Best Seller Authors

Book Marketing, Publishing, Author Resources

Author Traffic System Brings New Readers

graph[1]Every author wants more readers. Today that means you need more readers at your website, blog or book sales listing. Now there’s help to bring you web site traffic.

I teach and implement marketing and promotion for authors. In the last decade, I’ve seen thousands of authors reach new readers. We have seen books break out to reach new audiences and create more opportunities for it’s author. We’ve also used marketing and publicity online to give a book the jump start it needed to become a best seller.

Along the way, I’ve helped develop some back office tools that insure success. I’d like to share one of those proven systems with you today.

Why Some Great Books Don’t Succeed

Unfortunately, I have also met a lot of authors with good books who struggle to stay in the public eye, and never seem to get to the tipping point  that a huge launch promotion or media tour would bring. Some have spent thousands of dollars on a web site that can’t be found.

After a string of best sellers, I know what works. The truth is, no matter how great your book and online presence is, you won’t sell books if you can’t be found. A website is like a billboard built on a dead end street. You need traffic before anyone can see it.

If you have a best seller, you get coverage in the media, and the results start to snowball. What many authors need is that first burst of traffic coming to their web site.

How the Author Traffic System Works

Every book, author and launch promotion we work on today gets fed into this search engine optimization system for continued results.

I’ve not talked much about this system in the past, but used it to build lasting traffic for clients paying $5,000.00 per month or more to optimize their web sales.  This is considered to be a small SEO (search engine optimizer) budget so often difficult for an author to get started.

It’s worth the price. The traffic coming from the search engines is free, and there’s no end to the strategies that can add to results from the billions of searches done each month online.

Because of the volume of book specific projects we’ve done, I have worked with my SEO experts to build an affordable alternative that any author can use with any book.

Best of all, the system is 100% hands free. Our staff does all the work and you get the traffic.

Special Offer for a Few Authors

The Author Traffic System is not for everyone. If you don’t have a website, you’ll need to build one so there is someplace to send readers. Once you have a web page, any web page, the system can work for you.

It’s best to set up online presence for yourself and your book at least six months before you launch. We’ve seen results in as little as a few weeks but I caution you not to wait until your book is published.

Through our partnership with AuthorsTraffic.com you can now get access to the Author Traffic System for as little as $74/month.

Number of Months of Service Prepaid Price per Month
1 $249
3 149
6 99
12 74

As you can see, the cost per month drops drastically when you commit to a full year. This works because so much of the work gets prepared at the beginning of a project. The longer time commitments allow use to save on repeating the plan and installation, so we pass that savings on to you.

Each month, additional links and cross promotion allows the web of links and connections to grow. You can add new pages on your website, or use the promotion to drive more readers straight to your book listing. Most authors let the results build until they come out with a new book.

I’ve committed to work directly with AuthorTraffic.com for TEN AUTHORS during the rest of the year. I personally review the website promotion plan and will be adding two bonuses that will give you even more results if you order the 6 or 12 month package:

1. Promotion of your press release or article. You get a certificate for this that you can use right away, or redeem to get extra news coverage for a special event.  $497 value

2. Book announcement of your book to my following of several hundred thousand readers on my blog sites, email and social media networks. $997 value

This Author Traffic System package is new, but the work being done has proven to work for the authors and books we have promoted.

This special offer will be deleted once we get the 10 authors I am working with. If you have a book web site that needs a lot more traffic, or a new book planned during 2102, this is the best time to get started.

To order click on the link for package you want to see details needed to order.

Your Words Can Change Lives

We talk about book marketing, Internet promotion and the packing of you content to profit as an author and business. In today’s competitive market, the author platform is the key determining factor to the success of your book. Yes, your words can change lives

But never underestimate the power of the written word.

Words Can Change Lives

A kind word, an expression of gratitude, or an honest compliment can make someone’s day, turn a life around and become the inception of a world changing enterprise.

Whether you are writing your book, your blog, or just passing someone on the street today, use your words to make the world better.

As we wrote Profitable Social Media: Business Results Without Playing Games, we put some of the memes into the simplest phrases possible, using these word in tweets and social media postings. Honing the message to make certain that it caught attention, was repeatable and had meaning for the reader made our message easier to talk about, and easier to share.

If you get the message from this powerful video. Please share it with others today. You never know which simple messages will be the words that can change lives.

Marketing Your Book Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Gust post by Alan K’necht

yura_seo-style_book~300~11189_20091007_MA011500_6[1]You’ve no doubt spent countless days, weeks even months writing and editing your book. Along the way, you most likely had a working title, an interim title and finally the official title for your book. Congratulation all that is left is to market you book is to ensure that people who hear about can find it.

This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play. If you’re like most non-technical authors, you might have never heard of SEO or even considered it in the name of your book. Yet you’re about to come face to face with the reality of SEO. So prepare yourself and get ready to start working on it.

