Episode 96
Five Must-Have Black Friday Deals for Writers Revealed
Tune in to the latest episode of the Writing Momentum podcast with Chris and Gena, where they delve into the five must-have Black Friday deals for writers. Focusing on securing the best value for authors, their essential deals range from email marketing with ConvertKit's exclusive annual plan to the revolutionary email templates and trainings offered by Liz Wilcox, along with the time-saving social media management solution provided by SocialBee. Listen to uncover two lifetime deals: ProWritingAid for comprehensive grammar and spell checking and Sessions, a feature-packed video conferencing tool, both available at unbeatable rates. If you're looking to take your writing and marketing strategies to the next level, don't miss this insightful episode packed with exclusive deals!
BLACK FRIDAY DEALS
- ConvertKit 30% off Annual - https://wmdeal.com/convertkit
- Liz Wilcox's Email Marketing Membership (Annual Version) - https://wmdeal.com/lizannual
- ProWritindAid 50% off Lifetime Deal - https://wmdeal.com/prowritingaid
- SocialBee 20% off forever - https://wmdeal.com/socialbee - Use coupon MOMENTUM20
- Sessions - Lifetime Deal - https://wmdeal.com/sessions
LINKS:
- Liz Wilcox's Email Marketing Membership at https://wmdeal.com/liz
- Get your FREE Move the Needle goal-setting for authors ebook at https://www.writingmomentum.com
- Write with us! Join Chris, Gena, and Rene each Wednesday at noon Central and let's get our writing DONE! https://www.writingmoments.com
Transcript
What Black Friday deals do writers need this year?
Speaker:Hey, we can help with that!
Speaker:Hey, welcome to the Writing Momentum podcast.
Speaker:I'm Christopher Maselli and I'm here with my wife, Gena.
Speaker:How's it going, Gena?
Speaker:It's going really well.
Speaker:We are headed into the holiday season and I have to admit, I love it.
Speaker:I'm a junkie for the holidays.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:We love the holidays, though I think it's always difficult to know what
Speaker:to buy everyone for the holidays.
Speaker:I think that's absolutely true.
Speaker:I love shopping.
Speaker:You do.
Speaker:But...
Speaker:We have said before that I'm so thankful for you because you, for
Speaker:many reasons, but for the fact that you are a hound dog for deals.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I love a good deal.
Speaker:I love to search for deals.
Speaker:I love to find deals and not just deals that are like, 10
Speaker:percent off here or there.
Speaker:I like to find the deals that really just crush it for our personal
Speaker:life, for our business life.
Speaker:And that's what we're talking about today are finding deals for writers.
Speaker:And we have done some research and we have found what we think are the five best
Speaker:deals for writers this holiday season.
Speaker:If you know a writer and you're thinking, Hey, I don't know what to get them.
Speaker:One of these could be the ticket.
Speaker:If you are a writer and you want to buy something for yourself.
Speaker:I like to do that sometimes.
Speaker:I am notorious for this.
Speaker:I do what I call treat yourself gifts.
Speaker:I put them under the tree.
Speaker:I am really obnoxious about it.
Speaker:I do it to get a rise out of our kids on Christmas morning.
Speaker:She'll buy things for herself, wrap them up, put them under the tree, and
Speaker:then open them on Christmas morning.
Speaker:Which means she gets more gifts than anyone else.
Speaker:I deserve more gifts than anyone else.
Speaker:I am the cruise director and the airline attendant.
Speaker:It's this is where the the exit signs are.
Speaker:This is where we're going.
Speaker:I'm that person.
Speaker:So I think I deserve it.
Speaker:It's really true.
Speaker:She deserves it.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Let's jump into this cause I have a feeling anyone listening is really excited
Speaker:now to hear about what we might recommend.
Speaker:This holiday season.
Speaker:And there, there are five that we've boiled it down to that
Speaker:are some of our favorites.
Speaker:Some of these you'll have heard about because we've talked about them
Speaker:before and some of them are brand new.
