Writing Articles

My Amazon KDP Select Free Promo Roller Coaster

10/8/2013

As many readers around the world now know, I had a massive freebie campaign for my new book, Sell Your Book: 75 eBook Promotion Sites That Increase Amazon Traffic.

This Amazon KDP Select free promo campaign worked out a lot better than my last, which I did in April 2013 and which you can read about here.

So how did it go, and why in the world would I give such a valuable book away for free?

First, let's look at the results:

Day 1

The Amazon KDP Select sale started on Thursday, October 3 just after midnight, but the book didn’t show up as free until well past 3 AM. By that time things started to heat up and it got 6 sales in the US and a couple more overseas. I wasn’t too impressed.

When I woke up the next day things had picked up, and there had been 117 sales, pushing me up to #1,573 in the Amazon Free Store, with a category ranking of #4 in Advertising and #2 in Authorship.

Here’s the rundown on Day 1

Sales: 367
Rank: Free #995
Categories: #1 Advertising, #1 Authorship
Reviews: 0

My Categories began to Appear

Day 2

Things slowed down a bit on the second day. I didn’t sell as many out of the gate, and my total sales decreased overall. Still, I managed to get a few benefits. The book picked up 3 reviews, all of them 5-star. That enabled me to submit it to a few more free and paid promotion sites that only accept books with a few reviews.

Here’s the rundown on Day 2

Sales: 317
Rank: Free #839
Categories: #1 Advertising, #1 Authorship
Reviews: 3

#1 in Advertising

Day 3

I woke up on Day 3 to see that the book had gone even higher in the Amazon free rankings, reaching all the way up to #494 at one point. I also discovered that the book was ranking in several categories that I hadn’t checked. Here’s a short rundown:

#1 Authorship
#1 Advertising
#1 Publishing & Books
#1 Business Marketing & Sales
#2 Writing, Research, & Publishing Guides
#8 Education & Reference
#14 Business & Investing

I didn’t know about these until I searched the larger categories, as I was only searching Amazon’s sub-categories. Getting into Amazon categories like that is great for giving the book away, but will they help me when the end of the free campaign ends? It’s always hard to say, especially as the free rankings have no bearing on the paid rankings.

On Day 3 I also had more ‘also bought’ listings show up. I got 8 pages worth, which will really help in two ways. First, authors looking at my page will gain confidence when they see other great books listed as also bought. Second, the book will begin showing up on the ‘also bought’ listings of other books, giving me more visibility.

11 Pages of Also Bought's (would eventually grow to 15)

I figure one of the main reasons I jumped so much on this day was because I was showing up higher in my free categories, and also because one of my paid advertising efforts took effect. eReaderlove.com listed the book beginning for 3 days, all for the cost of $12, which I thought was pretty good. It’s hard to tell how many ‘sales’ came from this site because I didn’t use a tracking link there.

eReaderlove.com Paid Advertisement for $12

Still, I was impressed with the site, and the fact that my book was displayed so prominently on the front page. Being next to Stephen King didn’t hurt, either. I gave them another $12 to run another ad in November when I do a big marketing push on my Warring States Series.

Here’s the rundown on Day 3

Sales:354
Rank: Free #557
Categories:#1 Advertising, #1 in Authorship
Reviews: 4

Day 4

It became obvious to me as my Amazon KDP free promo Day 4 started that there wasn’t much point keeping the book free any longer. I was up to 1,016 total sales by the time I checked in the morning, and my ranking was holding steady around the high 600-level. I decided that I’d stop the free promo come that evening.

By the time I pulled the plug just after midnight on Monday, October 7 I’d managed to get 1,318 people to download my book for free. Just to compare, if that many people would have downloaded it at the introductory price of $4.99 I’d have made about $4,600. Even if it’d been priced at $2.99 I’d have made almost $3,000.

