Book Widget? Blog Widget?
BLidget?
Using Widgets to Hold a Visitor's Interest

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1) What's New At The Shared Self Publishing Experience

Better navigability, more on marketing. Read up!


2) The SiteBuildIt "Back to Work" Special

My favorite web host (and so much more) is running another of their specials for a few more days. Read how to get a great deal and get started now.


3) FEATURE ARTICLE: Invite Your Visitors to Stay Awhile: Make Your Site a Momentary Launch Pad

The more time someone spends on your site, the more likely they are to buy. Learn how to use book widgets and blog widgets (BLidgets!) to turn your site into a temporary home page.


4) Proposing an Article for the New Focus On Selling Section

There's a new section to the site, and with it comes new opportunity for authors. Read more...


5) New Pages on the Site

When you signed up for the newsletter, you were promised an update on new pages to the site. Here they are. Also, this month's featured sites.

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Functionality Alerts!
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If any links in this newsletter don't work, it's probably because your email software cuts off the link text at a line break, then prints the rest of the link as plain text. To use one of these links, try copying the WHOLE link then pasting it into your browser.

This email was designed to be read in an email reader that reads html. If you don't have one or yours is turned off, this letter might not look great but I'm guessing you're still smart enough to make sense of what I'm saying!
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1) What's New at the Shared Self Publishing Experience

What's new? Improved navigability.

Do you take inspiration and get great ideas from the authors who post to The Shared Self Publishing Experience? I know I do. But until recently, there was no good way for return visitors to find the newest posts, the ones they hadn't seen before.

If that's you, then go to the home page and page down to "Been Here Before". That screen within a screen is my new "Blidget"!

A blidget is a blog widget - a widget that keeps track of blog postings. (My blog is where updates to the site are noted.) So now, the 20 most recent posts to the site are accessible right from the home page!

(It's okay if you're not excited. I am. Now folks can stop by every week or so and see precisely what's new.)

Just as cool: the blidget can be copied and pasted to any other site on the internet! Just click on the Get Widget button. The code you need is automatically generated.

And by the way: YOU can easily create your own blidget. Check out this month's feature article for more on the subject.

What's new? More focus on marketing.

I read it in a forum post on another site. It went something like this:

The Shared Self Publishing Experience is great, but if I'm looking for specific marketing information, what am I supposed to do? Read every post?

Fair point. So at the bottom of the menu bar, you'll now see a new section: Focus on Selling.

You'll find some new articles there, as well as some you may already have read in the newsletter or seen recommended by the newsletter. KNOW THIS:

I'll be adding some of my own online book marketing articles to Focus on Selling, but many of you know a LOT more than me on various aspects of self publishing and offline book marketing. So...

I am soliciting narrowly focused articles for this new section on any and all aspects of self publishing.

Learn more at Item 4.


2) The SiteBuildIt "Back to Work" Special

I'm sending the monthly newsletter out a little early so that you'll have an opportunity to take advantage of a SiteBuildIt special.

Unless you're VERY new, you know that I believe like crazy in the service I use, as a writer, to build my websites, sites like The Shared Self Publishing Experience.

SiteBuildIt gives you all the tools you need to write a site that attracts real traffic. Imagine a combined web-designer/web-host/search-engine-optimization expert...who holds your hand every step of the way as you structure, design and write your own site. THAT'S SiteBuildIt.

A few times a year SBI runs specials, discounts on your first year of new service. The current special requires that you know someone else who wants to start a site...or that you want to start TWO of your own.

The deal is "Buy one, get the 2nd for 2/3 off." For instance...

* Know someone else interested in starting a well-trafficked website? Buy two together and you'll each save 1/3.
* Buy one for yourself and give one as a gift.
* Buy two for yourself, get started on the first and put off the second for as long as 9 months.

However you want to do it, now is the time to buy. If experience is a guide, it could be late December before you can take advantage of another SBI special. Visit this link to find out just how soon the offer is ending.


3) FEATURE ARTICLE
Invite Your Website Visitors to Stay Awhile!

Here are some headlines you don't see:

• The Only Website You'll Ever Need
  
• Woman Arrives at Website, Never Leaves
  
• Man Held Hostage By Website
  

It's said that there are now more than 100 million websites.

Think about that. Okay, now think about this:

Sales of any product are most often a result of REPEAT exposure to the sales message.

Now, put those thoughts together. You might come up with something like this:

I'm probably more likely to be hit by lightning than to have a visitor come across my site twice. So how the heck am I supposed to make the sale???

