In a previous post (January 18th) I suggested separating yourself from the competition to get new clients by swapping your business card (or flyer or brochure) with a tips booklet. But self-promotion is only one way to set the stage to profit from your writing. Here are five ways to set yourself apart and open doors to new opportunities by using tips booklets:

  1. Market your services. To elaborate on the original idea, create a booklet with tips on how to hire a copywriter (or ghostwriter, technical writer, or any service you want to promote). Send it to a specific person at each of the companies you’re targeting for new business. Be sure to include a call to action at the end of the booklet so potential clients can get in touch with you. Additionally, keep a few of your tips booklets in your briefcase so you can hand them out when opportunities present themselves.
  2. Market your client’s services. Writing tips booklets can be a lucrative specialty. As a viable alternative to expensive brochures, tips booklets can help your clients help their customers. The quick dissemination of information in small, bite-sized chunks is often saved by the recipient to review over and over again. If you can specialize in writing pointed, how-to, or helpful tips booklets, you’ll likely attract more new business than you ever imagined.
  3. Sell topic-specific tips booklets. If you’re an ambitious writer who would like to jump start your career as an author, why not start with tips booklets? Many full-length books, like Heloise’s handy household hints, started out as small groupings of tips presented to a target-specific audience. Choose a topic you’re interested in—tennis, boating, fishing, crafting—anything that has a like-minded audience. You can print and submit your booklets to editors, giving them permission to excerpt a select number of tips to share with their readers as long as they give out your order information for readers to purchase the booklet.
  4. Sell topic-specific tips booklets in quantity. As an extension, or alternative, to the previous tip, choose a topic that would be of interest to businesses to buy in quantity to give their employees or customers. For example, tips on giving superior customer service or quick tips for customer-focused sales might serve an employee base. Customer-focused tips booklets might be something like getting ready for tax season or how to prepare your house to be put up for sale. Accounting firms and real estate agents, respectively, might likely buy these tips booklets in quantity to send to their prospective clients.
  5. Use for book promotion. If you’re an author, preparing a tips booklet could be a unique marketing piece for editors or direct to potential buyers. You can even convert the booklet to a PDF and offer it as a free download from your website. Be sure to include your book order information at the end.
  6. (Bonus!) License your tips booklet’s content. Licensing content can bring in a nice residual income with no extra effort from you. This can be done with business clients and it can also be done by granting translation rights for your booklets to be published in other countries.

I’m sure it will be no surprise for you to learn that I didn’t come up with the idea of using booklets to increase your writing profits or launch your writing career. The genius behind that concept is Paulette Ensign. She’s a real “been-there-done-that” person when it comes to marketing with booklets, and her advice and guidance on the use of tips booklets has made a wonderfully positive impact on my business and I suspect it can on yours, too. If you’d like to learn more about using tips booklets to enhance your writing business or sign up for Paulette’s ezine, click here: http://www.writerprofits.com/tipsbooklet

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