Dale King: Today I'm interviewing The eBook Coach and Internet Marketing expert, Ellen Violette. Hello Ellen, how are you?
Ellen Violette: Great! thanks for asking.
Dale King: Ellen, tell our readers how and when you got started marketing on the Internet.
Ellen Violette: I had been a Grammy-nominated songwriter who was very passionate about what I was doing and winning awards but I was the typical struggling artist: I wasn’t making any money!
Luckily I had really supportive parents. But they both passed away within 11 months of each other and my husband and I had nothing to fall back on. He had been a hypnotherapist but we ignored his business when my mother got sick and it fell by the wayside. But we did inherited an earthquake damaged house. So we spent a year fixing it. Then moved down to San Diego and bought a condo there. We continued to struggle in our businesses but saw we were making money on the condo. The prices just kept going up. So we started buying fixing and selling houses.
So then I was doing something I wasn’t passionate about but making good money and it was really stressful moving every 6 months. So we took a property-management job to tide us over back in Los Angeles. I knew I wanted to write books but didn’t want to go through what I went through in music. So I got on line found an ebook on writing ebooks and wrote my first ebook, The Moving Cure How to Organize Your Move To Save Time, Money, & Your Sanity(www.movingtips4u.com).
The process didn’t quite go like the sales page promised. The ebook took me a couple of months instead of a week or two. Plus when I was done I realized I’d have to learn how to market it. So I got on line and started listening to a lot of free teleseminars and the one person who really resonated with me was Alex Mandossian. Then I met him at the Big Seminar ad got into Teleseminar Secrets. The problem for me was that I felt like I was being asked to run before I could walk! Everyone would get on the calls and say how great their teleseminars were going and I got on and said, mine was a nightmare!
Alex thanked me for sharing that because nobody else would! I was feeling like there was something wrong with me that it was so difficult for me. Then I realized I was doing this with no technical background, no business background and no marketing background. I had my desire, my writing ability a credit card and that was it. I saw that it didn’t have to be this difficult and that I could create the programs I wished I’d had when I was first getting started!
So that’s what I did. I created my Quick-Start 3-Day eBook Authoring Workshop and eBook Profit Secrets and my individual coaching and mentoring programs.
Dale King: Some Internet Marketing experts advise newbies to steer clear of certain areas of Internet Marketing, like selling ebooks on how to make money, advertising services, SEO services, copywriting, etc., because those particular niches are deemed to be "too competitive." Do you agree with that assessment?
Ellen Violette: I would tell them to steer clear of these not because they are competitive but because if they are just getting started they don’t have the credentials to help people accomplish what they have not accomplished themselves. I didn’t start out teaching the marketing, I started out teaching a process that teaches people how to author an ebook in 72 hours or less that is very effective and proven to work.
But yes, they are competitive fields. But if you can find a new, better, faster, cheaper way to do something in any field then you can be successful at it.
Dale King: How is Internet Marketing different now, as opposed to when you first got started online?
Ellen Violette: We were just talking about that on a call the other night. The technology is better and cheaper now. When I got started I paid a small fortune when I did my first teleseminar series. It was a 10-week course and some of the calls were two to three hours. The cost to record it was around $1200 I think. Now you can use bridge lines that are free!
Also, people weren’t using webinars or podcasting. There are just more ways to reach people now.
Also pay per click has evolved. It’s not as easy to use Google Adwords as it used to be. It’s become more expensive to use and they’ve got a lot more restrictions that they used to. We used to use Google Adwords a lot but we don’t use it as much any more.
Dale King: How important has goal-setting been to your overall success?
Ellen Violette: In the beginning it wasn’t important at all because I didn’t know any better. I was just trying to figure out how to create programs that solved problems for people. Having said that, I certainly knew what I wanted to achieve but I never wrote it down or set dates to achieve certain goals. But as I grow my business it’s very important.
Because as you get more successful, you get offered more opportunities and if you don’t know what your goals are it’s really easy to get sidetracked and veer off course. Suddenly a year has gone by and you’re shaking your head going how did I wind up here? So goal setting really helps you stay focused.
Dale King: How important has reading been to your overall success?
Ellen Violette: Very important. I’ve always loved books and reading.
In The Success Principle Jack Canfield says that creativity is just seeing two things in a new way. And when you read you get exposed to a lot of ideas that you can start to juxtapose and see in new ways! I’m always thinking about how to create something great and reading really helps me do that.
Dale King: If you could recommend one book that all Internet marketers should read, what would it be?
Ellen Violette: I recently bought The Power of Focus by Mark Victory Hansen, Jack Canfield and Les Hewitt and I think that is the best book out there to help people with goal setting and living a balanced life while achieving their goals. It’s very concrete and gives you a plan that you can easily implement. Plus it’s an easy read. I highly recommend it.
Dale King: In your opinion, what technology has changed Internet Marketing the most over the last 5 years?
Ellen Violette: I’m not big on technology so I can’t say that I really keep up on it. Plus I’ve only been on the Internet in a serious way for 3 years. I’m really an author first. But I think the biggest changes have been IPODS and Video.
Now you can see people-which changes the dynamic. People get to know you like you and trust you faster and more intimately with video than audio.
Also now you can download content with IPODS and take it with you so you can listen to teleseminars at your own convenience.
That is having an impact on the way people market because they know a lot of their listeners won’t be on the live calls anymore. Also people can get a lot of content for free with podcasting. So content that is for sale must be better than ever. I think in the long run it benefits entrepreneurs and authors who have great products and content-they will be the ones who survive. But it’s definitely changed things.
Dale King: What new technology do you see changing Internet Marketing over the next 5 years?
Ellen Violette: I think webinars will become the industry standard. It will make conferences much more dynamic and interactive. And it will allow marketers and entrepreneurs to get a lot more information about their participants which will allow them to market specifically to their needs so it will become even more niched.
Dale King: What person has influenced you the most in your lifetime, and how?
Ellen Violette: A therapist I saw when I was in graduate school in Architecture at UCLA. I was very unhappy, I hated graduate school but there was a lot of pressure to stick with it from my family and boyfriend who was also in the program.
I had been writing poetry since I was about eleven and I read some of it to her. She asked if I ever considered becoming a songwriter. I was floored. The thought never crossed my mind-it wasn’t “professional” which was what was expected of me. But I liked the sound of it so I pursued it. I dropped out of graduate school, left my boyfriend and became a songwriter. My life has been very "untraditional" ever since! Plus I eventually got the Grammy nomination. She definitely changed the course of my life!
Dale King: If you could give my readers one piece of advice, what would it be?
Ellen Violette: That’s a hard one. There is so much I want to share but I would say don’t get caught up in the hype. Write your ebook and then start building a real business with it. That’s a lot more lucrative than just writing an ebook and trying to sell it. And thinking you’re going to make a million dollars from it! You can make a lot of money in this business but it takes time. So be patient and take it one step at a time!
Dale King: Thank you very much, Ellen. I appreciate you taking the time to do this interview.
Ellen Violette: Thank you for having me. If your readers would like
9 free secret ebook tips to making money on line and a complimentary subscription to my eBook Profit Secrets Newsletter ($147 value) they can go to: www.theebookcoach.com and opt-in to get them.
Also if they have any questions for me they can submit them at:
support@theebookcoach.com
This interview is the exclusive property of Ellen Violette. It may not be republished in any format - period.