For the author with a site about little more than the author and the author's books, the only realistic chance of making the sale to a complete stranger is on that stranger's first visit.

So your job is to make that visit a loooong visit...with repeated exposure to your message.

Of course, I'm not talking about installing malicious software, or making sure your pages take forever to load. I'm talking about making your site interesting. Especially your home page.

I'm also talking about making your home page a temporary launch point.

I've seen author sites...

I've seen author sites that actually have a button, "Make this page your home page."

I don't like to laugh at my fellow writers, but come on. I'm supposed to launch all my web activities from matinghabitsofgroundhogs-thebook.com? Why?

The button that you (the self published author with a website) should be interested in is the "Back" button on every web browser. You have a much better chance of having a visitor bounce right back to your site than for that visitor to find you at random again.

So think about this: Give your visitor a bunch of things to go see, using your site as a temporary launching point. Make your site your visitor's home page for these next three minutes.

Start with a "blidget" or two. (You did read about my new blog widget, didn't you? Check it out on my home page.)

My blog widget (or "blidget") shows the 20 most recent posts to The Shared Self Publishing Experience, and it was a cinch to set up. Let's say you have visitors who are writers and thus might have an interest in self publishing.

Imagine they see MY blog widget on YOUR site and start clicking. They check out the five posts that are most interesting to them.

Back and forth, back and forth...5 TIMES...5 repeat exposures to your message. To YOUR BOOK.

Want to give it a try?

Visit my home page, page down, click Get Widget, copy the code and paste it to your site!

http://www.shared-self-publishing.com#blog-widget

It's easy!

More on blog widgets and book widgets

My blidget is not the only widget you can add to your site to increase Back Button traffic. At Widgetbox, there are more than 74,000 widgets (and growing) that you can add to your site, tailored to your visitors.

Is your book about dogs? You can put the My Dog Space widget on your site. It's myspace for dogs! Is your book about sports? Add a widget that leads to last night's results.

Back and forth, back and forth.

Is your book set in London, or maybe it's a London guidebook? Get a weather widget for Britain's capitol. In fact, provide a whole pile of fascinating widgets offering information for travelers to Britain.

There's a widget for The Daily Telegraph, another for Pop Buzz UK: "For all your pop culture needs with a British flavour!" Link to a British blogger (who links back to you)!

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Special note to authors who blog regularly

Your blog or RSS feed can easily be rendered into a blog widget, just as mine has been.

If you have a traditional website AND a blog, you can put your blidget on your site. It's much more appealing than a text link because it's visual, it takes up screen space, AND it previews what visitors will get if they click to your blog.

Now, imagine your visitors bouncing between YOUR site and YOUR blog, rebounding back and forth from exposure to your message to MORE exposure to YOUR message! Also...

Like mine, your blog widget can be made available to webmasters the world over to add to their sites. Turn your blog into a blidget!
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Moving on...

Have you ever found yourself in someone's home and "getting to know them" by perusing their bookshelves?

I certainly have. So I was blown away when I recently visited an author's site and saw her VIRTUAL bookshelf. It was a book widget.

It featured books she was reading, books she had read and books she was planning to read. Suddenly she wasn't just an author, she was a READER. And, for me, that validated her writing. It also helped me get a feel for her as an individual.

And it certainly made me stay at her site much longer than I would have otherwise!

Here's what one looks like:

Interested in validating yourself as a person of words by adding your own virtual bookshelf to your site?

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WARNING!

I'm new to book widgets. I registered and created one at Shelfari.com. It is NOT AS EASY as creating a blog widget at widgetbox. ALSO...

Shelfari is somewhat notorious for tricking you into opening your address books and spamming all your friends! I was able to avoid this when I registered, but I had to be pretty careful. ALSO...

The Shelfari widget is built for blogs and social networking pages. I was able to figure out how to add it to my site, but it took a little know-how. If you're lacking in know-how, it could be that adding a book widget is a job for your web designer.

There are other book widgets out there besides Shelfari. (LibraryThing is one.) If Shelfari doesn't do it for you, do some Googling to find the one that's right for you!
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Here's where to go to create a book widget on Shelfari, but take caution when registering (see above).

Shelfari offers a lot more than a book widget. It's also a social networking site, so in addition to giving you the tools to add a virtual bookshelf to your own site, there will be opportunities to promote your book. There's a special section for authors, and you can post a profile WITH A LINK TO YOUR SITE.

(If there are any book widget experts out there - or newbies who want to become experts - I would love to have someone propose an article on making the best use of Shelfari or its competitors! Please read the next item on proposing articles to the site.)

