Marketing Books on a Highly Trafficked Site

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1) What's New at the Shared Self Publishing Experience

Keep up with traffic figures. See what kind of audience a big, do-it-yourself site can draw.


2) SiteBuildIt Comes with a Guarantee

If you've been around the site or read the newsletters, you know I think SiteBuildIt is the best way to build an online presence that attracts attention to your books. Did you know that SBI comes with a money-back guarantee? Here's the fine print.


3) FEATURE ARTICLE:
I Join Your Ranks: Webmaster Becomes a Self Publisher

It's true. I just started marketing my children's books on my other site. Want to hear how it's going?


4) Three Self Published Authors with Sites Done Right

These people posted this month, and boy, am I impressed!


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!

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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

I've been a busy little webmaster, but not with The Shared Self Publishing Experience.

I've been focused on my children's books site. You'll learn why later in the newsletter.

I've been so busy that this newsletter is going out late. But because the site has been on auto-pilot, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the traffic figures. During the month of September...

• 540 Googlers found the site
• 131 folks found the site thanks to live.com and msn.com
• 93 people Yahooed their way to me.
• 30 people arrived via Google Image Search. Your book covers were what brought them!
• 3 searchers Asked their way to the site. (I guess not enough are Asking the right question.)

Of course, lots of repeat visitors too, as well as folks finding the site from the hundreds of inbound links.

It was a good month!


2) The SiteBuildIt Money Back Guarantee

As a do it yourself webmaster, I always recommend that self published authors build a web presence designed to attract search engine traffic. No one ever became a bestselling author by selling to friends and family!

My first site, Best Children's Books, received 55,000 page views last month.

I built it from scratch, with no tech knowledge, using an extensive suite of brilliant, simple-to-use tools provided by a company called SiteBuildIt. For a very modest price, SBI walks you through the whole process of what it takes to build a successful site. And they pretty much take "tech" out of the equation, so that nothing stands between you and your writing.

SiteBuildIt gets you started with an instruction manual (the Action Guide!) that pretty much amounts to having your hand held through every step of the sitebuilding process.

(Write me if you want me to link you up with the Action Guide.)

Now here's the thing: some people steer away from SBI because the service sells in one year chunks. Folks are used to paying a web host monthly, instead of yearly, for their poorly trafficked sites.

Please know that - on top of costing no more than a decent webhost - SiteBuildIt has a pretty impressive money-back guarantee...

1) If you decide SBI isn't for you within the first month, you get ALL your money back AND get to keep the brilliant domain name that SBI helped you choose. (A good domain name is essential to great traffic!)

2) If you decide against SBI at any time AFTER the first month of service, you'll get a full, pro-rated refund. Quit after 2 months and get 5/6 of your money back. (And STILL keep your domain name.)

Hard to beat. See the guarantee in writing if you don't believe me!

SBI is even a member of their local Better Business Bureau. Good luck finding another webhost that's willing to be held to BBB standards! Yet SiteBuildIt is so much more than a host. They're an all-in-one traffic building package.


3) FEATURE ARTICLE
I've Joined Your Ranks: Webmaster Steve Barancik Becomes a Self Publisher

This has been an exciting couple months for me.

I built my first website, Best Children's Books - Find, Read or Write, with the intention of selling my own children's books on it.

I began the website two and a half years ago. I didn't start posting the books to the site until this August.

Am I exceedingly patient? Not at all. I had just come to realize that simply putting books up on the web was no way to make sales.

Just posting your books to the web doesn't bring real traffic. And even the little traffic that does stumble by is unlikely to purchase. After all, it's not like books are a new concept and people don't know where to find them!

No, my strategy was to build a big, busy, helpful website, win over my visitors with my charm(?) and knowledge, then try to sell my books to some of them.

For the strategy to work, I had to build a website about something MORE than my books. It's the same strategy I recommend to all of you!

So here's what's happened...

1) I had written ten unillustrated books - unillustrated because they're meant for the child to illustrate.

2) I worked my butt off building that big busy website. (Currently, it receives nearly 20,000 visitors per month.)

3) On August 1st, in one full swoop, I posted five of the books to the website for download. For FREE.

