Tag: software
Simple Steps Lead To Successful Books
Like most first time authors, I figured that once the word was out that I’d written a book, the world would beat a path to my door wanting to buy it. I’ll admit I gave little thought to marketing until the day my first printing of Handbook To A Happier Life was delivered. In a panic, I called a published author I knew and asked, “What do I do now?” She suggested several books about book marketing, which I bought immediately. I was on my way.
Success in book selling is a three step process: 1. Write the book. 2. Print the book. 3. Sell the book. That last one can be bit tricky:-)
Space does not permit me to go into all the details of my process or to list the many people who helped, however, there are a couple of very important points I learned early on which made all the difference.
The most important thing I learned was to identify my reader. As much as I hated to admit it, not everyone would buy my book. My early feedback told me entrepreneurs, network marketers and salespeople were buying my book. I began to ask myself focused questions as to how I could best reach these people. I set goals. After all, if you don’t have a goal, how will you know when you’ve succeeded? I took specific actions daily. That’s important. Consistent action will make all the difference.
There were days when I was ready to give up but I kept taking action. I refused to give up. Another important point. Never, never, never give up! One day, a door opened. I had located a distributor who was selling to the market I wanted to reach. They reviewed “Handbook To A Happier Life” and it was put on a recommended reading list. It went into eight printings with almost 100,000 copies sold and was translated into several languages, and then sold to a big publisher. I knew all along that once people saw this book, they would want to read it.
I firmly believe most books will sell once you have taken the time to clearly define your market, set your goals and commit to taking daily action. And more action – keeping in mind that there are many places you can sell books besides bookstores. Go for it!
The Best Business Card You Ever Had
“Keep in mind Jim, this is a great business card.” That was my first lesson as a new author and it has served me well over the years. On a lark, I sent 20 copies of my new book to the presidents of several big direct sales companies. The result was a glowing testimonial from the president of one of the companies, along with an order for 250 books. Was it worth the cost of giving away the 20? You bet it was! I like to think of giving away books as planting seeds. You never know which ones will spout or when.
Many professional speakers and coaches willingly give away their $12 paperback book (with a cost of a $2-$4) and attract clients and bookings worth thousands of dollars from it. Others obtain high priced consulting contracts using the book as a door opener.
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One Author’s Solution For Publishing Creative Writing Output
It has never been easy to have your creative writing output accepted by traditional publishing houses.
Witness these famous masters of fiction who were all obliged to take the route of shelling out hard cash to have their debut novels printed.
Alexandre Dumas
D.H. Lawrence
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Rice Burroughs
George Bernard Shaw
Gertrude Stein
James Joyce
John Grisham
Mark Twain
Mary Baker Eddy
Rudyard Kipling
Stephen Crane
Upton Sinclair
Virginia Woolf
Walt Whitman
William Blake
Zane Grey
John Grisham, incidentally, sold copies of his first novel A Time to Kill out of the boot of a car which at the outset was his sole ‘vehicle’ for distributionÖ
And it is getting tougher all the time ñ even for established authors.
It can be doubly frustrating when youíve written something that you are desperate to see in print; something you want other people to read.
There is always recourse to the expensive vanity publishing houses but I wouldnít take that route come what may.
Would you?
Imagine my surprise then when I stumbled across the perfect solution for publishing creative output that you cannot place elsewhere.
I have a string of traditionally published titles currently selling in bookstores world wide but I have an almost equal string that I have never been able to get into print.
That is until now
The little known but highly reputable POD (print on demand) source I have discovered requires an initial membership fee that covers UNLIMITED titles – perfect bound with ISBN and free shipping to customers
In a nutshell: Instead of requiring you to place an initial order for 10 to 100 books, this innovative publisher provides the first copy of your book free of charge and then prints-on-demand and ships when they receive subsequent orders from you and your customers.
This website featured in the resource box below is well worth a visit especially if you are still struggling to get your first book into print. You could have your own personal library up and running in next to no time.
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Publicity From Thirty Thousand Feet
Sketching out your marketing campaign will also give you a chance to see what’s been leveraging you results and what hasn’t. Keep in mind that some things like bulk sales and national media might take longer than other items so you’ll want to keep putting forth effort toward those long-term goals.
