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How Raj Comics Built India’s Greatest Superhero Universe... and then f*cked it up

Chase Austin — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:17:55 GMT

In the early 1990s, Raj Comics was reportedly printing 3 lakh copies of a new comic, with some special editions crossing 10 lakh. Nagraj, Dhruva and Doga were everywhere, from railway stations to neighbourhood rental libraries.

Nearly 40 years later, India still has those superheroes. What it never got was the empire they should have become.

There is a comic somewhere in a steel trunk in half the middle-class Hindi-speaking homes in North India. Torn corners, a price stamped in single-digit rupees, a hero mid-leap on the cover. If you grew up in that world, you don’t need me to tell you his name. You already know it. Nagraj. Or maybe it was Dhruva. Or Doga, if your house allowed the darker stuff.

This is that story, told properly. Not the shorthand version where a family of publishers invented “India’s Marvel” in 1986 and the rest is nostalgia. The real version has an earlier beginning, a messier middle, several competing accounts of who gets credit for what, hard numbers pulled from court filings and press interviews rather than fan memory, a family fracture that is still, as of this writing, sitting in front of a judge, and a present day that looks nothing like the version most casual retellings describe.

And at the end of it, I want to answer the question that actually matters to anyone who thinks about Indian intellectual property for a living, and I want to answer a sharper version of it than the one usually asked. Not “why doesn’t India have its own Marvel.” India has, in fact, built cross-media character franchises, more than once, successfully. The real question is why India’s most enduring homegrown superhero universe is the one franchise that couldn’t make that same leap.

Chapter 1: Before There Was a Snake, There Was a Phantom

To understand what Raj Comics actually achieved, you first have to understand what it walked into. It did not arrive in an empty room.

Indian comics as a mass medium trace back to 1964, when Indrajal Comics, an offshoot of the Times Group, published Vetal ki Mekhla, the first Hindi comic book, built around The Phantom. Success with that led Indrajal to bring in Mandrake, Flash Gordon and other adapted Western adventure strips into Hindi, and by the 1970s the company, alongside Amar Chitra Katha, founded in 1967, had firmly established comic-book reading as part of Indian middle-class childhood, mostly out of Bombay, mostly aimed at urban readers.

Indrajal also produced something closer to an actual Indian hero before Raj Comics existed: Bahadur, an indigenous adventure character whose visual identity, blue jeans paired with a kurta, was a deliberate symbol, Western-style modernity stitched onto an Indian frame. So the idea of a homegrown Indian action hero predates Nagraj by roughly two decades. What Nagraj did was not invent the concept. It scaled it into something enormous.

Amar Chitra Katha, meanwhile, was building an entirely different kind of institution: not continuing superhero serials but a vast library of mythology, history, folklore and biography, designed for cultural transmission as much as entertainment. It would go on to claim more than 100 million lifetime copies sold and remains, today, a far larger and more durable institutional brand than Raj Comics ever became.

By the late 1970s, a second wave of publishers had noticed the money in this market. Diamond Comics, founded in 1978 by Gulshan Rai, ran a hybrid strategy: original Indian humor and family characters, Chacha Chaudhary, Billoo, Pinki, alongside licensed Hindi translations of Phantom, Mandrake, Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. Manoj Comics built its own roster, Ram-Rahim, Sagar-Salim, Crookbond, Hawaldar Bahadur, Mahabali Shera, stretching into fantasy, horror, detective and adventure fiction, with Ram-Rahim carrying an explicit Hindu-Muslim friendship theme. Tulsi Comics, tied to novelist Ved Prakash Sharma, produced Angara, Jambu and Tausi, and would later consider 1991 its golden year before a decline through 1997-98 and closure by 2004.

And critically, as this second wave grew, the geographic center of the business moved. Academic research on Hindi comics describes a clear shift away from Bombay, where Amar Chitra Katha and Indrajal were based, toward Delhi and Meerut, cities where the Hindi pulp-fiction industry had already been booming since the 1950s and 60s. That migration matters enormously, because it is exactly where Raj Comics comes from. It did not emerge from a comics scene. It emerged from a pulp-publishing scene that decided to make comics.

The readership these publishers were fighting over was also specific. Scholarly fieldwork describes the core audience as children of the “mofussil” middle classes, small-town and semi-urban families with just enough income for education and a little pocket money, not an elite, Anglophone readership. That’s the reason none of this story can be told in English-language nostalgia terms alone.

So by the time Raj Comics arrived, India already had translated Western adventure heroes, a mythology-and-history publishing giant, humor icons, and several competing Hindi genre publishers. What none of them had done was make the continuing, interconnected, indigenous superhero the central commercial product of an entire publishing house. That gap is what Raj Comics filled.

Chapter II: The Pulp Family That Became a Superhero Empire, 1982 to 1987

Raj Comics did not begin with a group of artists deciding to imitate Spider-Man. It began with a pocket-book business.

Raj Kumar Gupta was running Raja Pocket Books by the early 1980s, publishing cheap, fast, serialized Hindi pulp fiction, the same economic model that supplied railway stalls and neighborhood booksellers across North India.

This was not a fringe hobby operation. According to his son Manoj Gupta’s own account, the family’s pulp-fiction imprint published some of the biggest names in Hindi crime and thriller writing, including Surender Mohan Pathak, Ved Prakash Sharma and Anil Mohan, and at their peak individual pulp novels reportedly sold up to a million copies each. That number is worth sitting with. Before Nagraj existed, this family already knew what it felt like to sell a million copies of a piece of genre fiction to Hindi readers. Comics were not a leap of faith. They were the next logical product for a business that already had the printing infrastructure, the distribution relationships, and the instinct for what a mass Hindi readership wanted.

It’s worth pausing on what that pulp business actually taught the family, because it explains decisions they’d make a decade later. Pocket fiction ran on cheap unit economics, fast production cycles, and stories built to resolve within a single affordable issue, so a reader who missed the next one in a series hadn’t lost much and could simply pick up the next thing on the shelf. And the whole model depended on a distributor’s ability to keep a title moving through hundreds of small, informal retail points no head office ever directly controlled. Cheap units, rapid output, standalone-but-serial storytelling, informal mass distribution, that combination is exactly what Raj Comics would later run on with Nagraj.

By around 1984, Raj Kumar Gupta’s three sons, Sanjay, Manoj and Manish, were already working inside the family business. Nobody, including the current family-run businesses, agrees on a single founding date for what came next.

The Manoj Gupta-linked operation’s current corporate history dates Raj Comics to 1984, crediting Raj Kumar Gupta and Manoj Gupta specifically, and its retail catalogue identifies a title called Kanakpuri Ki Rajkumari as the founding release.

Sahapedia’s history of Hindi comics, and other family-linked accounts, place the actual launch in 1986, the same year Nagraj appeared, treating that as the moment the company became the superhero publisher the world remembers. The honest reconciliation is that the Gupta family’s publishing business predated superhero comics, comic activity of some kind was underway by 1984 to 1985, and 1986 is the decisive date because that is when Nagraj gave the company its identity.

Manoj Gupta

Nagraj himself arrived on April 1, 1986. Manoj Gupta’s own biography states that he personally conceived the idea of a snake-centered superhero in 1985, believing snakes carried deep religious and mythological weight in India, and that he and Sanjay then developed the concept together, isolating themselves in a room every Sunday to write new scripts once the character became a hit. Sanjay Gupta’s own public biography, by contrast, credits him as a principal creator of Nagraj and several other flagship characters, and his current publishing operation foregrounds his creative role heavily. The two branches now present different accounts of Nagraj’s conception.

What is not in dispute is who actually wrote and drew the character onto the page. The debut issue was written by Parshuram Sharma and illustrated by Pratap Mullick. For the next 44 issues, running until 1995’s Visarpi Ki Shadi, the art rotated between Sanjay Ashtpure, Pratap Mullick, Chandu, Milind Misal and Vitthal Kamble.

Nagraj as most readers actually remember him, the version with the deeper mythology and cosmic scale, only began with 1995’s Shakoora Ka Chakravyooh, when a young artist named Anupam Sinha took over the character. But that’s getting ahead of the story, because by 1995 Sinha had already spent eight years transforming Raj Comics’ other flagship hero.

A year after Nagraj’s debut, in 1987, Dhruva arrived. Anupam Sinha, who had already worked at Diamond Comics and at Chitra Bharti Kathamala before joining Raj Comics on what began as a freelance basis, created, wrote and drew Super Commando Dhruva, debuting in Pratishodh Ki Jwala.

Dhruva Mehra was given a home city, Rajnagar, and an origin rooted in Jupiter Circus, where his father worked as a trapeze artist before being killed in front of him by a rival strongman. Dhruva was built as Nagraj’s deliberate opposite: no inherited powers, no secret identity, a boy trained in acrobatics, tactics, disguise and scientific reasoning, able to communicate with animals, solving crimes through observation and physical mastery rather than superhuman force.

If Nagraj was myth wearing a cape, Dhruva was competence wearing one, and the contrast between them, spectacle versus reason, is the actual engine of everything that came after.

Chapter III: Building the Universe, 1988 to 1995

A publisher with two good heroes is a good publisher. A publisher with a universe is something else, and what Raj Comics actually proved across these years is that a single superhero brand could hold radically different genres at once, without the seams showing.

Nagraj carried the mythic-science-fiction register, snakes as both biotechnology and sacred symbol. Dhruva carried detective rationalism.

Doga, debuting in November 1992’s Curfew, created by writer Tarun Kumar Wahi and Sanjay Gupta with art by Manu, carried something closer to urban crime noir: Suraj, an orphan raised by a dacoit, turned into a violent, mask-wearing vigilante who could communicate with dogs, pulling the universe into genuinely dark territory, closer in tone to the Punisher than to anything else on the shelf.

And that was the real breakthrough. Raj Comics discovered that a superhero universe did not have to share one tone. Bhokal, closely associated with artist Dilip Kadam’s mythological visual sensibility, carried pure sword-and-sorcery fantasy, set in the mythic realm of Parilok rather than a contemporary Indian city.

Bankelal carried comedy: a scheming, self-interested trickster whose humor came from ambition constantly undone by his own greed, closer to a folk-tale rogue than a superhero.

Parmanu, arriving in 1991 and conceived, Sanjay Gupta has told ThePrint, in the late 1980s, gave the universe a science-adventure register aimed at younger readers, Inspector Vinay by day, a yellow-suited hero with the power to shrink to atomic size by night, explicitly built from a mix of DC’s the Atom and Marvel’s Ant-Man.

Around these five, Bheriya brought rural folk-horror, Shakti, rooted visually in Kali, gave the universe its most explicit vehicle for female power, and Tiranga, Anthony, Inspector Steel and Fighter Toads stretched things further still into patriotism, horror, cybernetic policing and outright comedy.

What made this more than a shelf of unrelated genre exercises was continuity: heroes crossed into each other’s stories, and villains did too. Nagraj’s own uncle Nagpasha, who murdered Nagraj’s father to seize power, gave the flagship hero a nemesis with real stakes rather than a disposable threat.

Grand Master Robo, Dhruva’s globally networked arch-enemy since 1989, functioned across Dhruva’s stories the way a Moriarty functions for Sherlock Holmes, defeated but never permanently gone. A reader following multiple titles came away with the sense of one coherent criminal underworld, not several disconnected ones, which is what actually let the crossover events work as spectacle rather than gimmick.

In October 1991, Nagraj and Dhruva teamed up for the first time in a special multistarrer issue.

Estimates vary: academic researchers Raminder Kaur and Saif Eqbal put the first major crossover at roughly 600,000 copies in three months, while press and fan-history accounts attribute more than 900,000 in the same window, an unmatched record, to a specific double-sized issue called Nagraj aur Bughaku from the same year, possibly the same event described two ways. Either way, the order of magnitude is the point: a single special issue selling several hundred thousand copies within months, at a time when that was almost unheard of for an Indian comic.

Chapter IV: The World Raj Comics Conquered

A new Raj Comics issue didn’t arrive as a notification. It arrived at a stall, in a bundle, and somebody’s older cousin or the kid who got to school first saw it before you did. Word moved by playground, not by push alert. Comics sat stacked at railway platforms and bus stands next to the tea and peanuts, cheap enough to be an impulse buy against pocket money rather than something you asked a parent to plan for. If your family didn’t buy it outright, the neighborhood rental library did, charging roughly a tenth of the cover price to borrow it, which meant a single copy could pass through a dozen sets of hands, dog-eared and re-taped, before it finally fell apart. Summer holidays and long train journeys were when the backlog got read, one comic traded for another, arguments settled over whose turn it was to keep an issue overnight.

Raj Comics also worked at manufacturing that anticipation, not just distributing books into it. Upcoming issues were teased inside the back pages of whatever a reader was currently holding, so every purchase doubled as an advertisement for the next one, and a special or a multistarrer carried a sense of occasion regular monthly issues didn’t, the kind of release kids actually watched for. Reader recollections also frequently mention letters pages, contests and promotional material as part of that culture, though no complete record of how those ran, or how large reader clubs actually got, survives in the sources reviewed here. What’s clear is that Raj Comics understood it was selling anticipation as much as it was selling paper.

That is the machine that was moving the numbers on record. Sanjay Gupta has told The Indian Express that standard first print runs in the early 1990s ran around 300,000 copies, with a handful of special editions crossing a million. In 1997, the Delhi High Court heard Goel Pocket Books v Raja Pocket Books, a trademark dispute over a rival comic infringing on Nagraj, and in that litigation Raja Pocket Books told the court that the first 22 issues of Nagraj had sold approximately 15,21,500 copies, alongside a claimed turnover of roughly Rs 50 lakh and Rs 8 lakh in advertising spend.

Raj Comics Vs Goel Pocket Books

These were the litigant’s own submitted figures rather than an independent audit, but the court found them credible enough, alongside other evidence, to grant Nagraj passing-off protection on the strength of its established goodwill.

Raj Comics vs Radha Comics

Run those two facts together, a rental economy charging a tenth of cover price and a 300,000-copy print run, and the readership of a popular issue could substantially exceed its sales number, which helps explain why so many people who never personally bought a Raj Comics issue still remember exactly what one looked like. Distribution reached beyond India’s own borders too: the Indian Express reports sales into Bangladesh and Nepal, strong numbers even in the south despite the smaller Hindi-reading base there, and Bengali special editions alongside occasional English and Tamil material. The center of gravity, always, was the Hindi belt.

Chapter V: The People Who Actually Built It

It is tempting, and convenient for the current family businesses, to let this story be about three Gupta brothers. It wasn’t.

Anupam Sinha: the bridge between 1987 and 2026

No other individual’s career maps so completely onto the arc of this entire company. Sinha arrived at Raj Comics around 1986 on a freelance basis, already carrying experience from Diamond Comics and Chitra Bharti Kathamala, and in 1987 created, wrote and drew Dhruva from the ground up. That alone would make him a significant figure. But in 1995, with Nagraj’s original run having ended that year under a rotating cast of other artists, Sinha took over the company’s flagship character too, beginning with Shakoora Ka Chakravyooh, and rebuilt Nagraj’s mythology from a controllable biological weapon into a character with roots, relationships and a home base, eventually capable of anchoring sagas on the scale of Nagayan, the mythic, Ramayana-inflected cycle scholar Roma Chatterji has treated as serious literary material in its own right.

Sinha, in other words, built and rebuilt the two characters the entire commercial empire rested on, and then kept working through the boom, the collapse, the digital transition, and the family’s fragmentation into competing businesses after 2020, without disappearing from any one of them. He remains actively credited on new Nagraj material today, including Sarpsatra and Sarpyagya, nearly forty years after he first drew Dhruva. If any one person’s career could stand in for the whole of this history, in a way no single Gupta brother’s can, it is his.

Beyond Sinha, Parshuram Sharma wrote and Pratap Mullick illustrated the first published Nagraj issue, and Tarun Kumar Wahi, Manu, Dilip Kadam and Dheeraj Verma shaped Doga, Bhokal and Bheriya respectively, alongside many other writers, pencillers, inkers and colorists who rotated through the company across four decades. The financial arrangements behind this creative boom remain unusually opaque: publicly available records do not establish whether major writers and artists received royalties or worked for flat fees, an important gap in understanding the economics of Raj Comics’ creative boom.

How a Raj Comic was made

The physical business ran out of Burari, in North Delhi, an unlikely but well-documented hub of Hindi superhero production, where editorial work, illustration, printing coordination and warehousing sat inside one relatively concentrated family-run operation rather than being farmed out across a distributed studio network the way most comics work today. A page moved from writer’s script to penciller to inker before reaching a colorist and letterer, and junior artists commonly learned the craft by inking or assisting a senior artist before graduating to pencilling their own pages. Early Raj Comics were bound by what physical pencils, inks and the print reproduction of the era could actually carry, line work doing most of the job that shadow and texture do now. Manoj Gupta has claimed personal credit for introducing digital coloring to the line in the 1990s, a shift that let later issues use gradients, glow effects and cleaner separations no hand-inked page from the 1986 launch could have managed, though no primary production record this account located pins down which page was genuinely first.

Chapter VI: The Fight for the Shelf

Raj Comics did not simply exist alongside its competitors. It fought them for space, attention and loyalty.

Diamond Comics likely had the stronger claim to being the bigger overall publishing business through much of this period, not despite Chacha Chaudhary but because of him. Chacha Chaudhary’s raw name recognition across generations of Indian readers, including many who never touched a superhero comic, arguably exceeded Nagraj’s for a long stretch, and Diamond’s dual strategy, owning a beloved humor icon while also holding Hindi licensing rights to Superman, Batman and Spider-Man, gave it a breadth of catalogue Raj Comics never matched. What Raj Comics won, specifically and decisively, was the superhero category within Hindi publishing: nobody else built a comparably deep, interconnected roster of original Indian action heroes.

Manoj Comics was, by sheer volume, arguably the more prolific publisher during the peak years, one account describing more than 365 comics released across its roster in a single year, essentially a new issue from somewhere hitting the stalls every day. What it lacked, relative to Raj, was continuity discipline: its characters largely operated as separate franchises rather than components of one interlocking universe. That also meant it never developed the same crossover-event commercial engine that made Raj’s multistarrers into spectacle purchases.

Tulsi Comics collapsed outright: its own family has told ThePrint the decline began around 1997-98, tracking the arrival of cable television, and publication ended entirely by 2004. Raj Comics did not shut down. Whatever the precise mix of distribution strength, capital reserves and character depth explains the difference, Raj proved the more resilient business.

Creators moved between all of these publishers freely enough that the boundaries between them were porous rather than fixed, which is worth remembering whenever the temptation arises to credit any single company’s “house style” entirely to that company.

Chapter VII: The Ground Starts Moving, 1995 to 2005

The decline is usually told as a single-cause story: cable television and video games arrived, and comics lost. That’s true, but it’s the smaller half of the truth.

Through roughly 1995, the business was still near its commercial peak, with Sinha’s reinvention of Nagraj that year a genuine creative high point rather than a sign of trouble. By the late 1990s, warning signs were spreading across the wider Hindi comics ecosystem: Tulsi’s decline set in around 1997-98, tracking cable television’s expansion, and Raj Comics, competing in the same distribution channels, would not have been fully insulated even if its larger scale let it absorb the shock more slowly. By the time Raj Comics management was speaking candidly to press in 2019, they described print sales having declined 10 to 15 percent a year over the preceding decade, a figure that implies the contraction had become a settled, ongoing feature of the business well before that interview.

Cable television did break Doordarshan’s monopoly on a child’s attention, and video games followed. Sanjay Gupta has repeatedly cited both as major causes. But the more structurally important change was what happened to the shelf itself. Economic liberalization flooded small retailers with fast-moving consumer goods carrying far better margins than a cheap comic. If a soft drink or snack made more money per square foot than Nagraj, Nagraj lost the square foot, not through any failure of the story, but through ordinary retail economics. At the same time, the rental libraries that had been multiplying every sale into a dozen readers began disappearing, print costs rose, cover prices rose to match, and the generation that had built the boom simply grew up, faster than the company built a pipeline for recruiting the next one.

It would also be dishonest to present the decline as purely external. Long-time readers, in interviews collected by Sahapedia, describe genuine creative complaints from the era: increasingly derivative plots, closer resemblance to Marvel and DC material, a publishing rhythm some found less rewarding to follow. Some longtime readers remember leaving because they believed the stories were getting worse, not simply because television had arrived.

Piracy entered the picture here too, in a way that’s often misunderstood. As print became harder to find, fan communities began scanning and circulating old issues online, unauthorized distribution that Raj Comics later pushed back against, but functioning at the time as preservation, a symptom of the availability problem rather than a cause of it.

Chapter VIII: From Mass Market to Fandom, 2005 to 2020

This is the period that gets skipped in almost every casual retelling, and it is the period that actually explains how Raj Comics got from mass-market powerhouse to the fragmented, collector-oriented business it is today.

As mass circulation shrank, the catalogue increasingly emphasized thicker specials and long-form event stories. The Nagayan saga became one of the era’s defining works, and Sarvanayak later extended the tradition of enormous crossover cycles, material still being sold and continued today, the kind of releases that became collectible in a way ordinary monthly issues never had been. The company’s own website became a real storefront during these years too, letting Raj Comics sell directly to readers who could no longer find new issues at a physical stall, and English-language editions became a standing product line rather than an occasional experiment.

The company also experimented seriously with merchandising: trading cards for Nagraj, Dhruva, Doga, Bheriya, Anthony, Bhokal, Inspector Steel, Parmanu and Tiranga, alongside notebooks, postcards and novelty items, still sold today through the Sanjay Gupta-linked operation. Raj Comics understood early that its characters could extend beyond the page. What it never built was a scalable licensing and production system capable of turning that instinct into a durable business.

By 2019, Manoj Gupta told PTI the company held a catalogue of more than 3,000 titles and a self-described following of “over a million people,” while acknowledging the print decline above. The same interview laid out the company’s actual response: e-comics on a mobile app after 2015, which Gupta credited with helping sales recover; a self-funded Doga film, launched after negotiations with director Anurag Kashyap collapsed, teased at that year’s Comic Con; a planned animated Bankelal show for children; talk of a 3D animated Nagraj film; and a live-action web series being pitched to studios and channels. None of these specific 2019 projects appear to have resulted in a finished, released production. This was not a company that never tried to leave print. It tried repeatedly, across more than a decade, and kept not landing the plane.