Why free? Well, I wanted to gather some positive feedback to post to the site.

I also wanted to see which of the books people were drawn to. I wanted to LEARN.

One of the things I learned: only about 1 in 10 people offered the free download took advantage of it!

I was offering the free download in exchange for a promise (easily broken) to send me feedback on the book. Probably some combination of having to provide an email address and having to download the file (fear of viruses?) was responsible for the low conversion rate.

But it was important to know that even a free book is hard to "sell" on the internet!

I wrote one webpage that spoke to all 5 of the books, then wrote individual pages for each of the books separately. I also created an excerpt page for each book.

Each page added to your site, of course, is one more page to attract traffic from the search engines. I did keyword research to see what terms people use with the search engines to find the kind of books I was offering.

For instance, one of the books is entitled, "How Timbo Found Out That Telling the Truth Really Does Work!" My research led me to believe that "children lying" was the search term most likely to attract search engine traffic, so my "Timbo" page features that phrase prominently.

http://www.best-childrens-books.com/children-lying.html

That page alone is attracting about three search engine hits a day. And my "pouty child" page is already near the top of the first page of Google results for that search term.

Of course, with low conversion rates, a few hits a day won't result in success. I took action to funnel some of my site's existing traffic toward the pages featuring my books by placing text and image links strategically.

During that first month of August, I amassed about 2000 page views for the pages featuring my books. The site during that month had about 45,000 page views in total on its 400 or so pages of content.

Now, when you're giving away Ebooks, you don't go broke. In fact, the site made nearly $500 US that month from advertising and selling books by authors other than myself.

A website with real traffic has lots of ways to make money. Here's one.

My kids' books site isn't dependent on a single income stream. Does your site have ways to "monetize" all those visitors who DON'T buy your books?

So many people post to The Shared Self Publishing Experience disappointed with what they feel they've gotten out of their websites.

I think it's because there's a lot of bad information out there. It's the rare webmaster or web designer hoping to make a client of you who will tell you just how UNtrafficked your tiny site is likely to be. No one tells you, "Hey, if you want traffic, you have to create content. Lots of written content."

So I'm telling you.

The Numbers

My father - a math whiz - once told me that there was a sure-fire way to make a million dollars playing the lottery. Do you know what it is?

Buy FIVE million dollars worth of lottery tickets.

Any salesperson knows that you might start with a list of one thousand PROSPECTS, further qualify them to narrow your field to a hundred LEADS, then pitch to those hundred leads to try to make one SALE.

A thousand prospects to get one sale. Every self published author needs to get his or her head around ratios like that. You can't pull in two prospects a day to your website and hope to sell to one of them.

THE BAD NEWS: the internet probably has the worst conversion rate of any sales medium.

THE GOOD NEWS: The internet is probably the only medium where you can attract thousands of prospects at no marginal cost, because you can build a site that will draw prospects to you. If you work the search engines for traffic, each additional visitor costs you NOTHING.

My results? I gave away about 100 free downloads during the month of August. About 10 people kept their promise (including the people who downloaded the book on lying!) to provide me feedback.

See what I mean about conversion rates?

• 2000 page views
• 100 downloads
• 10 "payments" (in the form of feedback)

In the next newsletter I'll discuss my first attempts to sell the books for cash!

In the meantime, this is what my sales effort looks like, visit

Visit my home page too to see a couple of the ways I'm driving traffic to the books.

Want more info on attracting search engine traffic? Many of the posts to The Shared Self Publishing Experience feature comments by me on the subject of traffic. And of course back issues of this newsletter have lots of traffic-building information.

Visit these pages too:

• Online Book Marketing
• More Book Marketing

And go here if you'd like to know how to build a "trafficky" site from scratch.

And if you'd like to pay someone else to do it for you, there's a much better way to go about it.

Write me back if you have questions!


4) Three Great Sites by Self Publishers

Okay, SiteBuildIt is NOT the only way to build a successful site. A few of the authors who posted this last month have sites that impressed me. I'd like to share them with you.

Kathleen Gage's StreetSmarts Marketing

Kathleen's page on this site.