Speaker:Yes, and I will tell you, Chris, I mentioned that he's a hound dog for deals,
Speaker:but he really does look for lifetime deals or deals where he can pay once and then
Speaker:not have to pay again for a year or ever.
Speaker:Yeah, or ever.
Speaker:So that's what some of these are.
Speaker:Now, this first one is not like that.
Speaker:This first one is just getting a better deal on a service that you might
Speaker:already use, and that is ConvertKit.
Speaker:Now, you've heard us talk about ConvertKit before.
Speaker:ConvertKit is an email marketing program.
Speaker:Email marketing programs, a lot of these, they're free for the first
Speaker:thousand or so that you get on there.
Speaker:But that's for a limited functions and convert kit is one of the best
Speaker:for emailing your audience with the great thing about this particular
Speaker:deal is that this is their best price all year long and it lets you
Speaker:lock in this price for a full year.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:30 percent off for annual plans, best price of the year and totally worth it.
Speaker:And I think the thing that makes this so great is also with these upper
Speaker:tier plans beyond the free one is that you do get some segmentation, you get
Speaker:some automation, you get, now some of that's going to be available in the
Speaker:free plans, but as the higher you go, the more bells and whistles you get.
Speaker:So this is their creator annual plan.
Speaker:So if you are with ConvertKit or not with ConvertKit, you can take advantage of this
Speaker:unless you've already got this particular plan locked into an annual rate.
Speaker:But this is up to a thousand subscribers for this price, and I will tell you if
Speaker:you have more than a thousand subscribers the price will just be slightly
Speaker:different because they have it tiered based on how many subscribers you have.
Speaker:But if you have up to a thousand, it's $200 for the entire year.
Speaker:That gets you unlimited email broadcasts sends, unlimited forms, unlimited landing
Speaker:pages, unlimited products it gives you tagging and segmentation, automated
Speaker:email sequences and a whole lot more.
Speaker:And it's just really impressive.
Speaker:It has a hundred plus direct integrations, which I love because I love to integrate
Speaker:ConvertKit with other things that I'm using, like the landing forms on my
Speaker:website or our membership platform writing that we use with writing moments.
Speaker:Those are all linked into ConvertKit.
Speaker:And we find it a very easy email marketing platform to use.
Speaker:Yeah, it really is.
Speaker:It's got some great functionality and just really, I think it's just really good.
Speaker:It's a great one and very easy to use.
Speaker:Now we, at this point we do need to tell you.
Speaker:A lot of these are special links that you have to use to get these so we are
Speaker:going to put those links into our show notes so that you're able to find out and
Speaker:make sure that you get this exact deal we're talking about because for whatever
Speaker:reason, some of these companies do not put these best deals on their front page
Speaker:or on their homepage and they'll reserve them for their affiliates, and so we've
Speaker:become affiliates with a lot of places over the web over the years just to, make
Speaker:a little extra money as we go, because what happens is it'll give a kickback to
Speaker:us for recommending a service when we do that, but then they also reserve some of
Speaker:their best deals for their affiliates, so it doesn't cost you anything extra.
Speaker:And it will actually support the show, but more importantly, it gets you the
Speaker:best deal when you follow those links.
Speaker:And so that's really why we recommend these.
Speaker:The link is in the notes.
Speaker:I believe it's writing.
Speaker:fyi slash convertkit, if you're just listening.
Speaker:I do want to add that out there, that yes, we are with these,
Speaker:we are affiliates with them.
Speaker:But we only recommend what we would recommend.
Speaker:We are very upfront about that.
Speaker:We don't we don't recommend things.
Speaker:There are a lot of things that would give us a bigger kickback.
Speaker:We don't recommend those.
Speaker:We only recommend the things that we use and the things that we really believe in.
Speaker:And we, we went through a lot of deals this year to find the best ones.
Speaker:And these are the really the best ones that we have found.
Speaker:There were a lot more that we saw that we were like, no, we
Speaker:don't want to recommend that one.
Speaker:But this one, we love convert kit.
Speaker:We use convertKit.
Speaker:We recommend ConvertKit.