As it stands, however, I made nothing. After I cancelled the Amazon free promotion I set the price to $0.99, which was part of my original plan for getting the book’s rankings back in order. You see, once the free promo ended I lost those #1 rankings. After all, they were in the free category, and my book had had only 1 actual sale for money at that point. 30 minutes after the price went into effect someone bought it, the first step to getting good rankings again.

Here’s the rundown on Day 4

Sales:280
Rank: Free #667 (Paid #412,716 after promo)
Categories:#1 Advertising, #1 in Authorship (None after promo)
Reviews: 5

Day 5

Day 5 was the first day that the book would run for a full day at $0.99. I was hoping for quite a few sales to get the book boosted back in the rankings, and I managed to do alright. Enough people bought my book that it stayed up in the Paid rankings, and also gave me back all my old categories, this time on the Paid side though.

I also got more reviews, including 2 on Amazon UK, which will help me there, and where the book is doing quite well. More reviews came in on Amazon US as well, and several more people emailed me asking for the spreadsheet that I offer for free. This spreadsheet gives you all the sits in an easy to use format, and there are sheets for you to enter your own promo details.

Here’s the rundown on Day 5

Sales:13
Rank: Free Paid #25,268
Categories:#15 Advertising, #19 in Authorship, Books & Authorship #38
Reviews: 7

Takeaway

More reviews keep coming on Amazon US and Amazon UK. I’ve also got a full reel of ‘Also Boughts,’ which really help out sales. I made it into 3 of the Top 100 categories for paid books, and two of those are in the Top 20. One of those categories, Books & Authorship, applies to both print and eBooks, giving me even more exposure.

More paid eBook promos are still going into effect. Just today there was an Authors of the Cheap Book social media blast, which went out to 8,000 people. I’m a little leery of the effects of social media on eBook sales, and so far I haven’t really seen a noticeable boost from it.

Amazon KDP Sales Report Following Promo

There will be some limited paid advertising on a couple sites until October 22 when everything ends and I begin promoting some other things. The price of Sell Your Book: 75 eBook Promotion Sites That Increase Amazon Traffic will go back to $4.99 in a day or two, and it’ll stay there for some time.

I’ve given away a lot of these books to people that found them useful, and I really hit my target audience. It was a successful free promo, much more so than many non-fiction promos are. But I still gave away what I could have charged for. A lot of people who would have paid for the book will now never do so.

But there are always new eBook authors on the scene. With those reviews and also boughts I’ll be a tempting prospect for many frustrated authors. I expect this book to sell well each month for some time to come, and all I’ll have to do is update it periodically when the sites in the book change prices and such.

Like most Amazon KDP Select free promos, this one was a roller coaster that shot straight up and then took a big dive at the end. Thankfully my strategy of putting the book at $0.99 gave it a quick boost and got it back up where it needed to be. I’m happy with the results.

And you know what, after 5 days, still no Look Inside!

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A Huge Blog Commenting Misstep

10/7/2013

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Anyone who has a blog loves to get comments on it. Comments are the life blood of blogging, and without them most blogs wither and die.

One of the key aspects you’ll find with all successful blogs is how they manage their comments. As a blog writer I can tell you it’s thrilling when I get an email notification that someone’s commented on one of my blog posts.

Sometimes comments come soon after the fact, and sometimes not until months after the article was written. But no matter how long it takes, I always respond to my comments when they happen.

When Blog Comment Replies Go Bad

That’s not always the case with some blogs, however. One blog that I like to check out a lot is Copyblogger. This site always has great information, mainly because they have a wonderful team that puts up new content on a daily basis.

One recent article, however, seems to have gotten away from them. One of their guest posters chose not to reply to any of the comments on their article until a while after the fact. And when they did they did what amounted to carpet bombing, as can be seen by this picture of my inbox:

What the hell?

I had to zoom out, but you can see there are about 20 messages, all showing me someone has commented on a post I commented upon. In this case it’s the post’s author, and it really doesn’t look that good.

