Guruprasad Nagarajan's Blog, page 3
January 18, 2014
Adding Gumroad to Weebly
I recently started selling my short stories through Gumroad on this website which I created with Weebly. Initially, I thought I would provide an external link to my Gumroad site, then figured that it would take the readers away from my site. Then I discovered the Gumroad overlay element which, when you copy/ paste it on your site, helps you sell your digital products while keeping the users right on the page they are buying from. For instance, if I had a Gumroad overlay here, and you could click on it, and my sales page would be displayed over this page. Perfect right? Not really, because I found that it doesn't display https in the URL when you do that. Maybe it was safe, maybe it wasn't, but I was uncomfortable directing readers to an interface without https where they would be using their credit card information.
So I decided to copy paste their HTML code on my landing page above the cover images of my books (it's easy to do that and edit it as well to say 'Buy this here' and take the readers to the sales site. Drop me a note here if you want to know how, I'll tell you what I've learnt, hopefully you'll find it useful). But unfortunately, I couldn't add a button and use the HTML code. Because when you drag the >embed code element in Weebly, it doesn't sit on the button. So I had to create a text based direction message that said 'Buy this at (Gumroad link)'. (Btw, I forgot to mention that when I added the Gumroad visual (the G icon), it looked quite ugly against this background, so I removed that. )
Still, I wasn't happy as some people didn't see the 'Buy now' message right off. Plus, when people clicked the link, they were still on the same page without https, which meant I had to add a note under the 'Buy' message to open it in a new window. Clunky. Clumsy. Not nice.
So today, I was playing around with the layout and realised that I could add a button right above the cover image, name it Buy now and link it to my Gumroad sales page of that particular book and it automatically opened in a new window. Perfect!
Here's how you do it: When you sell a product through Gumroad, you get a short link to the product. Copy it, paste it in the URL bar of your browser, hit return, and once you see your product there. copy that URL, come back to the Weebly page, click the button, and paste that link, save and publish (after adjusting the space and alignment). No hassle, no need to say open in a new window for secure transaction, no worries about your message being hidden. You can make the button big and obvious. Take a look at my Welcome page and you'll know what I mean. The whole buying process is streamlined and much easier for my readers.
Hope you find this article useful.
PS: Forgot to add this earlier: After copy/pasting the Gumroad G- link, when I clicked the G- logo, I found that it goes to Gumroad's default Alice in Wonderland page. So buyers will have to click the link to the book and not the G logo. So I took it out and kept link to my books.
So I decided to copy paste their HTML code on my landing page above the cover images of my books (it's easy to do that and edit it as well to say 'Buy this here' and take the readers to the sales site. Drop me a note here if you want to know how, I'll tell you what I've learnt, hopefully you'll find it useful). But unfortunately, I couldn't add a button and use the HTML code. Because when you drag the >embed code element in Weebly, it doesn't sit on the button. So I had to create a text based direction message that said 'Buy this at (Gumroad link)'. (Btw, I forgot to mention that when I added the Gumroad visual (the G icon), it looked quite ugly against this background, so I removed that. )
Still, I wasn't happy as some people didn't see the 'Buy now' message right off. Plus, when people clicked the link, they were still on the same page without https, which meant I had to add a note under the 'Buy' message to open it in a new window. Clunky. Clumsy. Not nice.
So today, I was playing around with the layout and realised that I could add a button right above the cover image, name it Buy now and link it to my Gumroad sales page of that particular book and it automatically opened in a new window. Perfect!
Here's how you do it: When you sell a product through Gumroad, you get a short link to the product. Copy it, paste it in the URL bar of your browser, hit return, and once you see your product there. copy that URL, come back to the Weebly page, click the button, and paste that link, save and publish (after adjusting the space and alignment). No hassle, no need to say open in a new window for secure transaction, no worries about your message being hidden. You can make the button big and obvious. Take a look at my Welcome page and you'll know what I mean. The whole buying process is streamlined and much easier for my readers.
Hope you find this article useful.
PS: Forgot to add this earlier: After copy/pasting the Gumroad G- link, when I clicked the G- logo, I found that it goes to Gumroad's default Alice in Wonderland page. So buyers will have to click the link to the book and not the G logo. So I took it out and kept link to my books.
December 7, 2013
Google Adwords, again. And Bing.
I don't know about the results from my Google Adwords yet but the process seems very interesting, and scientific as I mentioned in my previous post. I ran 3 ads to promote my children's series, in which I published a second ebook, and there was a huge spike in the number of visitors to my site. And I could deduce from the keyword tool in Google, the Paid Search button StatCounter and Weebly's own stat tab, which keywords people were using to come to my site. And accordingly, I could edit the keywords that were not producing optimal results. Google lets you add 'negative words' to weed out wrong placement of your ad. I saw that some people searching for free short stories were being directed to my site, so I put that in my Negative Word field. It's funny writing very functional, very sparse, very direct ads and is challenging writing to the character limitation set by Google. Funny because I am an advertising writer, and been in the copywriting business for over two decades, I still do freelance. Forget long copy, story telling, crafting your lines, and ensuring that the last line loops back to your healdine. Adwords takes economy of words to a new level (this is true to some extent in FB ads too).