Speaker:30 percent off annual plans with the Creator Annual Plan.
Speaker:It's about $200 for the first year, and then, or for the first thousand, and then
Speaker:beyond that it just goes up just slightly.
Speaker:Alright.
Speaker:Next one is...
Speaker:Speaking of email.
Speaker:Speaking of email, Liz's annual plan.
Speaker:This is Liz Wilcox.
Speaker:We've had her on our show.
Speaker:We have interviewed her.
Speaker:We are huge fans of her because she really she really revolutionized our newsletter.
Speaker:She really simplified it.
Speaker:If you haven't had a chance to listen to that podcast, please go
Speaker:back and listen to it or watch it.
Speaker:Because she gives you a lot of insight there and she's just a lot of fun too.
Speaker:But let's talk about what she offers.
Speaker:So what she offers, Liz has a program called email marketing membership and
Speaker:the email marketing membership program.
Speaker:I'm trying to bring it up on my own screen here, so I can look at it as I talk.
Speaker:What it is it's a template system that she has created.
Speaker:Every week, she creates an email template for you.
Speaker:She does the research to find out what's good to send in the market right now.
Speaker:She gives you creative ideas and prompts, and an outline for
Speaker:what your newsletter can be.
Speaker:And then she sends that to you.
Speaker:So I have called her before.
Speaker:She's like my email VA.
Speaker:She does the marketing research.
Speaker:She does the initial draft of that email that goes out, but then she shows how you
Speaker:can customize to really make it your own.
Speaker:So your email is not going to look like other emails of other people
Speaker:who subscribe to her program.
Speaker:It'll look completely different.
Speaker:You won't know that it's the same email, right?
Speaker:It looks really different and it, her emails work like they, they really are a
Speaker:great way to draw out of you what you need to send out to your audience this week.
Speaker:Now with her annual plan, This is she offers her regular plan
Speaker:for $9 a month all year long.
Speaker:Anytime you want to sign up, you can go to writing.
Speaker:fyi slash Liz and you can sign up for that plan.
Speaker:But right now she has what she calls her annual plan.
Speaker:So basically what she does is she takes that 9 times 12, she asks you to pay for
Speaker:the full year up front, but when you do, you get not only one year of her email
Speaker:templates coming to you every single week with a template, with a video, with an
Speaker:explanation, but any additional training she has all year long, you get it.
Speaker:Included in that price.
Speaker:Absolutely free.
Speaker:We are annual members ourselves, and I will tell you that she will
Speaker:have a full seminar on how to do a landing page, for instance.
Speaker:And if you're a writer and you're like, I want to do a landing
Speaker:page, but I don't know how, she'll have a full seminar on it.
Speaker:She might charge three or four hundred dollars for that seminar.
Speaker:For you, it's included because you've got the annual plan, and her annual plan is
Speaker:going to go away at the end of this year.
Speaker:Okay, it won't be offered again, at least for another year, she said.
Speaker:If you want to get in on this, you want to get in on it now,
Speaker:believe it or not, it's only $108.
Speaker:That also includes launches, which for those of you who are coming out with your
Speaker:own books, you're wanting to know how do I launch this thing just on the email side,
Speaker:now she's not going to give you everything everywhere, but on the email side, she
Speaker:is going to show you how to structure your launch so you can make it effective.
Speaker:And that...
Speaker:is worth.
Speaker:Oh my gosh, that's so worth the money for the annual plan.
Speaker:I actually, I think $100 is cheap for that.
Speaker:Yeah, she also gives you a welcome sequence for when people sign up for
Speaker:your email list that you can use to send them, a reactivation sequence
Speaker:in case people sign up and then they haven't opened your emails for a while.
Speaker:You can put that in your system to email to them.
Speaker:She, and these are all again, they're templates.
Speaker:She doesn't write all the emails for you, but she gives you a
Speaker:template to help you write it.
Speaker:Cause if you ever sat down and been like.
Speaker:Man, what am I going to write now?
Speaker:That goes away for us because we have Liz's templates.