Even before your book is published go to Google and Bing and search on the title of your book. Take a look at what comes up in the search results. Believe it or not this is your first level of competition. When I did this search for my book entitled “The Last Original Idea” I was competing with numerous blogs, news paper articles, etc. that were lamenting that neither Hollywood nor the TV industry has had a truly original idea in decades. Many of published article/blog post had title similar to my book “what was the Last Original Idea in…”, “The are no more original ides ….”.

As a marketer I knew how to get people spreading the name of my book and that was great if people happened to go directly to Amazon (or other online books store) to purchase it, but what if they wanted to know more details about the book or what if I wanted to capture people searching for the last original idea in marketing? To ensure that my book would be found and dominate the search results, I executed a SEO strategy.

As part of this strategy, I was aware that Google will only show 2 listings per website on a page of its search results. Simply building an SEO effective website would only get me 2 spots out of the default 10 which isn’t good enough. How could I ensure that they were the first two listed? I wanted to own the first page of results and if possible the second page as well. I’m happy to report that I do and here’s how I did it and now you can you!

  1. Register a domain that is the title of your book (i.e. thelastoriginalidea.com) (to protect yourself from others hoping to steal your thunder also register similar domains (i.e. lastoriginalidea.com)
  2. Build a website according to SEO best practices ensuring that you are focused on the title of your book and the subject of your book
  3. Create a Facebook page for your book and register a custom URL that includes the name of your book (i.e. https://www.facebook.com/TheLastOriginalIdea)
  4. Start a blog that does not operate under your website. This means using a different sub-domain (ie blog.thelastoriginalidea.com)
  5. Use the blog to not only post book happenings (book signings, status updates of your book, etc.), but your thoughts on related topics. This is a great opportunity to create both excitement for your book and to demonstrate your knowledge on the subject.
  6. Submit your book for various online contests that will create a page about your book or at a very minimum list it as an entrant with a link to your site.
  7. Contact book reviewers who have blogs and regularly post reviews. Not only will the review help get your name out there, you can easily get them to link to your site and that’s part of step 8.
  8. Now get active and get links & fans to both

Getting Links and Fans

Fans

This may be harder or easer depending on how involved you are already in Facebook. Step 1, tell all your current Facebook friends about it and encourage them to pass the word on. To entice people to become fans create a simple contest (become a fan for a random chance to win X copies of my book). Don’t stop with you current Facebook friends; market this fan generating contest through your email list, twitter followers, LinkedIn account and simply by telling people you know and meet.

On your Facebook page you will of course have a link to your books website. As you get more fans the value of this link will go up and help both the Facebook page and your website rank higher in the search engines.

Don’t forget to post regularly in the Facebook page to garner likes and shares. This activity also help keep and generate new fans, Likes and Shares. Remember your blog (step 4), make sure you post a description of each blog post on your Facebook page as well. This helps generate links to your blog, plus lets people know about and encourages people to read your blog posts.

Your Blog

Ensure that in description area of your blog is a description of your book with a text based link on the books name to the books website. When done correctly, this link will appear on every blog post creating a new link to your book with each post. While not as valuable as links from unique domains, they still count and help your site rank in the search engines.

Your Website

Last but not least the most critical part of the puzzle the book’s website. This is where you need to get tons of links. Here are some sure fire ways to get links:

  1. Send out a press release with an established/quality PR distribution company and ensure that it has a text based link to your site in it. When done well, the press release will get picked up by 10 perhaps several hundred websites creating a large quantity of links.
  2. Register your website with as many author /book directories as possible
  3. Arrange for interviews that will be published online and insist that they link back to the books website.
  4. Run a contest that requires people to submit written entries that will be posted on the site and voted for. This works wonders in getting other people not only to tell people where to go, but in many cases they’ll put permanent links to their content on your site (known as deep links)

The Fruits of Your Labor

If you’ve done everything well, now when you search on your books title, you should be dominating the listings (6 out of 10 on the 1st page maybe even a 10 out of 10 on the first page). To truly reap the benefits of this effort, make sure you have a link to where people can purchase your book on each of the pages listed. After all, isn’t that the ultimate goal of all your efforts?

Alan K’necht is the author of “The Last Original Idea – A Cynic’s View of Internet Marketing” (www.TheLast OriginalIdea.com) and a founding Partner at Digital Always Media Inc. (http://www.digitalalwaysmedia.com) a full service agency specializing in search engine and social media marketing.

Authors: Share Your Expert Knowledge To Be Seen as an Expert Author

imageI teach authors to create content for their readers beyond their book. Most of us spend much more time online, watching video, or listening to audio than we ever spend with a book.

Go where your audience lives

I almost always suggest an author have their own radio show. Easy to set up, and adaptable to talk about any subject with any guests. I also suggest every author of a blog and social media pages about their subject.