Let this be a lesson to anyone writing a blog: always reply to your comments as they happen, or at least within a few hours. I’d go a day at the most unless you can’t look at them, but really, in today’s world you’re going to have me believe you were out of smart phone contact?

Be smart; reply to your blog comments in a professional, and timely, manner.

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Why’s Your Website Telling Me to ‘Go Fuck Myself?’

10/5/2013

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That’s what you’re telling your readers, after all, when your content is a week old or more. “Hey, there’s nothing new here, what the hell are you thinking? Go fuck yourself!”

There are lots of great sites I like to go to, and I check them each day for new content. Now, I know it’s difficult to add new stuff each day; I did it on three blogs for three months! But if you can’t even throw up 500 words in 7 days, then why should I waste my time visiting you?

And why should I continue to have your bookmark on my bookmark bar? That’s prime real estate, and as soon as a scroll bar appears there I know it’s time to clean house. Which site do you think won’t be making the cut?

I don’t know what’s with these sites, or why they think they can get away it. What the hell are they thinking? Here’s a few of my theories:

They’re busy: This one’s pretty common, as many sites I visit are run by copywriters, novelists, or people somehow involved in the publishing industry. But wouldn’t that mean fresh content should be all the more important?

They’re stuck: This one seems pretty plausible. It’s tough coming up with new ideas, especially if you’ve had a site for a long time. So maybe instead of sitting down to get at it these people are twiddling their thumbs and waiting for magic dust to sprinkle down upon them.

They’re lazy: You don’t find many lazy bloggers, but perhaps that’s what you’re up against when you run into a site that doesn’t add new content for a week. That laziness will eventually only translate into one thing: a dead blog.

They’re rubbish: I write eBooks. I know that lots of people write eBooks because I see new authors show up all the time. Often they’ll start off strong but burn themselves out quick. Does it matter that they had anything good to say to begin with? They couldn’t hack it, they went nowhere: they’re rubbish.

So How Can You Add New Content Each Week (at the least)

That’s easy, you have to plan. I can’t tell you how simple it is. Well, I guess I can, and did so more than 6 months ago when I put it in a chapter in my book Write Now! You have to plan things, and the best way to do that is sit down sometime, preferably at the beginning of the week, and write them out.

Yeah, it’s that simple!

So why can’t I do it?

Try these simple ways to plan your blog content weeks in advance, and make it easier to produce when the time comes:

Top 25 List

You might as well just get several months out of the way. Take one of those notebooks with the lined-paper; don’t use your computer for this. Write out 25 to 50 2-word titles. Here are some examples:

Winter blogging;
Morning traffic;
Afternoon traffic;
Evening traffic;
Weekend traffic;
User comments;
Comment responses;
Quality control;
Site visitors.

You get the idea. The point is, when you start brainstorming you come up with stuff. Take that daily blogging: morning, afternoon, evening. My students would try to pull that crap when I was an ESL teacher, and it worked for them. It can work for you too.

Analyzing your daily traffic over three posts gives you internal linking options, external linking opportunities, and content that people might want to share. People love numbers, and that’s not a bad idea.

Blog Titles

Sometimes I find it hard to get started on a new blog post because I can’t think of a good title. This sounds silly, and it is. But the sad truth is your title is very important for a variety of reasons.

First, it tells readers at a glance whether they should even bother clicking on you;

Second, you can put keywords in there that will get picked up by the search engines;

Third, great titles stay with readers.

Your title has power, and that’s why I’ll often wait until I’m finished writing to come up with the perfect title. Actually, lots of times I don’t bother. But if you’re having trouble, or just want to make that killer weekly article, I’d suggest spending a little time on it.

Start off with a simple list of ideas, like above. Take one and expand it, writing what you think a possible title might be. Switch around your object and subject. Move and change nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, and adjectives. Write it as a statement, question, or how-to. Even try writing it from different emotional viewpoints.

