I have a Kindle countdown deal price promotion starting this morning at 8 am. Every 6 months Amazon will allow you to do a “countdown deal” to promote your book(s) on Amazon.
This countdown deal is a time limited price promotion.
My deal starts this morning on my book, “Employment Law in Ireland: The Essentials for Employers, Employees, and HR Managers” which normally sells for £9.99.
Starting at 8 am today you can buy this book for £0.99. Yes, less than £1.
This last for 2 or 3 days, then the price goes to £3.99, then after a few more days will go to £6.99.
And then it will revert to its usual price of £9.99 next Sunday evening.
I spent a bit of time over the Christmas updating this book which has always sold well and garnered good reviews.
This book is only 122 pages long and was first published in January, 2016 and even though many things have changed since the strategy outlined in that book is the one that I still pursue as I write this blog post.
It’s simple: content marketing is publishing useful and/or interesting content for the market you seek to serve.
The content can be written, for example blog posts, can be video (YouTube channel), can be audio (Podcast), or even a combination of all three. But the bottom line is the content must have utility, must help.
That’s all there is to it. It means I don’t have to spend money on traditional advertising, or distribute leaflets, or engage in the tactics that might have worked 20 years ago.
If you create 2 pieces of content every weekend, and you do this 52 weeks of the year, and you do it for 10 years you find that you have a significant body of work out there working away for you in the search engines, on YouTube, on social media sites, and so on.
I meet people every day of the week who claim to be, or are, suffering from stress and anxiety. Much, but not all, of the stress arises from their workplace.
I have a philosophy which helps me deal with stress and worry and anxiety and it involves the acceptance of what I believe are 3 fundamental truths; if you accept these truths life will go easier on you.
If you don’t accept them you will, almost certainly, suffer from a great deal of avoidable stress.
The 3 truths, as I see them, are:
Life isn’t fair
The goalposts move
There are no guarantees
If you accept these observations as inalterable principles of life you will not be disappointed. In fact, you may be pleasantly surprised.
But you will reduce your stress and anxiety levels.
I have always try to maintain this general stoic view of life but recently read a book which articulates this philosophy more articulately than I am capable of and explains the scientific and psychological underpinning for this view.
It is a book that I recommend very highly as it is written by a psychiatrist and gives you a framework for reducing stress and managing your mind on a daily basis.
If you are the man who rang four times in an hour to speak to me for “10 minutes” about whether you have a case or not, having been told you need to arrange a consultation, I’m not for you.
If you are the woman who “is nervous about paying for legal advice unless I have a case”, I’m probably not for you either.
If you have ambitions to start your own business and need advice and guidance but things are “too tight” to pay for advice, I’m not for you.
If you are the woman who rang from Idaho or Ohio with a dispute in relation to your driving licence in your home State, I’m not for you either.
If you are the man who wants to take action about “deformation of character” as a consequence of an allegation against you in your workplace, and you are much occupied with your good name and reputation, and you want to embark on legal proceedings to restore your good name but disappear like snow off a hedge when you are advised there is a consultation fee, I’m not for you either.
I’m not for everyone.
If you are running a business, or thinking about starting one, it’s almost certain that you should not be for everyone either.
If you want to improve your English, while away hours of distraction free entertainment with engaging stories peopled with colorful, unforgettable characters who you will love or hate with a passion, learn about everyday life in the 19th century, understand the class system, observe how society has evolved and changed, learn about human nature and character and personality (and note how little it has changed in hundreds of years), and not have to spend a cent here’s what you do.
Firstly, go to Amazon.co.uk and download the Kindle app for the device of your choice (PC, Kindle, smartphone, Ipad etc.)
Then, go to the books of Charles Dickens and you will find that a great deal of them, and other classics, can be downloaded for free. For example here is the Kindle version of Charles Dickens: the Complete Novels-completely free.
Many other classics are free, too, as these books are in the public domain.
All you have to do is a little searching around on Amazon.co.uk because some will have a small price, depending no the publisher, and some will be completely gratis.
The teacher asked the little lad where he was the previous day, told him the whole classed missed him. The little lad told her he was up and ready for school at the usual time but nobody else in the house got up until 11.30.
So he didn’t get to go to school.
In my daily life, at work and at home, I am surrounded by books. I make it my business to be surrounded by books and believe education is a lifelong process and attitude.
But the vision of that little lad being ready for school and nobody in the house bothering to get up before 11.30 to bring him was a sad and graphic one for me.
If nothing else it reminded me of how much we take for granted in our day to day life; being got ready and taken to school when I was a boy was never an issue and something that I thought happened to every child.
Unfortunately, even in 2019 in a wealthy, educated country such as Ireland, that’s not the case.
