It’s Party Time!
Everyone grab a glass, it’s party time! My website and newsletter are 1 year old!
*Sets off party popper*
Launched just over a year ago it was a big decision for me, as it involved a lot of outlay in the form of web design and management, graphic design, and newsletter package, not to mention employing my lovely partner Kez to keep everything ticking over. And because I don’t actually sell books myself, I have no visibility as to whether any of it makes a jot of difference when it comes to the bank balance.
Which is why I’m not judging its success on royalties figures, but on the feedback I get from the people who read my blog or newsletter, who have appreciated my writing advice articles, and have welcomed my books pages as a structured resource for everything they want to know about a particular title.
Newsletter
I’m slowly getting to grips with my monthly newsletter, finding a balance between gushing about the geeky stuff that has caught my attention recently and shameless self-promotion. The Kickstarter section always goes down well, and people seem to appreciate hearing about the behind-the-scenes side of being a freelance word pirate.
One thing I’m enjoying more than I expected is giving newsletter subscribers the ability to just reply to any of my newsletters. Not only do the emails provide a very welcome source of procrastination they’re also helping me re-connect with my hobby.
At the time of writing:
I have 1,044 subscribers, of which a surprising amount come from Norway (takk alle sammen).
I’ve given away six signed books in the bi-monthly draw, including Angels of Caliban, Ravenlord, Raptor CD, Asurmen: Hand of Asuryan, The Unforgiven, and the very heavy (and expensive to post) Ultramarines anthology. The next prize is the hardback of Deliverance Lost – must stop offering up these heavy books!
111 people haven’t clicked the “Confirm Subscription” link in the sign-up email (check your spam folders people!).
Website
My last post on the old Mechanical Hamster website gave a few statistics about my old site. At the time of writing, one year on:
I have posted 150 new blogs (and thanks to Kez, actually remember to promote new books I have coming out).
The site has been viewed 53,594 times, mostly from the UK and USA.
On the best ever day there were 923 views, when I published my “More Dark Angels Secrets Revealed” blog.
The website which has driven most traffic to my website is Warseer.com – thanks guys!
The most popular post was my Author’s Notes for Warbeast.
Three people have found my site by searching for “hamster diet plan”. One can only assume they were disappointed.
What’s To Come
There are a myriad of ways I want to develop the website and newsletter but, as always, time is the bugbear (or carrion crawler, or maybe some kind of gnoll (I think I might be craving some old school D+D…)). We’re still honing the content for the newsletter to try and make sure it stays relevant, and I’d like to find a way to engage more people in the comments section of my blog to hopefully inspire me further with the hobby (if you have any suggestions how I can do this please, ummm, comment below…).
A huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to comment or give feedback, whether it be in person at an event, in reply to a newsletter, or through my various social media channels. I’m intending to issue a survey in the next month or so to establish just what people do and don’t like about the website and newsletter, so your help with that when it comes would be very much appreciated.
I’d be remiss not to thank Kez for keeping everything running smoothly, and gratitude to Darren Turpin for doing all the crunchy behind-the-scenes work to ensure nothing falls off or goes >sproink<
So here’s to a good first year, and an even better second year, and let us remember the fabled motto of Bugman’s Rangers:
**To make sure you don’t miss out on any blog posts, you can keep up-to-date with everything Gav by signing up to my monthly newsletter. As a bonus, every other month I randomly pick a newsletter subscriber to receive a free signed copy of one of my books.**Meinz Abeir!
