This month, we’re going to spend some time thinking about the gifts or products we can offer our readers in exchange for their deeper involvement and engagement with us. These are typically called Opt-ins or Minimum Viable Products.
Let’s start by identifying what each of those things really is.
Opt-ins
An Opt-in is a small, but powerful, free piece of (usually) digital content that you offer to those readers who are willing to share their email addresses to receive it. That might mean that they fill out a form on a landing page. It might mean that they follow you on a site that collects their email address (like Medium or Substack.)
Regardless, they want what you are offering and in exchange, they are giving you a way to reach them more directly than just publishing a piece of content and hoping they come along and find it.
Think of this as the chocolate bar you pick up at the checkout counter. It’s not a big decision. If you want the chocolate, you add it to your order just as you’re checking out. It’s going to give you a dopamine hit and while you have to pay for it, in the moment you decide the cost is worth it.
An Opt-in helps you to find the readers who are more interested in what you’re creating.
MVPs
A Minimum Viable Product is a little bigger. A little bolder. It requires more thought from the reader you’re presenting it to.
They’re going to pay for it some way. Often that’s with a little money. But it could also be with a commitment of time or money. This would be more like buying a box of brownie mix at the grocery store.
With that chocolate bar, you can eat it before you even leave the store. But brownies? Even when everything is all there in the box and even if all you need to do is add water and put it in the oven, you’re going to have to get home and do that work in order to enjoy the finished treat.
This isn’t a major undertaking. You’re not buying all the ingredients to make award-winning chocolate chip cookies with real vanilla and locally sourced eggs here. You’re making boxed brownies. They’re going to taste good, but they’re a minimum effort.
More of an effort than that chocolate bar, though.
When you create a MVP, you’re asking the reader to make a little more effort. Give you a few dollars or put more time or effort into it. Not the ultimate effort or a lot of money–but something.
An MVP helps you to find the readers who are most likely to become customers for larger products at some point.
Do you need an Opt-in, an MVP, or Both?
The short answer is yes to the Opt-in at least. And probably to the MVP.
The first step, and this week’s homework, is to think about what it is you want to do with your writing and how each of these would help you.
Are you trying to build an audience for your novels?
Offering something small and kind of silly–like a picture of your dog reading a book–is a good Opt-in. So is directing folks to your social media, in the hopes they’ll follow you there.
Offering a free novela or the first book in your series for 99 cents is a good MVP. Offering a short story or other fiction falls under MVP, rather than Opt-in, even if it’s free because it will cost your reader time and effort to read.
If you don’t have any books published yet, your goal might be to get readers to follow you on social media, so that you can engage them and reach out to them more easily than just posting on your blog and hoping for the best.
Are you trying to build a business?
An Opt-in like an exercise or worksheet or other PDF works well. Wow them with this. Your Opt-in should knock their socks off and offer a lot of value. More than they might expect. You want them to identify you with cool things.
A free or very-low cost course or short ebook works as an MVP. If you’re starting a business, being able to identify the people who are interested enough to even consider spending their time or energy on your work is as important as figuring out who is willing to give you a couple of bucks.
Are you a blogger without any current plans to sell anything?
You should still consider an Opt-in–something to encourage people to follow you. For one thing, it’s fun to have readers. And for another, you’ll be glad you have them if you decide to write a book or teach a class or otherwise monetize later.
You could probably skip the MVP for now.
Are you testing out an idea?
If you are, then you can probably skip the Opt-in that’s specific to the idea. It’s too small and will get people to take it, even if they’re not all that into the initial idea. Think about a little piece of chocolate at the checkout. You might buy it, even if the brand is new to you and you’re not really hungry, just because it’s there and looks interesting.
The MVP, though. This is where you’ll really vet your idea. Offer something more substantial that takes time and effort, and possibly money, to engage in–and you’ll know whether your idea is something that will connect with readers.
Over the next three weeks, we’ll go into more depth about two different kinds of Opt-ins (general opt-ins and content upgrades) and MVPs. On Sunday, March 26, at NOON EST during the All-Day Write, we’ll have a live Working Lunch and I’ll go over a bunch of different ideas for specific Opt-ins and MVPs and help you make a plan for creating your own.
Homework:
Spend some time this week thinking about where you want your writing to take you and whether Opt-ins or MVPs or both will help you get there.
+ Don’t forget about our LIVE working lunch call on Sunday, March 26th. Click here to register.
Love,
Shaunta
Working Lunch is a new free program offered exclusively via The Write Brain. We’ll tackle a different writing-related topic for you.
These lessons will only be live until April 1st. After April 1st, they’ll be placed behind The Write Brain’s paywall. Click the button below to sign up and get your first month free!
This one right here sounds like it will be a very interesting series. Looking forward to it.