Zero to Sold: The New Website!

It's here! It's up and fully functional, with loads of good stuff for anyone that's looking to promote themselves and their product.

We started ZTS Promotions based on the premise that visuals matter. Press kits are important. Cover or poster art is arresting. Trailers rock out loud!

These were the tools that we wanted to deliver to any creatives that needed them. Whether it’s the beginner that’s just needing some guidance, or the seasoned pro that simply wants the best tools for their project, we consistently delivered.

After quite a while of offering truly superlative marketing materials to writers, screenwriters and filmmakers, we realized something else. Things have changed.

When’s the last time you actually watched a commercial on TV? TiVo is an amazing thing, isn’t it? It’s also completely changed the way that savvy advertisers market. TV ads are being dropped left and right. Even the Super Bowl, the Holy Grail of television ad space, just doesn’t pack the whallop that it once did.

What does this mean for us? Nothing but good things!

Social media has now become the new frontier of advertising. Now, before you turn up your nose, I want you to realize that this is actually a return to the basics. In the days before TV, promotion was done socially, by building up and maintaining relationships with current and potential clients. Parties and gatherings were as much a part of a business’ landscape as they were a filling of a human need for contact.

And our new website is all over it!

We can help you fully integrate your amazing promotional tools across multiple online platforms. We have the skills to grow your network using your website, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. We can help you develop an integrated “brand” that fully expresses what you have to offer. Once we have that, we then target those that will respond best to that brand.

So, go check it out, right here! What do you have to lose? It’s just the click of the mouse, right?

Plain Jane--The Launch

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. Here I am, going on and on about “getting your stuff out there” and what have you seen from me?

Hmmm.

Worry not, kind friends (or skeptical passersby, whichever fits the bill). There has been a plan.

I am announcing the release of Plain Jane: Brunettes Beware, written under my pseudonym, Cristyn West. This is a wonderfully tense crime thriller with a twist. Here’s the link to our Smashwords.com page (an amazing resource, by the way): http://bit.ly/atlm6P. You can read up to 30% of the book for free, and if you wish to purchase it, it’s only $2.99!

Now, there’s a twist in the actual novel itself, but there’s another one as well. We are releasing this novel as a fully self-published work with a completely online business model.

There will be no attempt to get this novel into typical brick-and-mortar bookstores. It will only be available as an on-line purchase.

In addition, we will be heavily promoting the e-book versions, eschewing the print copies almost completely.

Why?

Simple. As of March 2010, e-book sales are up 185%. Amazon is now reporting that 50% of its book sales are digital. They expect that statistic to reach 70% by next year. People are buying more e-books.

They’re easier to purchase. They’re less expensive. You don’t have to worry about shipping. You can read more than a quarter of the book first without paying.

Okay, now you know why others (perhaps even you) are buying e-books, but what about us? What’s the upside?

Ahem. Money.

We make more money per copy off of e-book sales than we ever would off of a print version. Doesn’t matter if you’re self-published or not, the amount we make off of a hardcover or paperback copy is not as much as we make off of an e-book, even selling it for $2.99 on Smashwords: http://bit.ly/b60jVe.

Like what you’re hearing? Like the idea that we don’t need to cow-tow to the publishers? That we can do it ourselves, through the power of the internet and social media like Twitter?

Then join us. We’re looking to form a writer’s collective. We want it to be small (no more than 10 authors). We want it to be made up of the truly dedicated. We want it to work for everyone involved. If you have a novel that you’re sitting on, hoping against hope that it’ll get picked up, why not test the digital waters?

From where I’m swimming, it’s quite refreshing!

The Anti-'Borg Collective

I love Star Trek. The original remains my favorite, since it’s the one that first opened up my eyes and mind to the mysteries of a larger universe. However, some of the newer series’ episodes had some pretty awe-inspiring stuff.

One storyline that really affected me was the ‘Borg collective. It was creepy. It was inhuman. It went against everything that I believe in (pretty sure that was the point).

It was also incredibly powerful.

That kind of unification allows for a lot to get done very quickly. I started thinking that if we could form that kind of unity without giving up our individuality, we could do so much more than we can as isolated artists.

So, here’s the deal. I want to form a writer’s collective. The old publishing model is starting to feel increasingly outdated. Publishers simply don’t give the kind of attention to new writers that they need to really get their stuff out there. It’s increasingly up to the writer to make sure their books get sold.