Fandom moved online well before any of that, and became something close to an unofficial preservation system. Communities on platforms like Orkut, documented in archives like Raj Comics Fan Nation from 2009, scanned and catalogued thousands of old issues. Researchers Roma Chatterji and Amaan Shreyas have argued that Nagraj’s own decades-long seriality is precisely what trained readers to sustain that kind of long-term online community. Comic Con appearances and events like Comics Fest India, which in 2013 brought out actor Mukesh Khanna alongside life-size superhero statues, kept the brand visible in adult geek culture through the same years its child readership was thinning, and it’s roughly across this stretch that Comic Con and collector events shifted from promotional appearances into genuine commercial occasions for the company.

When the official Raj Comics reading app eventually launched, now showing more than 500,000 downloads on Google Play, it did something worth pausing on: it doesn’t only carry Raj Comics’ own catalogue. It carries thousands of titles from King Comics, Manoj Comics, Tulsi Comics, Pawan Comics and Nutan Comics, several of which no longer exist as functioning publishers at all. One branch of the fractured Raj Comics family has, in effect, become a digital archive for an entire generation of otherwise largely inaccessible Hindi comics publishers, and that fact alone may matter more to this history than any single rumored film deal.

Chapter IX: Three Raj Comics, One Legacy

And then, around 2020, the family behind the company fractured, and Raj Comics fractured with it, after surviving cable television, video games, and the collapse of its own distribution network intact.

How the family split

Sanjay Gupta’s operation, Alpha Book Publishers and Raj Comics by Sanjay Gupta, was formally established on October 26, 2020, on the day of Vijayadashami, positioned as successor to Raja Pocket Books and the classic Raj Comics line. By 2022, ThePrint was reporting the original company had visibly split into three, between Manoj, Manish and Sanjay, each running separate storylines, products and pricing under the same shared logo. Sanjay told the paper the three brothers had genuinely different skills, himself creative, Manoj strong on business and marketing, Manish a strong communicator, and that separating let each move faster, citing 50 new titles released in the two years after 10 to 11 comparatively quiet years.

The legal dispute

The legal picture is more serious, and more precisely bounded than casual summaries usually present it. On September 24, 2025, the Delhi High Court issued an order in Manoj Gupta & Ors v Manan Gupta & Anr, in which petitioners aligned with Manoj Gupta sought interim relief against Manan Gupta and another respondent over alleged interference with the business of Pinwheel Publications and Ayush Gupta, and over continued exploitation of Raja Pocket Books’ intellectual property. The court appointed a substitute arbitrator, directed that the petitioners’ business not be obstructed pending arbitration, and stated explicitly that the parties’ underlying rights and contentions in the associated civil litigation had not been adjudicated. What this establishes: disputes over who may exploit Raja Pocket Books’ intellectual property remain genuinely active, and a court has said the underlying rights question, in this litigation, is undecided. What it does not establish: a complete, settled map of who owns which character, trademark or adaptation right across the whole catalogue. In plain terms: the split does not appear to have divided the classic heroes character by character, one brother owning Nagraj and another owning Dhruva, the way online summaries sometimes claim. But the public record also does not establish that all three brothers hold identical, unrestricted rights over every old property either.

Manoj Gupta’s Raj Comics

The strange result is that a reader can now enter the Raj Comics universe through three different doors, each selling a slightly different idea of what Raj Comics should be. Rajcomics.net and rajcomics.shop, connected to Pinwheel Publications, run the largest of the three visible catalogues. Current releases include Sarpyagya, Sarvgrahan, Sarpsatra, Prakoshth Ke Qaidi, Punarutthan and Kutta Panti, alongside continuing Doga and Bankelal material, and Ayush Gupta, publicly positioned as studio head, is directly named in the 2025 litigation.

A complete set of all 32 general Nagraj issues currently sells for roughly Rs 3,200, a marker of how far the per-unit price has moved from the single-digit-rupee comics of the 1990s. Of the three, this line is strongest on continuing continuity.

Sanjay Gupta’s Raj Comics

Raj Comics by Sanjay Gupta, together with Alpha Comics, mixes classic Raj characters with new stories, English-language releases, and Alpha Comics’ own original properties, recent output including new material from writers like Tarun Kumar Wahi and Hemant Kumar alongside classic-character digests. This is the branch leaning hardest into new IP and English-market expansion.

Manish Gupta’s Raj Comics

Rajcomics.com shows a much smaller active new-release catalogue, with its emphasis squarely on premium collector packaging, deluxe slipcases, gold and metallic variant editions and complete-series omnibus sets running into thousands of rupees. This is also the branch connected to the official Raj Comics mobile app, and the line leaning hardest into premium nostalgia and digital backlist.

Put together, the modern business model is legible in one sentence: a product that once depended on millions of low-price casual readers now appears increasingly designed around a much smaller pool of high-intent collectors willing to spend far more per purchase, while a separate digital arm quietly archives an entire generation of otherwise-vanished Hindi comics publishers. No audited revenue or print-run data exist for any of the three private businesses, so that direction should be read as the clear shape of the evidence, not a measured financial fact. All three operations continue to appear at Comic Con India, sharing floor space with Amar Chitra Katha, international anime brands like Crunchyroll, and a new generation of independent Indian creators.

Chapter X: The Screen Problem

Raj Comics’ most obvious unrealized asset has always been audiovisual adaptation, and the record shows this was not for lack of trying.

The earliest serious attempt centers on Doga. Director Anurag Kashyap has said in interviews spanning 2009, 2017 and 2023 that he was attached to a Doga film, with actor Kunal Kapoor cast, backed at one point by Sony, as early as 2005-06. In 2009, Hindustan Times reported the project postponed because Kashyap believed a faithful adaptation needed effects work the production wasn’t ready to deliver. By 2017 he described it as shelved entirely, and in 2023 again described roughly five to six years of effort undone by unresolved rights questions and unrealistic budget expectations. Across three interviews spanning fourteen years, the account has stayed consistent: the project could not clear its development barriers.

After that failure, Raj Comics pivoted to self-funding its own Doga production, teased at Comic Con as of 2019, alongside the Bankelal animation pitch, the 3D Nagraj pitch, and the live-action web series pitched to broadcasters. None of it resulted in a finished, released production. In December 2019, Manoj Gupta told PTI the company was in talks with Ranveer Singh and Karan Johar for a live-action Nagraj, explicitly noting nothing had been signed. No production followed.

The current attempt involves both Nagraj and Dhruva. In October 2025, amid speculation that Aryan Khan would direct Lakshya in a Super Commando Dhruva adaptation, Manoj Gupta told Hindustan Times the company was “in the final stages of signing a three-film deal for Nagraj and Super Commando Dhruva,” declining to confirm any actor, director or studio, with production expected to go on floors by the end of 2026.

As of August 30, 2026, no later report confirms that principal photography has begun. Three serious, well-documented attempts across three decades, and not one has yet produced a finished film.

Chapter XI: Why Raj Didn’t Become Marvel, and Why That’s the Wrong Comparison

The version of this question usually asked, “why doesn’t India have its own Marvel,” has an easy and slightly misleading answer if you stop at budget constraints and industry fragmentation. India has already built cross-media character franchises successfully, more than once, so the interesting question isn’t whether India can do this. It’s why Raj Comics, specifically, the property with the deepest catalogue and the oldest fan base, is the one that couldn’t.

Consider Chhota Bheem. Rajiv Chilaka’s Green Gold Animation launched the show in 2006, struggled for roughly two years to find an audience, then took off once Turner’s Pogo channel committed to sustained broadcast and co-production support, eventually leading to a Netflix spinoff and Green Gold growing from around 25 employees to well over a thousand.

Consider Motu Patlu, launched by Cosmos-Maya on Nickelodeon in 2012: within four years the studio had produced close to 500 episodes plus ten television specials, with a theatrical feature already planned. Both were built animation-first, in direct partnership with a broadcaster willing to commit years of co-production support before the character had proven itself. Raj Comics spent decades as a print publisher before seriously attempting the jump to screens, and that gap, not raw creative quality, is the more useful explanation for the divergent outcomes.

Four factors compound it

Budget: Nagraj needs serious visual-effects work to read on screen, and Indian studios have been reluctant to commit blockbuster financing to an unproven homegrown superhero brand given a thin box-office track record for the genre.

Tone: a catalogue running from Bankelal’s comedy to Doga’s adult violence is genuinely hard to position in one film.

Continuity: decades of lore are an asset for existing fans and a wall for newcomers, the same problem Marvel solved by starting small with Iron Man in 2008 and expanding patiently.

And live disputes over the right to exploit parts of the Raja Pocket Books intellectual-property portfolio create exactly the kind of uncertainty that complicates long-term studio financing, though it would be too broad to claim the entire IP is unsettled; what the record shows is active litigation over specific exploitation rights, not a blanket cloud over every character.

Underneath all four sits the deepest structural reason: there was never a cross-media machine built to compound the value of the characters in the first place. Marvel and DC didn’t become global cultural forces through comic-book sales; comics became the R&D lab, while the actual business was built across decades of animation, merchandising, games and a deliberately sequenced cinematic universe, run by companies that eventually evolved into systems capable of moving a character across every medium at once, Marvel Studios itself didn’t exist until 2007, nearly seventy years after the company began as a comics publisher.

Raj Comics genuinely tried, the self-funded Doga film, the animation pitches, the trading cards, the app, but never completed that same evolution. It remained, at its core, an exceptionally good print-distribution business that kept bolting screen ambitions onto a structure that was never built to carry them. Graphic India, a newer Indian company that says it has produced more than 500 episodes of animation across major streaming and television partners and was designed cross-media from its founding, shows the alternative path Raj Comics never took.

Chapter XII: What the Indian Comics World Looks Like Now

Raj Comics doesn’t exist in isolation, and it’s worth placing it inside the wider Indian comics market before closing this history, because that market has itself split into several barely-overlapping worlds.

Amar Chitra Katha remains the largest and most durable institutional brand, still claiming more than 100 million lifetime copies and over 1.5 million in annual print sales, operating less like a nostalgia business and more like a permanent children’s-publishing institution.

Diamond Comics survives as a legacy publisher in its own right, still marketing Chacha Chaudhary and its multilingual catalogue. Raj Comics sits closer to the collector-and-nostalgia end of the spectrum than either of those.

Below all three, the 2010s and 2020s produced a wave of smaller independent and creator-owned comics, mostly English-language, urban, crowdfunded or direct-sale, accepting print runs a fraction of what 1990s Hindi publishers considered normal. Business Standard’s January 2026 reporting described the result as a hollowed-out middle: legacy giants at one end, passionate small creators at the other, and much less of the mass monthly comic habit that used to connect them.

Layered on top of all of it, manga and anime now command a visibly large share of youth attention at events like Comic Con, alongside global brands like Crunchyroll, competition Raj Comics never had to face in its own boom years.

Part of why that middle hollowed out, and why it can’t simply be filled back in with a cheaper comic, is print economics rather than nostalgia. Industry reporting from 2026 shows small independent full-color print runs of 500 to 1,000 copies costing roughly Rs 120 to 180 per copy, pushing cover prices into the Rs 299 to 499 range just to break even.

That’s not a Raj Comics-specific figure, but it explains the trap facing anyone trying to revive something like the old model: low volume forces higher prices, higher prices make the kind of casual, unplanned discovery that built Raj Comics in the first place even harder, and reduced discovery keeps volume low. The single-digit-rupee comic of 1990 isn’t coming back because nobody wants it back. It isn’t coming back because the unit economics that made it possible no longer exist.

Amar Chitra Katha taught generations to encounter history and mythology through panels. Diamond embedded Chacha Chaudhary in family humor and everyday life.

Raj Comics made Indian children track universes, and that distinction, continuity as the product rather than the story itself, is still the clearest way to state what it actually contributed to Indian comics.

Chapter XIII: What Raj Comics Actually Means

Culturally, Raj Comics normalized a proposition that now seems almost obvious: Indian superheroes did not need to be gods, imported foreigners, or film-star tie-ins.

A hero could be built specifically for the Hindi comic market and sustain fan argument across decades. Readers didn’t have to imagine themselves in Gotham, Metropolis or New York; Nagraj’s cities, Dhruva’s Rajnagar, Doga’s crime-ridden streets were Indian even when the plots turned cosmic, and that sense of local ownership is a real part of why the nostalgia still runs this deep.

Nagraj fused biotechnology and naga mythology in a way that let readers hold both registers at once. Dhruva offered rational, trainable heroism grounded in circus upbringing rather than imported city iconography. Doga channeled specifically Indian anxieties about urban crime and political violence. Shakti gave the universe an explicit, Kali-rooted vocabulary for female power, even as the wider catalogue drew real, documented academic criticism for how it often depicted and endangered its women, a criticism this history shouldn’t sand down for the sake of a tidier legacy.

Longtime fans themselves, in interviews collected by outlets like Sahapedia, have pointed to periods of derivative plotting and close visual borrowing from Western comics as real flaws, not just nostalgia-proof strengths, and there is meaningfully less scholarship on how the catalogue handled caste, religious minorities and regional identity outside the Hindi belt than there is for a comparable institution like Amar Chitra Katha.

At the same time, fandom itself became part of the franchise’s actual survival infrastructure, not just its emotional afterlife. Online communities scanned and preserved thousands of issues when the physical business couldn’t. Comic Con appearances and dedicated collector and YouTube communities kept the characters visibly present in adult geek culture through the exact years the print business was contracting.

And the honest, current answer to who is actually buying and reading this material today is more specific than “the fans never left.” Reporting from January 2026 describes a Delhi children’s library with roughly 7,000 members where almost no one currently chooses comics, and quotes Sanjay Gupta making a striking admission: parents now have to actively introduce these characters to their own children, because the old accidental-discovery channels, the railway stall, the rental library, the neighborhood kiosk, are simply gone.

Raj Comics still has customers is true.

Raj Comics still has a mass children’s audience the way it did in 1993 is not, and conflating the two is exactly the kind of comfortable overstatement this history has tried to avoid throughout.

Conclusion: The Character Work Was Already Done

I don’t think Raj Comics is finished. I think it’s precisely what it looks like on close inspection: a living, commercially active, legally contested in parts, deeply fragmented legacy franchise, sitting on top of one of the richest unexploited character libraries this country has ever produced. The fans never left, even as their numbers and their age skewed steadily upward. The stories never stopped, even as the business supporting them split three ways. What has been consistently missing, across three separate serious attempts spanning three decades, is not a good story, and not fan enthusiasm.

It’s the machinery that other Indian properties, Motu Patlu, Chhota Bheem, eventually built to carry a beloved character somewhere new.

That is the sharper version of the question this history set out to answer. Not “why can’t India build a Marvel,” because India demonstrably can, and has. The real question is why the country’s most enduring mass-market homegrown superhero universe, the one that was doing continuity, crossovers and shared-world storytelling in Hindi before most of today’s global franchises existed, is the one property that couldn’t make the leap that smaller, younger Indian characters managed within a decade of launching.

The character work was finished decades ago. Nagraj and Dhruva have been fully formed, richly documented, decades-deep fictional people since long before most of the executives now negotiating film rights to them were born. What remains is a business question, not a creative one.

I’d like to believe the answer is yes. But if this history has taught me anything, it’s that in Indian publishing, being loved has never been the hard part. Being built, from the start, for the long game always was.

What we still don’t know

A few genuine gaps in the public record, kept here rather than inside the story, because they’re worth flagging without interrupting it.

The most consequential is reader demographics: no survey establishes how many of Raj Comics’ current buyers are under 18 versus returning adults, or how many discovered the characters through the app rather than a parent’s shelf, and that number would do more than anything else here to settle whether this is a franchise still reaching new readers or one now living almost entirely on nostalgia.

Audited circulation and current business scale are similarly absent: no independent accounting exists for any of the three branches, a “sold out” badge on a modern collector release could mean 300 copies or 30,000, and app downloads are not the same as paying, returning readers.

Cross-media rights are just as opaque, no production or option agreement establishing who can actually license which character for film, television or games under what approval process has surfaced publicly.

Regional reception outside the Hindi belt, in Bengali, Marathi, Tamil and among the overseas diaspora, has barely been studied at all, and neither has the catalogue’s handling of caste and minority representation at anything beyond the level of a handful of famous stories.

The exact monthly release rhythm at Raj Comics’ peak, how many titles were on sale at once, how prominent letters pages and contests actually were, is also not established by any source located for this account, though it is exactly the kind of detail a proper oral history with surviving vendors, rental-library owners and production staff could still recover.

The employment and payment structure behind the creative work, whether major writers and artists were salaried or freelance, whether they received royalties, and what happened to ownership when a freelancer originated a character, is similarly undocumented.

And how the official reading app’s licensing works, whether King Comics, Manoj Comics, Tulsi Comics, Pawan Comics and Nutan Comics material is there under formal agreement and how complete each back catalogue is, is not disclosed anywhere in the public record; a retail listing also surfaces a much smaller fourth line labeled “Raj Comics by Premlata Gupta” that this account could not identify with confidence.

None of these gaps change the shape of the history above.They’re simply where a more complete one would need to start digging.

[CASE STUDY] How a Math Teacher Cracked the Romance Code and Built a 7-Figure Author Empire

Chase Austin — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 03:35:28 GMT

The $100,000 Month That Changed Everything

Elana Johnson didn’t start out chasing numbers. She started out writing YA fiction because she loved it, spent years getting rejected, and eventually landed a deal with Simon & Schuster. The analytical, system-building version of her came later, once she realized loving what she wrote wasn’t the same as being able to sell it.

In 2014, she made the harder call: set the passion project down and go where the readers actually were. The pen name born from that decision, “Liz Isaacson,” was pulling in $100,000 months by January 2020.

This isn’t some overnight success story or lucky break. This is what happens when a former math teacher who fell in love with writing years earlier eventually learns to treat it like a business equation, and solves it systematically. Four years later, she’s still pulling down seven figures annually, and “Liz Isaacson” dominates the cowboy romance scene like nobody’s business.

Want to know how she did it? Buckle up.

The Real Person Behind the Brand - Meet the Mastermind: Elana Johnson

Before Elana became a romance writing machine, she was doing something completely different, teaching math and science while working as a tech specialist in Utah.

Her writing journey started in 2007, the normal way, with big dreams and bigger rejections. She spent years writing YA dystopian novels, finally landing a deal with Simon & Schuster in 2011 for “Possession.” At this point, she was a writer first, full stop. The math-teacher brain hadn’t found its way into the business yet, that would come later, once the writing itself stopped being enough.

The Traditional Publishing Reality Check

Here’s what really happened with traditional publishing: it sucked.

Not because the book was bad, but because she had zero control. The publisher controlled everything, marketing, timing, cover design, promotion strategy. She wrote the book, they owned the relationship with readers.

Sound familiar?

While she was dealing with traditional publishing’s glacial pace, she started messing around with Amazon’s self-publishing platform on the side. That’s when she discovered something that would change her life: she could publish a book today and have it for sale tomorrow.

Forget waiting 18 months for a publisher to maybe promote your book. This was speed at the speed of business. And it was here, watching what actually moved the needle for her own books, that the systems-thinking she’d spent years using in the classroom started creeping back into how she thought about writing.

The $450,000 Mistake (That Led to Millions)

In 2014, Elana made a decision that looked crazy to everyone around her. She was writing science fiction, her passion project, but the numbers weren’t adding up. Science fiction readers existed, but they weren’t buying enough books to pay the bills.

So she did something most authors would never do: she set the artistic vision aside and followed the readers instead. This is where the math-teacher brain finally showed up in her business, not at the start, but the moment loving what she wrote stopped being enough to keep going.

Romance was the biggest fiction market. Christian romance had passionate, underserved readers. Cowboy romance combined popular tropes with American fantasies. The math was simple: more readers, plus passionate fans, plus an underserved market, equals opportunity.

In 2015, she set her science fiction career aside and gave birth to “Liz Isaacson,” who would write Contemporary Christian Cowboy Romances.

The first series, Three Rivers Ranch Romance, hit Amazon’s #1 spot almost immediately.

That wasn’t luck. That was the analytical thinking she’d spent years developing, finally pointed at the right problem.

The Multi-Million Dollar Pen Name Strategy

Why “Liz Isaacson” Had to Be Born

Here’s something most authors get wrong: they think one name can do everything.

Elana operates like a portfolio manager, not a hobbyist. She writes under four different names:

Elana Johnson: Beach romance (the original brand)
Liz Isaacson: Inspirational cowboy romance (the money maker)
Jessie Newton: Women’s fiction (the feelings)
Donna Jeffries: Whatever she wants to experiment with

Each name targets a different reader. Each name can fail without destroying the others. Each name can test new markets without baggage from previous books.

Think of it like this: would you rather own one restaurant that needs to please everyone, or four specialized restaurants that each dominate their niche?

The Market Testing Genius

The pen name strategy isn’t just about organization—it’s about data.

When Elana launches a new pen name, she’s essentially A/B testing an entire market. She can see exactly how much demand exists for that type of story without her established reputation skewing the results.

If “Liz Isaacson” cowboys sell like hotcakes but “Jessie Newton” women’s fiction struggles, she knows where to focus her energy. It’s market research disguised as creativity.

Most authors write what they want to write, then hope someone wants to read it. Elana writes what people want to read, then figures out how to love writing it.

Guess which approach pays more bills?

The “Feel-Good Fiction” Empire

Cracking the Reader Code

“Liz Isaacson” isn’t just a pen name—it’s a brand promise. Every single book delivers the exact same emotional experience, packaged slightly differently.

Here’s the promise:

Genre: Inspirational cowboy romance (never varies)
Heat Level: Clean and wholesome (consistent every time)
Setting: Western landscapes—Texas, Wyoming, Utah, Montana
Values: Christian faith, family, redemption
Tropes: The same ones readers love, delivered reliably

This isn’t creativity—it’s product development.

