Use crowdfunding to validate your content product: Russell Nohelty used Kickstarter to raise money for his work, but it also allowed him to know when he stumbled onto a good idea.
Build partnerships: Partnering with Monica Leonelle of The World Needs Your Passion, the two created numerous courses to help authors find success and bring in revenue for both.
Value newsletters: Russell launched a newsletter in 2015, growing it to 27K subscribers before moving the newsletter, Author Stack, to the Substack platform in 2023. He provided free memberships for the first three months and removed anyone who didn’t open the newsletter in that time. That culled the list to 16K, but he’s now grown it to 40K.

The Story of Russell Nohelty

Nothing about Russell Nohelty’s journey was intentional. In fact, Russell wishes more of it had been.

After graduating college in December 2004, Russell began a short-lived reporting career on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. It took him only six months to realize he hated the job and profession. His true passion was to make movies on his own. This marked the beginning of his journey (often unintentional) into entrepreneurship, a path marked by numerous challenges and failures.

Between 2004 and 2007, Russell had multiple creative ventures. He ran a photography studio, RPN Photography, directed a movie titled Connections, which evolved into a web series, and served as the executive producer of Hundred Dimensions, one of the first internet television stations (even though they didn’t call it that at the time.) Despite his efforts, none of these ventures achieved significant financial success.

In 2008, after a severe accident, Russell sold all his photography and movie business equipment to pay for his medical expenses.

This unintentional turn of events pushed Russell and his wife to relocate to Los Angeles. Initially, he set his sights on writing movies and TV shows. However, by 2010, after a conversation with his manager, Russell was introduced to the world of comic books.

He recalls thinking, “I guess I’m making comics now. I know how to make this form of media,” because it made perfect sense with his skills and experience as a visual storyteller.

Life as a struggling writer

The pivot to comics led Russell Nohelty to write and publish fiction books one year later. He wanted to diversify as he discovered that creating comics took too long and was extremely expensive.

By early 2012, Russell had started and failed at three businesses and at age 29, knew it was time to bring in more substantial income. He tried sales and marketing for insurance and cars and ended up as a cell phone reseller.

“I was bad at selling. I could not close a deal to save my life. But I would do just enough to hit my minimums. And then, one day in September 2014, it just all clicked. I don’t know what changed, but suddenly, I was their top salesman,” Russell says.

He was asked to open a Verizon store, and that did well until it didn’t. “All of this happened in July 2015, and that was the last job I’ve ever had,” he says.

During his “real job” period, Russell continued to write. He launched his first graphic novel, Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, via a Kickstarter campaign. This success led to his second book, Katrina Hates the Dead.

Following those two successes, Russell launched his own publishing company, Wannabe Press. He specializes in making wonderfully weird genre books that are as entertaining as they are thought-provoking.

Unintentional non-fiction expert

While working the convention circuit to promote his books, Russell grew tired of people spending copious time answering writing and publishing questions. This led to his non-fiction book, How To Build Your Creative Career, in 2015.

“I wanted them to have all the information so I could go back to making fiction,” he says jokingly.

The book served its purpose, generated some income, and marked Russell’s switch from author to content entrepreneur. In this book, Russell provided an extensive collection of information about his writing process and what it takes to become a successful writer.

“I want my fans and audience’s first touchpoint with me to make them feel good. I would rather them have a good experience by giving them what they need and then assuming that they will want to support me in the future. It hasn’t led to a seven-figure business, but it has led to a six-figure business,” he says.

Power of Kickstarter and collaboration

Russell’s first Kickstarter campaign was in 2014 to get his first book off the ground. He refined his approach to crowdfunding and used it to not only fund his ideas but to validate them and build a loyal audience.

In 2017, Russell experienced a breakthrough with his Kickstarter campaigns. He launched raised $5K one day after launching his campaign. The campaign went on to raise $26K. A year later, he launched another Kickstarter campaign that raised $39K.

