#165: Jennifer Waddle self-published 10 books and is now selling books from the ideas she has learned from Shelley

Hey everyone, it's Shelly Hitz and I'm here with my husband, cj. Hey, guys. And we are excited to feature one of our Christian Book Academy members, Jennifer Waddle. Welcome. Jennifer. Hi.

Thank you so much for having me here today.

Yes. And I don't remember what year it was that we first met, but it has been years ago.

And you know, as a result, we started talking and you ended up self publishing your first book, Women's Bible Study. And now you have 10 published books, right?

Yes, I do. I'm just so thankful it's been such a great journey and you've been a big part of that, Shelley.

Just so amazing. And I know now you are a freelance writer and you write for a lot of well known ministries online and all of this, but we just wanted to feature some of what God is doing in you. And I know you had kind of a, a case study that you had done recently and that you were willing to share with us.

Absolutely. So as part of your book marketing Momentum challenge in the spring of 2020, I ended up selling one of my books as part of a Mother's Day bundle. But before we get into the case study, I'd like to say that the challenge was amazing. You provided us with a whole packet of ideas for marketing our books. And I still refer to that packet of information.

So this Mother's Day book bundle was one of the dozens of ideas that you offered in that challenge. And I remember that you encouraged the group to start with what we had. You told us to take inventory of the books we already had on our shelves. And because I'd already ordered a box full of author copies of my women's Bible study, I felt like this would be a great marketing strategy for the upcoming holiday, which was Mother's Day. So if it's okay with you, I'm.

Just going to give you a quick.

Breakdown of what the bundle included.

Yeah. And just real quick, I'll just share. That was an idea that I shared because I had done it myself as well. And I have a brush lettering workbook that I have ordered, you know, just different copies and I put together a bundle and it really helped, you know, increase the sales. And so I just, I mentioned that and Jennifer took the idea and ran with it. And I loved how creative and also how you were able to serve and impact individual women's lives, you know, through this opportunity.

Absolutely. So basically I took, I think I had 15 books on hand and so I created 15 bundles and this is what was in the bundle. I had my Women's Bible Study, which was called Scarves of Replacing Our Issues with the Covering of Christ. And I put in a small lined companion journal. These were just plain, plain journals from Amazon that I found that I thought would accompany the book really well. And then I included a micro journal pen, a summer scarf which was white, going along with the theme of the book, scripture cards for each chapter. And then I bundled all these up into a white organza bag that was real pretty for Mother's Day, had some ribbon with it and it was just really nice. I also had to buy packing supplies and kind of determine the cost to mail each bundle within the United States. And so the total cost for each bundle was $21.45. And I turned around and sold the bundles for $32 each. So that was a profit of $10.55 per bundle.

Now I also, in this case study that I made up afterwards, I determined how much time I creating these bundles because I wanted to make sure this was going to be something profitable and not something that was just going to take up all my time, be way too much money and not be much of a profit at all.

So basically I spent one hour researching products and placing orders. I spent an hour creating a product sales page on payhip. Payhip was kind of the platform I used for my landing and sales page and then they in turn go through PayPal for the money part of it. I spent an hour creating sales emails to my subscribers. So I already had an email list which was huge and I just created a couple of different emails for them. And then of course I had the pack. I spent a couple of hours packaging the bundles and another hour mailing them in time for Mother's Day. So I spent six hours is all for this one holiday and taking into factor how much I was profiting and how many hours were involved. I ended up with an $18.41 per hour profit. Now I will say that I did the bundle sale again this year in 2021 and I sold more bundles at a higher price because I was able to include a few more details such as a blank line journal that I had created and self published and and free bonus cd, a worship CD that I included in there. So it was tons easier this time around.

Were prettier. I was able to sell them for more money and we sold out within about 48 hours to a week. Wow.

It really can be profitable if you just start with what you have. Get creative, try to take the title of your book and think outside the box and Add a few accessories to go with it and package it real nice and I bet you can make some money on your books.

Yeah. And what I love about what you've done is I love the white scarf, you know, because it was tying in the title. So, you know, every time they see that scarf, wherever it is, you know, they'll think about you and your book and the message in the book. Right. That's the thing. Helping the message to go deeper into their heart. But then I love how the second time around, like you had a lot of the, the things in place, right. So you could, you know, save a lot of time with that, but then you self published your own journal, so you're able to probably profit a little bit more on that. And then you included a cd which, if you don't know, Jennifer Waddle is also a musician.

And I've been, you know, thinking for years, oh, it'd be so neat to be able to combine the, you know, to your writing and your music. So I love that. So such a great idea. And that's exactly what happens when you do something if you are able to, you know, do it more than once. So like, for this, you could do it every year and, you know, be able to have a little bit of infusion of cash for your writing ministry. But also impact lives. Right. You know, every book, every bundle is a life that is impacted. And people are much more likely to give that as a gift, maybe even to someone who maybe isn't even, you know, a Christian or maybe they're, you know, on the fringe or, you know, struggling some. And so every bundle that you have shipped out is a life that God can impact. So I love that so much. Thank you for sharing.

You're welcome. And thank you for running the book marketing challenge. It was awesome.

Yes, you are very welcome. And we hope that this encouraged and inspired all of you that are listening. You know, think outside the box, get creative and maybe the first time it won't be as profitable or as successful as you want. But don't give up there, you know, try other things, add other things and you can continue to see, you know, see things improve, but also more lives impacted. So thank you so much for sharing, Jennifer.

You are welcome. Thanks for having me today.

Bye. Bye.

Bye.