You May Have The World’s Greatest Book But, If No One Reads It, Then You Have The World’s Greatest Paper Weight

What do you have more of, time or money? I suppose another more pertinent question is, how much of a cheap skate are you? Because this is going to impact how you try to get traffic to your e-book pages. Unfortunately traffic (aka the number of people visiting your e-book download pages) is not organic, it does not grow on trees, it does not magically manifest from a spaceship in the sky like Captain Kirk, and it most certainly does not occur in any significant quantity from you sleeping on the job. Traffic has to be worked for, like everything else.

There are three types of traffic; paid, borrowed or free. While I am going to spend a little more time on the ‘free’ option (yes I did just see how much your eyes lit up. See how well the word free works?) in another post, I will briefly explain the others here.

PAID: So you have the mullah but not the time. Understandable, we are all time poor in this day and age, too many distractions coming at us from all angles. You can do paid advertisement in many ways, through Google Adwords, Yahoo!, Windows Live Search, Project Wonderful, the list goes on. Basically you advertise on these sites and every time someone clicks on your ad you pay anywhere from cents to your first boarn depending on how far up the list of ads you wish to appear. The more money you pay per click the higher up your ad appears. When a searcher types the keywords you have selected for the ad into a search engine, your ad appears. This is where researching your keywords and knowing your competition comes in. If you can advertise for keywords that have lots of people looking for them, but not many people selling with those keywords then you will save a tone of money. And we are all, really, penny pinchers at heart.

There are a couple of effective tips you can use to make the most of your money and a greater number of readers. Google Adwords allows you to rotate through up to 9 different ads (different headlines) at no extra cost. This is a fantastic option, because Google will tell you which ad gets the most people clicking on it and you can eliminate any ad which isn’t drawing your readers in. I discussed in a previous post how to set up headlines for your website and novel to entice readers. You need to think of your ad as one big headline. You don’t need to sell your product in the ad; you just have to get the reader curious enough to click. You need to keep them short and sharp. Rambling is not effective. If you are a non-fiction author think about the 9 main benefits of your e-book and turn those into ads. Make a clear promise to your reader, what is in it for them? And you can, as always, make it irresistible if you offer something for free whether it is a sample or your whole book. Also try using your keywords in the ad. If your reader has typed in ‘Ninja Secrets’ they are more likely to click if they see those words in the first line of the ad.

For tools like Project Wonderful, where you just advertise on specific sites, you need to decide how long you want to show your ad for. If you advertise on one site for three months, constantly, the visitors will get use to the ad being there and they won’t see it. Once you go chameleon and blend into the background, it doesn’t matter what your ad contains. It could include a photo of naked women doing the CanCan on the back of a pink elephant and it wouldn’t make a difference. So it’s important to do it in a pattern where you advertise for several weeks, then remove the ad from the site for several weeks and repeat.

BORROW: Also known as joint ventures. Here is where you do your shady deal with the crazy man in the alley. Well, not quite. What you need is someone in your field - if you know the person it makes it easier – who has a large database of people they can contact. Then you do a deal with them to split the profits of your sales if they email their database about your e-book. This works better for non-fiction authors. On the other side of the coin you can look at this as writers helping writers. If you have a fellow indie author in the same genre whose novel you have read and would recommend, you can collaborate and borrow each other’s readers/traffic. Put their synopsis in the back of your novel and have them do the same for you. Then every reader who finishes your novel, full to the brim with praise for your prose, sees the ad to the book. Because they liked your book so much and it is in the same genre as yours, they take your recommendation to purchase the other novel. It is a win-win situation for both authors.

FREE: Three for free! The first two I shall mention briefly as I will be covering them in more detail in later blog posts. The first is social media, that topic you have all heard so much about. By connecting with people in your niche through such sites as Twitter and Facebook you can generate large amounts of traffic through promotional posts. It is always important to balance the promotion with sincere participation within your community, with promotion only taking up 30-40% of what you write. The more you engage with your followers, send them to funny links, and help inform them on your topic, the more impact your promotions will have. The second is writing articles on your topic. This is a great way to get promotion without having to do the leg work. My lips are sealed on the details for this is tomorrow’s blog post.

The third and final way to get free promotion and traffic is by creating a press release. Ever wonder how the footage of a budgerigar riding a surf board got on the 6 pm news? Or how every newspaper seemed to be present when Richard Branson was making one of his ‘surprise’ stunts? Most articles in a newspaper are there because someone sent a press release to an editor. If you can make your e-book news worthy (do not make your business the focus that will get you discarded faster than a publisher rejection) then you can get free publicity. There are three ways you can do this. A) Do something good for others (charity). B) Make announcements that affect a lot of people. Or make an announcement that will intrigue a lot of people. C) Have a strong and clear view on a news topic. If you have a strong opinion and can back it up, say it in a press release. Editors love opposing sides of a story so keep a close watch on internet sites related to your niche. A press release is similar to a synopsis, it must intrigue and excite, tell the story quickly and concisely and provides contact information if an editor would like more info on your release.

Pick at least one of these methods of traffic generation to start. Do not leave your book out in the cold unsupported!!! Because the fact of the matter is, you can have the world’s greatest book, but if no one reads it, it becomes the world’s greatest digital paper weight.

TOMORROW: The Media Machine: How writing short articles can draw massive traffic to your e-book download page.