You’re an author and you’ve got a book you’d like to sell.  Your website isn’t getting ANY traffic and someone tells you that an EASY way to drive traffic to your website is by using Adwords.

Adwords is the name of the advertiser’s side of the online advertising program developed by Google. Adwords allows you to place text ads for your website on other people’s websites.

The other side of the equation is AdSense, which allows website owners to make money by displaying ads.

So on one side of the equation, you have website owners displaying ads, while on the other side of the equation you have website owners who are PAYING to have those ads displayed.

Google allows AdSense Publishers to share the revenue that Google earns from AdWords.

AdWords advertisers only PAY Google when someone actually CLICKS on the ad.  Adwords rates are determined in a “silent auction” style system.  Adwords advertisers determine when they place their ad how much they are willing to pay each time someone clicks upon their ad. Google will then reveal to them what “position” they can expect to see their ad appear.

The words an advertiser uses to determine WHERE their ads appear are known as “keywords”.

So today, as I was using my Gmail to respond to an editor’s query, I saw an Adwords ad appearing at the top of my screen:

M.D. Needs A Ghostwriter? (webaddress) Bestselling health writer can help make your book idea a reality.

It’s a GREAT ad!!  I click, even though I’m NOT an M.D. and I don’t need a ghostwriter.

When I arrived at the page, I’m disappointed.   The page leads with:

Finding a writer is easy.

What’s really difficult is finding a writer who truly understands the health and inspirational/spiritual genres…

I’m here because I clicked on an ad about  ghostwriting for MD’s and this dude’s main selling point is the  “spirtuality” of his writing.

BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO ADWORDS:

Rule #1:  Choose the right keywords to target.

Rule #2: Include those keywords in your “ad” copy.

Rule #3: LEAD with those keywords in the page you link to the ad.

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By the way -  if you’re even THINKING about using Adwords - try launching a blog first!  If you have a blog and you’re still thinking about using Adwords - pick up a copy of the 8 Week Power Blog Launch.  Use the coupon code “author” to save $20.

The $57 for this course is MUCH, MUCH less than you’ll spend on your first Adwords campaign AND you’ll learn valuable information that will make your Adwords campaign less expensive AND more effective - if you need to go that route!

One of my blogging client’s Alexa ranking went from 6.4 Million to 1.2 Million in the course of 3 weeks.

Filed under: Easy Author Book Marketing, Adwords, author, author blog marketing, blogs for authors, book marketing, selling books online | Post a comment

I’m in a rather unique position in that I am an author  who also helps authors and other small business owners set up their own self hosted Wordpress blogs.

I’ve been known to extoll the virtues of a self hosted Wordpress blog as a “secret weapon” of many successful authors.  I’ve used my blog at Beyond Niche Marketing to promote my book.  Not only have I sold copies of my book, I’ve However, I must confess there are two things about blogs you should probably know:

1. Not ALL blogs are created equally
2. No blog, not even self hosted Wordpress blog, will perform book marketing magic if they aren’t used correctly!!

Today, I was researching an article for another blog I’ve launched to assist a client of mine who couldn’t wrap her brain around the whole ” a blog can be your website” issue.   She insisted upon a traditional static website and I obliged.  A few weeks ago, I got an email from her asking, “How can I get people to come to my beautiful website?”

Judy Smith Divorce Coach is a beautiful website - perhaps one of the most beautiful websites I’ve had the pleasure of coding.   However, like most static websites, it takes a LOT of time and effort to drive traffic to a traditional website.  Websites are definitely not a “set it and forget it” marketing tool.

So, I launched the blog Divorce Recovery Advice as a “joint venture” with Judy.  She gets the ability to promote her divorce coaching groups via posts to the blog.  I’ve been recruiting other divorce coaches to post their articles as well.  I’ve got Google Adsense ads running on the blog, so it provides a nice little stream of income for me as well.

As I researched information so I could create the blog posts, I used the term “divorce recovery quotes” in search for an opening for an article.  This unusual keyword combination had a free Blogger.com blog launched by Zondervan publishing.  Unfortunately, very few people are searching for the terms being used on the Zondervan publishing blog because their Alexa ranking (a system that ranks websites from 1 - the most popular - to 24 Million - being the least popular) is in the 21 Milllion range.

