Seeking Advice

I am seeking your advice.

For some time I have debated how I could use my hobby of writing and the books I currently have available to fund The Sunshine Smile Crew with our mission for every member to every day make one person smile. Not having found a Marketing Manager I decided to do the job myself. I am now

fearful that I have become a bore on social media and by constantly trying to sell my books I am switching people off from our main objective to make people SMILE.

Let's have a look at what SMILES we are seeking to generate:

Supporting families with a child sick in hospital. We run Secret Santa and now have Project Ronald where we want to reach out to families in ten different locations across the world.

We work with Dreamsai, indeed we are part of The Dreamsai Family, helping people who are down on their luck. I can see several doors opening to expand this work.

We support Milton Keynes Food Bank but if I am honest we are not doing anything like enough.

I play music on the radio 6am to 8am Monday to Friday. I say this is a hobby but the music does reach out into the SMILES in our projects.

I am a member of West Bletchley Council which really has nothing to do in any way with our projects but through this I became Chairman of Tames Valley Police's Community Forum For West Bletchley. Again this has nothing to do with The Sunshine Smile Crew but via my membership the need to support vulnerable people in so many areas and to make them SMILE is increasing.

So back to the books......

In the two weeks I was promoting them myself we sold 12 e-books and made £9 = an average of 75p per book.  Across a 14 day period that gives us an average of 0.85 books a day.

If I am honest I am disappointing with these figures, disappointing and frustrated but realistically is this a good start ?  Perhaps it is.

In the three years we have run The Sunshine Smile Crew I have used my own pockets to fund what we do. Not a penny is taken away from a good cause we support. Living on a pension and investment income my pockets are just not deep enough. I feel it is my responsibility to deepen my pockets and to bring in the additional money we need.  Can I explain what is currently being spent.

FOOD BANK - every Friday I take 3 coconuts, two pineapples and a bunch of bananas to the Food Bank distribution point at St Andrews Church in Bletchley. This costs me around £6 a week = £24 a month = 32 e-book sales.

DREAMSAI - I am spending around £45 a week = £180 a month = 240 e-book downloads.  However, this could easily be increased to £80 a week = £360 = 480 e-book downloads.  Doors are opening from this area of work which we need to walk through.

SMILE CARDS - The mission is to give out 20,000 during the year. Laminated cards we just hand out to anyone we find, cards we are asking people to sign with love to send to families with a child sick in hospital - these are going to TEN different locations round the world, cards we are putting into as many hospital locations as we can find.

So what does a card cost ? Let me ask a different question - What is a card worth ?  That answer is PRICELESS.

I have never worked out the cost of a card but let me try:

Printing ink costs £29 - I get through the sets of cartridges a month. This is not just for Smile Cards but for everything we do. £87 = 116 e-book downloads.

Laminating sheets cost 10p each.  I get through about 50 a month = £5 = 6.6 call it 7 e-book downloads a month.

General admin stationery and postage ? I guess that comes to about £40 a month = 54 e-book downloads.

How we doing ?  32 + 480 + 116 + 7 + 54 = 693

The use of my car, fuel and parking come to another £200 a

month = 267 e-book downloads.

Add all that lot up and we have 893. Divide by 31 days in a month and we need to achieve 28.7 sales a day. You know I really do not think that is hard. If I ran that by Amazon they would scoff saying top selling authors can sell 28,000 sales in a day !

How do we move from an average in February 2020 of 0.85 a day to 28.7 a day.

I am asking for your advice ?