The Trope Menu Strategy

Most authors worry about being “formulaic.” Elana realized her readers WANT the formula. They’re not looking for surprises—they’re looking for guaranteed satisfaction.

Every Liz Isaacson book delivers from this menu:

Second Chance Romance: Because everyone deserves another shot
Military Heroes: Wounded warriors finding love and healing
Single Dads: Responsibility meets vulnerability
Billionaire Cowboys: Fantasy meets down-home values
Friends to Lovers: Safe emotional progression
Holiday Romance: Christmas, family, belonging

Readers know exactly what they’re buying. There are no bad surprises, no genre-bending experiments, no “artistic growth” that alienates fans.

It’s like McDonald’s—you know exactly what you’re getting, and that’s why people keep coming back.

The Billion-Dollar Universe Trick

Here’s where Elana gets really smart: Instead of writing standalone books, she created an interconnected universe that hooks readers like crack.

Three Rivers, Texas and Coral Canyon, Wyoming aren’t just settings—they’re entire worlds populated by multi-generational families. The Youngs, the Hammonds, the Glovers, the Walkers all live in these towns, and their stories connect across multiple series.

Why this works:

A reader who loves one character meets their siblings in other books
New releases feature cameo appearances from old favorites
Readers have to read everything to get the full story
Each book becomes a commercial for 20 other books

The math is brutal: Instead of selling one book per reader, she sells 10-15 books per reader. Her customer lifetime value is insane.

The Content Factory

Writing Like a Machine

Since 2015, Liz Isaacson has published over 100 books. That’s not a typo.

This isn’t about being a “fast writer”—it’s about being a systematic writer.

Elana’s Daily System:

Morning: Pure writing when her brain is fresh (no email, no social media, no business stuff)
Word Target: 2,000-3,000 words per day, every day
Afternoon: Business operations—marketing, admin, planning

She doesn’t wait for inspiration. She doesn’t have “writer’s block.” She has a job, and she does it every day.

The Technology Stack That Changed Everything

Here’s where it gets really interesting. Elana doesn’t just write fast—she’s automated everything that isn’t actual storytelling.

Dictation: She can speak 15,000 words in a single day during intensive sessions. While most authors are typing 40 words per minute, she’s speaking 150+ words per minute.

AI Tools (But Not What You Think): She’s not using AI to write her books. She’s using it to eliminate business bottlenecks:

Plotting: AI helps generate story outlines following romance conventions
Character Tracking: AI keeps track of character details across 100+ books
Marketing Copy: AI writes her book descriptions and ad copy
Social Media: AI generates content ideas for her team to execute

She competes against AI by making AI work for her.

The Production Pipeline

Most authors write one book, publish it, market it, then start the next one. Elana runs an assembly line:

Book 1: Being marketed while she writes Book 3
Book 2: Being edited while she outlines Book 4
Book 3: Being written while she plans Book 5

She’s never not working on multiple projects. When one book launches, the next one is already done.

The Multi-Million Dollar Sales Machine

Amazon: The Foundation

Liz Isaacson is a “Top 10 Kindle Unlimited All-Star,” which means she’s making bank from subscription readers who binge-read entire series.

Her interconnected universe is perfect for Kindle Unlimited. Readers find one book, then devour 20 more. Each reader generates thousands of page reads instead of a single purchase.

But here’s the smart part—she’s not Amazon-exclusive.

The Insurance Policy: Going Direct

In July 2023, something scary happened. Amazon threatened to terminate Elana’s account over a bogus claim. For most authors, that would mean game over.

Not for Elana. She already had a backup plan.

Her Direct Store (feelgoodfictionbooks.com):

Higher profit margins (no Amazon cut)
Customer data she owns
Instant payments
Control over pricing and promotions

She uses BookFunnel to deliver ebooks to any device, so buying direct is as easy as buying from Amazon.

The Platform Portfolio Strategy

Elana doesn’t just sell on Amazon and her own site. She’s everywhere:

Barnes & Noble: Nook readers
Kobo: International markets
Apple Books: iPhone/iPad users
Google Play: Android users
Libraries: OverDrive for institutional sales
Subscriptions: Ream, Substack and other services

Every platform is a different revenue stream. If one goes down, five others keep paying the bills.

The Format Multiplication Trick

Every Liz Isaacson story gets released in every possible format:

Ebooks: The volume driver
Print: Available globally through print-on-demand
Audiobooks: 117+ titles and growing
Signed Books: Premium products sold direct for higher margins

Same story, multiple revenue streams per customer.

The Marketing Machine

The Authority Strategy

Elana doesn’t just write romance—she teaches other authors how to build businesses. Her non-fiction series “Indie Inspiration” includes books like “Writing and Marketing Systems.”

Why this matters:

Establishes her as an expert, not just another author
Creates a secondary income stream
Builds a following of authors who study her fiction as a case study
Generates massive credibility and trust

She’s not just competing with other romance authors—she’s teaching them. That’s next-level positioning.

The Community Empire

Her Facebook group “Indie Inspiration with Elana Johnson Discussion Group” has 2,700+ members who hang on her every word.

These aren’t just fans—they’re disciples of her business philosophy. They buy her books, share her strategies, and become ambassadors for her brand.

The Direct Line Strategy

Email marketing is dead, right? Wrong. Elana built something better:

SMS Marketing: “Text COWBOY to 8X1-6X8-2114”

Text messages get opened 90%+ of the time. When Liz Isaacson has a new book out, 25,000+ people get an instant notification on their phones.

Social Media: She’s on TikTok creating “book unboxing” videos and promoting popular tropes like “single dad romance.”

Different platforms, same goal: Get people into her universe.

The Sales Funnel That Never Stops

Here’s how new readers become superfans:

Discovery: TikTok, Facebook ads, or friend recommendation
Free Sample: First book in series for $0.99 or free
Email Capture: Sign up for more free books
Binge Reading: Fall in love with the interconnected world
Complete Purchase: Buy entire series bundles at discount
SMS Conversion: Get notified first about new releases
Repeat Customer: Automatically buy everything new

Once someone enters her universe, they rarely leave.

The Money: How 7 Figures Actually Happens

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Elana Johnson runs a 7-figure business. Not “on track to maybe hit six figures someday”—actual seven figures, year after year, for the last four years running.

Key Milestone: Her first $100,000 month in January 2020 wasn’t luck. It was the inevitable result of a system that had been building for five years.

The Math of Success

How do you make seven figures selling $3.99 ebooks?

Volume × Velocity × Value

Volume: 160+ titles across all pen names creating a massive catalog that generates revenue 24/7
Velocity: Rapid release schedule keeps her books visible in Amazon’s algorithms and gives fans constant new content
Value: High customer lifetime value because readers buy 10-15 books instead of just one

Revenue Stream Breakdown

Kindle Unlimited Page Reads: The foundation—subscription readers devouring entire series
Direct Ebook Sales: Individual purchases across all platforms
Print Books: Including premium signed editions sold direct
Audiobooks: Growing revenue stream across multiple platforms
Non-Fiction: Author education books for secondary income
Direct Store: Higher margins on bundles and exclusive deals

Multiple income sources = bulletproof business.

The Customer Lifetime Value Secret

Here’s the key metric most authors ignore: Elana can spend $5 to acquire a customer who initially buys a $4 book because she knows that customer will spend $10-15 more on backlist titles.

Her marketing isn’t optimized for immediate profit—it’s optimized for long-term customer value.

That’s why she can outbid every other author for advertising space. Her math works when theirs doesn’t.

---------------

Steal This Playbook: Your Step-by-Step Implementation Guide

Phase 1: The Foundation

Stop Writing and Start Researching

Most authors get this backwards. They write first, then try to find readers. Big mistake.

Your Market Research Checklist:

Spend couple of weeks on Amazon studying bestseller lists in different romance subgenres
Use Publisher Rocket or KDP Rocket to analyze keyword competition and demand
Read 50+ books in your chosen niche to understand reader expectations
Join reader Facebook groups to see what they’re actually talking about

Pick Your Lane and Own It

Don’t try to write “romance.” Pick a specific niche:

Paranormal vampire romance
Military romantic suspense
Small-town second chance romance
Billionaire fake marriage romance

The more specific, the better. You want to become the obvious choice for that exact type of reader.

Build Your Infrastructure

Before you write word one:

Set up your author website with email capture
Choose your email service (ConvertKit or Mailchimp)
Create your BookFunnel account for reader magnets
Plan your pen name strategy (separate genres = separate names)

Phase 2: Content Creation

Plan Your Universe, Not Your Book

Don’t write one book. Plan a world:

Create a fictional town with multiple families
Design characters with spin-off potential
Plan crossover opportunities between series
Build in reasons for readers to read everything

Write Like You Mean Business

Daily Target: 1,000 words minimum, 2,000 words goal
Schedule: Same time every day (mornings work best)
No Excuses: No inspiration required, only discipline
Series First: Write 3-5 books before publishing book 1

Create Your Reader Magnet

Before you publish anything:

Write a prequel novella to your main series
Make it good enough that people would pay for it
Use it to capture email addresses
Set up automated delivery through BookFunnel

Phase 3: The Launch Machine

Master the Rapid Release Strategy

Book 1: Free or $0.99 to get people hooked
Books 2-3: Regular price with email list promotion
Book 4+: Launch with email list for instant bestseller velocity

Build Your Email Empire

Goal: 100 new subscribers per month minimum
Strategy: Reader magnet + social media + book discovery
Nurture: Weekly emails with value, not just sales pitches
Segment: Different lists for different pen names/genres

Learn Paid Advertising

Start small, but start:

Facebook Ads: $5/day testing different audiences
Amazon Ads: $10/day targeting comparable authors
BookBub: Apply for featured deals and social media ads
Track Everything: What works, what doesn’t, why

Phase 4: Scale and Dominate

Become the Advertising Master

Once you find profitable campaigns:

Scale Gradually: Increase budget by 20% when campaigns are profitable
Test Constantly: New audiences, new creative, new targeting
Optimize Daily: Check campaigns every morning, adjust based on data
Reinvest Profits: Put ad profits back into more advertising

Build Your Authority Platform

Share Your Journey: Blog about your successes and failures
Help Other Authors: Join communities and provide value
Create Courses: Teach what you’ve learned once you’re successful
Build Community: Facebook group, podcast, whatever fits your style

Diversify Your Revenue

Direct Sales: Build your own Shopify store
Multiple Formats: Ebooks, print, audiobooks
Premium Products: Signed books, exclusive content
Licensing: Consider movie/TV rights for successful series

Phase 5: Empire Building

Multiple Pen Name Strategy

Once one pen name is profitable:

Test New Niches: Use new pen names to explore different markets
Cross-Promote: Subtle mentions between pen names when appropriate
Portfolio Management: Allocate time based on profitability
Risk Management: Multiple brands protect against market changes

Team Building

Virtual Assistant: Social media, email management, admin tasks
Editor/Proofreader: Professional editing for every book
Cover Designer: Consistent, professional covers for all releases
Formatter: Professional ebook and print formatting

Business Optimization

Analytics: Track everything, sales, ads, email metrics, website traffic
Automation: Automate everything that doesn’t require creativity
Systems: Document every process so others can help
Growth: Reinvest profits into advertising, team, and technology

The Tools That Actually Matter

Writing and Production

Essential Software:

Scrivener: Organize massive series with complex characters and plotlines
Vellum: Professional formatting that makes your books look like bestsellers
ChatGPT or AI LLMs: Catch errors before your editor sees them
Rev or Otter.ai: Dictation services if you want to write at the speed of speech

Marketing and Business

The Non-Negotiables:

ConvertKit or Mailchimp: Email marketing automation
BookFunnel: Reader magnet delivery and email capture
Canva or Book Brush: Professional graphics for social media and ads
Facebook Ads Manager: Where the magic happens for customer acquisition
Google Analytics: Track website traffic and conversions

Advanced Tools

When You’re Ready to Scale:

Shopify: Your own direct sales platform
BookReport: Track sales across all platforms
Publisher Rocket: Keyword research and competition analysis
Social media management tools: Buffer, Later, or Hootsuite

The Reality Check: What This Actually Takes

Time Investment

This isn’t a side hustle. Building a 7-figure author business requires:

Daily Writing: 2-4 hours of focused writing time
Daily Business: 2-4 hours of marketing, admin, and planning
Learning: Constant education about marketing, technology, and industry changes
Long-term Commitment: Building sustainable six-figure income takes real time

Financial Investment (Estimated, Will vary from person to person)

Starting Costs:

Professional editing: $1,000-$2,500 per book
Cover design: $300-$800 per book
Marketing and advertising: $500-$2,000 per month
Software and tools: $100-$300 per month
Business setup: $500-$1,500 one-time

Scaling Costs:

Advertising: $2,000-$10,000+ per month as you scale
Team members: $1,000-$5,000+ per month for VAs, editors, etc.
Technology upgrades: $500-$1,500 per month for advanced tools

Skill Development

You need to become competent at:

Writing: Obviously, but specifically writing to market expectations
Marketing: Facebook ads, Amazon ads, email marketing, social media
Business: Analytics, financial planning, team management
Technology: Basic website management, email automation, publishing platforms

The Hard Truths Nobody Tells You

Success Isn’t Guaranteed

Elana’s system works, but it requires:

Market Research: Writing what readers want, not what you want to write
Consistent Execution: No days off, no “waiting for inspiration”
Financial Investment: Spending money on professional services and advertising
Business Mindset: Treating writing like a business, not just creative expression

The Emotional Cost

Building this kind of business means:

Less Creative Freedom: Writing to market demands, not artistic vision
Constant Pressure: Always launching, always marketing, always producing
Public Failure: When books flop, everyone can see the Amazon rankings
Isolation: Writing is solitary; building a business can be lonely

The Platform Risk

Even with diversification:

Algorithm Changes: Amazon, Facebook, and other platforms change rules constantly
Market Saturation: More authors learn these strategies every day
Reader Fatigue: Rapid release can burn out even dedicated fans
Technology Disruption: AI and other technologies constantly change the game

The Bottom Line: Is This Worth It?

Elana Johnson transformed from a struggling science fiction author into a 7-figure romance empire in less than a decade. She did it by treating writing like a business, not a hobby.

What You Get:

Complete creative control over your work
Multiple six-figure or seven-figure annual income potential
Location independence (work from anywhere)
Scalable business that can grow beyond just your writing
Industry authority and influence

What It Costs:

Your “artistic vision” if it doesn’t match market demand
Significant time, money, and energy investment
Constant learning and adaptation to stay competitive
The stress of running a business, not just writing books

The Real Question: Do you want to be a “writer” or do you want to build a writing business?

If you just want to write what you love and hope someone buys it, this system isn’t for you.

If you want to build a sustainable, profitable business that happens to involve writing books people love, then Elana’s blueprint is your roadmap.

The choice is yours. The system works. The question is: Will you work the system?

Your Next Steps

Pick your genre niche based on market research, not personal preference
Set up your author website with email capture
Plan your first 5-book series with interconnected characters
Start writing 1,000 words per day, every day
Create your reader magnet (prequel novella or first book)
Set up BookFunnel and email automation
Write the first draft of book 1
Start learning Facebook advertising basics
Publish your first 3-book series with rapid release schedule
Build your email list to 1,000+ subscribers
Master profitable advertising on at least one platform
Start planning your second series in the same universe

The Liz Isaacson empire didn’t happen overnight. But it did happen systematically, strategically, and profitably.

How I sold 135,000 Books across 13 Countries + 3 Mistakes That Costed Me Money

Chase Austin — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 16:28:28 GMT

The machine I built, and what I’d do again

I didn’t publish my first book with a plan to sell 135,000+ copies across 13 countries.

I started with one book. One series. One market.

The countries come later in this article because they came later in the business too.

Before I had anything worth taking international, I had to build a catalog readers actually wanted to keep reading.

Start Small

At the beginning, I wasn’t thinking about markets or formats or translation. I was thinking about one thing: can I get the right reader to buy this book and finish it.

That meant narrowing everything down. One genre. One clear reader. One series. One primary market. I wasn’t worrying about Germany or audio or ten advertising platforms, because none of that matters if the first question isn’t answered yet.

For me, that meant Sam Wick and action thrillers first, nothing else. Once that had traction, I expanded into crime fiction with Aria Hunt, then supernatural thriller with Creed-Hart. Legal thriller, with Cal Justice, is the newest expansion. Each one only came after the series before it was already working, not alongside it.

Before you build anything bigger, you need a small machine that works. One book that reaches the right reader and gives them a reason to want the next one.

Write in Series, Not Isolated Books

135,000+ sales sounds like 135,000+ separate purchasing decisions. It isn’t.

A lot of those sales came from the same pattern repeating itself. A reader discovers Book 1, buys Book 2, buys Book 3, keeps going. One reader acquired once can turn into several book sales, Kindle Unlimited reads across multiple titles, future launch sales, and a newsletter subscriber who shows up again for the next series.

That changes the question you should be asking. Don’t just ask how many people bought Book 1. Ask how many of those Book 1 readers became Book 2 readers. That number, read-through, is where an author business actually starts. A book that sells well but doesn’t pull readers into Book 2 is a much weaker asset than a book that sells modestly but sends a strong percentage of readers into Book 2.

Give Every Series a Branding Readers Can Remember

One of the simplest branding decisions I made was to give each series a consistent naming pattern.

For Sam Wick, that word is Wicked.

For Axel Monk, it’s Monk.

For Aria Hunt, it’s Hunt.

For Cal Justice, it’s Justice.

That recurring word becomes part of the series identity. A reader doesn’t have to remember every title perfectly, they just have to recognize the pattern. Readers may forget the exact title, but they remember the recurring word. If they’ve already read one Sam Wick book and they see another title using Wicked, the connection is immediate. Same with Monk. Same with Hunt. Same with Justice.

That consistency carries into the covers too. Similar typography, layout, color language, and genre signal make the books feel like part of the same family. But the naming does more work than the visuals alone, because it survives even when a reader only half-remembers the cover. A reader should be able to recognize the next book before they even read the full title.

It’s worth pairing this with something more operational: making the next book easy to actually find. A numbered series, clean back matter, a direct link to Book 2 at the end of Book 1. A reader finishing your book at one in the morning shouldn’t have to search for what comes next. That gap, between finishing a book and finding the next one, is where a lot of potential read-through quietly dies.

Build Your Email List Before You Need It

My newsletter mattered because it gave me a way to turn one-time discovery into repeat discovery. A reader who found me through Amazon once didn’t have to wait for Amazon to surface me again. I could tell them directly when the next book, series, or translation was ready.

Between launches, I send behind-the-scenes notes, cover reveals, excerpts, and the occasional offer, not just launch announcements. The list matters because without it, the reader relationship largely lives inside Amazon’s ecosystem, and you’re depending on their algorithm to reconnect you with someone who already liked your work.

Use Ads to Find New Readers

Ads work very differently depending on what’s behind them.

If an ad is pushing one standalone ebook with nothing behind it, the economics are weak. You spend to acquire a reader, and the relationship ends at that one transaction.

If an ad is pushing Book 1 of a series that reliably pulls readers into Book 2, Book 3, and a newsletter, the economics change completely. You’re not paying for one sale, you’re paying for entry into a catalog, which lets you spend more to acquire that reader because their value isn’t capped at the first purchase.

Ads didn’t build this business. They accelerated a catalog that was already designed to keep readers once it had them.

The Real Engine Is Repeat Readers

New authors tend to think about growth as a single number: how many new readers can I find. That’s acquisition, and it matters, but it’s only half the engine.

The other half is retention, getting readers you already have to buy another book. As the catalog grew, retention became increasingly valuable, because each returning reader had more books available to buy than they did the year before.

A meaningful share of the 135,000 isn’t 135,000 people making one decision each. It’s a smaller group of people making the same decision, to read another Chase Austin book, over and over.

Connect Your Series Into One Reader Ecosystem

Most advice stops at “write a series.” The next level is building series that feed readers into each other.

There are two kinds of read-through worth distinguishing.

Horizontal read-through is Book 1 to Book 2 to Book 3 within one series.

Cross-series read-through is Series A leading into Series B leading into Series C, a different mechanism and far less commonly talked about.

Right now, Axel Monk and Aria Hunt both appear in Sam Wick books, and Sam Wick appears in Aria Hunt books.

That’s not a coincidence or a one-off cameo, it’s a deliberate two-way bridge between series.

A reader who follows one of those threads has a natural, in-story reason to pick up the other.

I’m building this further.

Sam Wick is set to appear in Axel Monk books next. Further out, the plan is for Sam Wick and Aria Hunt to both appear in Cal Justice, along with another of my characters, Talon Creed. Each addition widens the web a little more, so a reader who starts anywhere in the catalog eventually has a path into everywhere else in it. Every crossover gives an existing reader a reason to sample a series they might otherwise never have tried, and it does that without costing me a dollar in ad spend, since it’s the story itself doing the discovery work rather than an ad pushing a stranger toward a new series.

The effect is that a reader’s lifetime value stops being capped at one series. I wasn’t just trying to build individual series that worked on their own. I wanted each one to function as another doorway into the rest of the catalog.

Here’s what that actually looks like for one reader moving through the system. Someone finds Sam Wick through Book 1, likes it, and reads through several more Wick books in a row.

Somewhere in that run, Aria Hunt shows up as a character.

That reader, already invested in the world, follows the thread and picks up Aria Hunt’s own series.

Later, Sam Wick appears back inside an Aria Hunt book, closing the loop between the two. From there, the next crossover I’m building, into Axel Monk or Cal Justice, gives that same reader another door to walk through.

That one reader can account for a dozen or more book sales without ever being counted as a dozen separate acquisitions. This is a large part of how 135,000 sales come from a much smaller number of actual people, and why my acquisition costs have stayed lower than they’d otherwise need to be. The catalog isn’t just a list of series sitting next to each other, it’s a system that keeps handing the same reader a reason to stay, and that system runs almost entirely on organic discovery instead of paid reach.

Core English Markets First

The United States has been my biggest market from the start.