Maybe you’ll get a few different article ideas from the exercise. Maybe you’ll just get that great title that keeps visitors clicking on that blog pot months from now. The point is, titles can help you get started and make something that’s finished even better.

Here are the titles I worked on for this article:

If You’re Not Writing New Content You’re Telling Me to Go Fuck Myself

If You’re Not Writing New Content You’re Telling Me to Go Fuck Yourself

Old Content Tells Your Users to ‘Go Fuck Themselves!’

Your Old Content is Telling Me to ‘Go Fuck Myself!’

Old Content Screams ‘Go Fuck Yourself!’

The Website Told Me To Go Fuck Myself

Why is Your Website Telling Me to Go Fuck Myself?

Should a Website Tell You to "Go Fuck Yourself?”

Extra! Extra! Websites Tell Users to ‘Go Fuck Themselves!’

Mommy, Mommy, the Website Said a Bad Word!

Your Website is Telling Users to Fuck Off!

Don’t Let Your Website Tell Users to Fuck Off!

“Aaahhh…Go Fuck Yourself!” the Website Said

Copy Others

Yeah, go to the blogs you like and say what they’re saying. It’s not really copying, and I can’t tell you how many times this has helped me.

Start off by rewriting one of the sections from the site content you like. Keep writing, and eventually you’ll find that your own thought processes take over. Soon that little paragraph you copied expands into two paragraphs of your own, and then a page.

You see, when you’re writing content similar to content you’re reading you’ll be able to write quickly. And you usually read what interests you, and interests are some of the easiest things to write about.

I loved making my students write when I was a teacher. For one thing, it gave me a break. Also, it allowed them to get their ideas across in a way they felt comfortable expressing later. I’d always put up a model of what I wanted them to write, often a funny and stupid little short story.

Some would copy it almost exactly, and most would copy the form or format of the model. But all would produce something slightly unique and different. And the keyword there is produce. By seeing a model, copying it slightly, and working off of it, they were able to produce their own content quickly and effectively.

Do a 360°

When you just can’t think of a damn thing to say, start to say what the other guy says. No, not that friendly blogger who you love and copy anyway; check out that bastard you hate and can’t stand reading!

There’s nothing like an opposing viewpoint to get you writing quickly. If you’re a little bundle of sunshine and agree with everyone, find a news story or issue that pisses you off. Something must push your buttons, and use that to get you going.

One morning I woke up and read something about John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House. I can’t remember what the headline was, but it so inflamed me that I punched out 800 words or so for my ESL blog. (Thanks, John!)

If that strategy doesn’t work, adopt the opposite positions you usually take. By taking a 360° on your stance you’ll throw your readers, but you’ll also be able to dissect your position and come to a better understanding of where you usually stand. Consider something like “The Top 10 Reasons Why My Competitor…” whatever. You can come up with something that’ll shed light, give your readers a new and unique perspective, and expand your own horizons in the process.

Newsflash! Regular Content Keeps Sites Regular

Sometimes I think I’m selling Metimucel or some other fiber product for seniors. Regular content keeps your site regular by ensuring your traffic remains the same, your user’s experience remains consistent, and your earnings stay constant.

From a link building standpoint new content is critical. Where are you going to point those new backlinks you want to create; to the same old boring stuff from last quarter? That’s not going to work too well, especially as more sites embrace mobile and update their content to take local search results into account on a much-wider basis.

And this is especially true for social media today. Everyone uses that stuff and they expect updates now. If you’re even a day old on those platforms you’re irrelevant. Does that mean you should bombard? No, it means you need to have a different approach to your social media presence that gets the message across without your users forgetting you, but also without you alienating them.

Please stop telling your users to ‘Go Fuck Themselves.’ Write new content today!

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75 Websites That Promote Your eBook

10/3/2013

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I’ve just completed and published my 15th eBook and you can buy it now on Amazon.

Sell My Book: 75 eBook Promotion Sites That Increase Amazon Sales is targeted directly to eBook authors. You’ll learn which sites you should concentrate on when your book is free, and which will deliver some real firepower when your book is discounted.

