Celebrate with a Giveaway

I am really happy to announce that last week my podcast passed 50k downloads. This may not sound too much for some, but for me it is very special. The reason is - when I was launching Write 2B Read the biggest fear I had was that no one will listen. That's what I was scared of most. So reaching 50k downloads is huge!

To celebrate that (+ my birthday this month) http://www.anialexander.com/giveaway (I created a giveaway for writers, which you can see here.) The winner will get Scrivener + 2 books, which will help become successful self-published author. http://www.anialexander.com/giveaway (Please check it out and share with those, who might be interested.)

Don't Forget
As you already know the podcast is sponsored by the http://www.authormarketinginstitute.com (Author Marketing Institute). AMI wanted me to let you know that their next event for authors is coming up at the end of Jan. It's called Author Marketing Live and it's a virtual conference. That means you can attend from your home or office and see all the presentations via your computer or tablet. Grab a seat today to learn from best sellers like Steve Scott, Joel Comm, Lewis Howes and Peter Shankman, and more. You can grab a ticket to the event for only $99 if you use the coupon code "ani" during checkout. That's $49 off the regular ticket price. Just visit http://www.authormarketinglive.com/ (http://www.authormarketinglive.com) to register.

Now let's get to my today's guest - David Nihill

David was born in Dublin, Ireland. After graduating with a Master’s Degree in Business in 2003, he moved to San Francisco where he worked for the Irish government helping startups expand rapidly. He has been involved with startup companies ever since. David is the Founder of http://funnybizz.co/funnybizz-conference/ (FunnyBizz Conferences), a community conference series helping content creators tap into the power of storytelling, comedy and improv to create better content. He has performed standup comedy at California’s leading clubs including Cobbs, the Comedy Store, the Improv and the Punchline even though he strongly denies being a comedian and is well aware most people don’t understand his accent. His learning, taken from one year's intensive experiments in comedy, performed on someone from the business community with a huge initial fear of public speaking (i.e. him!) have been featured in Inc. and Forbes amongst others. He loves sharks, still dislikes public speaking, and calls San Francisco home when immigration officials permit.

In this interview we discuss how David wrote and launched http://www.7comedyhabits.com/book/ (his book Do You Talk Funny?), which you can get for free in the coming 2 days.

So what did David do?

David had the original idea for that was creating an online course on Udemy called https://www.udemy.com/7-comedic-habits-to-be-consistently-funnier-presenting/?couponCode=addhumornow (Become a Better and Funnier Speaker). By clicking on the link you can get the course for $18 (with 70% discount).

What were the benefits of that strategy?


It is easier to find natural voice by talking than writing

Udemy promoted the course, so David was able to avoid the self-promotion

Training's demand validated that there is a need of the topic

Helped create the audience (around 4k students enrolled)

10-20% of the students were engaged and provided interactive feedback

Saved time and effort (all training material was transcribed for $80)

The online training brought in passive income of $12k

The income from the training made it possible to invest in producing a good quality book

The creation of the training took about 2 weeks only

Through training data you can track where students drop off and which parts should be modified


Food for Thought

The passive income is not as passive as you think it is!