WELCOME BACK
And I’m welcoming you back to the second part of Mike Friedman’s article about marketing, so get comfortable, grab a snack and let’s do it!
THE SECOND HALF OF MIKE’S GUEST BLOG
For a small fee an ad offered to drive x number of visits to your site. ‘That’s sound great’, you think, here is my money. And right on time the stats showed a big jump in traffic. Great you think, where did all this traffic come from? So you find out – http://theteaguide.com/. That’s right a tea room in India. Pinged (I think that is the term) my blog page 19,000 times. The page rank may or may not have moved. No eyes read my offer.So unless you have a dedicated web site for your book which is already receiving traffic, I do not recommend this idea.
TWITTER, that’s it, get your message out on Twitter. (write a note on a scrap of paper near your computer). Find out what is a Twitter.
Respond to an ad, for a small fee, I will send your message to my 45,000 twitter followers. “Great, here is my money.” Order sent, I suppose. My email was hacked and mailings from Indonesia and Malaysia started showing up in my inbox. Twitter – ok – I tried twits.
Pinterest, I have heard of that. I’ll get the word out through Pinterest. For a small fee I will send your information to my 4500 Pinterest followers. Ok, here is my money. Pinterest is a fascinating place.
I see an ad, “I will place your ad on our emails that we send out daily to over 1000 accounts.” That sounds great a thousand people will see your book title. “Great here is my money.”
Increase your Alexa/Google reading. Great … You know the rest. Not recommended unless you have a dedicated web site.
I see an ad, “I will tweet anything you want to my amazingly wonderful, engaged, reply happy 275,000+ followers on Twitter.” Don’t fall for this.
I see ads “Air your commercial on popular internet radio section. Air your commercial on Los Angeles NBC radio affiliate advertise your product. I will play your ad on my radio show for 1 week. I will play your ad on my radio show for a month.
Tough to measure this method. I wrote ads, had them recorded sent out mp3 files and listened to the ads over and over on streaming Internet Radio. This had the most solid feel of the methods used.
Air YOUR radio commercial to 100,000+ listeners. Done.
This was the most fun. The ad read, Create and give you an impressive and attractive Commercials Intro Video Animation with Your text and Images
This is the results of weeks of self taught Book promotion. Scoreboard zero sales, through these efforts. But all is not lost. There have seen sales sent my way. When I asked ‘how’ from the person who brought the sales in, the answers were, “I told my neighbor. Oh, I work with her.” Etc.
Start over from the beginning.
THANK YOU, MIKE
I think there’s a valuable lesson to be learned in Mike’s article….word of mouth is free and oh so valuable. Establish relationships with your readers, produce quality work and let the cards fall where they will.
FLASH FICTION
Someone asked me on the Mailbag the other day whether I thought flash fiction was a viable genre to publish in…a collection of flash fiction….and I honestly don’t know. Flash fiction is really just another way of saying short stories, and short stories have been popular since, well, a long time ago….so I see no specific reason why a collection of self-published flash fictions wouldn’t sell.
Flash fictions are very popular these days among writers, but do they sell? Not as well, on Kindle, as full-length novels, but there are writers who do quite well on Amazon selling novellas….checking sales figures, anthologies do not do well and I have no reason for that.
My personal opinion: the writing market is undergoing one hell of a fluctuation, and when it will stabilize, and what it will look like once it does stabilize, is anyone’s guess. The best we can do is work on our own craft and try to catch the wave when it develops.
SEE YOU NEXT WEEK
So much to do, so little time.
I’m outta here. Have a great week of writing!
Bill
“Helping writers to spread their wings and fly.”
Billybuc
Artistry With Words 
Loved Mike’s message, too and you truly cannot beat the price of word of mouth ever! Thanks for sharing, Bill and wishing you a lovely end of the week and weekend, too. I will be off the grind through next weekend as tomorrow is my 10th wedding anniversary and then we leave for Disney on Saturday for the week. So, will most likely be offline for that time and just wanted to give you a heads up while I will be MIA for a bit. Talk again soon 🙂
Janine, Happy Anniversary! Have a fantastic trip down south and we’ll see you when we see you. Thank you as always.
Aw, thank you so much Bill and just didn’t want you to think I was missing though. But very excited and just can’t wait to get away for a bit with Kevin and the girls now 😉
I’m excited for you, Janine. Stay safe and have a fabulous time.
Happy anniversary, Janine Huldie. And thanks Bill for sharing this hike through the marketing jungle.
Thanks again, Mike! Greatly appreciated.
Great article by Mike! I have spent the past year or so working to get more book sales and I have to tell you that despite the fact that there are more people on the internet, book sales are not as good for me there as getting out and getting to know people at live events. I have been using it, but not so much in direct online marketing.
I’m of the same belief, Donna. I do not believe in social media or other online advertising. The market has been flooded by it and I find it totally ineffective.
You are right Bill; the market is acting weird right now on book sales. What do I do? The same I always will do. I write, laugh, love and share. I know no other way. Just follow my gut and hope it all works out.
I should also mention that using the free read in Kindle once in awhile seems to help sales there.
Take care my friend.
Thanks as always, Greg. Sharing our experiences makes us all better writers and marketers.
I agree with your thoughts on good relationships leading to results. It takes dedicated effort but you will retain more readers. Mike’s message was helpful.
Thank you Dee! If nothing else, I am persistent in my pursuit of my goals.
Bill
I’ve been waiting all week for this post to see what I might be doing wrong!
The answer is probably nothing, I just need to get out and ‘network’ more!
I too nearly fell for some of the ‘slick ads’ so it was great to read Mike’s ‘rate’ on them.
Thanks
Lawrence
Glad to hear that, Lawrence. The thing is…this is a tough gig and it takes a long time and a lot of work to break through. Keep plugging away.
Mike’s post reads like someone who has learned the hard way how to and how not to promote. The thing is there is nothing those ‘for a small fee’ people do that you can’t do for yourself for free. Yes, it takes a bit of time, some research and a few mistakes. However, at the end of it all, you’ve got a marketing plan tailor-made for your needs. And you learned something new.
Have a great weekend, Bill.
All true, Zulma! I loved Mike’s condensed version of the “what not to do’s” and I think I’ve done most of them. In the end, exactly what you said is exactly what needs to be done…get out there, make our own mistakes, but control our own destiny.
You are such a loyal friend. Thanks for always being here.
Happy Saturday to you, Zulma!
Great point Zulma
Thanks for coming back, Lawrence!
“So much to do, so little time” – I hear ya!! I think it’s this mid-year slump… we’re all kind of willing the December holidays to arrive, but at the same time, wishing time would slow down or pause so we can get through everything! Well, that’s how I’m feeling right now LOL, a holiday would be amazing!!
Thanks Bill, as always for your writing advice. It’s refreshing and always perks me up and lights some inspiration bulb hehe. Busy fiddling around on the health blog today, yipeee.
Hope your weekend is great!
Always good to see you, Mel! For a variety of reasons, you are one of those people I instantly liked and would love to meet face to face…maybe someday, eh?