Speaker:We now, we used to spend just time agonizing over writing our emails,
Speaker:and now it's so easy because we know where to start so that we
Speaker:can then truly make them our own.
Speaker:Yeah, she really is she's an email strategist for you.
Speaker:Chris said a VA, that's true because as part of your becoming a member, an
Speaker:annual member, she has once a month, she has Q and A's that live Q and A's.
Speaker:So you can get on there and she will answer questions.
Speaker:You can hear other people's questions.
Speaker:You will discover that the questions that you have are not so unique.
Speaker:They're pretty universal.
Speaker:And so she answers those things, but to me, the biggest thing is
Speaker:the strategy that she brings to it.
Speaker:Hey, speaking of VAs, this next one is like having your own VA for social media.
Speaker:Now, we've talked a lot about SocialBee before.
Speaker:It's our favorite social media scheduler.
Speaker:But what it's like hiring your own social media team.
Speaker:I used to be over a social media team and it helped us do digital
Speaker:marketing and figure out how to Send things to Facebook and Twitter and,
Speaker:Instagram, Pinterest and.
Speaker:It's a lot of work, right?
Speaker:It's a lot of work to be present on all those channels, but with a social
Speaker:media scheduler like SocialBee, you can Automatically send out social
Speaker:material to all those channels, even while you're away from your computer.
Speaker:Right now, as we're recording this and talking to you, as you're listening
Speaker:to this, SocialBee is working for us to send out information to
Speaker:all our social channels at once.
Speaker:We love SocialBee.
Speaker:We've created posts, put them on there.
Speaker:They automatically go out there and post.
Speaker:It alerts us when people have responded to those posts.
Speaker:We also really like that it has a really good analytics feature so that you can see
Speaker:how your social media presence is doing.
Speaker:SocialBee is just under $20 a month, but with our special writing momentum link.
Speaker:We worked this out with them.
Speaker:You get 20 percent off that.
Speaker:So it ends up being something like $14 or $15 a month.
Speaker:And here's the secret.
Speaker:I don't know if you should tell anyone this.
Speaker:The Writing Momentum link actually works for life.
Speaker:It locks, locks in that price for life as long as you're with social bee.
Speaker:This is not something they offer at large to even their affiliates on the internet.
Speaker:. But because we locked this in with them years ago and it's still available
Speaker:if you want to get social bee.
Speaker:20 percent off for life.
Speaker:Go to writing.
Speaker:fyi slash socialbee and you can take advantage of that one.
Speaker:And I will tell you, social media managers like SocialBee,
Speaker:they, this will change your life.
Speaker:It, if you have ever thought, I want to be present on social media, but
Speaker:I don't have the time to babysit all these different channels.
Speaker:Or you find that maybe the one that you like is not the one that maybe
Speaker:is the best one for your market.
Speaker:Maybe your market is on another one, but maybe you like something else.
Speaker:This is the way that you can take care of both of those in one fell swoop.
Speaker:So it will save your sanity more than anything.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:These next two are two lifetime deals.
Speaker:These are our last two.
Speaker:The first one is if you need help with your grammar, with
Speaker:your spelling, with just having someone look over your shoulders.
Speaker:Again, like hiring a VA, hiring another editor to work with you.
Speaker:And it's ProWritingAid.
Speaker:ProWritingAid is a wonderful program that automatically watches you as you write,
Speaker:whether you're writing in Word or on the web or on any program on your computer.
Speaker:ProWritingAid is watching as you write and it will give you suggestions for
Speaker:your grammar, for your grade level, for your spelling, for different
Speaker:ways to say things, for watching, for active and passive sentences,
Speaker:whatever it is you're looking for.
Speaker:It'll watch it and get this.
Speaker:It's 50 percent off with this link for life.
Speaker:This is, I'm going to see if I can find the price.
Speaker:It is $200 for life.
Speaker:Or they also have a premium pro, which has some I think some AI features
Speaker:built into it for $250 for life.
Speaker:Let me tell you what, a lot of these apps, they charge you $10, $15 a month.