Russell continued using Kickstarted and online direct sales to generate most of his revenue until 2021. Most of his projects reached 50K in crowdfunding, and he was generating six-figure revenue in the business.

He later partnered with Monica Leonelle of The World Needs Your Passion. Together, they created numerous courses to help authors find success. Using the Teachable platform, they created the courses Kickstarter Accelerator and Direct Sales Accelerator.

They also created their most popular program, WriterMBA, which teaches and mentors authors on sales, marketing, and business principles to help them sell more books. This collaboration led to Russell licensing his non-fiction business to Monica in 2020. He is still a consultant for Write MBA. Writer MBA has a podcast, Kickstart Your Book Sales, hosted by Russell and Monica, and a free Circle community.

WriteMBA has also become an event in 2022. Russell and Monica wanted an event that would provide actionable strategies, hands-on workshops, and direct access to industry experts to help build a writing business.

The event then expanded to include a two-day Mastermind intensive experience prior to the event. The Mastermind is kept intentionally small, and attendees work closely with the hosts and industry experts to find breakthroughs in their thinking and approach.

Monica and Russell also created the Author Ecosystem after working with thousands of authors. They developed this to help audiences understand their audience and what will work for them as they sell directly and grow their readership. They created an online quiz to help guide authors into five clear and unique publishing ecosystems for author success.

The Author Ecosystem also has a paid community that includes all of the accelerator courses, access to Monica and Russell, as well as the author community. The $999 membership also includes monthly live training calls as well as updated content.

Russell also collaborates with Lee Savino to host The Six-Figure Author Experiment podcast. Before meeting Lee, Russell had never put any of his books on retailers. He and Lee use the podcast to share the failures and successes of launching his series, The Godverse Chronicles, on retailers.

Building a loyal audience with newsletters

Russell has long recognized the importance of newsletters as a powerful way to connect with and build an audience. He has been blogging since the early days of moving to LA. He created the blog LA Grind in 2008 and wrote about what was working for him and his writing career.

In 2015, he created a basic newsletter that shared valuable insights on writing and publishing and grew it to 27K subscribers. This newsletter morphed into its current form, the Author Stack, which Russell moved to Substack in 2023.

When he started Author Stack, Russell migrated all 27K subscribers to the new Substack newsletter and gave them three months of free membership. Anyone who did not open the newsletter in the first three months was purged. He whittled his list down to 16K loyal readers before beginning to grow subscribers again. Currently, Author Stack has 40K subscribers.

In July 2024, Russell added a daily newsletter as a direct response to his audience’s requests, who loved his content but found the weekly format overwhelming.

His newsletter subscribers are the first to hear about new courses, events, webinars, and new publications.

Russell does not directly sell sponsorships for his newsletter. Instead, it is a mix of partnering with a sponsor, and they can get an article, a podcast appearance, something at one of his events, or an ad placement in the newsletter. Russell prefers the idea of a sponsorship being squishy. The partnership is the real goal, and then Russell and his team can give them value for the partnership revenue in many different ways, even throwing in “extras” to foster the relationship.

Advice for content entrepreneurs

Russell looks for different ways to monetize the same content. Writer MBA started as a course and then became an event. It also became the foundation for the Padi community. Russell also recommends using your written content in multiple ways. Take an illustration from a book and sell it as print. Or sell a few chapters as a short story. These can generate revenue or be used as lead magnets.

As a content entrepreneur, you need to be patient. You can have all your levers in place, but they may not be working at full capacity. One day, they will start working (probably when you least expect it!). At that point, it’s easy to view all decisions as a “hell yes.” The trick is to then know when to say yes and when to say no.

Join Russell and the Lulu team on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, for a special webinar to learn how to build an audience … that’s ready to buy your books. Register now for this free event.

The post Russell Nohelty Helps Writers Build More Sustainable Content Businesses appeared first on The Tilt Publishing.

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