We all know that marketing a book is a process. But sometimes the process takes longer than we’d anticipated. That’s why it’s nice every now and again to hop aboard the publicity jet and get a look-see at what you’ve been doing from the thirty-thousand foot level. Why? Well, first off this birds-eye view will reveal to you areas you might be overlooking or other options for marketing you hadn’t considered.
To accomplish this bird-eye view you’ll want to get yourself a big white board, or something else big enough to chart your flight plan on. Then, once you’ve gotten that start charting the course you’ve taken so far. Don’t leave a single thing out; it doesn’t matter what it is. What you want to end up with is a serious list of everything you’ve done from the time you held your first proof book in your hands.
One of the things this type of a project will do is give you a new perspective on what you’re doing. It will show you areas that you’ve possibly been spending too much time on or potential holes in your campaign. Sketching out your marketing campaign will also give you a chance to see what’s been leveraging you results and what hasn’t. Keep in mind that some things like bulk sales and national media might take longer than other items so you’ll want to keep putting forth effort toward those long-term goals. But let’s say you’ve been spending tons of time doing radio but nothing really seems to be happening in that area. You then look over to your speaking engagement section and realize you haven’t done a lot with that recently. Perhaps it’s time to pull back on radio and start pushing speaking events.
Once you’ve spent a good long time in this birds-eye view mode, start developing a to-do list of items or add to an existing list to help reinvigorate your campaign. One of the many things you’ll learn from doing this thirty-thousand foot perspective is that we often become myopic in our campaigns, focusing too hard in one area and not hard enough in another. Stepping back from your work will allow you the breathing room you need to regroup and reset your goals. Then you can focus in on particular areas or tasks that might need a boost. ‘
It’s been said that a plane flying from Hawaii to Los Angeles is always off by three percent. If left to fly without any adjustments to the course, however slight, the plane would land up in Seattle instead (a difference of almost 1,200 miles!). But through corrections and readjustments the pilot eventually reaches his destination. As you pilot your own campaign, remember: don’t leave your marketing on autopilot. Realign, readjust, and refocus and eventually you too will reach your destination, wherever that might be.
Happy flying!
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Marketing to Marketers
Marketing to other marketers to make it easier to make money is great but many of the buyers never use the products and just try to pawn them off on other marketers. So you wind up with all these people selling scripts, programs, eBooks, and more to other online marketers and they profess how great they are without ever using them. They are just trying to make a buck as an affiliate of someone else’s idea.
I am all for new marketing ideas especially the ones that automate tedious tasks. I love submitting articles and use an auto submitter. RSS feeds provide news to my sites. Automatically creating links to Clickbank items based on keywords in my blogs is a godsend.
But, to me, if people donít use these products and just pimp them to others, they are missing out on the long term benefits for a quick buck.
I admit that I have done this in the past and may do it again in the future ñ but ñ I only sell products that I actually use and approve. That way I can actually vouch for them since I have used them and can speak from personal experience.
Personally, I prefer to market to the average Internet Joe. I market to people who are looking for a deal on a credit card (and I use a super script to keep my site current). I recommend hotels in Thailand and can speak from first-hand experience. I post links to hotels in Thailand forums and also have 6 Thai affiliate hotel sites.
I also write articles about Thailand and list my hotel affiliate links in the author’s resource box. These are pretty easy to write since I have been traveling to Thailand for over 30 years.
I also write the occasional marketing or credit article to get some traffic to those sites. I have about 10 article sites and advertise on those sites that others submit their articles to.
I would rather make a few bucks marketing a product to people who are actually going to use it instead of marketing to someone who is only going to try to sell it to someone else.
All of this is just my personal opinion. There is nothing morally wrong or illegal of marketing to marketers. I use many of the items that are up for sale, especially those that make my life a little bit easier.
The one thing that I do object to is the folks that market to others and make false or misleading statements indicating that they use the product and how wonderful it is when they have never used it and just want to make a buck.
Anyhow, keep coming up with all those great products that marketers can use to make our lives easier. Just market them honestly.
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Social Bookmark Traffic – Is It Useful?
In the very recent past, a friend of mine [Kate] was lucky enough to get her website listed (bookmarked) on Digg, a very popular social bookmark site. With her permission, I was given an excellent chance to overlook and analyze the traffic generated from these types of sites. Read on to discover the pro’s and con’s of social media site traffic, and how it could be utilised in your own website or online marketing efforts.
