Take Permission

The Right Tools & Mindset For Success

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You’ll Write Like Seth Godin If You Use This Tool

The key to Seth Godin‘s success is a little known Mac-only word processor called Nisus (pronounced Nice us). If you use that software, you will write like Seth Godin.

Using Nisus will enable you to write a blog post every day. Using Nisus will empower you to express yourself for pennies to the entire world when you publish your thoughts to a blog.

The Truth

Of course, Nisus isn’t the secret. Nisus is a tool. Replace the word Nisus with Scrivener, Evernote, Google Docs, a Notebook, ByWord, TextEdit, Word, or Pages. It doesn’t matter which program you use, it matters that you’re using a tool consistently.

The reason Nisus works for Seth is it has become part of his routine. That’s what you need. You need to pick a program and use it, every day.

The process advice that makes sense to me is to write. Constantly. At length. Often. Don’t publish everything you write, but the more you write, the more you have to choose from.

Seth Godin

 

The Best Tool For You

On Tuesday (August 30th) I’m hosting a class at 10 am and 9 pm CT to teach you about the seven different writing programs you can use to write more consistently. Some will help you more than others, so I hope you’ll come learn about them.

If you can’t make it live, register anyway, and I’ll send you a replay.

Seth’s secret isn’t Nisus; it’s consistently using Nisus. Some programs are better than others, though, and I’ll teach you which ones I think you should use during the class.

“Too Much” Isn’t The Problem

You don’t write too many words.
You don’t publish too often.
Your problem is being brave, consistent, and disciplined.

I know the feeling.

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What I Think About Instead of Actually Writing a Blog Post

  • Which program should I use to write my post?
  • Does that program sync with the cloud?
  • Should I use all bullet points or paragraphs?
  • Which picture should I use?
  • Will the picture look good on Pinterest? (I think about this and I’ve never put a picture on Pinterest)
  • Is my headline catchy, click worthy, or have X Steps To… in it?
  • Seth Godin already said that and he used less words
  • Should that be a new paragraph?
  • Should I have paragraph headings for every paragraph? 
  • Are those H3 or H4?
  • My blog needs a redesign.
  • I should be thinking about SEO more.
  • How can I monetize this?
  • I wonder if Mike will tweet this one out?
  • Is it too long?
  • How many click to tweets should I include, because I love those things. (Really, I do)
  • Should I do a video too? I should do more videos. 
  • Will I be considered more artistic if I just upload it to Vimeo instead of YouTube?
  • Is my RSS email campaign to finally format correctly?
  • This probably isn’t worth writing about.
  • I should check my email.

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Why We Struggle To Publish What We Really Think

There’s a difference between what we think and what we say. We filter everything.

The moment you know your writing is going to be read by others your writing changes. That’s why you can’t journal on Facebook. That’s not journaling. Journaling is a private conversation.

[Tweet “The moment you know your writing is going to be read by others your writing changes”]

When we know we have an audience it changes what you say. We’re less honest. We’re more safe.
[Read more…]

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Why a free chapter is a lousy thing to give away if you want to sell a book

Post 3 of 26 of The Self-Publishing Series


 
The days of being teased are over
Do we really want to play the warehouse food sample game? I appreciate that you want to show me a bit of your book but you’re going to give me one chapter? First, it’s not hard to write one good chapter. Second, giving away a chapter of your book is like giving someone one digit of your phone number (Tweet That). Is it really your number? Sure. Does it move the relationship forward? Not really. My advice is to be stupid generous and see what happens. We’ll get to that later.

Why your free chapter has absolutely no value
Giving one chapter away has lost its value because of, you guessed it, Amazon.com. I can download a “free sample” of every book in the Kindle library and Amazon doesn’t require me to join your email list. I also get to see the reviews of other people who have already purchased the book to help me decide if I want to download that free sample.

What else you should give your readers
Two things are usually happening in the exchange for the chapter. Most authors, if they’re smart, are using the bait of a free chapter to get your email address. As the book gets closer to release or when the author develops other products related to their book they can communicate with you. The first benefit of the free chapter is creating a relationship. The second goal of giving away the chapter is to sell more books at launch. This is where I think authors miss an opportunity. If authors really want to sell more books at launch they must out give Amazon. They should give away different forms of those chapters (audio specifically) or some of those products they were going to deliver later.

Here’s an example.
Click here to see the example

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WordPress blogging tip: Use fullscreen mode to write your posts

You will be distracted by something before you finish reading this post because that’s the way our brains work now. If that’s true then we all need things to help us stay focused. If you use WordPress as your platform for your web site then there’s a great option that provides a distraction free environment for you to write your content. You need to be in the HTML tab of your page or post and then you should see the “Fullscreen” button.

HTML mode shows fullscreen button

If you combine the fullscreen mode in WordPress with fullscreen mode for your browser (Cmd+Shift+F on a Mac) then you get a totally distraction free writing environment. Here’s what it looks like while I write this post.

Click here to learn more about Full Screen mode…