Making and Selling Tips Booklets I

Paulette Ensign has sold over ONE MILLION copies of her tips booklet without spending a penny in advertising. She is founder and Chief Visionary of her San Diego, CA-based company, Tips Products International. She teaches people how to create and market booklets, and blogs on Tips Booklets at Booklet Tips From Paulette. Paulette offers a range of products and services to contribute to other people’s success with tips booklets. I'll be using her expertise to help me sell and market myself though my upcoming blogging tips booklet.

1) Paulette, how do you define booklet?

3 ½" x 8 ½"
16 to 24 pages
Tips, techniques, or strategies
Simple design, minimal graphics, photos, colors
A marketing tool and income stream for your business

2) Why do you think booklets are a natural product for bloggers?

Blogs tend to have entries that are short and to the point. Those entries are ripe for repurposing into other saleable products, including tips booklets. “Write it once, sell it many times” is one of the cornerstones of the work I do and the advice I offer.

3) How much easier/faster is writing a booklet than a book?

Most bloggers are working from a broad base of expertise stored in their mind and in things they’ve already written. A booklet can literally be written overnight, or take as long as the writer decides to take. There aren’t too many books that can be done that fast. If a book is a requirement, then writing a series of booklets and later combining them is a more painless way to write a book. For those who already have a book written, it can be readily sliced and diced into booklets, often with the parts selling for more than the whole thing, and marketing the entire book in the process.

4) How about marketing and selling booklets? Many bloggers write well, but are afraid of sales and marketing?

There are usually opportunities right under your nose that you don’t see until they are pointed out. Booklets can be licensed as PDF files or sold or licensed for hard copy production. The key is to identify bulk buyers. They are companies and organizations who want to reach the same end-user you want to reach, who will find your booklets to be an ideal vehicle for their promotional purposes. That’s where the real money is to be made, rather than by selling single copies. Position your products as promotional items to help your buyers sell and promote their own products, services, or causes. Look at the contacts you already have who are likely candidates to be large-quantity buyers or who can introduce you to people they know and start a conversation there. You already have some level of relationship established. That’s the ideal starting point.

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