Firstly, it should be said that any sort of internet traffic, should not be considered useless. Visitors to your site should all be welcomed, as any visitor is a good thing. In saying that, however, it should be noted that traffic in all its greatness, is not created equally. Great differences become apparent when you start to analyze its source. The purpose of this article, is to take a much closer look at the traffic generated from social bookmarking, from the perspective of internet marketing.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 2 years, you’d notice a very big trend on the web–social bookmark and media websites have become “all that” on the web. Slashdot, Stumbleupon, Digg; any of these popular sites sound familiar?
This is where a lot of social bookmark traffic will originate from. In essence, these sites are driven and “controlled” by the users. Users or members choose which content they want to bookmark, and this will lead into viewing and discussing of said bookmarked content. Sites such as these are immensely popular, and flow traffic that the average website owner can only ever imagine having. Thats a lot of traffic, isn’t it? But is it really useful?
All this traffic and hype must be a good thing, right? But is it really worth your time? Should you integrate active promotion to these types of social media websites? What about concentrating all your online marketing strategies on these types of sites? The question more at point is, what are the real pro’s and con’s of getting your website listed on the front page of sites like Stumbleupon or Digg?
As a website owner myself, I wanted answers, and I wanted them quickly. In addition, I wondered if utilising these sites could benefit me; i.e, could they help me generate more income online?
Recently, my friends listing on Digg enabled me to have a upclose look at these sites, and the effects they brought to a website owner. This was a chance for a first-hand, upclose study; I was not about to pass this up.
However, this didn’t happen by chance. Kate took the action of placing the free “Addthis.com” bookmark to all her pages. You can also do this quite easily. Using this simple bookmark “button”, you can start to attract these sites. However, be warned; a site featured on the front page of social media sites can almost instantly generate 100,000’s of visitors to your website; this in essence is enough traffic that it may overload your server. Not good!
So be careful; active promotion to these social bookmark sites should only be taken upon if your servers or web hosting company can withstand the sudden influx of traffic.
With Kate’s permission, I utilised Google Analytics and started to analyze these types of visitors and social bookmark traffic generated. Interestingly enough, some very important factors were realised. The Majority of this traffic will:
– Simply bounce back.
– Very few visitors will stay on your site; even for a short period of time.
– Very few visitors will actually go into the depths of your site.
– If you have a newsletter or similar, you’ll notice that very few sign-up for these.
– If you utilise any type of marketing follow-ups, etc, very few will enter.
(In saying this, an unknown variable is the content of your site. Is it well written? Does it perform well? Is it useful or attractive to the visitor?)
Traffic from these sites does pose a very common problem, however; its temporary traffic, to say the least. The mass amount of traffic generated will usually only last a few days at most, that is, until your listing or bookmark is removed from the front page. Most of these visitors will rarely remain on your website for long, and the majority leave within seconds. In saying that, you may have a few sign-up’s to your newsletter or Ezine, or visitors that explore your site. But keep in mind, this number will not be very high.
Social media site traffic can be likened to customers in the drive-thru sections of fast food restaurants; they come and go as quick as they came. The visitors will basically view your content, and before you know it, have already left, surfing back to the main site to venture onto the next item or listing. Social bookmark traffic will always behave differently, to a large extent, when compared to organic search engine traffic, or your newsletter traffic, for instance. Very differently.
Visitors from Kate’s article posts will generally add up to 50 to a 100 new sign-ups a day; much different when compared to social bookmark traffic. In addition, readers and visitors to her articles are actually interested in her content, and therefore have been previously exposed to similiar content upon reaching her website. So in this case, there was no comparison.
The choice of traffic will always lay in the visitors generated from search engines, atleast when comparing to the traffic from social bookmarking sites. A question still remains, however– is social bookmark traffic really all that useless?
Firstly, as previously mentioned, you need to remember that no traffic should be considered useless. Any type of visitor to your website should be counted as a good thing. Any website owner should realise that getting traffic and visitors to your website is a must; otherwise its game over.
When someone searches for a particular term in a search engine, and they end up at your website, this means that your visitor is there because you have what they’re looking for. This type of traffic is essential to your website. Visitors like these are considered to be “targeted traffic”; that is, they’re more likely to read your pitch-page, overlook your information, sign-up to a newsletter, or even buy a product. Additionally, they may also become repeat visitors. Traffic like this is ideal. These are the types of visitors you really want.