And since you are the expert, you can guest post on other blogs, and share links to relevant content from anywhere on the web. Read and share the top blogs and sites in your field and you’ll get ideas for your own content, and a reputation for being a great source on your expertise.

Where do you find the time?

Well, fist off, it’s much faster than writing a book Smile  And there tools cropping up that make it very ease to find and share with your readers on your blog, in social media and in your own media products.

Take a look at Scoop.it, one of the rapidly developing tools to filter out the noise and then easily share what you find: (video)

Some Curation  Ideas for Authors

  1. Subscribe to the top blogs in industry. Be sure to comment on relevant posts. You are the expert. Your opinion matters.
  2. Subscribe to active readers who comment on those blogs. Make sure you reach out them on their favorite social media sites. They may have their own blog, Facebook page, Twitter account.. you’ll find out by clicking on the link they use on their blog comments and then searching for where they are most active
  3. Join the Facebook groups and pages in your niche. Connect with the top contributors and offer comments of value (not just a pitch for your own blog)
  4. Do a search on Amazon for the top book in your category. Many of those authors will have a blog or active social media profile
  5. Join your industry group on LinkedIn. Contribute and connect
  6. Search for videos on your topic. If you find someone who is doing a good job posting, connect with them. If now (still likely in some niches) make plans to produce some videos on the basics

Once you have feeds from the blogs in your RSS reader (I user Google Reader, it’s just like reading email). Scan on a regular basis for posts and articles to share.

When you find an author, writer, or contributor you respect. Ask them to be on your radio show, or write a guest post for  your blog.

Each of these steps is easy. New tools like Scoop.it can really speed things up, but most of the time you spend on this activity will be the reading you do (which you would do as an expert in your field) and connect and having conversations with the other experts. Neither need any special skills, budget or cutting edge tools. The commitment from you is the key ingredient.

When I released Twitter Revolution, I didn’t do any of the book marketing and promotion campaigns we’d run before. Instead, I just used Twitter to reach out to other social media authors and speakers. It wasn’t long till I became known as and expert who added value to their goals and they were happy to review and share my book.

Who have you met by networking and sharing. Please add your success story to the comments below.

Why the Best Authors Have a Mailing List

With all the talk of social media and the dominance of Facebook in the out thoughts when we market your book online, authors have been asking me “Do I still need a mailing list?”

The answer is any unwavering YES!

In the 1990’s, just having an email address from a reader meant you had a connection. Then marketers got busy sending out offers and mailings, with some large companies reaching millions of subscribers. Spammers really added to the clutter to the point where many people shut down one email address and started over.

However, in the past decade, we’ve all come to depend on email for important communications. Most good email services do a pretty good job of catching the spam, and we’ve all learned to filter and ignore the mundane or irrelevant mail.

You Have to Be Relevant

When I talk to major marketers about their mailing lists, they tell tales of lower response rates to sales offer emails. One might think that email is on it’s way out.

Not quite, what on it’s way out is irrelevant emails.

It’s true that some young people forgo an email address to get their messages from other sources, but most everyone is getting email type messages in one or more places. Facebook has just announce integration with email systems. Emails between real people have a real conversation is alive and well.

What does this mean for an author today?

You have a major advantage when you engage readers using email. As an author you understand the power of the written word. In an age where much of the communications amounts to the written equivalent of grunts and murmurs, a little bit of attention to good writing really stands out.

Here’s some tips for getting your email read

  1. Make sure your are writing as a human being. Put your own name and a return address on every email and expect that some of your readers will reply and want a response. If you have a large following, you may need some assistance, but there’s no excuse for ignoring your readers.
  2. The SUBJECT LINE is the most important part of an email message. If your reader thinks it’s just another ad or notice, you’ve lost them before the message is opened.
  3. An email is not a book. Keep it brief, get to the point and let your readers know what do next to continue the conversation.
  4. Don’t send email just for your own goals. Pay attention to what the readers will be feeling and thinking when they get your email. What is their desire? Speak to those desires and they will respond.

How To Build Your Mailing List

When you know what your readers want, it’s easier to find other places they are reading relevant information. You can buy advertising, or reach these group in forums, chat rooms and user groups… or you can get creative…

My favorite way to find people who are anxious to read about a subject is a cross promotion with other authors in similar niches. We often put dozens to hundreds of authors together to announce a new book launch or business. We know that readers will like seeing what authors they know recommend.

Connect With the Best Authors for FREE

I set up ZeroCostPromotions.com to help authors build their mailing list when we launch a new best seller.

It FREE to join, just sign up at the link to become a PARTNER.

You’ll get the first notice of any upcoming book launch, specialized training, and an inside look at our best seller book launch campaigns.

The site is a bit dated. We are putting up the new page with paid options next month.

Become a PARTNER at ZeroCostPromotions.com to build your list with readers.