Putting My eBook in Amazon’s KDP Select

I’ve chosen to enroll Sell My Book: 75 eBook Promotion Sites That Increase Amazon Sales in Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) program, which means the book can only be bought on Amazon. It won’t be until I get out of the program in January that the book will be available on iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, and other sites.

So why did I do that? It’s simple; because I want to run a free promo campaign with the book right away. That’s right, for this week only you can get Sell My Book: 75 eBook Promotion Sites That Increase Amazon Sales for free!

The book has its free run from October 3 to October 7, five days in total. Beginning on October 8 the book will go to $0.99 for 2 days and then it will revert back to its regular price of $4.99, where it will remain for some time.

Why Have a Free Promo On a New Book?

There are many reasons why you should have a free promo on a new book, and here are the main reasons I’m doing so with Sell My Book: 75 eBook Promotion Sites That Increase Amazon Sales:

Increases visibility;
Increases your chance for reviews;
Increases the chances the book will be lent more;
Increases the chances that people will see my other titles;
Helps authors.

Yeah, I think this book will really help authors, and I hope a lot of you out there can download this book when it’s free.

I got all of the information for the book from the internet for free, and so can anyone else. It took me several hours over a couple days to do that, however, and I think a lot of people might like to save some time.

My Free Promo for My eBook Promo Book

I submitted the book to 29 different sites that’ll promote free eBooks for free. I decided to stagger the dates on the sites, and I did so like this:

7 sites = 10/3 to 10/8
9 sites = 10/3 to 10/7
4 sites = 10/4 to 10/8
4 sites = 10/4 to 10/7
2 sites = 10/5 to 10/8
1 site = 10/5 to 10/7
1 site = 10/5 to 10/9
1 site = 10/6 to 10/8

This approach ensures new emails are going out each day, and hopefully they’ll reach new readers. Most on those mailing lists are probably interested in fiction, but I’m hoping enough authors are also on them (and actually read the dang things).

When the free promo ends at midnight on Monday 10/7 I’m going to bump the price up to $0.99 with the aim of pushing it up in the rankings. That’s when I’ll also begin my paid advertising campaign.

May Paid Promo for My eBook Promo Book

Since this book is new it has no reviews, which cuts me out of a lot of the better paid promo sites right there. So I’ve chosen 10 sites that I think will help my book, and will only cost me $148 if I use them all. This will largely depend on how many copies are downloaded during the free campaign and what the rank of the book turns out to be.

Several of the free promo sites I submitted to when the book was free will also allow me to submit again when the book becomes discounted. Since the original price was $4.99 this should apply.

Here are the paid promo sites I'm using:

It’ll be interesting to see what happens. It’s a non-fiction book so I’m not expecting blockbuster numbers. I’ll be sure to follow up with another post to let anyone interested know how the campaign went.

Remember, Sell My Book: 75 eBook Promotion Sites That Increase Amazon Sales is now available on Amazon, and will be free for 5 days!

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Editing Your Website Long-Term

10/2/2013

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Sites get big. The longer you add content the larger they become. And the more content you’ve got the harder it is to manage.

Think of all those pages that you have links to on your sidebar right now. If you’ve been around awhile you’ve probably got at least 10 over there, probably your most popular posts. Those ones are pretty easy to keep track of, but what about those articles you wrote 6 months or even 6 years ago? Have you been checking in on them lately to see how they’re doing?

Yeah, that’s right; once these blog articles are put out they’re out there for good! And that means sometimes they might not always be performing as they should be.

Creating the best quality content you can is essential for your website’s longevity. But maintaining your content is right up there as well. Here are a few things I’ve noticed about my site, and what you may notice about yours, when it comes to editing your website long-term.

Updating Links

You’ve got to keep track of your links. When I first started this site it was my second website. With my first site I always posted to the blog, but I never copied the link. I still to this day have a helluva time when I want to track down a link on that site. I have to go to the site and wade through mountains of past blog articles to find it, and it’s a real headache.