The US is first, by a clear margin. UK is second. Then Australia, then Canada. Germany rounds out my top five, a spot it only claimed in the back half of 2025. It’s not ahead of Canada or Australia yet, but I think its ceiling is significantly higher once more of the catalog is translated and supported with ads. That’ll likely take a couple more years and some real spend behind it, not just organic translation reach. It’s the first sign of a story I’ll come back to.

I didn’t have to rebuild the book for each of these markets. Same manuscript, same series, largely the same cover. One English-language book had the potential to earn across four countries with almost no additional production work. That’s closer to distribution than localization, the story doesn’t change, the audience just gets bigger.

That has a ceiling, though. English-language reach only takes you so far. To go further, the books themselves had to change languages. That’s where the most interesting part of this story actually starts.

I also have paid sales in India, the Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan, but these are smaller markets today, and I don’t pretend all 13 countries contribute equally.

Germany: Proof the Machine Works in Another Language

Germany is the freshest part of this story, and it’s the one I’d tell you to pay the most attention to.

The easy version of this lesson is “translation works.” That’s not really it. The real lesson is that translation economics change dramatically once you translate enough of a series to preserve read-through, the exact same mechanism that made the English catalog work in the first place.

For a long time, “international” for me just meant selling English editions outside the US. I’d had books available in German for a while before that, one or two titles here and there, without much happening. The real shift came this year, once more of the catalog became available in translation at the same time.

That’s the part worth sitting with. The English catalog worked because a reader who finished Book 1 always had Book 2 waiting. For years, the German catalog didn’t offer that. A German reader could find one translated Sam Wick book and then hit a wall, nothing else in their language to move to next. Once enough of the series existed in German at once, that wall came down, and the same read-through engine that built the English side of the business started reproducing itself in German.

The signal was hard to miss. I saw a sudden jump in German revenue with almost no ad spend behind it, just the translated backlist itself doing the work. That’s a different pattern than a title needing to be pushed. It’s a market responding to something simply becoming available to it, the same way US readers respond when a series they already love gets a new book.

I’m not running ads in Germany yet. The plan is to start once at least eight books in the Sam Wick series are translated, not before. That’s deliberate. I don’t want to pay to acquire a German reader who runs out of translated books to read after two or three, the exact mistake that would have wasted ad spend on a market that wasn’t ready for it yet.

One translated title gives the reader nowhere to continue. A translated series starts to become a market. Germany is the first place I’ve watched that transition happen in real time, and it’s the clearest evidence I have that this business isn’t just an English-language phenomenon. It’s a machine, and the machine appears to work in more than one language.

France, Italy, and Spain: Applying What Germany Proved

Germany is the proof. France, Italy, and Spain are where I’m testing whether it repeats.

I’m no longer thinking about translation title by title. I’m thinking in terms of translated series depth, because that’s the variable that actually moved the needle in Germany.

I don’t yet have enough data to claim these markets will follow Germany’s path. That’s the bet I’m making now, as more of the catalog becomes available in those languages.

One Story, Many Formats and Markets

I wrote each story once. But a story can keep earning as an ebook, a paperback, a hardcover, a box-set component, or a translated edition in another market.

Audio is the next format I’m exploring because the stories already exist, although the economics still have to make sense title by title.

The point isn’t to maximize the number of products you can count. A German ebook and a German paperback aren’t valuable just because they’re two SKUs instead of one. The point is that a single creative asset can earn repeatedly across multiple consumption formats and multiple markets without requiring a new story every time. Sometimes the story already exists, and the opportunity is simply giving it a new format, a new language, or a new market it hasn’t reached yet.

What I’d Do Differently Starting Today

If I were starting from zero readers again, here’s roughly how I’d sequence it.

From the beginning: Write the series, establish the brand, put out ebook and paperback since readers expect both, and start collecting emails even if almost nobody is subscribing yet. Don’t let anything more expensive than that distract you from proving the core series works.

Once you have read-through data: Nurture the list in earnest and learn one acquisition channel properly instead of spreading across several. Once you can see how many Book 1 readers become Book 2 and Book 3 readers, you can start to estimate what a new reader is actually worth.

Once acquisition economics work: That’s the point where spending more to acquire a first-time reader starts to make sense, and where scaling ads or promos actually pays off.

Once the series is proven: Add the more expensive layers, audio, box sets, the next English-language market. Low complexity for the English markets, same books, more work for audio.

Once multiple series exist: Start building the connections between them.

If I were starting again, I’d wait to invest seriously in translation until I had enough of a proven series to translate several books together, rather than one title at a time.

I got some of this order wrong the first time.

Three, specifically.

I slowed down when I shouldn’t have. Early on I was publishing three to four books a year. Then from 2021 through 2023, that dropped to about one a year. That wasn’t just fewer releases. It meant fewer reasons for existing readers to return, slower backlist growth, and weaker economics behind every new reader I acquired. I’ve been picking the pace back up since late 2024, and the difference shows.

I also wrote too short for too long. My earliest Sam Wick books were considerably shorter than what I write now. Looking back, I think that cost some read-through, less time in the world meant fewer readers converting into repeat buyers. My average book length today is around 70,000 words, and that fits the experience I’m trying to deliver much better.

And I didn’t run enough promos. They’re one of the more reliable ways to boost earnings across a catalog like mine, and under-investing in them for years cost more than short-term sales. It meant fewer new readers feeding the email list, the ads, and the crossovers downstream. That’s something I’m actively fixing this year.

135,000 Was the Result, Not the Strategy

I never sat down with a strategy called “sell 135,000 books in 13 countries.”

I wrote the next book. Then I made it easier for readers to find the one after that. I built series, nurtured repeat readers, learned to acquire new ones, and connected those readers across my catalog. Eventually the same stories picked up more formats, languages, and markets.

None of those decisions looked like 135,000 sales when I made them.

Together, they became 135,000 sales across 13 countries.

The lesson isn’t to go global. It’s to build something worth taking global.

One Book Won't Change Your Life. A Plan Would.

Chase Austin — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 05:00:41 GMT

An author career is not built on one or two books.

I know that sounds obvious the moment you read it. But most authors don’t actually operate like they believe it. They write one book, pour everything into the launch, wait to see what happens, and then wonder why the business never really starts.

Written Word Media just published a mid-year survey that puts real numbers behind this. They surveyed 582 indie authors in 2026, split into four income tiers... Just Starting Out under $500 a month, Building Momentum at $500 to $2,500, Got Traction at $2,500 to $10,000, and Living the Dream at $10,000 plus.

One caveat before we go further. This was a self-selected group from Written Word Media’s own author community, and every figure in it is self-reported. So treat it as a useful snapshot of active indie authors, not a perfect census of the entire market. With that said, the patterns in it are worth paying attention to.

The headline numbers. About 44% of authors are growing or holding steady right now. 30% are seeing their business decline. And despite a genuinely rough year for the industry, 51% still expect their income to grow over the next 12 months.

Written Word Media then isolated a specific group inside that data. Authors whose business was growing, who felt good about it, and who expected income to keep rising. Not just anyone whose sales happened to tick up. When they looked at what that group was actually doing differently, five patterns kept surfacing. Once I sat with them, I realized they weren’t five separate tactics. They were five different assets an author business accumulates over time. Here’s how I’d lay them out.

1. Your first asset is the catalog itself

64% of this growing, optimistic group were increasing their output, compared to 36% of everyone surveyed. Almost double.

That doesn’t prove more books cause growth on its own. But it does tell you something about where these authors are putting their energy. When ad platforms shift and algorithms change without warning, output is the one lever nobody can take away from you. One author in the survey said it better than I could. “I will always have that book. It’s not built on sand.”

Every book you finish becomes another asset. Something that can sell on its own, get advertised, get bundled into a box set later, get translated, get narrated. A single book is a product. A catalog is a business.

And there’s a separate Written Word Media study that shows exactly how much this compounds. It tracked authors across five income tiers and measured the average number of books each tier had published.

Authors earning $0 to $249 a month averaged about 6 published books. Authors earning $250 to $999 a month averaged about 17. At $1,000 to $4,999 a month, that number jumps to about 29. At $5,000 to $9,999, it’s about 36. And authors earning more than $10,000 a month averaged about 42 published books.

That’s not a coincidence dressed up as one. It’s about as close to a straight line as you’ll find in this industry. There’s no magic number that unlocks full-time income, but the pattern is impossible to ignore. The authors making real money almost always have a real catalog behind them.

2. Your second asset is direct access to readers

This is one of the clearest patterns in the whole survey. Newsletter usage climbs steadily by income stage. At Just Starting Out, only 39% of authors have one. By Got Traction, that number is 73%.

That doesn’t prove the newsletter alone caused the growth. But it is, in Written Word Media’s own words, the single clearest marker of a maturing author business. Among the growing group specifically, 58% actively use a newsletter versus 43% overall, and they’re doing newsletter swaps with other authors at nearly double the rate too.

Here’s why that matters so much. Amazon can change its recommendations tomorrow. Meta can change its targeting rules next quarter. Your email list is one of the few reader channels you actually control directly. The bigger an author’s business gets, the more likely they are to have built that direct line to readers well before they needed it.

3. A business still needs paid customer acquisition

There’s a popular narrative that ads don’t work anymore. This survey doesn’t really support that, at least not for the authors who are growing. Promo sites, Meta Ads, and Amazon Ads were the top three paid channels that growing authors were actively using. Amazon Ads usage alone climbs from 18% at the starting-out stage to 59% at Got Traction.

That doesn’t mean every ad works or that every author should be spending on all three. It means the authors growing right now haven’t stopped paying for discovery. They’ve gotten better at figuring out which traffic is actually worth buying.

The era of publish and pray is over. What’s working now is publish, and then promote deliberately.

4. Once you have a catalog, you monetize it again and again

This is where the real business starts, and it’s probably the most important pillar of the five.

Growing authors monetize their existing catalog at much higher rates than everyone else. Human-narrated audiobooks, 43% versus 28% overall. Box sets, 43% versus 28%. Translations, 38% versus 23%.

Here’s the compounding logic. One novel can become an ebook, a paperback, a hardcover, an audiobook, one piece of a box set, a translated edition in a market you’ve never touched. A single book has a handful of these options. A series multiplies every one of them. You can’t build a box set out of one title. Translating a single isolated book gives you one new product in one new market. Translating a series gives that new reader somewhere to go next, in that same market, which is where the real return shows up.

Technology is making some of this more accessible than it used to be, especially on the translation and production side, where AI-assisted workflows are lowering the cost and effort involved. That’s worth knowing. But it’s a tool that makes an existing catalog more valuable. It doesn’t replace the catalog.

5. Diversify before you’re forced to

This is the pillar that the survey data makes hardest to ignore, because you can see exactly what happens when authors don’t do it.

The authors hurting the most right now aren’t beginners. They’re in the Got Traction tier, $2,500 to $10,000 a month, where 36% reported a declining business, the highest of any group. Many respondents in this tier pointed to Amazon’s A10 algorithm change and ACX royalty restructuring as the cause, with some describing revenue drops of 30% to 50% with little warning. One author put it plainly. Sales suddenly nosedived in April. Earning half of what I made before.

The risk here isn’t having too few books. It’s building too much of your revenue around a channel you don’t control. A deeper catalog doesn’t make you immune to a platform change. But it gives you more products, more formats, more promotions, and more ways for readers to find you when one channel weakens.

Now compare that to the top tier, Living the Dream, $10,000 plus a month. They weren’t untouched by the same industry shifts. But they responded by diversifying on purpose, not in a panic. They lead the survey in translations, human-narrated audiobooks, and box sets, and they’d already moved toward owned channels like their newsletter, direct sales, even Kickstarter, before they needed to.

There’s one more useful data point buried in here. Among the growing group, distribution choice didn’t separate anyone. 46% were exclusive to KDP, 47% were wide. Essentially a coin flip. So if you’ve been agonizing over that decision, the survey suggests it matters less than actually executing whichever model you pick.

What this actually looks like at each stage

You don’t build all five of these at once, and you shouldn’t try to.

Early on, the job is simple. Finish the next book. Start the newsletter, even if it’s small.

A few books in, focus on learning one paid acquisition channel well enough that you understand your own numbers.

Once you have a real series, start turning it into a box set, adding audio, testing a translation.

Once the business is established, work on not being dependent on any single platform, retailer, or format for your income.

Where this actually lands

The highest earners in this survey don’t look like someone who sells ebooks on Amazon anymore. They look like a small, diversified publishing company. Multiple books. Multiple formats. Multiple markets. A direct line to their own readers. Paid acquisition they understand and can adjust. Nothing hanging entirely on one algorithm or one retailer’s mood.

Share Side Hustle Weekend

An author career is not built on one or two books.

It’s built one asset at a time. Another book. Another reader on your list. Another format. Another market. Another reliable way for someone to discover you.

Eventually those assets start reinforcing each other. That’s the moment you stop having a book that sells, and start having an author business.

THE ART OF DOING NOTHING

Chase Austin — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 13:10:18 GMT

Do you know what to do when there is nothing to do?

From the time I began college, the only thing I was taught was to excel in everything I did. Sometimes I did excel, sometimes I failed, but I was always doing something.

In this race to reach somewhere, I forgot one thing — How to ace nothingness? How to pass the time when there is nothing to do?

Back in the day, I knew exactly how to crack this code. Our summer vacations used to be more relaxed, perhaps more relaxed than we’d like them to be but that’s how they were. There would be days at a stretch when we had nothing to do. No activities. So we would come up with our own. We would draw squares and rectangles on the ground and then hop, skip and jump. We would play with street dogs, kick a football,

fly a kite, pluck flowers, or just paint. We knew how to deal with boredom.

As I grew older, I chose to forget that art. Becuase if you are not doing anything, you are wasting your life. That’s what everyone said.

But is it true?

Is it true that if I don’t do anything for a while, I’m wasting my life?

Now you might say, isn’t an idle mind a devil’s den? Maybe it is. But that’s a den we must learn to tame. We must learn how to conduct ourselves when we have nothing to do.

In countries like ours, being a star performer is not really a matter of choice. It is a necessity. There is fierce competition for every damn thing — from colleges to jobs to everything under the sun. If you aren’t ahead of the curve, then you’re left behind.

So we do all we can, all the time, to remain ahead of the curve. Our schedules are so packed that we don’t even have time to sit down with our family or with ourselves. We have planned things that would take more than 100 years to finish, and we are still filling our schedule with newer activities.

there is another aspect to it too. If everything is put in front of us in an organized structure, then we lose the capability to amuse ourselves.

Humans learn the best from experiencing things, and even studies say that boredom is a great teacher. It helps in our emotional development. It helps build a tolerance to less-than-ideal experiences, and most of you would agree that life is not perfect.

There are days that are bad. Most bosses are less than ideal. Same with relationships and circumstances. Boredom prepares us for those less-than-ideal experiences.

Life requires us to manage our frustrations and regulate our emotions when things aren’t going our way, and boredom is a great way to teach that skill. Boredom also helps us find value in our own experiences. Develop and expand our own worldview.

2. Boredom helps us strategize. Figure out ways to keep ourselves engaged and entertained.

3. Boredom helps us with problem-solving skills.

4- It makes us creative, and this is something that studies have proven over and over again. Boredom fosters imagination and creativity.

The human mind, when bored, comes up with things to do on its own. This is the time when we learn how to make optimum use of the resources around us.

And these are lessons that go a long way in life. Boredom teaches us to sit still, to be at peace, and daydream.

5. It also instills a sense of independence, and that’s very important because there will be times in our lives when we will be facing problems that no one can help us solve. There will be times when we will feel lonely, and for those times, we must learn how to manage on our own. How how to motivate ourselves.

These are life skills that boredom can teach.

I’m not saying don’t do anything or leave all your work and do nothing. I’m only making a case for a balance of activities and free time.

There are plenty of reasons why we should not be afraid of letting ourselves be bored.

it might be irritating and annoying at first, but eventually, we all find ways to keep ourselves occupied, and our creativity starts to flourish, and this journey can be life-changing.

A lot can be done when there’s nothing specific to do. That is a gift too.

About Me

I’m an author with more than a decade of experience writing, publishing, and marketing books.

Over the years, I’ve written 35+ novels across multiple thriller and crime series, reached the top of Amazon charts, made plenty of mistakes, and learned what actually helps turn writing into a sustainable author business.

Some of my bestselling series include:

Sam Wick Action Thrillers
Axel Monk Action Thrillers
Aria Hunt FBI Crime Mystery Thrillers
Cal Justice Legal Thrillers
Creed-Hart Supernatural Thrillers

Here, I share practical lessons on writing, publishing, book marketing, growing a backlist, reaching more readers, and building multiple income streams around your stories.

No fluff. No overnight-success promises. Just honest experiences, useful strategies, and actionable ideas for authors who want to make a living from writing, build a serious side income, or simply sell more books.

Things I enjoy: long walks, reading about almost anything, telling stories, and playing chess.

Visit me at www.thechaseaustin.com.

Want to say hello? Email me at contact@thechaseaustin.com.

Can You Make a Living as an Author? Traditional vs Indie Publishing Income Explained

Chase Austin — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 06:56:50 GMT

Can writing books become a real source of income? And does choosing self-publishing instead of traditional publishing change how much you can earn?

In 2023, the Alliance of Independent Authors published one of the most detailed income surveys ever conducted among self-published authors. The headline numbers were striking.

Median annual revenue of $12,749.
Average revenue of $82,607.
Almost 18% of respondents reporting more than $100,000.

But those figures need context before they mean anything useful. The survey did not cover the average person who had uploaded one book. It focused on authors who spent more than half their working time on writing and publishing.

Here is what the numbers actually say, and what they do not.

Source: The Alliance of Independent Authors, Independent Author Income Survey 2023.

The ALLi Survey at a Glance

Finding Number Median gross revenue $12,749 Average gross revenue $82,607 Earned $1,000 or less About 23% Earned $20,000 or less 56% Earned more than $50,000 28% Earned more than $100,000 Almost 18% Earned more than $1 million 1.2%

How Much Did Indie Authors Earn?

The median gross revenue for the surveyed authors in 2022 was $12,749.

The median is the middle figure. Half the authors in the survey earned more than that and half earned less. When incomes are spread unevenly, the median gives a more honest picture than the average.

The average, or mean, was $82,607.

That gap needs an explanation. You calculate the mean by adding up all reported revenues and dividing by the number of respondents. A small number of very high earners can pull that number up significantly. In this survey, 1.2% of respondents reported revenue above $1 million. Those very high earners helped pull the average far above the median.

So $82,607 is not a false number, but it is not what a typical survey respondent earned. The median of $12,749 gives a better picture of the middle respondent in this survey.

How Were Earnings Distributed?

The full spread of numbers matters more than either headline figure on its own.

Almost one in four surveyed authors, about 23%, reported no more than $1,000 in annual revenue. That includes 2.5% who reported earning nothing at all.

Fifty-six percent of respondents earned $20,000 or less before costs. Even among authors who had committed most of their working time to writing and publishing, most were still below that threshold.

At the same time, a meaningful group was doing significantly better. Twenty-eight percent reported revenue above $50,000. Almost 18%, or roughly one in six respondents, reported gross revenue above $100,000.

This is not a profession where everyone earns about the same. It is one where outcomes vary enormously. Some respondents had built substantial publishing businesses. Many others earned meaningful side income but had not yet reached full-time income levels.

Does Revenue Mean Profit?

This is the most important qualification in the whole survey, and it is easy to miss.

Every figure above measures gross revenue, meaning total earnings before any costs are deducted.

Indie authors cover their own production costs. Editing, cover design, formatting, advertising, software, and sometimes audiobook production or assistants all come out of that revenue figure. An author reporting $50,000 in gross revenue may keep substantially less after expenses and taxes.

That does not make the numbers useless. It means you should read them as publishing business revenue, not take-home pay.

Were These Typical Self-Published Authors?

No. This is the second qualification worth keeping in mind.

More than half of the surveyed authors had already published over ten books. One in five had published more than thirty. These were, generally, more committed and established than the wider population of self-published authors.

Commercial fiction dominated the sample. Romance, speculative fiction, and crime or thriller titles accounted for 57% of the authors’ primary genres. These genres are strongly represented in commercial self-publishing and often support frequent reading and long series.

The $12,749 median is not beginner income. A new author publishing their first book should not use it as a benchmark for year one.

Do Indie Authors Earn More Than Traditional Authors?

The ALLi survey gives much stronger data on indie authors than on traditionally published authors, so any comparison here is useful but limited.

ALLi compared its $12,749 indie median with a reported median of $8,600 for traditionally published authors who also spent more than half their working time on writing. On paper, the indie figure was about 48% higher.

That difference is worth noting, but the two figures came from separate surveys conducted under different conditions. They suggest that committed indie authors can earn competitively with traditionally published authors at the median level. They do not prove that any individual author would earn 48% more by switching paths.

The two routes also work differently in ways the income figures alone do not capture. Indie authors generally keep a larger share of each ebook sale, though the exact percentage depends on the platform, price, and market. They also control pricing and release schedules and retain their rights.

A legitimate traditional publisher normally covers core production costs, including editing, design, and printing, although authors may still spend their own money on promotion. The publisher also carries the main production and inventory risk, while the author gives up some control and a larger share of each sale.

What Did Higher-Earning Indie Authors Have in Common?

The survey did not test causes directly, but a few patterns showed up consistently among higher earners.

Catalogue size was one of the clearest patterns. Authors with more books had more products generating income at the same time.

Genre also stood out. Authors in romance, thriller, crime, and speculative fiction may have an advantage, since readers in these genres often buy frequently and follow series closely.

Time in the business mattered too. Authors who had published for several years had more time to build readership and refine what worked for them.

The pattern is association, not proof. It suggests that treating publishing as a long-term business, rather than a single book, tends to go along with stronger results.

Which Route Should You Choose?

Indie publishing may suit you if you plan to publish several books, write commercial fiction, want control over pricing and rights, and are willing to manage marketing and costs yourself.

