Photo by Drew Hays on Unsplash

3 areas of experimentation for a creative business

K. D. McAdams
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read

I’m an indie author, a creative entrepreneur. Unfortunately I’ve been so focused on creating I haven’t done well on the business side of things. There are three areas I’m experimenting with to help change that. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

I’ve released 12 novels.

2 box sets (soon to be 3).

8 novellas (don’t ask about the 4 erotica ones I wrote as an experiment).

My books have been included in multiple anthologies and I’ve sold a few short stories.

I’m not Hemingway or Rowling, but both my series book 1’s have over 20 reviews and average 4+ stars.

I’ve even received fan mail. From complete strangers.

Aside from some promotion of free download days and half hearted marketing it’s all been organic. There is some social proof that my stories don’t suck.

This represents about five years of work. And I still get excited about breaking even or the rare month with $200 profit.

Some days I think the only thing harder than writing a novel is selling it. I’ve worked hard on writing, editing, and publishing these stories. I haven’t worked as hard at building a solid business around my creativity.

Hard work doesn’t bother me. But I don’t think just committing more hours is going to help.

I need to work smarter. I need to learn new skills, conduct experiments, measure results and improve.

It’s time to be clever.

Three areas that I am experimenting with are:

  1. Copywriting — Particularly product descriptions. Creatives put so much energy into what they make that by the time it’s ready to sell, we throw together a few words, list it on a site, set a price and move on. When was the last time you looked at your product description? Does it convert browsers into buyers?
  2. Targeted Paid advertising — Good covers, smart copywriting, and solid reviews are only valuable if you get people to consider your book. In todays digital world it is rare to “stumble” upon a product and fall in love. Smart paid advertising programs will get customers to consider your work and generate a positive ROI.
  3. General Brand awareness — I’ve been incredibly lazy about separating my personal social media from my professional social media. That makes it near impossible for readers, customers, to know what to expect from me. I’m not interested in becoming boring one track mind guy, but scattered random posting doesn’t help grow my business either.

While I experiment with my existing work, I’m going to keep writing new books. Getting better at selling what I already wrote is valuable only if I apply my new skills to new products.

I started the Clever Cooperative because I don’t think the steps to grow my business will only work for fiction authors.

If you’re a blogger, photographer, vlogger, Etsy seller, Instagram personality, etc. Or if you want to be any of these things, I think there will be things you can learn from my experiments and experience.

There will probably be plenty of things you can teach me too. This is how I added Cooperative to the title.

So subscribe to the Clever Journal to follow along.

Tuesday’s are for Clever people who are trying to grow a creative business. Thursday are for people ready to start a creative business and are looking for some guidance and support.


Originally published at clevercooperative.com on September 4, 2018.

K. D. McAdams

Written by

Indie fiction author at http://kd-mcadams.com Helping creative entrepreneurs grow business at https://clevercooperative.com/ Posts may contain affiliate links

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