I didn’t make that mistake with this site. I started with a simple MS Word document and pasted all of my links in there under category headings like ‘Blogs,’ ‘KDP,’ and ‘Editing.’ When that file got too large I switched to a spreadsheet with multiple pages so that everything’s easy to access.

Here are some additional things to consider when it comes to editing and maintaining your website’s links:

Broken Links: There comes time when links get broken. You should easily be able to check these out in your analytics report. No one wants these, but sometimes you can take advantage of other sites’ broken links. Think about your own blog. You probably started out with a few articles, they grew into dozens, and as the years have gone by you now find you have hundreds. That’s a lot of pages to keep track of, and sometimes links become broken and don’t direct users to where they should. Find these broken links in your niche and provide content for them. Contact the webmaster, point out what you’ve done, and ask if they’ll redirect that link to you. You’re creating great content, undermining your competition, and creating backlinks. Wow!

Outbound Links: You’ve got a great site, a great blog, but not a lot of links. Make links to sites or blogs you like and post them prominently on your site. Have a sidebar with your favorite blogs, or a Links Page that helps your users find lots of related stuff. The more useful content you can provide to your users, whether it’s on your site or not, the better. They’ll remember where they got that link and they’ll come back to see what other cool stuff you put up next. Point your users in the right direction with working and relevant outbound links.

Inbound Links: You’re linking to sites you and your users find useful, now get them to link to you. Fill out their contact form and ask them. It’s the easiest way. If any traffic’s coming to them from you they’ll know from their analytics report. A friendly shout out could be all it takes for another link. That’s always easier said than done, so make yourself a presence on that site. Comment on the blog, send a personal note on the contact form, point out broken links or outdated content, suggest topics you care about, offer to do some editing. Really, as long as you can develop a relationship you can get a backlink.

Updating Images

This is something I’m not too good with on my site, or at least I wasn’t until I went back and edited my website. Now, what does that mean when it comes to images?

I’ve got a lot of eBook covers on this site, and people who read it often know that I always seem to be changing eBook covers, trying to make them better, really trying to give my reader more value. Unfortunately I forget about old posts that had that old cover showing. Sometimes I don’t even know about this until a reader leaves a comment!

That’s why it’s a good idea to go back through your site, or at least your older content, and update any outdated images. This could be old work photos, old covers, early design templates, images you found out were copyrighted, the list goes on. The point is, you’ll know it when you see it, but first you’ve got to get your eyes on it. That’s what editing’s all about!

Updating Covers

Any author will tell you that updating book covers is something that happens a lot. I for one have gone through many different covers on my books, and each time I update one I have to switch out all the cover on my two sites. This is where my covers usually show up:

Sidebar: This is the easiest to spot. Both of the blogs on this site have my books listed in the sidebar. The covers are no problem: it’s changing the links that’s a pain;

Home Page: I have about 5 eBook covers listed on my home page, and those are also easy to change out, and some of the most important to maintain;

My Books: Ha! Are you kidding? This one’s so easy I shouldn’t even mention it, but the truth is, I’ve had outdated covers on that page;

Services: If you have a services page on your site like I do, chances are you have at least one book cover on it;

Blog Posts: This is the tricky part. You have to wade through all of the old blog posts pertaining to that old cover and change them. This is easier if you use your categories, and it’s one of the reasons I started an eBook Covers category on the blog. If you plan on blogging a long time it might behoove you to note down miscellaneous posts that include a cover image;

Back Pages: Most sites will have some back pages that are used to store old info that may have to be used again. I’ll talk more about these below. Sometimes these will have old covers, and you’ll want to check them out and change them. Remember, users sometimes stumble upon these pages from search engines or old links.

Copyrights

We’ve all seen those sites that have a 2006 copyright at the bottom of the screen. Hell, sometimes they’re dating back to the 90s! Don’t let that be you. It’s pretty easy to update your copyright, and you only have to do it once a year.