Take a look around Kathleen's site. Kathleen has multiple income streams. She offers free information. She has a focus - Marketing - and it shows.

Click on "Articles" if you want to see where all the content is for the search engines to find.

Now here's the number that will blow you away: Kathleen has 15,000 "opt-in" subscribers to her e-newsletter. 15K folks who have CHOSEN to keep hearing what Kathleen has to say. People who are exposed REPEATEDLY to Kathleen's marketing message and the goods and services she has for sale.

Should a self published author have a newsletter? I've seen many who do, but few who have any reason to. Your book is a static thing, so I doubt many strangers want updates on it. But...

If your website is on a subject larger than (but inclusive of) your book, and if your expertise is such that your thoughts on the subject are valued, then an e-newsletter may be a nice feature to add to your online presence.

But you don't get 15,000 subscribers from just a few site visitors.

(And yes, SiteBuildIt has an easy to use newsletter feature. You're reading my version of it right now!)

Padme Nina Livingstone's Healing with Awareness

Padme Nina's page on this site.

Quite a soothing site, isn't it?

There's tons of free and valuable content (click Talks/Articles), as well as a variety of products and services. (And a newsletter!) Please note also that Padme Nina has a booklist featuring books by others in addition to her own.

Did you know a booklist can be a great way to attract traffic to your site?

Padme Nina's site gives her a professional online presence as well a place to sell her stuff. It doesn't for a minute read like the site of someone with a singular mission: to hawk a particular book.

Those sites make you look like a desperate salesperson!

Trent Stephens' Build Model Castles

Trent's page on this site.

Trent's page on my children's books site.

Google Model Castles. See who's #1 (and #2)? Meet Dr. Trent Stephens.

Please study what's going on here. I don't know that I've ever seen a better example of someone building a site for the audience most apt to buy their book.

Google reports 1600 people a month use a search phrase that includes "Model Castles." Most of the time, those searchers find Dr. Trent at the top of the list.

They click to his site. They find free downloads of model castle designs. "Oh, he has a book with plans for all of the castles? Let's buy it."

Talk about brilliant!

Now, are you ready for the irony?

If ten times as many people were searching for this information each month, Trent would probably get LESS traffic. Why?

Because there would likely be more websites competing for that traffic. Trent would need a much bigger site to appear at the top of the rankings.

So Trent has really hit the sweet spot. And if you read his post to my children's books site, you'll see he has plans for a series of books that have little to do with model castles.

And of course, he knows that those books will require their own site. You don't sell sports magazines at the Farmers' Market!

Can YOU build a targeted website? Sure you can.


5) NEW PAGES ON THE SITE

When you signed up for this newsletter you were promised updates on new self publishing stories posted to the site. There have been 25 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 3 authors and 4 posts cited in the previous section, I'm noting other terrific posts below in each category by bolding them. Read the comments (because when writers write back in response to my questions, sometimes that's where the best information is). And please post your own comments as well!

start-where-you-are.html

workington-dynamo.html

self-publishing-podcasting-and-me.html

preaching-to-the-converted.html

finally-a-book-i-can-hold-and-so-can-others.html

controlling-your-destiny.html

writing-nemesis.html

how-i-said-yes-to-myself-for-a-novel-38-years-in-the-making.html

avoiding-agendas.html

dos-and-donts-in-self-publishing.html

me-writing-a-book-no-way.html

tales-of-nshalain.html

my-selfpublishing-journey.html

stand.html

authorhouseuk.html

plane-sense-and-perseverance.html

i-self-published-and-created-my-own-book-printing-business.html

to-find-a-publisher-vs-self-publishing.html

And here are a couple self publishing posts from my children's books site:

http://www.best-childrens-books.com/its-been-rewarding-and-painful.html

http://www.best-childrens-books.com/smooth-sailing-so-far.html

susan-houckcrescent-moon-dtp-designs.html

shane-lees.html

cherry.html

standthebook.html


WRAPPING UP

Please remember that this newsletter is perfectly suitable for forwarding to your self published friends and acquaintances! You can also recommend to them that they sign up for the newsletter on The Shared Self Publishing Experience home page. Also remember to tell those folks they can post to the site in return for a link to their site!

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