Building a Picture Books Site

by Colleen H. Robley Blake
(Connecticut)

Site at time of review: www.imaajinn.com

Current version of site: www.robleyblake.com

How much traffic do you get? Not sure

How much money and time have you put into the site? $40 - 60 a year

Has the site met your expectations? Yes, somewhat.

Author's page on this site: I Love It!

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Well, Colleen, hi. Since it's my job here to be honest, I'll tell you my initial reactions to the website.

1) What the heck does imaajinn (your domain name) mean? Does it have something to do with ferns, since the lady whose picture is featured appears to be tending one?

2) If the author could afford to hire the illustrator who did the gorgeous cover for the picture book Mom, I Fired the Babysitter, why couldn't she get a little help for the design of her site?

Let's take a look at #1. I'm assuming imaajinn is a cute spelling of "imagine." Two problems I see:

1) There's already a line of books that has the same odd spelling, only with one A. They look to be futuristic romance books, not picture books. I don't see how you benefit from any confusion there!

2) Nobody spells "imagine" that way. Even your customers are likely to misspell it, and likely to end up on the futuristic romance books site. Confusion again!

At the risk of being harsh, I don't know what to call the current version of your site besides "misconceived." It's not working on a visual level, the url is likely to confuse customers and prospective customers, and it's never going to attract search engine attention (my particular area of expertise).

Sorry!

(By the way, I don't see the shopping cart I'm supposed to click on!)

The first thing any author has to do with their website is decide whether they intend it to be a) simply an online business card (that is, a site that is found by people who are looking specifically for the site, the author or the book), or b) a site that is found by searchers who DON'T KNOW about the site, the author or the book.

In other words, is it meant simply to represent you well to people who are looking for you and your work, or is it also meant to attract attention for your work? Is it aimed at the 1000 or so people who are aware of you, or the 6 billion who aren't?

a) cannot do the work of b). b) CAN do the work of a).

If you're simply interested in a) I recommend

1) a new domain name, say colleenrobleyblake.com
2) a visual redesign
3) prominently featuring your name and your picture books' titles throughout the site.
4) fixing your "meta." Among other things, this would include

a) giving your home page a descriptive title other than "page 1."
b) adding meta keywords and meta description to each page. Again, the goal is to feature your name and your books' titles prominently.

The goal with all this is to make sure your site comes up at the top of the search listings when people look for you and your picture books (right now it doesn't come close), and that it represents you well when those people arrive.

Okay, that's the plan for reaching your 1000 people. What's the plan for reaching some of the 6 billion?

Well, Job 1 is finding yourself a market of people likely to find your books compelling. Maybe it's people looking for babysitters! 100s of 1000s of people search for babysitting info each month.

I'm a single parent. I have an event I can't miss this weekend. For the life of me I can't find a babysitter. Or maybe I'm interviewing babysitters and I don't know what questions to ask. So I'm googling and yahooing for help and I happen upon Colleen H. Robley Blake's site, which is a wonderment of helpful babysitting information. I'm saved! And look: Colleen has the cutest picture book about a kid who FIRES his babysitter. I'm going to buy it!

Or maybe it's the parents of 4 year olds. 9900 people per month search for information on 4 year olds. And get this, 246,000 search "pre-k". Target such a market and you could have a bunch of buyers for "I Can't Wait Till I'm Five."

Now, here's the catch: your site has to be filled with information that these searchers will find useful, otherwise the search engines won't lead people to it. But boy oh boy...if you do it right, you'll be reaching a lot more than your 1000 people. My other site, Best Children's Books, reaches 1000 people per day.

If you're interested in this approach, I have some reading assignments for you. Go read some back issues of my newsletter for more information on how to build a website that targets the 6 billion.

Visit this link if you want to see what a step-by-step approach to building such a site for your picture books yourself would look like. Alternatively, click here if you'd be interested in paying someone else to build your picture book site.

Reply by commenting if you have any questions!

Steve