Traditional publishing may suit you if you value bookstore distribution, publisher-funded production, an advance, and less responsibility for the business side of publishing. Neither route is financially better for every author.

What the Numbers Actually Mean

The ALLi survey shows that self-publishing can produce real professional income, but it also shows how uneven author earnings are. The median respondent reported $12,749 in gross annual revenue. Fifty-six percent earned $20,000 or less, while almost 18% reported more than $100,000.

These were not typical first-time authors. More than half had published over ten books, one in five had published over thirty, and most spent the majority of their working time on writing and publishing.

The survey suggests indie authors can compete financially with traditionally published authors, and some can earn substantially more. But indie publishing also requires authors to cover their own costs, manage their business, and accept the risk that a book may not sell.

The better route depends on what you want.

Traditional publishing offers an advance, professional production, and stronger bookstore access. Indie publishing offers control, higher earnings per sale, and long-term ownership.

Neither guarantees an income.

Both require time, good books, and readers willing to buy them.

Why Passion Is a Terrible Business Strategy for Writers - How Writing "The Book of Your Heart" is the Fastest Way to Stay Broke?

Chase Austin — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:36:34 GMT

The most expensive advice in publishing is also the most common: write what you love.

Here’s what nobody tells you: your personal catharsis doesn’t have a market cap. The market is not your therapist. If you write for therapy, you pay the therapist.

If you write for a customer, the customer pays you. Right now, you’re trying to get the therapist to pay you for the privilege of listening to your problems.

You want to write for a living?

Then you need to stop thinking like an artist and start thinking like a business owner.

That doesn’t mean selling out. It means understanding that the market is not obligated to care about what you care about.

The Narcissism of “Write What You Love”

Let’s be clear about what “write what you love” actually means in practice.

It means writing a 150,000-word cross-genre experimental literary thriller with magical realism elements because you found the concept intellectually stimulating. It means ignoring every signal the market is sending because you’ve decided your vision is more important than reader expectations. It means spending three years on a passion project and then being shocked when nobody buys it.

You’re not Cormac McCarthy. You’re not Toni Morrison. You don’t have the luxury of writing whatever you want and having publishers throw money at you because your name alone moves units. You’re starting from zero. And at zero, the market decides if you get to keep playing.

The writers who succeed understand this. They don’t write whatever random idea excites them on Tuesday morning. They look at what readers are buying, identify the gaps and opportunities, and write books designed to meet existing demand. Then, once they’ve built an audience and income, they can afford to write the weird experimental stuff.

But you’re doing it backwards. You’re writing the weird experimental stuff first, hoping it will magically find an audience, and wondering why you’re still broke after five years.

The answer is simple: you never asked if anyone wanted it.

The “Hungry Crowd” Theory

Every successful business starts with the same question: where is the demand?

Not “what do I want to make?” but “what are people already trying to buy?”

In genre fiction, this is embarrassingly easy to figure out. Readers are not shy about what they want. They congregate in subgenres. They devour tropes. They leave reviews explicitly stating what they loved and what they wish the author had done differently.

Romance readers want the mate bond, the forced proximity, the grumpy/sunshine dynamic. Thriller readers want the ticking clock, the conspiracy, the morally compromised protagonist. Cozy mystery readers want the small-town setting, the amateur sleuth, the cat.

These are not creative limitations. They’re instructions. The market is telling you exactly what it will pay for. Your job is to deliver it competently and consistently.

But you won’t do that. You’ll decide you’re going to “subvert the trope” or “bring literary depth to the genre” or “challenge reader expectations.” And then you’ll be confused when your book sells 83 copies.

You didn’t subvert anything. You just ignored the customer.

In any other industry, this would be obvious malpractice. If you opened a pizza restaurant and decided to serve only deconstructed pizza because you thought traditional pizza was too predictable, you’d go out of business. Your innovation doesn’t matter if nobody orders it.

Fiction is the same. Readers have preferences. Those preferences create demand. Demand creates income. If you ignore demand because you think your taste is more refined than the market’s, you’re not an artist. You’re unemployed.

Where Your Interest Meets Profitable Demand

Here’s the only question that matters: where does what you’re willing to write overlap with what customers are actively buying?

Think of it as two circles. One circle is genres and tropes you can write competently without hating your life. The other circle is genres and tropes with proven demand, reasonable competition, and actual money flowing through them.

The overlap is your business. Everything outside that overlap is a hobby.

If the circles don’t touch at all, you don’t have a misalignment problem with the market. You have a business model problem. And hobbies cost money. They don’t make it.

This is not a moral judgment. Hobbies are fine. But stop calling it a career. Stop complaining that readers “don’t appreciate quality” or that the market is “broken.” The market is working exactly as designed. It’s rewarding the people who give it what it wants.

You’re the one with the misalignment problem.

The successful writers I know all started the same way. They made a list of genres they could write competently. Then they researched which of those genres had strong demand, low competition, and decent monetization. Then they wrote to that intersection.

Not to the thing they loved most. To the thing they could tolerate that also had buyers.

One writer I know wanted to write epic fantasy. But epic fantasy is crowded, and the launch costs are brutal because the books are long and the series commitments are heavy. So he looked at adjacent markets. He found LitRPG. Shorter books. Faster release schedules. Ravenous audience. He wrote six LitRPG novels in two years, built an income, and now he’s writing the epic fantasy series he always wanted. He can afford to because the LitRPG backlist pays his bills.

He didn’t compromise. He sequenced.

Profit First, Passion Second

This is the law nobody wants to hear: you fund the book of your heart with the book the market wants.

You’re not abandoning your passion project. You’re putting it in a high-yield savings account until you can afford to withdraw it. The commercial books you write first are not a betrayal. They’re the foundation that lets you build the house you actually want.

But you’re trying to build the house in midair and calling it vision.

Chris Fox, an indie author who built his career by analyzing market trends and writing to proven demand, made this his entire strategy. He looked at what was selling, wrote competent books that delivered on those expectations, and used the income to fund the projects he cared about more deeply. His book “Write to Market” is not about selling out. It’s about understanding that writing is a business, and businesses require revenue to survive.

But you don’t want to hear that. You want to believe that if you just write something good enough, the market will find you. That’s not how markets work. Markets respond to demand, not quality. Quality helps you retain readers once you have them. But demand is what gets them in the door.

If you’re writing in a genre with no demand, your quality is irrelevant. Nobody’s looking.

The Craftsmanship Argument

Here’s the pushback I always get: “If I don’t love it, the writing will be bad.”

No. If you don’t respect the craft, the writing will be bad. Love is not a requirement for competence.

A professional plumber doesn’t need to “love” your pipes to fix them. They need to understand the system. They need to respect the work. They need to deliver a result that functions.

You can write a solid paranormal romance without being personally moved by the fated mate trope. You can write a competent thriller without caring deeply about geopolitical conspiracies. You just need to understand what the trope promises, respect the readers who love it, and deliver it well.

This is craftsmanship. It’s not passion. It’s not inspiration. It’s professional competence applied to a marketable template.

And here’s the part that surprises people: once you start doing it, you often find elements you do enjoy. Not because the trope itself converted you, but because solving the structural problems is satisfying. Making a reluctant billionaire romance work despite your initial skepticism is a craft challenge. And craft challenges are interesting.

You don’t have to love the genre. You have to respect the readers enough to give them what they came for.

The Tradeoff Nobody Mentions

If you write to demand, you will have to write things you wouldn’t choose to read. You’ll have to include tropes you find predictable. You’ll have to follow genre conventions you think are limiting.

That’s the tradeoff. You get income and audience in exchange for some creative autonomy.

For most writers, this is unacceptable. They’d rather stay broke than write a book they wouldn’t personally enjoy. And that’s fine. But then they need to stop pretending they’re trying to build a career. They’re protecting an identity. Those are different goals, and they require different strategies.

If your goal is income, you optimize for market fit. If your goal is self-expression, you optimize for personal satisfaction. You can’t do both at the same time unless you happen to love the exact thing the market wants, which almost never happens at the beginning.

The writers who make it are the ones who can tolerate the dissonance. They write the market-driven books to pay the bills, and they write the passion projects on the side or later, when they can afford the risk.

The ones who don’t make it are the ones who insist on writing only what they love, regardless of demand, and then blame the market when it doesn’t reward them.

The Real-World Proof

Look at any writer who broke through in the last decade. Not the literary darlings with MFA degrees and New York connections. The self-published authors who built audiences from nothing.

Most of them didn’t start with the book of their heart. They started with the book the market wanted. They looked at trends, identified demand, and delivered competent genre fiction that met reader expectations.

Romance authors who wrote billionaire romances during the billionaire boom. Thriller writers who wrote domestic suspense during the “Gone Girl” wave. Fantasy authors who jumped on LitRPG or progression fantasy when those subgenres exploded.

They caught the wave. Then they used the momentum to write what they wanted.

The ones still struggling? They ignored the waves. They wrote what they loved and hoped the market would notice. It didn’t.

This is not cynicism. It’s pattern recognition. Markets reward alignment, not originality. Once you have an audience, you can push boundaries. Before that, you’re just another unknown author asking strangers to care about your vision.

They won’t. Not unless your vision happens to align with what they’re already looking for.

The Uncomfortable Question

So here it is.

If you could write a book you’re only moderately interested in, but it would sell 10,000 copies and generate $20,000 in royalties, would you do it?

Or would you rather write the book you’re deeply passionate about, knowing it will sell 200 copies and make $400?

Your answer to that question tells you whether you’re trying to build a business or protect an identity.

Neither is wrong. But only one pays the rent.

If you want a career, you need to stop writing for yourself and start writing for the customer. That doesn’t mean you abandon your voice. It means you point it at a market that’s already listening.

The book of your heart can wait. The bills can’t.

Join Pro Author Empire For Free for more such articles, Author Case Studies and Long form reports - www.patreon.com/cw/ProAuthorHQ

Who Am I?

I’m a stay-at-home dad and a full-time author who writes for the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Germany markets.

Six-figure author (in USD)
30+ published fiction books
Multiple-time Amazon bestseller
No courses. No guru funnels. Just real publishing experience.

I don’t teach people how to write. I help writers figure out why their books aren’t selling and what to do about it.

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Stop Polishing Your Novel. Nobody Is Waiting for It

Chase Austin — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 14:35:38 GMT

You know what kills more writing careers than rejection letters?

A third rewrite of chapter one.

That thing you’re working on right now, the manuscript you’ve been “perfecting” for three years, is not the Sistine Chapel. It’s a product. A product is not a compromise. It’s a promise. And like any product, it needs to meet the market before you know if it’s worth the materials you used to build it.

A solitary writer chisels an unfinished stone book in a shadowed studio, mistaking endless refinement for progress while the world waits outside.

But you won’t do that. You’ll keep rewriting the first chapter. You’ll agonize over whether your protagonist’s backstory needs another flashback. You’ll workshop the same 80,000 words until they’re so smooth and lifeless they could pass for corporate email. And when you finally release it into the world, exhausted and broke, you’ll discover that nobody wanted it in the first place.

Not because it was bad. Because it was irrelevant.

The “Precious” Trap

Every day you spend “polishing” is a day you don’t have to face the market. Every beta reader session, every craft book, every Reddit thread about comma placement is another brick in the wall between you and the thing that actually matters, which is whether anyone will pay money to read what you wrote.

Here’s the part that stings: you’re not “perfecting” your art. You’re working for free. For a boss who doesn’t have a business plan. That boss is your ego, and it’s been paying you in delusion for three years.

Calculate your hourly rate as if you were a contractor. Now multiply it by the hours you’ve spent revising. That’s the capital you’ve sunk into a product you haven’t validated. Yes, art is not SaaS. But time is still capital, and you’re spending it blind. And you’re calling it discipline.

Writers in other industries figured this out decades ago. Software developers don’t spend four years building version 1.0 in a basement and then unveil it to the world. They ship the minimum viable product, watch how people use it, and iterate based on real data. Early versions shipped missing obvious features. They still shipped.

They tested. They pivoted. They survived.

You’re still in the workshop with the doors locked.

And the worst part? You think this makes you serious. You think the writers publishing three books a year are hacks, that they’re sacrificing quality for quantity, that real art takes time. Maybe. But real careers take income. Real audiences take consistency. And real feedback requires putting something in front of actual readers, not people who already want you to succeed.

The Manufacturing Mindset

In every other creative industry, you validate demand before scaling production. You don’t build a factory to manufacture a product nobody ordered. You test the concept. You run a pilot. You sell pre-orders.

Fiction writers do the opposite. We build the entire cathedral before checking if anyone wants to worship there.

Why?

Because we’ve been sold a mythology. The mythology says great books are born from long gestation periods, that Tolkien spent decades on Middle Earth, that literary genius requires isolation and time. What the mythology doesn’t mention is survivorship bias. For every Tolkien, there are ten thousand writers who spent decades on a manuscript nobody read, then gave up.

The ones who made it weren’t just talented. They were in the right place with the right book at the right time. And most of them wrote multiple books before they hit. Tolkien published “The Hobbit” first. It wasn’t his magnum opus. It was his market test.

Treat your first book like a prototype, not a pension plan.

Here’s what that looks like in practice: you write a 70,000-word genre novel. Not your life story. Not the book of your heart. A competent, complete story that delivers on a genre promise. You get it clean enough that it doesn’t embarrass you. Then you publish it.

Not after one more round of edits. Not after you find the perfect cover designer. Not after you save up for a publicity campaign. Now.

Then you watch what happens.

If readers bounce at chapter three, you know your hook is broken. If they finish but don’t buy book two, you know your story worked but your series concept didn’t. If nobody buys it at all, you know the market doesn’t want what you’re selling, and you can pivot before you waste two more years writing books nobody asked for.

This is not about lowering your standards. It’s about raising your awareness of what standards actually matter.

Data Over Drama

The rapid release model is not a productivity hack. It’s a feedback loop.

If you publish one book every three years, you get one data point every three years. That’s not enough information to build a career on. You’re flying blind, making huge time investments based on hunches and hope.

If you publish three books in one year, you get three data points. Three opportunities to see what resonates. Three chances to course-correct before you’ve burned half a decade chasing the wrong audience.

This terrifies people because it exposes you to failure faster. And it should. Failure is information. The longer you delay it, the more expensive it becomes.

I know a writer who spent six years on a trilogy. Literary fantasy. Beautiful prose. Complex world-building. He released book one and sold 47 copies. Not 47,000. Forty-seven. He was devastated. He still hasn’t written book two.

If he’d written that first book in six months, published it, seen the numbers, and pivoted? He’d have a backlist by now. Maybe one of those books would have hit. Probably several would have done better than 47 copies. At minimum, he’d know what doesn’t work.

Instead, he knows what it feels like to watch six years evaporate.

The math is brutal but simple: speed protects you from catastrophic loss. A bad book that took four months to write is a setback. A bad book that took four years is a career ender.

Here’s another pattern you’ll recognize. The author who releases one or two books, sees mediocre sales, and concludes “traditional publishing is dead” or “readers don’t appreciate quality anymore.” Then they retreat to their ivory tower and spend another three years on the next book, convinced that this time, if they just make it good enough, the market will notice.

They never release book three. They didn’t fail because their writing was bad. They failed because they were optimizing for perfection in a system that rewards iteration.

The Beta Reader Delusion

Let’s talk about your feedback loop.

You think beta readers represent the market. They don’t. Beta readers give you vibes. Amazon customers give you dollars. One of these is a metric. The other is a social interaction.

Your beta readers are polite. They’re invested in you as a person. They want to encourage you. Even when they’re critical, they’re critiquing the manuscript they wished you’d written, not evaluating whether the manuscript you did write is marketable.

They’ll tell you the protagonist needs more depth. The market won’t reward it if your hook and promise are weak. They’ll praise your lyrical prose. They won’t mention that your opening hook is weaker than the twenty other books in your subgenre that released this month.

Beta readers are not useless. But they’re not the market. They’re a focus group for a product that doesn’t exist yet. The market is a transaction. People voting with money, not goodwill.

If you want to know if your book works, you need to put it in front of strangers who have no reason to lie to you. That means publishing it.

The Pivot

Failing fast doesn’t mean failing carelessly. It means building systems that let you change direction without losing momentum.

In genre fiction, this is easier than most writers think. Your readers don’t want you to reinvent the wheel every time. They want the wheel to roll smoothly in a direction they enjoy. If your paranormal romance series about werewolf mechanics isn’t landing, but you’re getting comments about the side character who’s a vampire barista, you don’t need to abandon everything. You adjust.

Write the vampire barista book. Keep the tone. Keep the heat level. Keep the world. Change the angle.

This is not selling out. This is listening.

The alternative is what most writers do, which is double down on the thing that isn’t working because they’re “committed to the vision.” Vision doesn’t pay rent. Vision doesn’t build an audience. Resonance does.

And you can’t find resonance without putting multiple products in front of multiple readers and seeing what sticks.

Here’s the part nobody says out loud: most of your early books will be mediocre. Not because you’re a bad writer. Because you’re learning what the market wants, and the only way to learn that is by getting it wrong a few times.

The faster you get those mediocre books out of your system, the faster you get to the good ones.

The Real-World Proof

Dakota Krout didn’t build Mountaindale Press by perfecting a manuscript for a decade. He caught the LitRPG wave early, wrote fast, published frequently, and paid attention to what readers wanted. His early books were not flawless. They were timely. They hit a market that was starving for content, and he fed it.

By the time other writers were still “developing their voice,” he had a publishing company.

Could he have spent five years polishing his first book into something more literary, more prestigious, more critically acclaimed? Sure. And by the time he finished, the LitRPG boom would have been over. Someone else would have built Mountaindale Press. He’d still be workshopping chapter one.

Speed was not his compromise. It was his advantage.

Or take the romance author who released eight books in eighteen months. The first four barely sold. Book five hit. Not spectacularly, but enough to pull algorithms and visibility toward the backlist. By month twenty, all eight books were earning. She didn’t know book five would be the one. She just knew she needed enough at-bats to find out which pitch worked.

If she’d spent eighteen months on book one, waiting for perfection, she’d still be unpublished and wondering why her “best work” never got traction.

This pattern repeats across every breakout author in genre fiction. They didn’t wait for perfection. They wrote, published, learned, adjusted, and wrote again. The market told them what worked. They listened.

The writers who disappeared? They were still polishing in rooms with no windows.

The Framework: Reverence vs. Feedback

Here’s the decision model you need.

Every hour you spend on a manuscript falls into one of two categories: Reverence or Feedback.

Reverence is any activity that delays market contact. Rewriting prose that’s already functional. Perfecting a subplot that might get cut. Researching details past the point where the reader can tell the difference. This feels productive. It’s not. It’s risk accumulation.

Feedback is any activity that gets information from the market. Publishing. Testing covers, blurbs, and hooks with paid traffic. Releasing the next book to see if book one’s readers convert. This feels reckless. It’s not. It’s risk mitigation.

The trap is that Reverence feels like progress because you’re making the manuscript “better.” But better than what? Better than the version that already meets genre standards? Or better than nothing, which is what happens when you never publish?

Most writers live in Reverence. The ones who break through spend more of their time chasing Feedback. They ship faster. They learn faster. They fail cheaper.

You don’t need more craft books. You need more data.

What This Actually Requires

Treating your book as an MVP doesn’t mean shipping garbage. It means shipping something that meets the core promise of your genre without trying to also be a work of transcendent literary genius.

Here’s the one thing that must be right: the book has to deliver on its genre contract. If it’s a thriller, it needs to thrill. If it’s a romance, the relationship arc needs to land. If it’s fantasy, the world needs to be coherent enough that readers aren’t confused.

That’s it. That’s the bar.

Can your thriller keep someone awake past their bedtime? Does your romance deliver the emotional payoff the cover promises? Is your fantasy world consistent enough that readers aren’t thrown out of the story?

Good. Publish it.

The sentence-level craft, the thematic depth, the subtle foreshadowing in chapter two that pays off in chapter twenty-eight? That comes later. That comes after you know anyone cares.

You’re not writing for posterity. You’re writing for people who have a thousand other books they could read right now. Your job is to be good enough, fast enough, often enough that they choose you.

And then you get better.

But you can’t get better in isolation. You get better by writing more books, publishing them, and seeing what the actual humans who read them respond to. Not what your internal editor thinks they should respond to. What they do respond to.

This requires humility. It requires accepting that your taste might not match the market’s taste, and that’s not a moral failing. It’s just information.

The Uncomfortable Question

So here it is.

If you knew, right now, that the book you’ve been working on for three years would sell 200 copies and then disappear, would you still finish it?

If the answer is yes, stop pretending you’re building a career. You’re protecting an identity. That’s fine, but it’s expensive, and you should at least be honest about the price.

But if the answer is no, if you’re writing because you want readers and income and some proof that the last decade wasn’t wasted, then you need to ask yourself why you’re still treating your manuscript like a museum piece instead of a product.

You have two choices. Keep polishing until it’s perfect and nobody cares. Or ship it, learn from it, and write the next one faster.

The writers you admire? Most of them chose the second option. They just don’t talk about it because it’s not romantic.

Your book is not a masterpiece. It’s a test. Run it.

—

10 Passive Income Ideas to Increase Your Earnings in 2024

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 19:29:25 GMT

Introduction to Passive Income

In an era where financial security and independence are more sought after than ever, the concept of passive income has gained unprecedented momentum. As we step into 2024, the quest for earning streams that do not require active, day-to-day involvement has become a pivotal aspect of financial planning. Passive income, in its essence, is money earned with minimal activity, often stemming from previous efforts or investments that continue to pay off over time. This kind of income is especially appealing because it can provide financial stability and freedom, allowing individuals to focus on their passions, hobbies, or even further income-generating ventures.

The allure of passive income lies in its potential to generate earnings continuously, often with little additional effort after the initial setup. It's a way to break free from the traditional 9-to-5 work structure, offering a more flexible lifestyle while still ensuring a steady income flow. In 2024, the landscape of passive income has evolved, embracing new technologies and markets, making it accessible to a wider audience than ever before.

