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Making Money as a Writer: Products · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyRiderLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: As you probably know, we've been working our way through a series on making money as a writer.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And on today's episode, we're talking about one of the most fascinating and probably a little bit complicated ways to increase your income, and that is developing products.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of writers create hats, t-shirts, mugs, journals, and an endless array of other merchandise and products based on their brand.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my favorite examples of a writer who creates unique and interesting products based on his writing is Ryan Holliday.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Ryan Holiday's products include special editions of his books, coins featuring figures and mottos of Stoicism, a calendar, rings, jewelry, prints, and lots and lots of other stuff.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to dailystoic.com for some great examples of products that he has.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's got a link to his store there with lots and lots of cool things.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, products can be a really great way to set yourself apart from others who are writing about the same kinds of topics.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: But let's be honest, most writers don't have the business mindset or the persistence to go through the stages of developing a successful product.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: However, if you are committed to building your audience and you're committed to thinking like a business owner and not just a writer, products can be a really great source of income.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is an area that I absolutely want to dive more into over the next couple of years.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, at one of our recent Daily Rider retreats, I had special journals, pens, and tumblers made with a Daily Rider logo, and everybody loved them.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a cool experiment to see the response to some potential products, and it convinced me to dive into this area a lot more.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: My personal view on products is that you need to be willing to test some products and have a real entrepreneurial spirit in order to make those successful.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think you also need a customer base who can buy the products consistently in order for it to be profitable and to justify the time and effort to create them.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is different than buying a few things and having your logo put on things as a way to market your business.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that can be really, really helpful.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: It can be really fun to have your logo on some different things.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you to think, try and really put your business head on when you're spending money on products with your logo on them.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a business that can support you selling those things and you can, you know, recoup your investment and be profitable, that's really great.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have kind of a creative side and you really like to, you know, put your logo on lots of different things and and that makes you kind of feel good about your business.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's great, but just be careful about the money that you spend on those kinds of things because uh sometimes, you know, in our rush to promote our business, we have our logo put on a whole bunch of things and we give away a bunch of stuff and nothing actually really comes back from that.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I would encourage you just to be mindful and really intentional before you spend the money to have your logo put on a bunch of things that may not have the results that you want.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of my caution for you there.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I say that out of personal experience because uh I'm gonna throw myself under the bus here a little bit.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: At our recent Daily Rider retreat, this has been just like three months ago or so, in the gift bags that I had for the retreat attendees, I really wanted to have uh some kind of so at the last retreat I had really nice tumblers made.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the the kind of tumblers that have the lid that closes, and you can take them around in your car, and they're white and they look really, really cool, and they were actually really expensive to have made.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I loved those tumblers.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: However, I didn't want to just do the same thing for this retreat.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So instead, because the retreat was in May, I thought, oh, let me have some water bottles made.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, kind of those cheap water bottles that you see everywhere where the you can pop the top up and you can, you know, drink from it really easy, and they only cost a few dollars a piece to make.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: The problem was that I had to, from VistaPrint, I had to order a hundred of those just to get any kind of a deal on those.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't want to, I didn't really need a hundred of those.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: I needed like 15 of them.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I went ahead and I bought a hundred because they were actually really, really cheap.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And now in my garage, I have like I gave a lot of those away at the retreat.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think I gave everybody two or three of them.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I have like 70 water bottles just in my garage that just have my Daily Writer logo on them, not really knowing what to do with them.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they're water bottles, so they're not convenient to ship anywhere, like a book is.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll figure out what to do with those.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and maybe uh maybe since you're listening to this show, maybe if I see you in person sometime soon, I'll be happy to give you one of those because I've got a lot of them to give away.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I just thought that would be kind of a cool gift for people because I use water bottles all the time.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I ride my bike in the summer constantly, and I've got a thing for a water bottle on there.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you ever see me in person, you'll see loads of those green Daily Rider water bottles in my car, my bike, my offices, and all around the house.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It probably drives my wife crazy.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, that's uh the that that's today's episode of hey, things that Kent messed up and we cannot learn from, uh, which is kind of a common theme, but hey, that's what business is.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: We do things and we learn from them.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, all that said, back to our main theme here.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: All that said, I think products can be a great way to stand out as a writer because most writers won't go to the trouble of messing with it.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely encourage you to give it a shot, even if it's just marketing material and you're doing things like water bottles or pads of paper or journals or pens or whatever it is, they can be really cool.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: But if your business can support you uh selling some cool products and making some profit from those, I think that's really, really cool as well.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So here's my question for you today.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you were going to design a product with your logo or brand, what would it be?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super curious about that.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So give that some thought.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.