Yet another keyword search lead to an article with an article bank.  The author’s bio included a link to her Typepad blog - with an Alexa ranking in the 12 Million range.

This blog is HORRIBLY abused and ignored - and yet its Alexa ranking is in the 2.5 Million range.  (Then again, it’s a self hosted Wordpress blog!)  The author of both the blogs listed above are BOTH actively posting to their blogs on a regular basis.

ALL BLOGS ARE NOT CREATED EQUALLY!

If you want to experience the full power and “marketing magic” of blogging, be sure to start with a self hosted Wordpress blog.   (If you need help, I offer an easy and painless way to get started at Acumen Web Services.)

Once you’ve got your self hosted Wordpress blog, then you’ll need to learn how to properly USE your blog.  (Even if you don’t have a self hosted Wordpress blog, you can still do better than these two blog owners by learning the basics to blogging success.)

Pick up a copy of the 8 Week Power Blog Launch to learn all the secrets to blogging success.

If you just need help with blogging keywords, pick up a copy of the Fast Track to Blogging Success.  (Hint, if you pick up the Fast Track to Blogging Success FIRST, you’ll get a coupon worth $30 off of the 8 Week Power Blog Launch!)

Used properly, your blog can be the most important tool in your marketing arsenal in the promotion of your book.  You’ll sell more books online if you have a successful blog - but a poorly launched blog won’t provide any marketing magic to help sell books online.

Filed under: Easy Author Book Marketing, blogs for authors, sell books online | Post a comment

Self publishing (which used to be referred to as “vanity” publishing”) is more popular than ever these days, and for good reason.   Self publishing allows you to maintain complete control over your book, something traditional publishing houses don’t allow.

Self publishing also puts book marketing squarely on the shoulders of the author.  However, a dirty little secret is that book marketing ALSO falls upon the traditionally published author’s shoulders as well!  Every author needs a website or a blog as a part of their own book promotion and marketing strategy!

The other day I was talking the other day with Mitchell Levy of Happy About Publishing and he used an analogy to illustrate what it’s like to work with a traditional publishing house.  Mitchell says that the goal of major publishing houses is to hit a grand slam home run - you know, New York Times Best Sellers!

Still using the baseball analogy, the major publishing houses won’t swing at a pitch that might result in a base hit.  With that in mind, it takes 18- 24 months to get your book published when you sign with a traditional publisher.  (This was the PRIMARY reason I didn’t even TRY to find a traditional publisher for my book, Beyond the Niche.  I needed it for a project I was working on and I had no intention of waiting 2 years while the publisher “built buzz” for it.)

Mitchell then told me the story of branding expert who had landed a “traditional” publishing contract with a large publishing house.  To say the expert was thrilled would be an understatement.  He was over the moon!  However, that elation quickly faded as he began the arduous process of publishing his book.  See, his book was scheduled for release in the fall and his publishing house had a rule that any book released in the fall had to have a book cover with fall colors.  However, this brandind expert’s “brand” was BUILT upon a color scheme of pastel blue.  Color choice is a huge part of branding and the branding expert was horrified that his first book was going to “betray” his brand that he had carefully crafted!

This little tale may have inspired you to stop searching for a traditional publishing house and begin looking for a self publishing firm for your book.  That’s what happened to Bev Slomka. In her article, How to Find the Best Self-Publishing Firms she writes that she tried for 2 years to find a traditional publisher for her fiction novel.

Bev spent a lot of time and effort in researching self publishing firms.  You could do that too.  However, Kathleen Gage of Street Smarts Marketing recently interviewed  Stacie Vander Pol, the author of the book Top Self Publishing Firms: How Writers Get Published, Sell More Books, and Rise to the Top: and Make Money Working from Home with the Best Print On Demand Self-Publishing Companies

Kathleen has been self publishing books for a decade and she found the book informative.  That is high prasie indeed!

Filed under: Amazon and POD publishers, Easy Author Book Marketing, For the Writer, Writing as a Business, book publishing, pod publishing, publishing companies, Publishing Company, publishing house, Self Publishing | 1 Comment