WILL INCLUDE A LINK TO THE INTERVIEW AS SOON AS IT'S AVAILABLE]