However, its not all bad news. Social media or bookmark sites do have a bright side.
How would you like the possibility of your website gaining exposure to millions of people? Sounds good, doesn’t it? Even though you may not get sales, for instance, this traffic can assist in getting your websites name out there; branding it, creating a buzz.
If your website appeals to a more mass market, then you are even more in luck. Social bookmark traffic in this case can be an excellent source of traffic and visitors.
Social sites such as these also have another added bonus; gaining a link on high PR7 and PR8 websites, with high traffic flow, can’t hurt your search engine rankings. After your website is featured on a social media site such as Digg, your link can also appear on a large number of secondary websites on the web, as much as 1000 or more. Much of this traffic will also be using the Firefox web browser, which is embedded with the Alexa toolbar– what does this do for you? Your Alexa traffic rank will be improved. As much as 50% of the visitors hitting Kate’s website we’re running the Firefox browser.
Something worth pointing out, is that the traffic generated from Stumbleupon was much different. Longer stay durations were the common thing in this traffic, that is, this traffic behaved more like organic traffic. This could possibly be attributed to the fact that Stumbleupon is a higher quality site, and this was reflected from the higher quality of the visitors originating from there. This also made me come to the realisation that not all social media/bookmark traffic can be measured with the same stick. This experience also pointed me out to something important; the content featured on Kate’s website is geared towards targeted visitors from search engines and articles, and is generally not suited to the mainstream net-surfer.
An idea to better take advantage of this type of traffic, is to gear your website and its content to more mainstream internet users. Whether or not this enables you to achieve a greater level of success, is largely dependant on what you offer and how it is offered. Another unknown variable, unfortunately.
In the near future, I hope to gain the chance to further study social bookmark traffic, and its long-term effects on websites. In specific, the effect it would have on keyword rankings and link popularity rankings in search engines; only then can I come to any type of real judgements. However, for now, my mind is being kept open, and the idea is being tossed up as to whether social media and bookmark traffic is actually worth the time or the effort. Is the time taken away from your usual day-to-day marketing efforts worth it?
Guess there is only one way to find out, really.
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Myths about Selling
Your online commercializing conflict will include a number of dissimilar methods in different arenas of the Internet. You may have a web site, use an auto responder, post classified ads, post articles, place banner advertisings, sponsor lists and newssheets, circulate press handouts, and much more. Keep in mind, though, that when you are first commencing, it is vital that you concentrate on one facet of your merchandising crusade at a time and elevate it to its fullest degree before proceeding on to the next.
It is more effective to slowly become profitable by concentrating on one event at a time, than to hardly be gainful because you are attacking all of the events halfhearted.
Broaden and spend little sums of money on advertisement for the first time. If you apply a conservative approach, you will not be exhausted financially if an ad doesnít return the sales you were going for. Just keep trying out advertisements as your fund permits until you discover the one that works most effective; then you can roll it out and be positive that you are going to earn money rather than lose it!
If you have a lot of contest, state that you will respect all of your competitionsí vouchers and/or rebates; use “theirî advertisement to your advantage.
An antique problem in business sector is accumulating final payment for services delivered. As a business possessor, you need to be tended for “difficultî customers and “moochesî by exercising such matters as
In your contract or sales arrangements, state the interest rates and late fees that will be assessed if payment is not received within 30 days of completion.
Compose form letters to be used for accumulating the remainder. There should be three letters in total — one after the payment is ten days late, another after twenty days, and a third that lets the client know that youíll be turning their account over to a collection authority (or taking them to small claims court).
The third letter should not be sent until 45 days after the payment is late. And of course, never bluff. If you say you will turn it over to a collection agency, do so.
The best way to protect yourself is to take payment thru credit card. State to your customer that you will bill their credit card one third of the entire cost as an initial down payment, another third just after you have passed the 50% closing period, and the final third on delivery. Or use the two-payment system – half at the introduction of the task and the balance upon completion.
One more thing. You are free to use this article on your website provided that it stays unaltered and the links in the resourcebox is live, search-engine friendly links.
DO NOT STEAL. IT IS NOT WORTH IT.
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