So there you have it.

There are many ways for you to customize your website and entice your visitors into staying awhile and seeing your message more than once. For the typical self published author website, visitors are rare...don't let them get away!

It IS possible to build a website where visitors aren't rare. And if you think that means learning a lot of tech, you're wrong. What it does mean is doing a lot of WRITING.

But you're a writer, right? Let your words work some internet magic.

4) Proposing Articles for the New Focus On Selling Section

In the What's New section above, I introduced the new Focus On Selling section. Essentially, it's The Shared Self Publishing Experience's new Marketing Department. Go there for tips on how to increase your sales.

I'm looking to fill the section with articles on subjects on which I'm no expert. That means turning control over to you, the self published author. The articles could be on ANY aspect of self publishing, for instance:

• understanding your self publishing contract
• choosing a cover designer
• booking radio interviews
• marketing a trilogy
• reaching overseas markets
• building the best book widget

Anything! But know that the articles in this section will be held to a higher standard. Rather than approving nearly everything that comes in "over the transom," I'll be asking authors to propose comprehensive articles on some narrow but important aspect of successful self publishing, some area the author has gained real expertise in.

I can't pay in dollars, but I can pay in exposure. You'll get the usual links to your site and your Amazon page (assuming you have one), and the right to create as many live links as are necessary to make your article its best. Please know that these articles will soon be the most trafficked pages on the site.

How can I say that? Because...

a) they will be narrowly focused in the way the search engines like, and
b) I will do keyword research for your article, giving you the necessary word tools to make your page more appealing to the search engines.

If that sounds like a good learning experience AND another link to your site sounds like a good idea, this opportunity is probably for you! Visit the page.

Read, then page down to the "Submit Your Book Marketing Article Proposal" near the page bottom. Submit, then wait to hear back from me. I promise to be a heck of a lot quicker than your average publisher or agent!

If you have an area of expertise, some aspect of the business you've gotten real good at, propose an article. We'll ALL benefit.


5) NEW PAGES ON THE SITE

First, this month's feature sites

Let me tell you about some "don't miss" posts.

Jessica James of Gettysburg, PA, USA, writes a terrific self publishing story. She covers too many things for me to try and sum them up here, but know that Jessica knows how to think outside the box. Maybe her thinking will get you thinking too!

From Author to Award-Winning Publisher: It Can Be Done.

Randi Levin is The Muffin Lady. Her site is about more than her and her books, it's about her subject, and that's the key to being found by the search engines! Click to her story, then click on to her site:

The Ups and Downs of Self Publishing.

The reason I want you to read Nancy Koerner's post is because she takes craft SERIOUSLY, even in her posts to this site. For a reminder that good writing is about more than brute content - it's about precision, voice and style - read

Literary Destiny and the Beast.

When you signed up for this newsletter you were promised updates on new self publishing stories posted to the site. There have been 35 pages added to the site since the last newsletter.

Each url below reflects the title given by the author to their self publishing experience (minus the punctuation). To visit a page, paste into your browser's address bar the characters

then paste in the characters for the particular page that catches your eye. In addition to the regular posts, there is 1 illustrator post, 4 website reviews, and 5 new pages in the new Focus on Selling section.

In addition to the 3 posts cited above, I'm noting some other terrific posts below in each category by bolding them.

discovering-the-words-for-my-dreams.html

thump.html

taking-tinnas-promise-to-the-world.html

three-for-one.html

published-at-last.html

the-minnie-joys-of-selfpublishing.html

live-and-learn.html

a-writers-dilemma.html

following-the-advice-of-my-very-own-masters.html

filling-the-glass-the-skeptics-guide-to-positive-thinking.html

no-lie-truth-is-the-ultimate-sales-tool.html

getting-off-the-publishing-merrygo-round.html

do-not-give-up.html

my-frustrating-attemp-to-make-my-book-known.html

doityourself-when-nobody-else-will.html

youre-never-too-old-.html

its-free-to-publish-me.html

publish-or-and-die.html

is-no-not-clear-enough-for-you.html

self-publishing-the-truth.html

is-it-a-route-you-really-want-to-take.html

roll-of-the-dice.html

s-b-illustrations.html

lorrondoncom.html

wwwthechocolatequeennet.html

love-to-read.html

a-dialogue-about-authors-websites-in-general-and-this-authors-website-in-particular.html

selling-on-amazon.html

content-building.html

genre-book-list.html

lulu-forums.html

book-marketing.html


WRAPPING UP

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