A Book about Meat

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A Book about Meat

by John Smith
(Ashton, ID, USA)

Confessions of a Butcher

Confessions of the Butcher's Wife

About ten years ago my hubby John Smith and I started writing a newsletter, Ark Essentials promoting provident living and preparedness. I was working on a doll pattern on the side and he decided to write a book about saving money on meat since he was a butcher. He had written one article about saving money on meat in the newsletter and folks loved it- why not give them more of what they wanted?!

We wrote the book using Microsoft Publisher (since that's what we used for the newsletter) and just called around to local copy shops in the area. Once we found a place that seemed affordable we had them make up some copies.

Once we sold enough to break even we upgraded. Had someone draw up a cover, got a copyright, registered with the library of congress, etc. We also added pictures. We got tired of the newsletter and running our business and took a break.

We built a house, sold it and moved to Idaho. I started up a website and tried to promote my dolls but I added a small pitch about John's book and he sold more books in a week than I'd sold doll pattterns in a year so we refocused our efforts.

I was tired of getting ripped off my website "experts" and found SBI finally. (Webmaster's note: SBI = SiteBuildIt, the company I used to build this website.) I had some positive imput. We invested our own $$$ from selling the house and did the book up right. Paid someone good to do cover, layout, formating, and to clean up the illustrations. We are much happier with this 3rd printing as it's worthy of going on the store shelves as well as selling on the internet. We found a printing company within driving distance that did work for Don Aslett and other big name self publishers.

I"m constantly looking for publicity contacts and John has been interviewed on Larry Burkett's Money Matters show, local TV, and now a national magazine will be printing an interview of John for their June edition. Perhaps this will finally be our big break and we'll be able to parlay this book's success into additional writing projects!

Visit

Confessions of a Butcher
All About Meat (the SBI site)
Secrets of the Butcher's Wife

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A Book about Meat

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May 13, 2009
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Meaty thoughts
by: Steve B.

Vickie, thanks for the kind words! And there's a children's book on the way? How exciting! If it's self-published, I'll set aside room for you on both sites!

All the best (and thanks for stopping by),

Steve

May 12, 2009
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Thanks!
by: Vickie

Thanks for the nice comments. I should hope the SBI site ranks higher as all but one other site are very new and http://www.all-about-meat.com is about 3 years old. I am glad to see you plugging SBI to self publishers as it is a great tool and great way to get educated about what will really work on the web. One warning to those investigating SBI- sign up with someone like Steve who knows the ropes and can mentor you. I don't even know who actually got my referral commission but they don't offer any additional support or great sites like Steve has.

Enjoyed your bio and both sites. I'll have to check in when I get my first children's book completed. Hopefully later this summer.

May 12, 2009
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Getting to the meat of the matter
by: Steve B.

Hi, John's wife. I'm always delighted to have a fellow SBIer post to the site. (Almost as delighted as when one of my visitors decides to entrust their online presence to SiteBuildIt's methods.)

And what a great example all-about-meat.com is of so many of the things I say on this site. For instance...

Of your four sites, it's the one with the highest Google PageRank. (A 3, compared to a 2, a 1 and a zero.)

But the main thing is that you're doing PRECISELY what I always recommend on this site: Building a website about a subject larger than your book, but INCLUSIVE of your book. In your case...

The book is about affordable meat. The site is about everything meat-related. (I'm going to take this opportunity to direct everyone to your sales page, so they can see how you're going about it.)

I'll point out a few things to everyone else.

1) The website acts as a large fishing net, pulling in search engine visitors with a common interest in meat.
2) There is significant free content. According to Google, the site has 81 pages, and I'm willing to bet it's still growing.
3) The various pages are each meant to "win" a specific keyword search. More pages means more wins means more visits.
4) These visitors get their free information and are simultaneously exposed to the main product, namely John's book.
5) I call the book the main product because it isn't the only way the site is monetized. The butcher and his wife know that the overwhelming majority of visitors won't buy the book, no matter what! So, among other things, the John and his wife pepper the site with money making Google ads.

Content leads to traffic. Traffic can be monetized. A site about only your book tends to only attract visitors who are looking for your book! Do you think more people search for information on meat or for what a butcher has to say?

Thanks, John's wife, for walking us through your journey. Here's wishing you more and more success!

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May 12, 2009
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Submitted by: Steve B.

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Hi, John's wife. I'm always delighted to have a fellow SBIer post to the site. (Almost as delighted as when one of my visitors decides to entrust their online presence to <A HREF="http://find.sitesell.com/writingsuccess.html" TARGET="new">SiteBuildIt's methods</A>.) And what a great example all-about-meat.com is of so many of the things I say on this site. For instance... Of your four sites, it's the one with the highest Google PageRank. (A 3, compared to a 2, a 1 and a zero.) But the main thing is that you're doing PRECISELY what I always recommend on this site: Building a website about a subject larger than your book, but INCLUSIVE of your book. In your case... The book is about affordable meat. The site is about everything meat-related. (I'm going to take this opportunity to direct everyone to <A HREF="http://www.all-about-meat.com/meatsalespage1.html" TARGET="new">your sales page</A>, so they can see how you're going about it.) I'll point out a few things to everyone else. 1) The website acts as a large fishing net, pulling in search engine visitors with a common interest in meat. 2) There is significant free content. According to Google, the site has 81 pages, and I'm willing to bet it's still growing. 3) The various pages are each meant to "win" a specific keyword search. More pages means more wins means more visits. 4) These visitors get their free information and are simultaneously exposed to the main product, namely John's book. 5) I call the book the main product because it isn't the only way the site is monetized. The butcher and his wife know that the overwhelming majority of visitors won't buy the book, no matter what! So, among other things, the John and his wife pepper the site with <A HREF="http://adsense.sitesell.com/writingsuccess.html" TARGET="new">money making Google ads</A>. Content leads to traffic. Traffic can be monetized. A site about only your book tends to only attract visitors who are looking for your book! Do you think more people search for information on meat or for what a butcher has to say? Thanks, John's wife, for walking us through your journey. Here's wishing you more and more success!

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A Book about Meat

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