Speaker:They're saying for life, for $200, that means it pays for itself in
Speaker:just a little over a year's time.
Speaker:Yeah, and this is, ProWritingAid, it does have an AI feature.
Speaker:We are not suggesting that you write your book using AI.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:We would never suggest that.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:But...
Speaker:To catch those little errors that like to creep up on all of us those little
Speaker:errors, making sure that your verbs and your subjects, that they are in alignment,
Speaker:making sure that your sentences are active rather than passive, making sure that you
Speaker:haven't gotten a a clause that's out of alignment that kind of is not working.
Speaker:Or if you've just got a sentence that is so complicated that you need something to
Speaker:flag you to say, no you've done too much.
Speaker:That's what this does.
Speaker:This is really like having that line, not really a line editor,
Speaker:but more like a proofer coming through your work as you go.
Speaker:And here's the thing, you may not agree with it all the time and that's okay.
Speaker:But it is nice to have that kind of flag to come up to say, yeah, this
Speaker:sentence is looking a little wonky.
Speaker:Now, I will say, Word has started to do this, but this is more robust than Word.
Speaker:Oh, this one gives you like 25 different reports when you finish writing your
Speaker:paper that you can run your paper through.
Speaker:You can see how long and short your sentences are, how long
Speaker:and short your paragraphs are.
Speaker:You can see like I said earlier, the grade level, just a lot of
Speaker:different things all at once.
Speaker:And it doesn't just work in word, right?
Speaker:It works in your browser.
Speaker:It works in your email program.
Speaker:It works with your presentation program like PowerPoint or Keynote.
Speaker:It works in online apps.
Speaker:If you use an online app, it works in Slack.
Speaker:It works in WordPress.
Speaker:It works in Scrivener.
Speaker:Whatever you're using to write.
Speaker:It will work in that because it just works with your whole computer overall.
Speaker:That's writing.
Speaker:fyi slash pro writing aid.
Speaker:Especially if you're somebody who doesn't have that extra pair of eyes, to look
Speaker:at your work before you send it off.
Speaker:If you've got, maybe you're a magazine writer, or you're writing web articles
Speaker:for another site that's not your site, but it's somewhere else and
Speaker:you're trying to get work that way.
Speaker:I highly recommend that you have something, someone or something
Speaker:that is qualified to look over your work, to catch those little typos
Speaker:that sneak into everybody's writing.
Speaker:So ProWritingAid will help you with that.
Speaker:We got this 50 percent off lifetime probably five years ago.
Speaker:We are still using it today, right?
Speaker:That, that $200 that we spent, it goes a long way.
Speaker:So that's why you like these lifetime deals.
Speaker:Oh, hey.
Speaker:Speaking of lifetime deals.
Speaker:The last one is last, maybe one of my favorite last one.
Speaker:Now this is super rare because this one probably won't come back.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:This is Sessions.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So you guys have heard of Zoom?
Speaker:You've probably used Zoom.
Speaker:This is a competitor to Zoom called Sessions.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But it works very similarly.
Speaker:And I think really well.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Sessions is really great.
Speaker:It works in your browser.
Speaker:So you, when you create a session or a zoom session, it's what it is.
Speaker:It will automatically work in the browser and you connect with each
Speaker:other over camera and over audio.
Speaker:But It does a lot more than Zoom's general plan.
Speaker:So Zoom costs about, what, $120, $130 a year, something like that.
Speaker:Sessions is $69 for life with this deal.
Speaker:Now that's for their first tier, but what it does is it gives
Speaker:you video conferencing, it gives you cloud recording, it lets
Speaker:you have your custom branding.
Speaker:So you can actually have your logo on there if you want.
Speaker:You can have interactive agendas.
Speaker:You can have breakout rooms.
Speaker:You can have a team workspace and you can have a calendar and bookings.
Speaker:You also get a whiteboard and polls.
Speaker:All these things, if you use Zoom, you know that these are
Speaker:available on the higher Zoom levels.
Speaker:All of this is available in this basic plan for $69.
