A few years ago, blogging was the end-all-be-all of online business. The advice was to blog as often as you can (five times a week was ideal), and you’d get more clients, more business. We’re seeing the model change, though, and writing books is becoming a pillar to growing an online business. It makes us question, why blog when you could write a book?
Advantages of writing a book
- A book is a long-term asset. Once you publish a book (even an e-book on Amazon), it’s there as a resource for the foreseeable future.
- A book is a culmination of all your best stories and advice, all wrapped up in a single package.
- A book is a great way for people to come to know, like, and trust you. They spend several hours with you in your book, and after they close the last page, they’ll have those warm, fuzzy trusting feelings about you. They’ll want to hire you, interview you, bring you to their live event. All sorts of opportunities will open up for you.
- A book is another way to grow your list of potential clients and contacts. You can plant a lead magnet in the first few pages of a book (especially nice because it’ll be visible from the Amazon “Look Inside the Cover” feature), and entice people opt in to your email list.
- A book will give you a sense of accomplishment!
Honestly, it’s not that hard to write a book.
Okay, sure, it’ll be challenging, but a lot of things are challenging in life. If you set your mind to it, and set aside 3-5 hours of writing time a week, you could write a book within a few months.
In fact, if you’re currently blogging three or more times a week, I’d suggest you could scale back the blogging (just temporarily) to once a week, and use that other time for writing. Then, when the book is done, you can pick back up your blogging pace.
The book will only take a few months of dedicated time, but it will reap benefits for months and years (maybe even decades) to come.