From digital innovation to smart investments, the scope of passive income has broadened, offering various paths that cater to different skills, interests, and investment levels. In this article, we delve into 11 lucrative passive income ideas that can help you increase your earnings in 2024. These ideas are designed to guide you through the myriad of options available, whether you're a tech enthusiast, a creative mind, or someone with a knack for investments. With each idea, we'll explore how to get started, the potential returns, and the level of involvement required, ensuring you have all the information needed to embark on your passive income journey.

Digital Products and Online Courses

Harnessing the Digital Marketplace

The digital marketplace in 2024 is more vibrant and accessible than ever, offering immense opportunities for creators to generate passive income through digital products and online courses. This segment revolves around creating valuable content or tools once, and then selling them multiple times without incurring additional costs.

1. Identifying Your Niche

The key to success in this realm lies in identifying a niche that you are passionate about and that others are willing to pay for. This could range from eBooks on specialized subjects, graphic design templates, software tools, to comprehensive online courses. The idea is to leverage your expertise or skills in a particular area, creating content that is both unique and in demand.

2. Creating High-Quality Content

Once you’ve pinpointed your niche, the next step is to create high-quality, engaging content. This could involve writing an eBook, designing digital templates, developing a software tool, or recording a series of instructional videos for your course. It’s crucial to focus on delivering value; the more your product helps solve a problem or provides sought-after information, the more successful it will be.

3. Platforms for Selling and Distribution

With your digital product or course ready, the next phase is to choose the right platform for selling. Websites like Udemy, Coursera, or Teachable are excellent for online courses, while Etsy or Gumroad are ideal for other digital products. These platforms not only provide a marketplace with a built-in audience but also handle much of the administrative work, such as payments and distribution.

4. Marketing and Scaling

Marketing your product is critical. Utilize social media, email newsletters, and content marketing to reach your target audience. Customer testimonials, reviews, and engaging content related to your product can also boost its visibility and appeal. As your product gains traction, consider scaling by adding more courses or products, thus increasing your potential income.

5. Passive Revenue Stream

Once established, digital products and online courses can provide a significant passive income stream. While some maintenance and updates may be required, the bulk of the work is done upfront, allowing you to earn while focusing on other projects or enjoying leisure time.

Investing in Stocks and Dividends

In 2024, the stock market continues to be a lucrative avenue for generating passive income, especially through dividend-bearing stocks. This method involves investing in companies that pay out a portion of their profits to shareholders, providing a steady income stream.

1. Understanding Dividend Stocks

Dividend stocks are shares in companies that regularly distribute a portion of their earnings to shareholders. These dividends are typically paid quarterly and can be a reliable source of passive income. The key is to invest in stable companies with a history of consistent dividend payouts.

2. Research and Diversification

Before investing, thorough research is crucial. Look for companies with strong financial health, a track record of dividend payments, and potential for growth. Diversification is also important; spreading your investments across various sectors and companies can minimize risks.

3. Reinvesting Dividends

One effective strategy is the reinvestment of dividends. Instead of taking

the cash payouts, you can opt to reinvest these dividends to purchase more shares in the company. This approach, known as a Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP), can significantly enhance your investment portfolio's value over time, benefiting from the power of compounding.

4. Utilizing Investment Platforms

In 2024, there are numerous user-friendly investment platforms and apps that simplify the process of buying stocks and tracking dividends. These platforms offer tools for portfolio management, dividend forecasts, and automated investment options, making it easier for both beginners and experienced investors to engage in the stock market.

5. Long-Term Growth and Stability

Investing in dividend stocks is typically a long-term strategy. While the stock market can be volatile, dividend stocks often represent established, financially stable companies less prone to market fluctuations. This makes them a relatively safe option for earning passive income, providing both growth potential and financial stability.

Rental Properties and Real Estate Investments

Exploring Real Estate as a Passive Income Source in 2024

The real estate market in 2024 remains a robust avenue for generating passive income, particularly through rental properties. This method involves purchasing property and renting it out to tenants, thereby creating a steady stream of income.

1. Understanding the Rental Market

Successful real estate investment starts with a deep understanding of the rental market. This includes knowing the types of properties in demand, desirable locations, and average rental prices. Pay attention to market trends, demographic shifts, and economic factors that can influence rental demand.

2. Choosing the Right Property

Selecting the right property is critical. Look for locations with high rental demand, such as near universities, business districts, or tourist attractions. Consider the property's condition, potential maintenance costs, and the possibility for value appreciation over time.

3. Financing and Purchasing

Financing is a crucial aspect of real estate investment. Explore different financing options, including mortgages, real estate investment trusts (REITs), or partnering with other investors. Ensure that the rental income will cover mortgage payments, maintenance costs, and still yield a profit.

4. Property Management and Maintenance

Owning rental properties requires ongoing management and maintenance. You can choose to manage the property yourself or hire a property management company. Effective management includes finding and vetting tenants, maintaining the property, and handling any legal aspects of renting.

5. Scaling and Diversification

As you grow more comfortable in the real estate market, consider scaling your investments. This could mean purchasing additional properties or diversifying into different types of real estate, such as commercial properties or vacation rentals. Scaling and diversification can increase your passive income and mitigate risks.

Affiliate Marketing and Blogging

Leveraging Online Platforms for Passive Income in 2024

In 2024, affiliate marketing combined with blogging remains a powerful strategy for generating passive income. This approach involves promoting products or services on your blog or website and earning a commission for every sale made through your referral.

1. Starting a Blog or Website

The first step is to create a blog or website focused on a specific niche or topic that interests you and appeals to a specific audience. Your platform should provide valuable content that attracts and engages readers. The more targeted and engaged your audience, the more successful your affiliate marketing efforts will be.

2. Choosing Affiliate Programs

Select affiliate programs that align with your niche and your audience's interests. Popular platforms like Amazon Associates, ClickBank, or Commission Junction offer a wide range of products and services to promote. Look for products that you trust and would recommend to your readers.

3. Creating Quality Content

Content is king in the world of blogging and affiliate marketing. Create high-quality, informative, and engaging content that naturally incorporates your affiliate links. This could be in the form of product reviews, tutorials, or informative articles related to the products you are promoting.

4. Driving Traffic and SEO

Driving traffic to your blog is crucial. Utilize search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to improve your site's visibility on search engines. Additionally, leverage social media, email marketing, and networking with other bloggers to increase your audience reach.

5. Monetizing and Scaling

Once your blog starts receiving traffic, and your affiliate links are generating sales, focus on scaling. This can involve expanding your content, exploring additional affiliate programs, or even creating your own products or services to complement your affiliate offerings.

Peer-to-Peer Lending and Crowdfunding Platforms

Innovative Financial Avenues in 2024

In 2024, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and crowdfunding platforms have emerged as innovative ways to generate passive income. These platforms connect individuals who need funding with those who are looking to invest, providing a unique opportunity for investors to earn interest on their loans or to benefit from the success of crowdfunded projects.

1. Understanding P2P Lending

P2P lending platforms allow individuals to lend money directly to others, bypassing traditional banking institutions. As a lender, you can fund a portion of a borrower's request and earn interest on the loan. The key is to diversify your investments across multiple loans to spread risk.

2. Selecting Reliable Platforms

Choosing the right platform is crucial. Look for platforms with a strong track record, transparent operations, and good user reviews. Consider factors like default rates, the platform's method of vetting borrowers, and the types of loans available.

3. Investing in Crowdfunding Projects

Crowdfunding platforms offer the chance to invest in a variety of projects, from startups to real estate. By investing in these projects, you can earn returns either in the form of interest payments, equity, or even revenue sharing, depending on the project's nature.

4. Risk Management

While P2P lending and crowdfunding can offer higher returns, they also come with higher risks. It's important to thoroughly research and understand the risks involved. Diversify your investments across different loans and projects to mitigate potential losses.

5. Passive Income Potential

Both P2P lending and crowdfunding can provide a steady stream of passive income. These investments typically require an upfront capital investment, but once made, they can yield returns over time with little active management.

Creating an App or Software

Tapping into the Tech Market in 2024

In the ever-evolving tech landscape of 2024, creating an app or software presents a significant opportunity for generating passive income. This venture involves developing a digital tool or application that meets a specific need or interest, then monetizing it.

1. Ideation and Market Research

The first step is ideation — coming up with an app or software idea that fulfills a unique requirement or improves upon existing solutions. Conduct thorough market research to validate your idea, understand your target audience, and identify your competition.

2. Design and Development

Once your idea is solidified, move on to design and development. This can be a technical process, involving aspects like user interface design, programming, and testing. If you're not a developer, you can hire professionals or use app-building platforms that require minimal coding.

3. Monetization Strategies

There are several ways to monetize your app or software, including direct sales, in-app purchases, subscription models, or advertising. Choose a monetization strategy that aligns with your target audience and the functionality of your app.

4. Launch and Marketing

Launching your app or software involves submitting it to app stores and creating a marketing plan. Utilize social media, content marketing, and app store optimization (ASO) to increase visibility and attract users.

5. Maintenance and Updates

After the launch, ongoing maintenance and regular updates are crucial to keep your app relevant and functional. This ensures user satisfaction and can lead to more downloads and increased revenue over time.

Dropshipping and E-commerce

Capitalizing on Online Retail in 2024

The realm of online retail continues to flourish in 2024, and dropshipping stands as a prominent model for generating passive income. This approach involves selling products online without the need to manage inventory or handle shipping, as these tasks are handled by a third-party supplier.

1. Understanding Dropshipping

Dropshipping is an e-commerce model where you create an online store and partner with suppliers who fulfill orders directly to customers. You don't keep the products in stock; instead, you transfer customer orders and shipment details to the supplier, who then ships the products directly to the customer.

2. Niche Selection and Market Research

Choosing the right niche is crucial in the dropshipping business. Conduct thorough market research to identify trending products, understand your target audience, and analyze competition. A well-defined niche can significantly enhance your store's appeal and profitability.

3. Building an E-commerce Platform

Create an online store using e-commerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce. These platforms offer user-friendly interfaces, customizable templates, and various tools to manage your store efficiently. Ensure your website is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and optimized for conversions.

4. Partnering with Reliable Suppliers

Partner with reliable suppliers who can provide quality products and efficient shipping. Establishing a good relationship with your suppliers is vital for ensuring product availability, timely deliveries, and handling returns or exchanges.

5. Marketing and Customer Service

Effective marketing is key to driving traffic to your store. Utilize social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and email marketing to attract customers. Additionally, providing excellent customer service is crucial for building trust and encouraging repeat business.

Royalties from Intellectual Property

Earning Through Creativity in 2024

In 2024, earning royalties from intellectual property (IP) remains a viable path for generating passive income. This involves creating original works like books, music, patents, or other creative content and receiving ongoing payments for their use or sale.

1. Types of Intellectual Property

Intellectual property can include various forms of creative works. Authors receive royalties from book sales, musicians from their music streams and sales, and inventors from patents. The key is to produce original content or inventions that hold value and appeal to a specific audience or market.

2. Protecting Your IP

Protecting your intellectual property is crucial. This involves copyrighting your work, trademarking your brand, or patenting your inventions. Ensuring legal protection prevents unauthorized use and guarantees that you receive royalties for your work.

3. Licensing and Publishing

Licensing your IP is one way to earn royalties. This could involve signing a deal with a publishing house, a record label, or a company interested in your patent. The terms of these agreements dictate how royalties are paid and can vary greatly depending on the industry and the popularity of your work.

4. Passive Income Through Sales and Usage

Royalties provide a passive income stream as you earn money each time your work is sold, used, or licensed. For example, every time someone buys your book or streams your song, you receive a portion of the revenue.

5. Long-Term Earning Potential

Intellectual property can provide long-term financial benefits. Once your work is created and protected, it can continue to generate income for years, making it a particularly attractive option for creative individuals looking for sustainable passive income sources.

Automated YouTube Channels and Podcasts

Embracing Digital Media for Passive Income in 2024

In the digital era of 2024, creating automated YouTube channels and podcasts has become a popular way to generate passive income. This approach involves producing content that continues to attract viewers and listeners over time, leading to ongoing ad revenue or sponsorships.

1. Conceptualizing Your Channel or Podcast

Start by conceptualizing a theme or niche for your channel or podcast. This could range from educational content, entertainment, reviews, interviews, or any area that interests you and has an audience. The key is to create content that is both engaging and has the potential for long-term interest.

2. Creating Evergreen Content

Focus on producing 'evergreen' content – material that remains relevant and interesting over time. This ensures that your videos or podcast episodes continue to attract new viewers or listeners long after they are published.

3. Utilizing Automation Tools

Leverage automation tools for scheduling and posting content. Many platforms allow you to pre-record episodes or videos and schedule them for release, ensuring a consistent presence without needing daily management.

4. Monetizing Your Content

Monetize your channel or podcast through various means like ad revenue, sponsorships, or affiliate marketing. Platforms like YouTube have built-in monetization options, while podcast platforms offer opportunities for sponsorships and ads.

5. Building and Engaging with Your Audience

Building a loyal audience is crucial. Engage with your viewers or listeners through comments, social media, and community platforms. An active and engaged audience can significantly boost your channel's or podcast's popularity and income potential.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Investments

Exploring Digital Assets for Passive Income in 2024

In 2024, the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology offers intriguing opportunities for passive income. These digital assets and technologies have matured, presenting various ways to invest and earn.

1. Cryptocurrency Investments

Investing in cryptocurrencies can be a way to generate passive income, especially through methods like 'staking' or earning interest on crypto holdings. Staking involves holding funds in a cryptocurrency wallet to support the operations of a blockchain network, in return for which you earn rewards.

2. Blockchain Projects and Tokens

Another avenue is investing in specific blockchain projects or purchasing utility tokens. These investments can appreciate in value and may also offer dividends or a share in the project's revenue.

3. Navigating Volatility and Risk

The crypto market is known for its volatility. It’s crucial to conduct thorough research, understand the risks involved, and only invest what you can afford to lose. Diversification across different cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects can help mitigate these risks.

4. Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

DeFi platforms offer another way to earn passive income through cryptocurrency. These platforms allow you to lend your crypto or participate in liquidity pools, earning interest or a portion of transaction fees in return.

5. Staying Informed and Compliant

The cryptocurrency world is rapidly evolving, so staying informed about market trends, regulatory changes, and technological advancements is important. Additionally, understanding and complying with tax laws related to cryptocurrency investments is crucial.

Conclusion

The landscape of passive income in 2024 is diverse and brimming with opportunities. From leveraging digital products and diving into the stock market to exploring the realms of real estate, affiliate marketing, and the innovative world of cryptocurrencies, the possibilities are vast. Each of these avenues offers unique benefits and requires different levels of involvement and expertise.

The key to success in generating passive income lies in choosing the right avenue that aligns with your interests, skills, and financial goals. Whether it's creating content for automated digital platforms, investing in dividend stocks, or venturing into the ever-evolving world of blockchain technology, each method has the potential to provide financial security and freedom.

As we move further into the digital age, staying informed, adaptable, and proactive in financial planning is essential. Remember, the journey to building passive income streams is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires patience, research, and sometimes an appetite for risk. But with the right approach and mindset, the rewards can be substantial and long-lasting.

In conclusion, the future of passive income in 2024 is exciting and full of potential. By carefully selecting and managing your passive income streams, you can achieve greater financial stability and enjoy the freedom to pursue your passions and interests.

Thank you for reading Side Hustle Weekend. This post is public so feel free to share it.

THE ART OF DOING NOTHING

Chase Austin — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 14:27:13 GMT

Do you know what to do when there is nothing to do?

From the time I began college, the only thing I was taught was to excel in everything I did. Sometimes I did excel, sometimes I failed, but I was always doing something.

In this race to reach somewhere, I forgot one thing — How to ace nothingness? How to pass the time when there is nothing to do?

fly a kite, pluck flowers, or just paint. We knew how to deal with boredom.

As I grew older, I chose to forget that art. Becuase if you are not doing anything, you are wasting your life. That’s what everyone said.

But is it true?

Is it true that if I don’t do anything for a while, I’m wasting my life?

Now you might say, isn’t an idle mind a devil’s den? Maybe it is. But that’s a den we must learn to tame. We must learn how to conduct ourselves when we have nothing to do.

there is another aspect to it too. If everything is put in front of us in an organized structure, then we lose the capability to amuse ourselves.

There are days that are bad. Most bosses are less than ideal. Same with relationships and circumstances. Boredom prepares us for those less-than-ideal experiences.

2. Boredom helps us strategize. Figure out ways to keep ourselves engaged and entertained.

3. Boredom helps us with problem-solving skills.

4- It makes us creative, and this is something that studies have proven over and over again. Boredom fosters imagination and creativity.

The human mind, when bored, comes up with things to do on its own. This is the time when we learn how to make optimum use of the resources around us.

And these are lessons that go a long way in life. Boredom teaches us to sit still, to be at peace, and daydream.

These are life skills that boredom can teach.

I’m not saying don’t do anything or leave all your work and do nothing. I’m only making a case for a balance of activities and free time.

There are plenty of reasons why we should not be afraid of letting ourselves be bored.

it might be irritating and annoying at first, but eventually, we all find ways to keep ourselves occupied, and our creativity starts to flourish, and this journey can be life-changing.

A lot can be done when there’s nothing specific to do. That is a gift too.

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter — it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.
Buy me a Coffee

About Chase Austin

I have spent 10+ years writing stories and marketing them. I’ve failed and succeeded over the years, and these are some of my tidbits on how I started my author business, perfected marketing, and more.

Here you’ll find resources to help you kick more ass with your words. No fluff, only actionable tips, and tricks if you are looking to make a living through writing, or just use it as a side hustle.

Things I like: Long walks, Reading about anything and everything, Telling stories and chess.

Visit me at www.thechaseaustin.com. Want to say hi, email me at contact@thechaseaustin.com.

Are you a "real" author?

Chase Austin — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 14:38:24 GMT

Being a self-published author used to carry a huge stigma.

I still remember this 2016 article → For me, traditional publishing means poverty. But self-publish? No way

If you were writing in the early 2010s, self-publishing was what you did when you weren’t “good enough” to get a traditional publishing deal!

Now, with so many changes in trad-publishing and so many new ways for authors to market their books (and keep the majority of their royalties), indie publishing is no longer taboo or stigmatized …

… unless you’re my long-distance uncle who always ask me if I’m still self-publishing or if I can finally call myself a “real” author.

Throughout my career as an author, I’ve had people question the validity of my life choices.

“You mean he got his Master’s degree in Marketing and had a high paying job, but he quit it so that he could stay at home and write NOVELS?”
Yup, that’s exactly what I mean!

Even today, though, we have limitations (self-induced as well as societal) that make us question our validity. Seems like we’re Pinocchios, always wondering if we’re a real author yet.

And how do you define what makes a real author, anyway?

If you define it just by how much money you make, then that means that most earlier authors whose works are loved and revered today wouldn’t be “real.”

So then, is being a real author about the critical acclaim you receive? What about the author who gets lambasted by the literary fiction crowd but comfortably brings home half a million dollars a year in book sales?

Some people judge being a real author by whether or not you do the work full-time. But we all know of famous, popular, critically acclaimed, financially successful authors who take long breaks between books. Similarly, there are people who can spend a decade writing for 50 hours a week but never publish anything.

So what actually makes a real author?

You’re a real author if you put your books out in the world even though it feels like the scariest step you’ve ever taken in your entire life.
You’re a real author if you understand what it means to bare your soul on the page, get hateful feedback, pick yourself up, and keep writing.
You’re a real author if you don’t define your worth by your reviews or your royalties. You write because you Just. Can’t. Stop.

So happy writing, and keep creating the worlds, characters, chapters, and stories nobody can write but you!

To your success!

Share Foolish Author by Chase Austin

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter — it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

Buy me a Coffee

About Chase Austin

Things I like: Long walks, Reading about anything and everything, Telling stories and chess.

Visit me at www.thechaseaustin.com. Want to say hi, email me at contact@thechaseaustin.com.

How to Cure Writer’s Block?

Chase Austin — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 14:40:22 GMT

Writer’s block is a common problem that writers face. It can be difficult to get started on a project and even harder to keep going when you start feeling bogged down. But don’t worry — there are plenty of solutions out there. In this blog post, I’ll show you more than 50 proven ways to overcome writer’s block based on the writer’s block symptoms that people commonly experience. From breaking the writer’s block cycle to developing better work habits, these ideas will help get your writing juices flowing again!

What causes writer’s block?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the reason may vary from writer to writer. However, some potential causes could include anxiety, lack of inspiration, or a lack of motivation.

What are some common warning signs that writer’s block is setting in?

Some common warning signs that writer’s block is setting in may include writer’s block persisting despite trying different techniques, difficulty starting or completing a project, procrastination, and feeling agitated or frustrated when writing.

How can you prevent writer’s block from reoccurring in the future?

Again there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the best way to prevent writer’s block from reoccurring in the future will vary depending on one’s personality and writing habits. However, some tips that may help prevent writer’s block from reoccurring in the future include setting specific writing goals, breaking up long writing sessions into manageable parts, and keeping a journal to track ones progress.

But this article is not about some generic advice. Instead, we are talking about specific tips and tricks to help you write again with flair.

So, let’s get started.