I stumbled across a YouTube channel over the weekend and it proved, if any proof were needed, that there is a market or tribe for almost everyone.
The guy was a mature man, I would estimate in his 60s, and the channel started out as a guide to men’s grooming, hair, and so on as the guy, who shall remain unidentified for fear of giving him any more publicity, has a hairdressing/barber’s shop.
He was, as Charles Dickens might say, ‘much occupied by his own sagacity’.
The channel has evolved over time and now he does long ‘talking head’ videos in which he dispenses advice for men about women, relationships, finance, health, smoking cigars and pipes, sex, guff about stoicism, and so on.
Even though he has a pleasant speaking voice and speaks well, even though he is presentable, even though he positions himself as the grandfather or father you never had dispensing worldly wisdom he spouts the most tremendous amount of chauvinism, misogyny, and rank bad advice.
But that’s not the killer punch for me; no, the money shot for me is that the self absorbed fool has over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. And these people love him and agree with the rubbish he peddles about ‘finding your manhood’ again and all the other travails men allegedly face from women, leftists, socialists, take your pick.
I suppose when you consider the grifter Trump getting elected to the White House it should not be a surprise that this charlatan can get 100,000 followers with similar antediluvian, misconceived views.
But when you stumble across it up close and personal on YouTube it still sets you back a little bit.
The bottom line, though, is if you are a business owner or start up you can build a tribe of fans for your product or service quite easily, especially on YouTube.
Don’t get me wrong: I would love to have hundreds, nay, thousands of readers showing up everyday to read what I write.
But if they don’t, if nobody shows, I am not bothered or embarrassed.
Because what I am looking to do by writing here every day is:
Fulfill a commitment I made to myself
Get to play with words and practice writing and, in the process, acquire the tools to improve as a writer
I believe that showing up and practicing something everyday is the most effective way to improve a skill.
Therefore, regardless of what else is going on I intend showing up and writing, and improving as a writer.
If you show up and find anything of value: great, it’s a win for both of us.
If you don’t, it’s just a win for me.
Is there something in your life that would benefit from you showing up every day and practicing? Something that would benefit from the 10,000 hours practice referred to in ‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell?
A lady from Utah or Idaho or Ohio or someplace in the United States emailed me last week.
She wanted me to advise her in relation to some difficulty she was encountering with a government or State department in the United States. She had seen me on YouTube and was impressed and decided I was just the guy she needed.
Her problem had something to do with a driving licence or the restoration or renewal of a licence. It was some type of administrative difficulty with the body that issued driving licences in her state.
I quickly replied that she must be mistaken, that I was an Irish lawyer, and I knew absolutely nothing about United States law and could not advise or help her.
She said she wasn’t mistaken, she knew I was in Ireland, and said I was just the man to advise her as the Irish have a great record for fighting for the underdog, loved scraps, and could deliver the knockout blow in her dispute.
She persisted in asking for advice and I told her the only advice I could give was to get a local attorney in her State.
But the power of the YouTube video and the immediacy and authority she gleaned from watching it; the confidence that she had clearly derived from being able to see and hear me in the video, from being able to watch my body language and facial expressions and voice tone was what stuck in my mind for days afterward.
Would she ever have reacted in this way to the written word in a blog post or an article? No, I don’t believe so.
Video has an extra dimension over all other ways of communicating; if you are a small business owner or entrepreneur it is crazy to ignore the power of video.
When I was a young man and had ambitions to learn more about and start a business I was obliged to go to the Business Library in the Dublin City Public Library in the Ilac Centre in Henry Street.This was in the early 1980s when I was studying Commerce in UCD.
Back then, if you wanted to import anything, for example, you could go to this business library and go through the various directories of importers and exporters from various countries around the world.
This was the only way to find this type of information.
No internet, no mobile phone, no Google, no YouTube, no Amazon.
If you wanted to learn a new skill or find out how to do something you had to buy a book or magazine or take a correspondence course or go to college.
This was where the information was to be found.
Now I can pull my phone out of my pocket and a world of information is at my disposal.
There is no difficulty finding importers or exporters or distributors or manufacturers or middle men who are only too happy to supply their product. You can even have stuff delivered around the world in small sample quantities to check the quality, and so on.
To learn something you simply have to Google it or go to YouTube or go to Amazon and you will find what you want in seconds.
The problem now, though, is not the absence of information like back in the early 1980s; the problem now is sorting through the freely available information to find what is genuine, true, accurate, reliable.
Now the problem is sorting through the surfeit of information and trying to ascertain the reliable source from the charlatans, the grifters, the con artists, the snake oil salesmen and women, the shills, the scammers, the fakes.
Now the problem is not a lack of information but which information to trust.