Okay, so let’s embrace that! I have a friend who’s a mid-list author. His experiences with his publisher were less-than-stellar, so he finally got fed up. His backlist was dead in the water. It had barely made him back his modest advance and he was never going to see any royalties from it. Worse, his career was stagnate. He was LOSING his reader base rather than building it.

Then he said 'screw it,' and took over his on-line publicity. He hit Twitter, Facebook, and blogged like a fiend. He also made over $100,000 last year from Kindle alone. He’s on track to make twice that this year.

We can do that. We can come together as writers, supporting each other and our work.

Let’s form a collective!

Not a soul-crushing, individuality stealing entity, but a life-affirming, art inspiring group. We can lift one another up, offering moral support and encouragement, as well as cross-promotional marketing.

And I'm putting my money where my mouth is! Next week, I’ll be putting my novel out there for everyone to see. I'm going to be an active part of this new venture.

As part of this, we will be offering free online workshops on how to use Twitter to effectively market our novels. Leave your email address or Twitter handle here in the comments if you’re interested in joining in with our writer’s collective. We will keep you up-to-date on any upcoming workshops.

Together, we can do some pretty spectacular stuff!

Prepared for Success

We talk a lot about the tools that you need to become the successful writer/screenwriter/filmmaker that you want to be. We help with branding, online presence & platforming, social media expansion. We create amazing visuals like cover art, poster art, press kits and trailers to help your project succeed.

All of that is great, but it doesn't address one of the biggest problems we all face.

We are frightened of success.

You may not immediately agree with me. You may say to yourself, "But I desperately want success! I'm working myself half to death trying to be successful."

Just take a look at that last statement. Do you feel how much conflict is in it? We're fighting for success, but who is it that we're really fighting? The universe? I'm pretty sure the universe has enough success and to spare. It's not the one holding us back.

We are.

We're busy fighting off all of the stuff inside us that really believes that we don't deserve to be successful. We're putting self-imposed limits on what we can accomplish and how high we can go.

So, rather than talk about amazing tools to help, I thought that maybe we'd talk about preparing ourselves emotionally to become the artists we want to be.

I'm not even going to talk about how "good" or "bad" our art is, because firstly, that's pretty subjective, and secondly, we can always improve (that's the topic for another blog...always being a student!). It's not our job to determine whether or not what we offer is amazing. There are enough "bad" books and films out there that we all know that isn't really the determining factor.

What seems to be the real point is whether or not we're willing to embrace the idea of sharing our projects with the world. Because that is kind of what success looks like, right?

Any time we start to doubt ourselves or question our worth or want to just give it all up, let's take a second and realize that those words are not our own. Those are old tapes running in our heads that we picked up from someone else at some point. Usually our parents, but I'm not your therapist, so don't take my word for it. :)

Those tapes point in the exact opposite direction of where we want to be going, so when they show up, it's a pretty good indicator that we're on the right path. We don't need to bully our way through the negative tapes, we just need to take a moment and reconnect with our joy.

We know what it feels like when we are connected and creating. That's real. The dark, ugly tapes are not. At some other point, we can talk about the parts of us that are playing those tapes, but for now, just know that they're really telling us to keep going. We're on the right path. If we weren't, there would be no reason for those fears to come up.

Breathe through it, reconnect to your love of your art and continue to create. Keep showing up. Find others to help support you when the tapes get too loud. Talk it out with them. Lift one another up.

Eventually, success is not longer a battle. It becomes an inevitability.

Twitter, Your Own Personal Piggy Bank?

You've heard me talk about social media. You've seen me wax poetic about the wonders of Twitter. You've experienced my not-so-subtle prodding about what it is that we're doing here.

Time to get super specific!

We want to make money, right? Preferably doing what it is that we love.

And social media, particularly Twitter, is perfectly suited to helping us do exactly that.

So, the question is, are your accounts ready to monetize? There are many different ways to potentially make money off of social media. As many different ways, honestly, as there are different interests. And if you've been on Twitter long, you know that there are a LOT of different interests here. :)

The first step is to figure out what you have to offer. What is it that you can provide to interested parties? You may not see it at first, but it always has to do with passion. What are you passionate about?

Once you've determined what that passion is, it's time to develop a brand. Simply put, it's a unified way of having others looking at you. It's a way of helping those that view your materials to understand very quickly what you're all about.

The more your branding is well developed, the easier it will be to monetize when the time comes.

So, that all sounds great, right? Perfectly wonderful! Now, how do we do it??

That's where we come in! Zero to Sold is offering free online workshops on how to monetize your social media accounts, focusing on Twitter.