Nothing shouts out unprofessional like an outdated copyright on an active website. At best your users will chuckle at your error; at worst potential users will hit back and never return.

A good example of this was the latest book I was writing, Sell Your Book. I was going around to lots of eBook promotion sites. One in particular that looked promising happened to have a 2012 copyright on it, making it nearly 2 years old. In the end I chose not to include that site in the book.

Back Pages

We’ve all got those pages on our sites, what I like to call Back Pages. This is kind of like your website’s worktable, where you have old links that are easy to copy, maybe some popular blog posts you can move to a sidebar or the homepage, and even lots of miscellaneous images that you haven’t quite gotten around to using yet.

Could this be kept on your hard drive? You bet; but the thing is, when you’re putting up new content each day you want to make things easy for yourself. On this site I have a Back Page called “Popular Blog Posts.” I use it for just that: popular blog posts. When they get enough hits I’ll transfer that easy-to-move link box to the home page.

What I’ll also do is use my Back Page for cover contests. I often have lots of designers working on covers for me, and I like to let people in forums vote on the designs. I’ll line the covers up about 5 in a row on that Back Page and put out the URL. Usually that page isn’t viewable, but I find it’s good to let people know about in cases like that.

Book Placers

See those books listed over there on the right-hand sidebar? Well, there are 15 books there and each has 5 links. When I have to change all of those it comes out to 100 links, if you factor in all the retailers. You can imagine that it doesn’t get done all that often, but it’s one of the best ways to sell books.

One thing that I’ve been trying out lately is using Bitly links on the sidebar so I can better track where my traffic’s coming from and what links are being used the most. That means I’ve got to go and change all those links.

I highly recommend having a spreadsheet with all of your site’s links on it. This will save you a lot of time and headaches down the road.

Well, that's all I've got. I'd love to learn how you cope with your own website and the hassles of editing it. What do you thing: essential or not that necessary?

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An Energetic September

10/1/2013

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September seemed to go by pretty quickly. I managed to get a lot done on the writing front, both for myself and for other people. I wrote 162,122 words this month, which beats out the 141,491 in March, making September my most productive month this year. Here are a few of the highlights:

My Writing

The goal is to keep working on my stuff until I make enough money so I don’t have to work for other people. Then I can work on my stuff more. I got closer to that goal by putting out a couple books in September and getting close on two more.

Tarot eBooks

The month began around during the Labor Day holiday and I was frantically working on my latest Tarot eBook. I worked on it a lot over a family vacation in Washington and more when I got back. I was finally able to publish Ten Minute Tarot on Friday, September 13.

The reason I released it on that day was because I was having a promotion on my other Tarot book, Tarot: The Mystery and the Mystique. I got a lot of downloads of the promo book, but not too many of the new one. Still, the book sold 5 copies for September and managed to get onto the Amazon Tarot charts.

I think to reap the most benefit I’ll have to schedule a $0.99 promo for the book sometime in October and hopefully get enough sales to generate some reviews. After that it should do well.

Montana eBooks

For months I’ve been working on the second volume of my Montana history eBook series. It took me awhile, but I finally managed to publish Priests and Prospectors on Tuesday, September 22. Since then it’s gotten only 4 sales, something I was rather disappointed about, but I didn’t promote it at all, so that could account for that.

I’m glad to be finished with it, and I’ve decided to take a break from writing about Montana for a few weeks. I’ll get back on it eventually and I’m already planning on putting the third volume out in February 2014.

Promoting

Toward the end of September I really got motivated to start working on a new book, a new list book to be accurate. I got the idea when working on a project for someone else, which you can read about below.

The idea was to have a ‘101’ type of book, but I settled on 70 after doing the research. What the book’s about is sites that will help authors promote their eBooks. I’ve been looking into that, and it seemed there were a lot of lists out there, but no real analysis of them.