Ways to overcome writer’s block

Take a hike: One way to do this strategically is by taking a walk every day. Tasks such as these clock in at almost 500 times the productivity levels achieved while standing still — and they won’t take up your entire day! Your writer’s block may be due to your work in progress not having any direction or the slow-paced plot. Instead of giving up, go for a walk and see what happens. The reason this tactic works may have something to do with the connection between movement (or lack thereof) and your subconscious when you are too immobile while doing nothing.
Rely less on your computer: The modern pace at which we use technology is scary. So, breaking that pattern can be helpful. Be real, be present, and have a plan that can free you from the trap of constantly relying on your device.
Try pen and paper. Write longhand.
Write yourself out of it: Write in bursts. Write something else. Start a new project. Anything from filling out forms online to constructing the graph on paper or just letting your thoughts flow in their own way is valid. There’s certainly no harm in trying new things.
Write anything — No rules!: It’s easy to get stuck trying to write the most ridiculous, over-the-top story you could possibly think of. The world is full of amazing stories — so give yourself permission to tell them! Writing anything you come across in those bright moments when you sit down at your desk or while driving home can help loosen the chains into action and give direction back into turmoil; from funny anecdote here, heartbreaking emotion there, inspiring ideas and motivational proverbs here, you’re basically able to fold bits of your life into creative progress.
Get a little help from a friend. Simply describe what you are feeling to a friend, what it is that you are writing, and how and where you got stuck. By narrowing your audience to one person, you become more decisive.
Choose not to believe in writer’s block. Deny it.
Sleep on it. Take a break. The most creative fluid can be found not behind your eyelids but within those. Indeed states of inertia often lead to breakthroughs, revolution, and empowerment. So give the lazy bunny a rest!!!
Go back to your roots. Find your touch. Strive to overcome your writer’s block daily by questioning what you’re doing, why you should be doing it, and how. This change of perspective can rally up enough momentum.
Let your subconscious do the work. Shake up your brain by turning on the radio, opening a window, or turning down even more lights. Distract yourself with an exciting video you found online and adjust to some version of white noise while forcing attention onto the boundaries of hypnosis.
Stay put. Be patient if it takes time. Hunchback of Notre Dame was first performed in 1696, and even then, it took the author Victor Hugo thirty years to finally get past his most incredible creation at age 70.
You have to be willing to lose your way. Being stuck doesn’t mean it’s being worthless or lazy either — aren’t there always two sides to all stories? The trick with writer’s block is to never lose sight of your natural views and the magic there.
Restrict Your writing space. It can’t possibly work if all that more exciting stuff takes up too much room in it already! Think simple — divide your area into smaller spaces instead of simply concentrating on one bigger space at a time.
Show Me the Money. I write because I have bills to pay.
Determine the root of the problem. This could be simply a matter of the imagination not being up to scratch or more jittery feelings than you thought.
List your favorite books and writers — this could remind you why art is always worthwhile. Make a list of what you do well. Write down the specifics so it can get done more quickly and easily instead of leaving them buried in storage or in your head until they’re obsolete on paper as opposed to memory alone.
Build a solid routine. This can include short bouts of writing followed by necessary breaks and loads of exercise, but this depends on your specific strengths/weaknesses. If your personal best was that last time you wrote a paragraph, it’s not enough. Do these things repeatedly until they come easier than the most simple thing in front of you each day.
Write it badly at first. First draft of anything always sucks. Do not be afraid to write bad as long as it’s only intended for yourself. It can end up being the best thing you ever wrote (and more!), but how could that possibly happen if no one else sees it?
Don’t Follow Your Own Rules. A tendency for some people is to insist on following their own rules. This can be outmoded and get in the way of actual progress from daydreaming into action. Others would have no idea how they were going wrong if they continued this habit, so ignore your self-righteous attempts at morality. Write what you want to read, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. And by all means, never stop trying. Be Naive.
Find a different way into the story. Maybe start with a new character’s point of view. Perhaps your inner dialogue isn’t necessarily what is needed to get past these writerly thoughts and solve the down feeling that lingers within resting hearts wherever there is too much thinking and not enough writing.
Optimize your writing toolkit. A method I use to deal with bouts of self-doubt and negative thoughts throughout the day is to get into my head as a proper writer should. This involves contemplating various things, changing specific facial features, or even just deliberately remembering how happy everything was back at the moment you finished that first perfect chapter or article. Real writers see the flash for what it is and do not let the mind drift too deep into those details, right?
Do something other than writing. Go for a run or sit in a coffee shop. Change your place of work for some time.
Do the opposite of your natural inclinations. Try transcribing a poem or song lyrics and see what happens. Write a purely factual note or even an email to yourself. Try it!
Use a writing prompt — Writing prompts are an effective way to overcome writer’s block. Having another brain issue a challenge can get many writers going, even you.
Develop a character. Write a character description. Think about characterization (who would I put in this scene, who would I choose for dialogue?) — giving your characters their own cultures, ideally bringing them more fully alive on paper — build your character’s emotions.
Try a different genre. Try a different style. Experiment with another accent or writing in the first person. If you are a screenwriter, write a short story or essay. If you’re a novelist, write a poem. Try writing a letter to yourself.
Put together a puzzle of some sort (such as a jigsaw puzzle, tangram, sudoku, crossword, or a one-word collage) to stimulate your brain.
Change your music. Playing a new genre of music can be a suitable method for getting over writer’s block.
Practice another art form. Singing, painting, sculpting, or dancing will get your creative juices flowing.
Watch a short film or a series or a movie or a play.
Try cleaning your work desk or a room or the whole house.
Create a story circle. The Story Circle is an approach to plotting that Harmon adapted from The Hero’s Journey — which itself derives from the work of academic Joseph Campbell. It lays out a kind of narrative arc commonly used by myths from all over the world and emphasizes how almost all forms of storytelling have a cyclical nature.
As a writing exercise, it can be effective to write out your story and think of all the elements holistically as a way to kick your writer’s block.
Completing a simple task is another way to move forward and get past writer’s block. Instead of thinking up more things you need to do, it can be helpful to sit down and complete a task that will help you start moving forward. Finish editing your 10k words or 100 pages already composed either at your office or home. As suggested by Julien Smith: “Remind yourself how important these words are.” You can also take out the trash, scramble eggs, and water plants. These all have the potential to impact creativity.
Practice a new language.
Visualize yourself in control and having freedom of expression by doing what would be exciting for you, such as role-playing scenarios.
Listen to a podcast while jogging or at the gym. You may be surprised how much this can change your mood and help you move forward in some of your writing projects!
Drink some coffee. Caffeine does wonders in stimulating the mind. It spurs writers in every medium to get moving.
One of the most common tips on establishing a new creativity kick is to change your environment. If staying in the same location to write is frustrating you, move your desk or find a different space where there are distractions like family members or pets. Even better would be an added bonus — like free coffee for every milestone of word count that you meet on your goal writing project!
Watch a funny movie or TV show. It will make you laugh and loosen up your writing muscles, so they don’t get too stiff. Without laughter, people lose the power to connect with themselves on other levels — spiritual, emotional, physical… Take a break from the general daily grind.
Jump into music-making! Think of it as creating new material while tapping into your creativity in an unexplored way.
Get some exercise.
Go outside and play.
Dictate and record your book.
Have a cocktail to cure writer’s block. I don’t advocate resorting to alcohol all the time, but sipping a cocktail has undoubtedly helped many a writer.
Go through a guided visualization. When taking guided visualization, it is often helpful to minimize talk so that it doesn’t clutter the call-up of your new idea.
Dance, meditate, or stretch. Avoid distractions for 15 minutes. Also known as “Silence,” it is said to be the breath of creativity and can speed up everything from your workday to your writing life. Quit thinking about what you’re going to write next because other than letting thoughts run amuck in idle brain space, these thoughts stall new ideas at birth.
Use the Pomodoro technique — Short bursts of nonstop [usually 25 minutes] writing, followed by a five-minute break until you are ready to start again. Pomodoro technique is the simplest way to get rid of writer’s block. Keep your mind on work, don’t think about your past or future, and write for 25 minutes nonstop in a set period of time before taking a break. The goal here is not fancy writing but putting words onto paper.
Go for the 30-minute challenge. A longer time span during which you have a maximum of 30 minutes to work. You should complete at least 3 consecutive 10-minute sessions throughout that period. One example could be setting a timer for 30 minutes and writing down the events of your day.
The pretend-you’re-talking-to-a-friend technique — Pretend you’re speaking to a friend at a bar, and you need to explain to them the story or scene you’re working on. How would you describe it to them?
Determine the root cause of your writer’s block. Unclear writing goals or unrealistic deadlines may be among the reasons for your writer’s block. Anxiety over criticism can also result in writers’ block because anxiety and shame inhibit creativity, making us reluctant to share serious work with our peers. Find out what your reason is.
Set Yourself Straight. No matter how many tips you read about writer’s block or advice on slowing down your writing process, don’t become stubborn; adapt them in any way that best fits into your specific situation and circumstances, such as finding ways around.

Conclusion

Writing can be a daunting task, but with the help of these helpful tips, you can overcome writer’s block and produce great work! In this blog, you’ve learned about the different methods for overcoming writer’s block and how to structure your work schedule to achieve maximum productivity. So, what are you waiting for? Start writing today and see the difference!

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter — it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

Buy me a Coffee

About the author

Website / Medium Publication / Substack

Things I like: Long walks, Reading about anything and everything, Telling stories and chess.

How I skyrocketed my Medium followers 6 times in just 50 days?

Chase Austin — Mon, 23 May 2022 20:11:20 GMT

Today is 20th May 2022, when I’m writing this.

And I have just touched the coveted 100 Medium follower mark.

Maybe you are thinking, what’s the big deal about it… Yeah, I agree.

Not a big deal for me either.

But then I checked the stats

I am on this platform since Apr 2021. I had 5 followers then. [See image below]

Till Feb 2022, I had 11 followers.

Then by the time March ended, I had crawled up to 17.

But something happened in April. And then something else happened that I had never seen in my Medium journey.

Let’s try to decode what it was and how it happened.

Shall we?

My Monthly Medium Audience stats

What happened on Apr 20th, 2022

I published an article.

This article precisely.

265+ FREE and Inexpensive Tools for Authors and Writers.

And it exploded for me.

See, this is an article that is an iteration of another article that I published on Feb 24th, 2022.

200+ FREE Digital Marketing Tools for Content Creators

This article focuses primarily on content creators. And ideally, it should have skyrocketed too.

Why I’m saying that?

Because I thought that on Medium most of the audience are also creating content so they must be identifying themselves as content creators.

And in this article, I’m talking about 200+ tools for content creators.

This article gave me some push too but it had a rather teeny weeny effect on my follower numbers.

Now coming back to Apr 20th, when I published an iteration of this article where I only talked about 265+ FREE and Inexpensive Tools for Authors and Writers.

Initially, I didn't intend to publish this article because it already had similar tools mentioned in my other article about content creators, so why duplicate it.

But then I considered that this could be a niche article, only talking about writers and authors.

So, I added more tools that I already use, for example, book formatting tools, grammar checking tools, email marketing tools that are built mainly for authors, and so on.

In other words, I enhanced my older article.

In the real world, this tactic also has a name — The Skyscraper Technique.

What is this Skyscraper technique?

The Skyscraper Technique is a link-building tactic devised by Brian Dean of Backlinko as a way to create engaging content that will help writers to earn quality editorial links.

And the technique sits on the foundations of 3 core principles:

Find popular content that has been linked to other sites.
Create a better piece of content on the same topic and publish it on your own site.
Promote your content to the right people and let them know it exists.

In simple terms using this technique, I took my own article and published a better-enhanced version of it with a niche audience in mind.

BUT

Only writing an article is not enough.

It's not like, readers are waiting for you and anytime you publish, they will pounce on it.

The second piece of the puzzle is distribution.

Now you may say that Medium is meant for both writing and distribution so what am I talking about.

Medium is built for writing — YES.

Medium is built for distribution — YES and NO.

Consider Medium as an ocean where there are a lot of writers and even more readers.

When you have this scenario where a reader has a lot of options to read, the outcome generally is that reader is going to do three things.

Leave Medium and do something elsewhere he is not going to find himself confused about what to do.
He will go back to the writers he follows and not try new writers.
He is going to click on articles that have a better headline like listicles or how to make money or how to get more followers and so on.

In other words,

Excessive choice can produce “choice paralysis,” but also that it can reduce people’s satisfaction with their decisions, even if they made good ones.
This paradox of choice keeps you scrolling through Netflix too.
Think about it.

So, Medium is also a distribution channel but it's not doing a very good job since it only shows you articles based on earlier reading history and dissuades you from finding and exploring new writers and their voices.

What is the solution, then? OR how I overcame this to reach more readers.

If your readers cant find you, you go to where your readers are.

Medium has publications.

What is a Medium publication — These are shared spaces for stories written around a common theme or topic, usually by multiple authors.

I went and found similar articles to mine and then searched which publications they belong to.

Then I applied to these publications using the form given on their Medium page. Sometimes, it only took a solitary comment on a post. In short, I did what I had to do. I filled the forms, those long forms that I hated at times but I did it anyway.

So, that took care of the distribution part.

Next Big thing I did.

I wrote a good article that help my readers. Well, you can publish your article in a Medium publication but it won't get traction until it satisfies the need of your readers.

Think of it this way.

If you are writing an article like this, your reader should be able to at least take one giveaway from your content and use it instantly and see results.

So,

Write better.
Write better with your audience in mind.
And keep writing better.

BONUS HACK #1

At times, you can write something that is going against the grain. Like the article, I published recently.

Why You Should NOT Self Publish Your Book (plus 6 Myths Busted)

When the whole world os going gaga over self-publishing, I took a different route. And mind you, I’m an indie author who earns a good living from his books.

But that shouldn't deter you from talking about the cons of a vocation.

BONUS HACK #2

Your article’s title will make or break your chances to grab readers.

NAIL IT.

I use a tool called — Headline Analyzer for writing improved titles.

It's a free tool and you should give it a try if not tried it yet.

So, after telling you the FIVE hacks I used to grow my followers 6 times in just 50 days, now it's your turn to buy me a coffee.

I’m serious. Buy me a Coffee. ☕

About Chase Austin

Things I like: Long walks, Reading about anything and everything, Telling stories and chess.

Visit me at www.thechaseaustin.com. Want to say hi, email me at contact@thechaseaustin.com.

265+ FREE and Inexpensive Tools for Authors

Chase Austin — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 14:37:30 GMT

Writing and selling books is a lengthy and time-consuming process, which authors have discovered to be among their areas of greatest stress. While the publishing industry is getting more automated, marketing your books demands time and effort to go around writer's block and finish the job with a blank screen. To effortlessly allow your creativity to flow, today we’re sharing my selection of favorite tools.

I’m sure you are no stranger to tools that are helping you simplify your day-to-day writing life, however, I believe that you might be interested in knowing a few more content marketing tools that not only help save your time and effort and, on top of it all, these are also completely free of charge.

Let’s start.

Writing Tools

Google Docs
LibreOffice
Trello
EverNote
Notion
Grammarly
Hemmingway Editor
CoSchedule’s headline analyzer
BuzzSumo
WordCounter
Focus Writer

Book Formatting Tools

Atticus
Vellum
Kindle Create
Microsoft Word
Scrivener
Ulysses
Reedsy

15 Free Sites like Grammarly for Authors, Bloggers, Copywriters, and Content writers

15 Free Sites like Grammarly for Authors, Bloggers, Copywriters and Content writers

Do you write for a blog, author a book, produce copy or content? Is your writing littered with errors and typos? Grammar checker tools can help! Grammar checker tools have been a game-changer for writers. A decent grammar checking tool for authors, bloggers, copywriters, and content marketers is immensely beneficial that can help them upgrade their piece of content. It is also a good idea to use a grammar checker tool in order to improve the readability of their content…

5 years ago · 1 like · Chase Austin

Design Tools

Canva
Crello
Simplified
Pixelated
Tyle
Piktochart
Colorcinch
DesignBold
Photopea
Snappa

32 Free Canva Alternatives with Better Templates and Design Features

32 Free Canva Alternatives with Better Templates and Design Feature

One of the most critical elements to consider when building a brand is design. It will help you stand out from the competition and elicit your prospects and audience's desired emotion or feeling. However, if you're not developing visual content for your website and social media platforms, you must rethink your approach…

5 years ago · 2 likes · 4 comments · Chase Austin

Productivity Tools for writers

1. Friday

2. Todoist

3. Asana

4. Trello

5. Slack

6. Microsoft Teams

7. Zoom

8. Nifty

9. Toggl

10. Clockify

11. Monitask

12. Harvest

13. Loom

14. IFTTT

15. Zapier

16. Integromat

17. Notion

18. Dropbox Paper

19. Clickup

20. Twist

21. 15Five

22. Tettra

23. Sunsama

24. Akiflow

25. TimeCamp

26. TickTick

27. nTask

28. Evernote

Animation-Creation Tools

Biteable
Boomerang
Moovly
Animaker
Blender
K-3D
OpenToonz
Pencil2D Animation
Plastic Animation Paper
Powtoon
Stykz

Video-Creation Tools

Lightworks
VideoPad
HitFilm Express
DaVinci Resolve
VSDC Free Video Editor
OpenShot
Shotcut
Blender
Movie Maker 10
iMovie
Magisto
WeVideo

63 Amazing Sites With Breathtaking Free Stock Photos

63 Amazing Sites With Breathtaking Free Stock Photos

Photos and images are an essential part of marketing and especially in creating great content. Unfortunately, we’ve grown looking at cheesy stock images of people in suits shaking hands and nodding heads. They are not only tacky, but they cost a hell lot of money…

5 years ago · Chase Austin

Audio-Creation Tools

Audacity
Adobe Audition
GarageBand
FL Studio
Descript

Best Organization Apps & Software

Any.do
Friday
Sunsama
Trello
Todoist
Akiflow
Get Plan
Toggl
Asana
ClickUp
24me
DayViewer
Microsoft Planner
Google Calendar App
Dropbox

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

Infographic-Creation Tools

Canva
Venngage
Piktochart
easel.ly
Visme
Infogram
Vizualize.me
Snappa
Google Chart
MS PowerPoint

Presentation-Creation Tools

MS PowerPoint
Google Slides
Keynote
Prezi
Canva
PowToon
GoAnimate
Zoho Show

Screen-Capture Tools

CloudApp
SnapDraw Free
Free Cam
Screencast-O-Matic
OBS Studio
Debut Video Capture
ShareX
Apowersoft
CamStudio
ScreenRec
Ezvid

Cheapest Email Marketing Tools

Flodesk (Lifetime offer of 50% off)
Sendinblue
Mailchimp
Constant Contact
ConvertKit
Cake Mail
MailerLite
GetResponse
SendGrid
Aweber
Moosend
Omnisend
SendPulse
Mailjet
Email Octopus
Benchmark
Sender
RedCappi
Pabbly

Misc Tools

Hootsuite - To plan and track your social media activity
Right Relevance - To find the right influencer
Bitly - URL shortener
GTmetrix - for checking the website speed
Facebook Ad Library - To spy on competitors’ ads
Ocoya - for Scheduling Facebook and Insta Posts
Tubebuddy and Vidiq - for YouTube video Analytics
Rapdtags - for YouTube Video Tags
YouTube Audio Library - for Royalty-free music
Pexels - for free stock images and Videos
QuillBot - Paraphrasing tool that generates various synonyms
WordHero - AI writing assistant

What would you add to the list? Tell me in the comments

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

About Chase Austin

Things I like: Long walks, Reading about anything and everything, Telling stories and chess.

Visit me at www.thechaseaustin.com. Want to say hi, email me at contact@thechaseaustin.com.

When To Use The Facebook REACH or AWARENESS Objective

Chase Austin — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 14:50:37 GMT

Hi, this is Case Austin, and today I'm going to talk about when to use the Facebook reach or awareness objective for your Facebook Ads.

According to Facebook, a reach or awareness ad campaign show your ads to the maximum number of people.

We know that with other campaign objectives like conversions, traffic, etc., Facebook is going to optimize for an event. Let's take conversions, and we say I want purchases on my website. Facebook will then try and put your ads in front of people that are far more likely to purchase. Now the people that are far more likely to purchase might be way more expensive to reach because they're probably more likely to buy from other advertisers, too, and not only from your ad.

Some people buy things online a lot more than others. Some people buy things based on Facebook ads, a lot more than others, and some people have a lot more disposable income than others. Facebook can work a lot of this stuff out and put ads in front of those people, but everyone wants to reach those people, so they're more expensive to advertise to.

On the other hand, Reach gets your ads in front of as many people as possible. So you're not ranking the quality of prospects necessarily within your targeting options. You're just sort of saying I want to get the word out there. So, the time when I like to use the reach objective is when I'm advertising to a specific and usually, quite a small audience that I want to make sure I put my ads in front of repeatedly. So this would usually be advertising businesses that are expertise-based coaches and consultants. If you're selling online courses or any expertise-based items like high-end services or something that needs to be designed or creating bespoke products, and so on.

And the price point of whatever it is you're usually offering can be costly, and that's why you need to reach people again and again and again because you need to convince them that you are the best option to work with. That you are better than your competitors, you build that relationship.

That's when we tend to use Reach.

And that's about it.

The only other scenario where I think we would commonly use Reach is if you're working with a large budget brand that isn't worried about conversions or sending website traffic and just wants to get the word out there. They want to make their brand synonymous with the product that's being offered.

Coca-Cola will be the classic example where they're running like brand campaigns on TV and other places, all the time, they want you to think of Coke and not Pepsi. That is the other time when we typically use Reach.

When you should not use Reach or Awareness

There are many other scenarios where people use it when they shouldn't. The classic case is retargeting.

Many advertisers will say, let's have a conversion campaign for a cold audience to visit my website, and then they will think, well, I'm retargeting only people who have visited my website.

Therefore, why don't I just use Reach? Because I want to reach as many of them as possible with my retargeting campaign.

In my suggestion, you'd be better off using conversions in your retargeting.

I also wouldn't use the reach campaign objective when you are a new business. Many small businesses think, okay, I'm new; I just want to get the word out. If you ask me, I don't understand this business. For larger businesses going after 50 million impressions over the next couple of months, that's getting the word out, but if you're a small business, it's just a drop in the ocean.

You're better off running a conversion or lead generation campaign and generating customer leads. That's going to make your campaigns much more affordable, much more profitable, and much more scalable.

Hopefully, these are somewhat helpful scenarios where you should and shouldn't use the reach objective.

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

About Chase Austin

Things I like: Long walks, Reading about anything and everything, Telling stories and chess.

Visit me at www.thechaseaustin.com. Want to say hi, email me at contact@thechaseaustin.com.

101 content ideas for your next newsletter email

Chase Austin — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 07:21:00 GMT

I get it - you have some subscribers on your list, and now you are fighting with the predicament of what you should send them next.

And you are worried because you have seen that when you consistently engage with their readers you get better results. By the way, stats also show this.