Watch our stream for upcoming times and dates for these amazing classes, but anyone with any interest, go ahead and leave a comment with your Twitter @ name, so that we can contact you directly as classes are available.

Let's get to it! There's money to be made!

Let's Talk about Tweets, Baby!

"Let's talk about you and me."

Because that's what Twitter is all about, right? Creating relationships based on shared interests at 140 characters a pop.

So, just for a moment, I want you to go to your profile (if you're on Twitter, that is. If you aren't, get on, RIGHT NOW! Seriously!) and look at what's there.

What do your tweets say about you? Look at them from an outsider's point of view. Do they make sense? What's the latest tweet (which is one of your most important "stats" by they way)? If you were someone else, would you decide to follow yourself, based on what you see?

If you're on Twitter for purely social reasons, don't worry about any of this. If, however, you're here to self-promote or to monetize, you need to make sure that your stream looks attractive to potential contacts.

How do we do that? There are a lot of strategies that we employ for our clients' Twitter accounts that we're hired to manage. I will share one of those ideas.

Know what you want out of Twitter, and then make sure that your stream constantly reflects that. Anytime you engage in random banter with people on the stream, you're leaving your followers out of half of the conversation. If the conversation is one that matches your objectives online, then by all means engage. Otherwise, take it to DM.

This is just one of the many strategies that we can teach you that will help to target your market specifically. Strategies that will build your following, that will build your influence, that will allow you to push traffic from Twitter on towards your website, facebook, blog, etc.

Our new website, dealing with all of these promotional tools, is coming out very soon. In the meantime, go to our current site: www.zerotosoldtrailers.com and take a look at our wonderful promotional tools! You don't have to use our services to help you promote (although we're awesome, so you should!), but PLEASE make sure that you are getting your projects out there!

Maximizing Our Exposure

Before we raise any eyebrows here, I'm talking about our internet exposure. There will be no removal of clothing here. #justsaying

We're all here on the internet for different reasons. Many of you reading may be joining us from Twitter. And what is it that you're doing there, or on any other of the many social media sites? Why are you reading a blog about promoting yourself and your unique form of creativity?

Whatever your reason for being here in the first place (information, support, marketing, networking, etc.), you've found yourself here, reading this post. And here's the thing: we can help you accomplish your goals.

Whether you're looking to make new friends within a certain area of interest or hoping to sell the next great American novel, we can help you gain greater exposure.

Just to tell you a little bit about ourselves... We are award-winning writers and filmmakers first and foremost. That's where we started. As we embarked on our journey of creation, we realized quickly that promoting our projects was key to any sort of success. And we weren't happy with any of the promotions that were being offered.

The trailers we saw didn't inspire us. Honestly, we didn't see any trailers offered for scripts (which seems ridiculous), and the ones being made for novels didn't have the kind of punch and presence we were looking for.

The cover/poster art available was decent, but again, was lacking the kind of drama and flair we sought. The same with the press kits.

So we made our own. And received immediate and overwhelmingly positive responses. We began doing it for others, including working with web designers to really solidify the clients' "brand".

Soon after that, we started realizing that this material on its own wasn't enough. It helps, definitely, but it wasn't getting us or our clients the full exposure we wanted. Even though our clients were thrilled with their responses, we knew we weren't reaching the full potential of what was being created.

At that point we got involved in social media. Very quickly it became obvious that the "social media experts" weren't as expert as advertised. Before we would get to the point of engaging their services, we would find that we had surpassed them. Within two months, we had landed five clients (among whom are a NYT Bestseller, an artist, a mommy blogger and a co-producer for a hit reality show) for whom we were managing social media accounts and web presence, as well as coaching them on their overall brand.

Enough about us. Our approach to maximizing your exposure is three-fold. We study you and your goals and help to identify and unify your brand. We develop materials (cover art, trailers, press kits, business cards, bios, etc.) to solidify that brand in the minds of viewers. Finally, we use social media to increase your presence online, drive traffic to your website(s) and materials, and to help you monetize as quickly as possible. There are no guarantees in this industry (or in life, for that matter), but our consistent record is greatly increased presence (100% to !000%, on average) within a month and monetization within three.

We have a new and greatly expanded website coming soon, but for now, you can go to www.zerotosoldtrailers.com to check out our promotional materials. You can also email us at info@zerotosoldtrailers (dot) com. We offer a free assessment of your web presence and brand. And here's the thing: you don't have to go with us, but getting a free assessment is... well... free! There's no obligation. And it will give you INFORMATION!! So, why not give it a shot?