Tips for Creating Your First Freelancer (Writing) Site

An excellent resource for bloggers.

Nicholas C. Rossis

Continuing my paying-it-forward series of posts, I present to you today another one of my new friends, Duke Vukadinovic.

You may or may not be aware that in my day job, I’m a web developer whose company, Istomedia, has developed over 450 websites and blogs since 1995. This, however, is an expense that many authors would rather not make. And yet, they still need to have an online presence. So, what are they to do?

Duke has come up with a great resource, the First Site Guide. Freelancers – and writers in general – will find there all they need to build their first website on their own, along with helpful tips, how-tos, and loads of free advice.

Take it, Duke!

If you’re a freelancer, you need your own website. It doesn’t have to be great or fancy…

View original post 887 more words

It’s Up To You

When considering how to market your self-published books, it’s worth considering the consumer. In this article, Kristine Kathryn Rusch discusses some creative ways of marketing music in the past and how they can be used by self-publishers to market their books.

From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: “Normally when I have blog with this title, I’m discussing the choices writers make in this new world of publishing. But this blog is different. This blog is about consumer choice…”

Source: It’s Up To You

A First Look at #Advertising with #Amazon–#Results

I previously reblogged a post by Nicholas C. Rossis about using Amazon’s advertising program (Advertise with Amazon: A Step-by-Step Tutorial) as a marketing tool.

Today Nicholas, along with some other authors, shared his experience of advertising on Amazon. This post is an extensive analysis of his experiment, including how changing variables influenced the results in terms of effects on sales and costs for advertising.

Thank you to Nicholas C. Rossis, Tara Sparling, and C.J. Heath for sharing your results of advertising with Amazon.

The consensus: use Amazon’s advertising program with caution.

 

Nicholas C. Rossis

by meowmeowmeow21.deviantart.com

I’m sure you remember my step-by-step tutorial on how to advertise with Amazon. Three weeks later, I have some preliminary results, which, as promised, I’m sharing with you, so that you can learn from my mistakes.

In a nutshell: I’ve failed. The experiment has so far been a disappointment, albeit one offering fascinating insights.

You may remember that I had done my math and knew that, to make any profit, I had to bid under the proposed $0.50.

Now, for a peek behind the scenes: whenever Amazon is about to show a product page, a small bidding war will rage for a few nanoseconds. Amazon will check to see if that product is linked to any ads. If more than one ads want to be displayed, they will bid for that space, until they reach their cut-off threshold. So, if I have specified 5c as my maximum, then an ad…

View original post 1,257 more words

Conclusions from Smashwords Survey: How to Sell Your Books

Nicholas C. Rossis

Once again, author and blogger Nicholas C. Rossis has provided some excellent marketing information for self-published authors.

Using information distilled from a 2014 survey by Smashwords, he summarises his original post, New Smashwords Survey Helps Authors Sell More eBooks, providing a clear explanation of what this means for sales for independently published authors.

Thank you to Nicholas C. Rossis for sharing and interpreting this information, and to Robert Sparkman for sharing this on Google+ and bringing it to my attention.

Read: Conclusions from Smashwords Survey: How to Sell Your Books.

#Authors #Marketing Yourself and Your Work Part ONE

Definitely Worth Reading

What can I say about Susan M. Toy? Apart from being a successful self-published author, her experience in all aspects of the book industry makes her an incredibly valuable source of information about becoming a self-published author. (She’s also an incredibly lovely person.)

I’ve reblogged the first part of her five-part series, Authors Marketing Yourself and Your Work, from her guest spot on Chris The Story Reading Ape’s blog, and you can follow the other parts from there. It’s a series that all indie authors should read.

Susan was also featured as a guest author on our favourite literate primate’s Website. It’s an amazing story that you won’t want to miss and, as usual, Chris has been kind enough to include an exhaustive list of links to where you can find Susan.

Because I’m lazier than Chris, I’ve just included Susan’s Website, “Island Editions.” There is a great deal of helpful information and fun stuff there.

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

Cartoon from Toonpool.com

The following is an extract from a talk delivered at the Calgary Public Library in Feb. 2011.

Part 1

Before I begin, please watch this video:

 .

I’ve named these two characters Wannabe Author (WA) and Real Author(RA).

How many of you have ever said any of the things Wannabe Author says in this video? Come on, be honest. Okay, then, how many of you have heard other writers say any of these things? And, like Real Author, haven’t you just wanted to put them and everyone else out of their misery by ignoring whatever they say? Obviously, Wannabe Author is the least promotable kind of author. First of all, Wannabe is never likely to be published, so will be of little worry to the publishing industry anyway. WA is not listening to an experienced author, knows nothing about the publishing business, and thinks the path to…

View original post 914 more words