But coming up with fresh newsletter content ideas every week and that too without fail is tough. I have been in this situation a lot of time and trust me, it's hard. I’ve been doing this for some time now and it’s always been a challenge for me to come up with new and fresh content ideas and concepts.

And since you are dear to me, I decided to painstakingly create a long long list of all the good ideas I’ve seen over the years - some are used by me and some are used by the solopreneurs, bloggers, and authors in their newsletters.

So, here are 101 ideas for your newsletters that you can use instantly or maybe build something on these lines.

P.S.: Do NOT miss the end of this article where I will tell you the 3 questions that will help you get the most out of your newsletter content and these ideas!

So, let’s start.

Talk about the state of your industry, educate fellow authors, writers, bloggers, freelance writers about the industry trends.

As an author, blogger, or however you use your written words, you’ve worked hard to write that book or get reviews or get sales.

In short, you went from Zero to One in your journey, and there is not an iota of doubt that you’ve picked up plenty of expert tips along the way.

Now you might not know it but you, my friend, has more industry and craft knowledge than you give yourself credit for!

Why not tap into these insights and share the love with your subscribers?

Here are some ways to do it.

1. Share what took you from zero to one - share tips and tricks to help your readers succeed. In fact, helping your audience should be at the top of your list and inside your every newsletter there should be some free advice.

2. What NOT to do is as important as what one should do. Share those next.

3. Build a compendium or google drive library of the most valuable articles published on other websites, and share it. Imagine how much value you'd add to your readers in just one shot.

4. Write or talk about the latest trends in your industry and elucidate upon them.

5. A checklist that your readers can download.

6. Offer a free ebook, report, case study, or industry news as a downloadable content.

7. A beginner’s guide to something interesting in your industry.

8. Interview someone from your industry that is an expert in something your readers want to know more about. You and me, we both know that we all love to hear success stories and learn how they made it.

9. Choose a pressing issue in your field and ask maybe five experts to give one piece of advice about it. Cool, right.

10. Give your opinion about a post from a guest blogger that you admire and share it with your readers.

11. Create or share an infographic with actionable insights.

12. Share a calendar of upcoming events that you plan to do (like webinars or podcasts, conferences, and expos).

13. Answer questions from readers.

14. Review the past trends and how they have materialized as predicted like AI for authors or the rise of audiobooks.

15. Make predictions about how your industry is gonna look like in maybe 5 years.

16. What are some of the best industry-related buzzwords. Create a list.

17. List of your favorite quotes that your readers can connect with.

18. De-bunk common myths associated with your industry.

19. Share a list of the Facebook page/ Goodreads/ BookBub/ Twitter/ Instagram/ Pinterest/ LinkedIn profiles of experts from your industry.

20. Talk about new policies that will affect your subscribers.

21. Review of books about industry news, craft, marketing, etc.

22. Share case studies about how others have succeeded.

News updates

What are your up to? Are you working on a new book, some new software, or some event - your audience will always be excited to hear more about what’s been going on.

Keep your newsletter subscribers in the loop.

23. Highlight something about your journey. Your readers will love it. I have seen newsletters where people are talking about their new coffee machine so you get the gist.

24. Share takeaways from an event you participated in. There are podcasts on learning from events. Everyone loves a recap and especially your take on the event.

25. Talk about your proud milestones.

26. Review the tools you use that will benefit your readers.

27. Share your mistakes that you think costs you time or money and then what you did to improve upon them.

28. Run experiments. Share your results.

29. Tell a story when you think of something that was a mistake but turned out to be a surprising success.

30. List useful online resources like best free stock photos for Facebook ads.

31. Publish your earning report in the last month or year.

32. Give a sneak peek of a new book launch or upcoming series. Share a few chapters or character background.

33. Create a countdown series for the launch of a new book or series.

34. Share what’s next for your readers.

35. Create wallpapers based on your books, some quotes, and share with your readers.

36. Talk about the biggest hurdle you faced recently and how you overcame it.

37. Share any recent media coverage about you or your books like podcasts, videos, or articles.

38. Share things that you love or people who inspire you or concepts like minimalism and how you are using them.

39. Invite readers to contribute stories to the newsletter.

40. Write an article on your beginnings and how you started.

41. Share a video you created like book trailers, vlog, interview, etc.

42. Show behind-the-scenes videos or photos of your new book or a recent event.

43. Show a 'day-in-the-life' reel of your work life.

44. Give a tour of your work corner or computer setup. Like where you write.

45. Share topics or issues that are important to your local community.

46. Write about your kids, a pet, garden, some plant, or the car you love.

47. Share your opinion on something newsworthy or controversial in your field

48. Write a list of things you wish you knew when you started your journey.

49. List of free eBooks, videos, blogs, or podcasts that inspires you.

50. Share the most popular of your social media posts, tweets and pins.

51. Share the music playlists that you listen to while working.

52. Your favorite Netflix shows.

53. Your personal development activities that helped you.

54. Yoga exercises that can be done in fifteen minutes

Start a conversation with your audience

55. Interview your customers and talk about what they liked in your books or products.

56. Conduct reader surveys and share the results.

57. Take a poll and share results.

58. Run a contest like giveaways, photo competitions, and 5-day challenges, etc.

59. Ask readers to share pictures of themselves with your book. Give gifts.

60. Answer reader questions.

61. Ask (nicely) readers to review your books on your website or on third party websites like Amazon or Facebook.

62. This is really amazing - Ask your readers to share stories that are inspiring about things that they are doing like raising money for charity, battling a handicap, or helping their community.

63. Ask your readers what they want in your newsletter. Survey them.

64. Say Happy Birthday if you have their DOBs.

65. Share when it's your birthday.

66. Celebrate the anniversaries of your subscribers when they joined your email list. You can give them gifts like a free book or a discount.

67. Ask your readers to nominate the best podcasts or the experts in your industry. Convert it into a post like “Top 25 Podcasts in the Industry” post. Notify the winner of this list so that they’ll send some of their followers your way.

68. Send a quiz related to your book/product. Give prizes.

For selling your books, use these kickass ideas. Your bank account will thank you for it!

69. Create a list of your most popular books/products or anything on sale.

70. Share your most useful online courses that people are missing.

71. Like Amazon introduce a wish list for your products. Let people share it with their contacts, for big events like birthdays.

72. Link to independent reviews of your products (such as on Amazon).

73. Review another product that is complementary to yours.

74. Don’t forget special offers, discounts, and coupons.

75. Customer satisfaction survey email.

76. Your audience will thank you for being the first ones to hear about your limited edition products and exclusive news.

77. Tell a good story behind your book or product - Everyone love to learn more about their favorite product or book.

78. Share a video tutorial on how to use your product to gain the most results.

79. Share valuable resources to help your audience pick the correct products.

80. Offer an online scratch card (also called click-to-scratch). When the reader clicks through this scratch card, they can see a promotion code that they can use to buy your products.

81. Send personalized upselling emails, based on your customers’ past purchase like ‘because you ordered that, we thought you’d like this too.’

82. Share a list of FAQs about your product like online courses

Let's get more creative

83. You have a new YouTube channel then why not embed a video in your email and let people discover it.

84. Charm readers with a click-able mystery link (Make sure it's not a virus and the link title is clear enough to let the person know that it's a particular product like a book).

85. Great podcasts that will stimulate your backers.

86. Must-watch YouTube videos.

87. Select a theme like James Clear has "The 3-2-1 Newsletter ". Every Thursday, he sends this to his followers and this includes 3 short ideas from him, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question for the reader to ponder.

88. Write a list post like '7 best' or '9 deadly mistakes' or '10 ways to'

89. Create tutorials either as articles or videos or podcasts.

90. 'How-to' articles.

91. Talk about the weather if it is impacting your productivity.

92. Talk about holidays and not only the big one but something like the World Martini Day will also do.

93. Think broader about your content marketing strategy.

94. Create a welcome email series.

95. A step-by-step guide on how to do something in an article, video or podcast

96. Say thank you. Important.

97. List your worst books/blog/videos/podcast. Talk about why they are the worst.

98. Your most successful books/blog/videos/podcast and reveal why they worked.

99. Re-engage people who signed up for your email list but haven’t been opening your emails.

100. Refresh old posts with new information.

101. Finally, make a long list like - 101 content ideas for your next newsletter email!

BONUS SECTION

Whatever you decide to use from the above ideas always think of 3 things

1. Is it right for your target audience? Will it add value to their lives?

2. How do you want the reader to respond?

3. Does the newsletter content idea fit your brand?

Do you have more ideas? Please share in the comments. I'd love to add more ideas to the list!

63 Amazing Sites With Breathtaking Free Stock Photos

Chase Austin — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 07:20:00 GMT

Photos and images are an essential part of marketing and especially in creating great content.

Unfortunately, we’ve grown looking at cheesy stock images of people in suits shaking hands and nodding heads.

They are not only tacky, but they cost a hell lot of money.

Thankfully, there are a good number of websites with beautiful stock photography popping up all over the web.

Best of all, they’re free!

Here is a list for you of 64 of such amazing sites with breathtaking free stock photos.

I hope you’ll enjoy this collection of wonderful sites with free stock photos and images for your books, websites, blogs, and so many other things.

Quick Note About Licenses

Many of these photographs are free from copyright restrictions or licensed under creative commons public domain dedication, so you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

200+ FREE Digital Marketing Tools for Content Creators

Chase Austin — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 09:48:26 GMT

Creating digital content that's attractive to the target audience is a lengthy and time-consuming process, which marketers have discovered to be among their areas of greatest stress. While this industry is getting more automated, digital content demands time and effort to go around writer's block and finish the job with a blank screen. To effortlessly allow your creativity to flow, today we’re sharing our selection of our favorite content creation tools.

I’m sure you are no stranger to digital tools that are helping you simplify your day-to-day life, however, we believe that you might be interested in knowing a few more digital content marketing tools that not only help save your time and effort and, on top of it all, these are also completely free of charge.

SEO Tools

Google Analytics
Google Keyword Planner
Google Search Console
AnswerThePublic
Google Search Console
Google Trends
UberSuggest
Screaming Frog SEO spider
SEOreviewtools
Ahrefs Basic Account
SEMRush Basic Account

Content Writing Tools

Google Docs
Trello
EverNote
Notion
Grammarly
Hemmingway Editor
CoSchedule’s headline analyzer
BuzzSumo
WordCounter
Focus Writer

15 Free Sites like Grammarly for Authors, Bloggers, Copywriters, and Content writers

15 Free Sites like Grammarly for Authors, Bloggers, Copywriters and Content writers

5 years ago · 1 like · Chase Austin

Design Tools

Canva
Crello
Simplified
Pixelated
Tyle
Piktochart
Colorcinch
DesignBold
Photopea
Snappa

32 Free Canva Alternatives with Better Templates and Design Feature

32 Free Canva Alternatives with Better Templates and Design Feature

5 years ago · 2 likes · 4 comments · Chase Austin

Animation-Creation Tools

Biteable
Boomerang
Moovly
Animaker
Blender
K-3D
OpenToonz
Pencil2D Animation
Plastic Animation Paper
Powtoon
Stykz

Video-Creation Tools

Lightworks
VideoPad
HitFilm Express
DaVinci Resolve
VSDC Free Video Editor
OpenShot
Shotcut
Blender
Movie Maker 10
iMovie
Magisto
WeVideo

63 Amazing Sites With Breathtaking Free Stock Photos

63 Amazing Sites With Breathtaking Free Stock Photos

5 years ago · Chase Austin

Audio-Creation Tools

Audacity
Adobe Audition
GarageBand
FL Studio
Descript

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

Infographic-Creation Tools

Canva
Venngage
Piktochart
easel.ly
Visme
Infogram
Vizualize.me
Snappa
Google Chart
MS PowerPoint

Presentation-Creation Tools

MS PowerPoint
Google Slides
Keynote
Prezi
Canva
PowToon
GoAnimate
Zoho Show

Screen-Capture Tools

CloudApp
SnapDraw Free
Free Cam
Screencast-O-Matic
OBS Studio
Debut Video Capture
ShareX
Apowersoft
CamStudio
ScreenRec
Ezvid

Misc Tools

Website Auditor - Website audit
Monitor Backlinks - Monitor backlinks & keywords
Trello - Organize your project and monitor the progress
Hootsuite - Plan and track your social media activity
Smartlook - Analyze user behavior on your website
Mailchimp and Mailerlite- Email marketing
Right Relevance - Find the right influencer
Snaptik - Remove TikTok watermark
Bitly - URL shortener
GTmetrix - Checking the website speed
Facebook Ad Library - Spy on competitors Ads
Creator Studio - Scheduling Facebook and Insta Posts
Tubebuddy and Vidiq - YouTube video Analytics
Rapdtags - YouTube Video Tags
YouTube Audio Library - Royalty-free music
Pexels - for free stock images and Videos
QuillBot - Paraphrasing tool to generates various synonym

What would you add to the list? Tell me in the comments

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

About Chase Austin

Things I like: Long walks, Reading about anything and everything, Telling stories and chess.

Visit me at www.thechaseaustin.com. Want to say hi, email me at contact@thechaseaustin.com.

9 awesome ways to build an email list fast

Chase Austin — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 07:20:00 GMT

In this article, I'm going to talk about 9 ways you can get 1,000 strangers to allow your emails in their inboxes.

These are the exact tactics that I had used to generate impactful results day-in and day-out and today I'm sharing these with you.

So, Let's begin.

Hey everyone, I'm Chase Austin - Author, Marketer, and the face behind the Foolish Author website.

If you are still in doubt why you should still use email marketing today then check this Email Marketing Guide for Authors.

If you are like me then the first thing that you must check on your cell phone is checking emails. And trust me, email is still the first thing many people go for in the morning or the last thing in the night.

According to this report, there are over 3.9 Billion email users globally - in other words, every second person in the world has an email address.

Exposing your books to such a large user base can get you all the traffic you need for your books. It also leads to increased conversions and more book sales.

The starting point for this is your first 1000 email subscribers. But that is also the toughest challenge in building your email list.

It takes time, perseverance, and reliable tactics to get those 1000 subscribers. Without the right methods, you'll still get 1000 subs, but it probably would take an eternity.

Now if you're eager to grow your email list, the tactics mentioned below will not only help you get your first 1000 email subscribers but also the next 1000 subs in an instant.

There are tons of ways to grow your email list. But the tips listed here are the most effective ones when it comes to collecting email subscribers.

Let's begin with the first one;

1. Identify who is your target audience and what are their problems?

Readers will only want to subscribe to your list if they think you can solve their problems. They will only come to you if they can trust you with the right content. And you can do that only if you know what they are looking for. First thing first, stop shooting in the dark and start identifying the problems your target readers face.

How you can do this?

Create an audience/reader persona to build a fictional image of your readers. And then write for that persona.

Here is an example of a reader persona.

Richard is in his mid-thirties, lives in New York. He is a graduate from a community college and now works in a tiring accounting job, making approximately $40,000 a year.

Richard has an interest in writing fiction and making a side income to help his family through his books, and he spends his time actively learning about this subject online.

He particularly likes to read about how to publish and market books at a low cost without breaking the bank. He also does not want to leave his job as yet and wants to write books that can work as long-term assets. In addition to reading, he tries to take at least one in-depth course or tutorial a quarter.

Since he likes to test the tactics given by book marketers and already successful authors, he likes content that provides actionable tips. He prefers content in the range of 1,000-2,000 words that are mostly text as he gets time to read a few of these articles a day.

2. Ask yourself why someone should give you their email address?

Email address today is like the home addresses of users. Why they should give you one if they think you are going to spam it?

The one reason that comes to my mind why someone would give that email to you is if he thinks that you are giving him something of value in return.

That's why you need to create a freebie that's valuable.

If your reader is facing a problem of how to start with email marketing then the best freebie would be an email marketing starter guide for newbies.

Think about it.

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

3. Use freebies to the MAX

Find out your most popular blogs - the ones that got the most traffic in the last three-four months and add your best free resources in those blogs. This is the best way to expose your downloadable assets to your maximum website visitors and make them opt for it.

The only thing you need to take care of is that that freebie you're adding to your blog complements it. If you're writing a blog post on email subject lines, don't add a freebie about paid ads, even if it is your most downloaded one.

Bonus tip: If you're adding a freebie in your blog post, use tools like Hotjar, Clicktale, Crazyegg to check the percentage of customers scrolling ahead and driving away after seeing your freebie in the blog.

4. Create a Squeeze Page

Squeeze pages are one of the awesomest ways to grow an email list.

Because they are devoid of any distraction, they make it easier for visitors to sign up instead of a regular blog post.

Create a lead page with a precise message on why should they provide their email. Here’s a brilliant example of HubSpot’s lead page

What this page is doing well:

The headline and sub-headline communicate a clear benefit.
The CTA button color draws prospect attention.
The image serves as a visual representation of the offer, showing visitors what they’ll get after converting.

5. Use Facebook Ads

Facebook leads ads are a great tool to grow your email list with highly relevant leads as in the example below.

In a typical ad, you are asking people to follow the below sequence:

Ad > Click > Landing Page > Form Fill > Thank You Page > Email Confirmation > Freebie

With FB ads you don’t have to torture people like this anymore. One of the major advantages of Facebook lead ads is their pre-populated instant forms, which makes it ridiculously easy for users to opt-in for your newsletter.

Users can easily sign up for your newsletter with a few clicks (and without leaving the platform), and Facebook automatically sends your new leads to your email service provider.

While lead ads help you collect targeted leads with simple forms, your most important task is to optimize your ads for high conversions.

To achieve that, create lead ads that resonate with your target audience and offer an incentive like your freebie.

And yeah, generating leads with Facebook ads doesn’t cost you a fortune. I have even converted users into leads in as little as 40 cents per lead.

6. Use Popups and CTAs

Well, popups are annoying BUT Only if you use them in the wrong way.

If you design and display your popups strategically, it can boom your email list like Neil Patel does to qualify website visitors into real customers

Or this one

Bonus tip: Your popup should not appear frequently but only at a specific action or after a certain time gap.

7. Mine your LinkedIn Connections

96% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn for organic social marketing.

LinkedIn is not the biggest social network or the one with the largest reach BUT LinkedIn is a superpower when it comes to building genuine connections.

If you are a content creator then this will please you - Content creation on LinkedIn increased 60% in 2020.

LinkedIn has transitioned from being “just” a recruitment platform to being a professional network where people educate and inform themselves and learn about their industry.

A pro tip: Try to make connections with the people who belong to your field. For instance, if you’re an Author, try to connect with other writers. This will increase the chances of getting more collaboration requests.

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.

If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

8. Automation is the savior

Automated email marketing is shooting out emails to your readers automatically, based on triggers defined by you.

Sounds simple. Right?

And the good news is that it is simple (for the most part).

But just like with any other marketing skill, it needs time to learn and test and improve your email marketing campaigns.

And the more you learn, the better you can improve and grow your campaigns.

If the idea of consistent, impactful marketing growth sets your heart racing with joy– you’re going to love automated emails.

9. Guest posts

It means writing and publishing an article on someone else's website or blog.

These are an indirect but effective way to grow your list of emails. All you need to do is pitch your content to other sites and if they publish it, you’ll get more visibility which results in traffic and eventually, more subscribers.

Every website needs good content. By being a good guest blogger you can add value to someone else's blog, and not only that, you're going to build relationships with other writers and bloggers.

How to find websites that accept guest posts?

Google search on topics like "list of blogs that accept guest posts", as well as "list of - your keyword - blogs that accept guest posts" will likely bubble up numerous lists of blogs that accept guest posts.

You can use this search term on Google - Book marketing, Email marketing, Social media marketing, and so on.

Then, add the following search terms using a + sign.

+ "write for us"
+ "guest blog"
+ "guest post"
+ "contribute to our blog"
+ "contribute guest post"
+ "submit an article"
+ "submit a guest post"
+ "guest blogging guidelines"
+ "become a guest blogger"
+ "send a tip"
+ "guest author"
+ "guest post by"
+ "contributor guidelines"

Make a list of your top 5 websites where you want to get your guest post published and then pitch your ideas to them.

Here is a template from Mailshake that you can use to pith your idea

Hey, {{name}}!

I’m a huge fan of {{their blog}}. I just wanted to reach out because I’ve really been enjoying your writing. In fact, I accomplished {{something cool}} from reading your blog post: {{link to their blog post}}.

I know you’re busy, so I won’t waste your time. I’m reaching out because I had some ideas I think the {{their blog name}} audience would positively love, and I was wondering if you’d be open to a guest blog post.

Here are the titles:

{{Title 1}}

{{Title 2}}

{{Title 3}}

To give you an idea of my writing style, here are two of my best posts:

{{Your post with the most shares}}

{{Your best-written post}}

Thanks for your time and consideration! I can’t wait to hear back from you.

Cheers,

{{Your name}}

Don't do this while growing email list

Because they are unethical and can lead to penalties.

Don't buy email subscribers
Don't forget your subscribers
Don't focus on numbers but focus on engagement
Don't use spammy Keywords in your subject lines. Here is a list.

Conclusion

We covered a lot of things and to summarize - Create problem-solving content. Give your best content away for FREE. Add those awesome FREE content to your blog posts. Create dedicated squeeze pages. Automate your email marketing to save time and make more impact from your email marketing.

Don't purchase email lists or nurture your subscribers or use spam keywords or focus on numbers alone.

And finally, let's be realistic here. Growing an email list is a time taking process but following the above tips will give you a good headstart.

Do you have any tips that I forgot to mention here? You can write it in the comments below.

Don't forget to check my Awesome Email Marketing Guide for more in-depth insights.

I’d like to invite you to join me in my quest to provide you with the best tips, tricks and hacks to help you build your author career while keeping this newsletter free and independent.
If there was ever a time to join me in this quest, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers me to create more amazing content and sustain the future of this publication. Support this newsletter – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. You can do either by buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

About Chase Austin

Things I like: Long walks, Reading about anything and everything, Telling stories and chess.

Visit me at www.thechaseaustin.com. Want to say hi, email me at contact@thechaseaustin.com.