I set to work and over just 2 days managed to type up 60 pages and 19,000 words. I now have 28 free promo sites, 28 paid promo sites, and 14 free and paid promo sites. I also give a lot of insight into promoting books, although judging from my sales this month, that might not be worth a lot. We’ll see when I release and promote it in the coming weeks.

Kindle Worlds

I’ve always been interested in Amazon’s short work options, such as Kindle Singles, Kindle Serials, and now Kindle Worlds.

What Kindle Worlds is about is fan fiction. They do well on comic book stuff, vampire TV shows, and Gossip Girl. In August they announced that Kurt Vonnegut was now going to be a part of the program, so I began working on an old story based off of The Sirens of Titan.

My story follows Noel Constant as he figures out his winning stock market formula that will make him rich, and the action of the original novel possible. The working title for the book is “Room 223.” You need to have 10,000 words to qualify for decent royalty options for this program, and so far I’ve got 3,000. I’d probably be done with it now if I didn’t get caught up in the marketing book.

Fiction

"John Colter Exploring Yellowstone" by Gerry Metz

I think I’ve mentioned on this site how I’m getting a little burned out putting out non-fiction books all the time now. I haven’t written a novel in some time, and a comment made on this site the other day made me think about that.

Several months ago I talked about a new John Colter novel, but I never got too far into it. Someone mentioned they’d be having a new John Colter novel come out sometime next July, so I figured I better get into gear.

And anyone who does any research on Amazon will tell you that fiction sells a lot better than non-fiction. I’ve got lots of outlines, starters, and rough drafts that can be turned into some quality books. Hopefully October will see some headway in that direction.

Paid Writing

Yes, I write for money. It’s a little dirty, I know, but it pays the bills. In fact, this was my most profitable month this year.

This month I had several interesting jobs, and you can read a few of them in the latest installment of Adventures in SEO Writing. Other than that, here were a few of the latest highlights:

Links: Probably one of the better jobs I’ve had this past month involved an eBook about link building. You see, people always want to get traffic to their site, and building links from other sites is a great way to do that. But you want other sites to link to you, and that can be tricky. People have to make great content, and then hope, or ask, for a link. The book we did got up to 115 backlink strategies, and gave me the idea for my own marketing book. Pretty good job!

TVs: Sometimes I get work from other SEO companies. Lots of times these guys will get a big contract in from a company. They’ll need to produce a bunch of articles, but the problem is, these are often boring to write. This month I worked on several for a company about ways to hide your enormous flat screen TV. Yeah, everyone’s got to get the hugest TV, but then they’ve got to hide the damn thing! I’m glad sarcasm doesn’t show up well in writing.

Editing: I always get really fast editing and proofreading jobs. These literally take me minutes, and I’ll get a few bucks for them. Most of the time people are in other countries, and the errors are invariably the same. Just small stuff with grammar that would be a dead giveaway for most native speakers, but for me is child’s play.

Well, that was September. I hope October is just as fruitful. You can find other monthly reports here, and thanks for reading!

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My Amazon KDP Select Free Promo Roller Coaster

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Takeaway

A Huge Blog Commenting Misstep

When Blog Comment Replies Go Bad

Why’s Your Website Telling Me to ‘Go Fuck Myself?’

So How Can You Add New Content Each Week (at the least)

Top 25 List

Blog Titles

Copy Others

Do a 360°

Newsflash! Regular Content Keeps Sites Regular

75 Websites That Promote Your eBook

Putting My eBook in Amazon’s KDP Select

Why Have a Free Promo On a New Book?

My Free Promo for My eBook Promo Book

May Paid Promo for My eBook Promo Book

Editing Your Website Long-Term

Updating Links

Updating Images

Updating Covers

Copyrights

Back Pages

Book Placers

An Energetic September

My Writing

Tarot eBooks

Montana eBooks

Promoting

Kindle Worlds

Fiction

Paid Writing

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