How can a brand new writer make money from their book?

Are you a brand new writer looking to make a little money from your novel?

Here’s a recipe I used in June/July that added an extra $300 to my bottom line.

Best of all, it’s simple, easy and very low cost.

Join Prolificworks.

Upload your book.

Don't have a book that you can giveaway yet?

Write one.

Crank out a 10 -20k word book.

Get a good cover.

Write a cool blurb.

Put a link to book 1 on Amazon in the back of the 20k story.

Upload that 20k book to Prolificworks.

Now you have one book on Prolificworks and one book on Amazon.

Time to put the plan in motion.

Click on Join Giveaway in Prolificworks.

This should be on your dashboard at the top of the page.

Join all that are in your genre.

Once you’re approved for the giveaway, build a plan to share.

Now go to your calendar.

As you get accepted to each promo, block it off on your calendar so you can share.

Who will you share with?

Twitter. Facebook. Your mailing list. Your blog.

Don't got any of those?

Write an article and post it on medium. (blog post.) link back to your unique giveaway code.

Then start building all the others.

Don't have a huge audience?

Doesn't matter. You'll build one through Prolificworks.

Some numbers: In July, I participated in 2 promos and got 989 email addresses (and over 2k downloads without email add's.)

I put a stand alone sci fi book for five free days and sent it to the list. I got 456 downloads from that list (and combined with another fiverr promo, turned on the algorithm for that 2 year old stand alone novel for a month.)

My Prolificworks cost? ($20.)

My Cover? ($25)

Fiverr? ($6)

Total invested:  $51 (for this promo only)

My return for that book was over $300 for June trailing over into July.

What I missed:

I should have stacked more promo's to tack onto the Free Days for the build up.

I should not have used a stand alone title for the free promo intro- but my sci fi series at the time only had a couple of trilogies and some series intro books, instead of a 4 - 8 book series. 

I think I would have gotten some read through $$ based on other experiments with a sci fi dystopian novel I did this same experiment with.

My Prolificworks title and my stand alone title were only related by theme- had they been connected via storyline and MC, I might have seen higher returns.

The Prolificworks list has diminishing values.

I went from over 50% open rate to hit a steady 40% over the last dozen emails.

I'm experimenting with titles, call to actions and ways to improve the engagement to see what works best and gets the better results, including participating in more promo giveawayws through Prolificworks to find new readers.

Just not for stand alone titles.

Takeaway: Is PROLIFICWORKS worth it?

I think any investment of $50 that yeilds $300 is worthwhile.

If I had ZERO Promo dollars, I would use Prolificworks to find readers who like my style, and work them through a strategy of introducing them to free work, then a discount, and let them self select as fans by using Read Through.

It requires one thing: writing more books that readers like.

So guess I'm off to make the words.

Let me know how you do.