Speaker:This is a very good deal, and you're locked in, you get it, you pay
Speaker:once, and you forget it for life.
Speaker:Yes, like you said, this is for life.
Speaker:And I think what's happening here is this is a competitor to Zoom, that it
Speaker:works really well, we have used it, it's very seamless, you wouldn't...
Speaker:Tell that you're using something else, but because they have such a small part of the
Speaker:market, they're trying to get out there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So by getting into this lifetime deal early, this price is not
Speaker:going to always stay at $69.
Speaker:Or even.
Speaker:More than that, they're doing this introductory price because they're trying
Speaker:to introduce themselves to the market.
Speaker:And so that's what's happening here.
Speaker:And that's what happens.
Speaker:There's a, this is a offer through a platform called AppSumo, which we've
Speaker:talked a little bit about before, but if you haven't heard us talk about it,
Speaker:this is a platform that works with a lot of companies that are, they've only been
Speaker:out for a little while or they're trying to, raise some capital in order to do a
Speaker:big push and so Sessions is one of those.
Speaker:Sessions has actually been around for quite a while now.
Speaker:The platform feels very mature when you use it.
Speaker:I think you'll like it.
Speaker:But because they're trying to compete with Zoom, they're offering this low price.
Speaker:Now for us, we didn't buy Tier 1.
Speaker:We actually bought Tier 3.
Speaker:So for each tier, it's an additional like $69.
Speaker:So we spent about $200 on ours, a little bit more.
Speaker:But that gave us you get unlimited sessions with it.
Speaker:You've got 90 participants per sessions with that.
Speaker:You have, you can have sessions up to 6 or 12 hours long,
Speaker:depending on, which tier you get.
Speaker:And here's the great thing about this.
Speaker:Because this is offered through AppSumo, it has the AppSumo guarantee.
Speaker:What that is this.
Speaker:If, for any reason, you don't like Sessions, in the first 60 days you
Speaker:use it, the first 2 months, you can go in and with one click, you can get a
Speaker:refund, it'll automatically be charged back to your card, and the account
Speaker:with Sessions will be cancelled.
Speaker:So there's really no risk.
Speaker:And I've done this before with products with AppSumo.
Speaker:If there's something I haven't liked, I'll go ahead and just say refund
Speaker:my money and they give it back.
Speaker:So it's a great way to try it out for 60 days.
Speaker:If you like it, you keep it for that low price.
Speaker:If you don't like it, you get your money back.
Speaker:So there's not much risk.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:So there you are five Black Friday deals that every writer needs.
Speaker:We talked about ConvertKit, which is the email system.
Speaker:We talked about Liz Wilcox's annual plan where you not only get her weekly
Speaker:emails, but you also get all of her trainings that she does, which are
Speaker:well beyond worth the hundred dollars.
Speaker:You also get let's see, SocialBee, your social media management, which is, I'm
Speaker:telling you, it will save your sanity.
Speaker:And then we've got the lifetime deals, which are ProWritingAid and
Speaker:Sessions, which is a competitor to Zoom for a crazy low price of $69.
Speaker:So there you have it.
Speaker:Hey, I hope some of you get these deals.
Speaker:If you do, please write to us and let us know.
Speaker:We'd love to know which ones you get.
Speaker:If you like them, if you don't like them, I think you're going to like all these.
Speaker:I think this is the cream of the crop here.
Speaker:But and tell you what, if you know someone who you think would
Speaker:like one of these deals, please forward this podcast to them.
Speaker:Send them the link, let them know.
Speaker:And because we want all writers to take advantage of these great deals.
Speaker:These only come around about once a year.
Speaker:Some of them only come around...
Speaker:Once every five years or they may never come around again, like sessions.
Speaker:And so you want to get in on them while you can.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:So there you have it.
Speaker:We hope you guys have a great holiday season and that this helps kick it
Speaker:off and that you will treat yourself with one of these great deals.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Until next time, Happy Thanksgiving.
Speaker:And don't forget that together
Speaker:we have writing momentum.
Speaker:Bye bye.
