When I first started writing, I never considered making it a job. It made me happy to share stories and learn new skills. Once I made the switch and turned it into a business, it threw me into the deep end with questions like, Where do you see your business in 5 years?

I didn’t even want to think about that. I wanted to enjoy the process, but I’m not carefree that I didn’t consider the repercussions. However, that thought sat in the back of my mind that I did not know where to start with making an actual business plan.

I made a writing plan and stuck with it. Initially, that was my business plan because I didn’t know how to generate the numbers. My goal in 2020 was to publish my first book. In 2021, I wrote three books and published two. In 2022, I wrote four books and published two. Now I have five books published. I had made a writing plan and was working on how marketing works for authors (which will be the next post in this series), but I still needed a better idea of how to plan for the business. 

I’d proved I could write books. But can I create a business off of this? What do you need to create a business? A business plan. Then the question becomes: How much money do you want to make? Is my expectation reasonable? Is it attainable? How many people need to see my offers to make that money? How much will you spend to get people to see your offers? Can you afford to pay any? At first, I couldn’t.

No one seems to know the numbers when you talk to other authors. To find the numbers, you need to go to business people. I was lucky to find the Charmed Life Mastermind, where women from all walks of life and careers come together to share their information. You can check it out here to learn more about the group.

Here is what I’ve discovered about the numbers. 

Three percent of the people who see your product will buy it. This general business rule might not be valid for all, but it is a standard. It gave me something I didn’t have before, a starting point. 

So if only 3 percent of people are buyers. We need to work backward.

Decide your income goal.

For this example, my income goal is $1000 monthly.

Break down your goal by offers.

This means books you sell in either ebook or written format. Again, for this example, I have an ebook and a paperback. I’ll need to add the prices for each item. If the ebook costs $5 and the paperback is $10. I need to sell a mix of both to make $1000.

Printed books are still king, so let’s say we go with 75% paperback and 25% ebook. If we multiply our income by the percentages, we get $750 in paperback and $250 in ebook, respectively. 

Now that our sales targets match our projected revenue, we must determine how many people are buyers versus how many need to see our products.  

Since a paperback is 10 and we have a target of 750, we will need to divide 750 by 10 to get the number of sales we need. 

750/10 = 75 sales

Then do the same for the ebook.

250/5 = 50 sales

Now that we’ve got all our information, we can figure out how many people need to see the products. This is where our magic number of 3% comes in. We need to divide the number of sales by our 3%.

Paperback – 

75 / .03= 2500

Ebook –

50/ .03 = 1667

To sell 75 paperbacks, I have to get 2500 pairs of eyes onto my book.

To sell 50 ebooks, 1667 people need to see my book.

Additionally, I researched how email marketing and social media followings grow. Email marketing grows slower at 2.5% per month, and social media followings at 1.5-2.5% per month. Again, you use those numbers to take a target like an email list and create a reasonable business plan for building it. 

 If I wanted to add 600 people to my email in 6 months, I would divide 600/6 = 100

Now that I have my monthly target, I’ll divide it by the percentage. 

100/0.025 = 4000

To reach my target, I must offer my new newsletter to 4000 people monthly.

These numbers help determine a starting point to see how fast or slow you want to grow. So you can decide what is feasible for you in your business. 

So where do I see my business in 5 years? I may grow slower because of how I am, but that’s okay. In December 2022, I created my LLC. In five years, I will be where I’m supposed to be. I used to look at the destination and feel like I was failing, but now I’m looking at the process and am happy with where I am.