I just signed up with Yahoo Bing yesterday and out out two ads, one for my short story collection inspired by Roald Dahl and O.Henry, called the Ten Twisted Tales (available at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F2FF2M4).
And the other was for my children's series from which I donate 50% to elephant conservation. Strangely, my Google ad with the headline, 'Save the elephant' didn't pull in as many people as 'short stories for kids' did. (As I write this line, I get a sense of deja vu that I've written this very same line before.)
While I found it a bit difficult to simply resume my ads that I had paused with Google, Bing has an easier solution: it provides a 'pause' and 'resume' button, and I when I hit 'resume; after importing from Adwords, I was up and running. You have to make sure you pay a certain amount before your account becomes active, so remember that.
With Adwords, I kept looking for the simple resume button, couldn't find it, followed the steps and enabled the ads, but it showed as 'campaign ended', so had to copy and redo.
Will keep you posted on the difference between Bing and Adword. Till then, have a good week.
I just signed up with Yahoo Bing yesterday and out out two ads, one for my short story collection inspired by Roald Dahl and O.Henry, called the Ten Twisted Tales (available at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F2FF2M4).
And the other was for my children's series from which I donate 50% to elephant conservation. Strangely, my Google ad with the headline, 'Save the elephant' didn't pull in as many people as 'short stories for kids' did. (As I write this line, I get a sense of deja vu that I've written this very same line before.)
While I found it a bit difficult to simply resume my ads that I had paused with Google, Bing has an easier solution: it provides a 'pause' and 'resume' button, and I when I hit 'resume; after importing from Adwords, I was up and running. You have to make sure you pay a certain amount before your account becomes active, so remember that.
With Adwords, I kept looking for the simple resume button, couldn't find it, followed the steps and enabled the ads, but it showed as 'campaign ended', so had to copy and redo.
Will keep you posted on the difference between Bing and Adword. Till then, have a good week.
November 16, 2013
Disliking the fb 'like' button
I’ve always, almost always, disliked the fb 'like'button and how casually people click that. It's like a bodily function. Liking some post is fine, but it seems a large bunch of people people sit around waiting to see how quickly they can hit the like button, regardless of the nature of the posts. You could post something bad about the like button, for instance, and they will click it anyway. Because it’s easy to do, costs nothing and makes you feel like you are doing the guy a favour.
There’s a reason for the rant. I just finished my second burst of ad campaigns on facebook to promote my ebook (a short story collection called Ten Twisted Tales, inspired by Dahl and O’Henry) and all I got was these stupid 'likes'. On my first foray into fb ads, I chose right hand column ad, ran for a week, and got a lot of traffic but no sale. That cost me around $39. The second time around, I chose both right hand column ad and the newsfeed ad. While I got ‘likes’ from total strangers, none of it resulted in a sale. This time, I ran it for 2 days and set the budget to $3 daily.
I ran another ad to promote my ebook on creating a website for beginners with a launch price of 99 cents, again, a lot of traffic but no sale. I stopped this after a day. I used the conversion metrics which measures the effectiveness of your campaign by asking you to copy/poste a script on to your web page’s header tag. Doesn't help much to know that a lot of people come to your and buy nothing.
I’m going to try Google Adwords. Let’s see how that goes. Right now Weebly is giving a promo, you spend $50 and they give $150 worth of voucher free. I’m told Adwords works when people are already searching for a product related to what you are selling.
On the flip side, you learn by trial and error, and that much more informed the next time around. Which means I’m not going to spend on fb ads. Am sure there will be ‘likes’ for that too
(I posted this at my site www.guruswriting.com)
There’s a reason for the rant. I just finished my second burst of ad campaigns on facebook to promote my ebook (a short story collection called Ten Twisted Tales, inspired by Dahl and O’Henry) and all I got was these stupid 'likes'. On my first foray into fb ads, I chose right hand column ad, ran for a week, and got a lot of traffic but no sale. That cost me around $39. The second time around, I chose both right hand column ad and the newsfeed ad. While I got ‘likes’ from total strangers, none of it resulted in a sale. This time, I ran it for 2 days and set the budget to $3 daily.
I ran another ad to promote my ebook on creating a website for beginners with a launch price of 99 cents, again, a lot of traffic but no sale. I stopped this after a day. I used the conversion metrics which measures the effectiveness of your campaign by asking you to copy/poste a script on to your web page’s header tag. Doesn't help much to know that a lot of people come to your and buy nothing.
I’m going to try Google Adwords. Let’s see how that goes. Right now Weebly is giving a promo, you spend $50 and they give $150 worth of voucher free. I’m told Adwords works when people are already searching for a product related to what you are selling.
On the flip side, you learn by trial and error, and that much more informed the next time around. Which means I’m not going to spend on fb ads. Am sure there will be ‘likes’ for that too
(I posted this at my site www.guruswriting.com)
