Stats, and stuff…

Okay, remember how I said the leg swelling problem was rare? Well Sunday, I had a small relapse, resulting in slightly swollen, tingly, but not quite useless legs. Meaning, I could still walk on them, sort of. I swayed like I'd been drinking, but I stopped drinking booze on Saturday. Nevertheless, I ran myself into every single door handle in our apartment.

So Monday I was depressed, and it was probably the worst day to check my traffic stats again. But I'm a masochist, so I checked. And the numbers say that I'm the victim of someone else's good marketing. See, the highest traffic I get, every day, is from my review of Natural Reader 9. Not because of anything I've done, though.

Look at it this way: NR's ad people spend money on banners everywhere. They have a budget to cast a wide net and find that 2% of the population that actually looks at banner ads. So every day, people run a search for Natural Reader, no version number. The company has since moved on to 10 or maybe even 11, but not typing a version number also makes my article stay relevant forever because I used the brand name over and over in my review.

So a lot of my high traffic days that I thought were loads of people coming to look at a promo were in fact only here for a one-time visit. And that's the flaw with me writing product reviews as a method of getting traffic. A person coming to read my review of NR9 isn't interested in buying a book, or an ebook. They're interested in NR, and what my take on it was. Once they finish that review, they leave.

(To be clear, this is totally coolio with me. The flaw in my plan was my fault, and no, I'm not going to delete the review. Apparently, some people like to read it. Can't really bitch about that.)

So, feeling very defeated, I went to the couch for a long lie down and sulk, and I spun my little hamster wheel as fast as it could go. Which eventually inspired me to come up with an experiment.

I updated the Peter portal with a blurb, and then I added another book excerpt. While I posted links to the promos in my usual places, I DM'd a number of people and asked them to RT the link to the Peter portal. The idea for the experiment was to see if my efforts at seeding promotions could affect traffic enough to compete with the NR review.

And… it didn't. Though many people RT'ed like I asked, this did not result in any extra traffic coming to the page. The same is true of the promos I placed on the social networks. It's not just my imagination that I'm shouting into a void. I really am doing it. So while a few people (3-4 per day, taking the NR traffic into account properly) came to my site from the main page and saw the promos, the vast majority still arrived directly on the only review they're interested in seeing. No one else bothered clicking on the links, no matter which network the promos went out on.

I may be a word guru with a prolific work rate, but I'm an abject failure at promotions. The thing is, how do I compete with the folks at NR and overcome this hurdle? They have a big budget, and their product is always visible. So people search for their product by name. But without a larger working budget, I don't see how I can compete and get more people to search for Peter the Wolf.

Banners didn't work for me. Forums don't work for me. Socials sites are a nice place to meet and gab at other writers, but a lousy way to meet readers. I'm not able to get that many reviewers into my stuff, and those I do get end up being not enough to tip the balance of interest for the causal readers.

If marketing is all about making enough impressions to get someone to look at a product, my problem is, all the impressions I generate are ignored. I've built no brand for my name, so nobody runs that many search engine queries for me. None of my books have had any long-term exposure, and with only 2-3 reviews per book, it's not enough to change the balance.

I just know someone is looking to quote mine this post, so let me be clear. It's not that people are reading my books and not responding to them. The people who read my stuff and give me a chance usually DO respond. Not always in the way I was hoping, but there is a reaction. Yes, without me prompting for it.

The problem isn't that I'm failing to put out my message online. The problem is, the group around me in my social circles ARE NOT a market of readers. They're all other writers, and they all have stuff they need to sell. There's no incentive for most of them to talk up my stuff when they could be talking up their stuff instead.That's not their fault, nor are my slow sales their problem. At this point, we may be in similar boats, so in that case, they're going to be even more focused on trying to move their own stuff out.

You might think I'd try some rally of the writers, and say how we need to support each other. No. What I'm saying is, this social networking thing is a false idol when it comes to sales precisely because my message is NEVER going to the people I want to target. My message is only going to other sellers, and never to buyers. It's no wonder I'm shouting into the void. I'm talking to the wrong crowd. But, I don't know how to reach the right crowd.

I'm not being pessimistic or whiny, and I'm avoiding cussing even mildly so that maybe this ramble will give someone pause. But while the gurus keep spouting the same "Five things to ensure you get more RTs", I can tell you, I've done all five, and unless I poke people with sticks via DM, my sharing and RTing other peoples' stuff has not affected the number of "organic" retweets and shared links that I get during my promotions.

You can run a twitter stats program on my user name and see the truth. I RT and share other peoples' stuff more than I promote myself. Most software classifies my account as a socializer, because I talk to all kinds of people, and yes, I follow what they're talking about to stay a part of their conversations.

But all of that good social etiquette just means I have a lot of followers. It does not mean I have found an audience of readers, nor does it mean I've found an army of fans willing to share my stuff. And, even with more "inorganic RT's" factored into the promotion equation, the additional impressions DO NOT convert to additional traffic.

Which is why I'm declaring social sites a complete marketing failure. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't plan to quit any of the sites I'm on…okay, maybe Facebook if Google+ works out, but probably not them either. The social sites do let me gab with random people. They let me make friends with writers I might never have known otherwise. I can actually be friends with pro writers I admire, even though I've never met them in real life. And that's pretty cool, and I'm not knocking it.

I'm just not accomplishing the one goal that I arrived with. People told me, "Zoe, go over to this site. It's a great place to meet readers." There's not one social site I'm a member of where that was not a bold-faced lie. Even on Goodreads, where in theory I ought to find at least a few readers, my friends list is full of writers.

Andrew has suggested that I start a mailing list, but I really, really hate this idea. Why? Because we played that game before, and no one signed up for the list. If no one knows I exist, there's no point in having an empty list.

I've compared this problem to the revolving credit dilemma, which is: I need good credit to get good credit, but I can't have any credit because I don't have any credit. Only, as Becka pointed out in comments, it's actually easier to find a credit score than it is to find an audience.

I'm not calling this your problem or ranting at you about how it's unfair. I hope y'all can see that. I'm outlining a problem that I don't see a way to move past. To get readers on the social networks, I need them to look for me. Because there's no way for me to target readers on any social site. Which is weird, because I should be able to tell Facebook: "Find every person with reading, dark fantasy, and werewolves in their likes," and voila, instant audience. Instead, you're only allowed to search for people by name. If you don't already know them, you can't look for them. So telling writers "This is a great way to meet readers" is a lie. Social sites are only a great way to meet your peers.

So, having painted myself into a corner, I remain baffled about how to re-sight my aim someplace where I'd actually be reaching readers. The only options I can see are targeted ads on the social sites, but I'm wary about investing much into a glorified banner ad if it's going to result in the same stats that I got out of Project Wonderful.

The problem really is that simple. Before I can worry about reader reactions or reviews, I still have to let people know those books exist. Virtually no one does. So, how do I fix that?

I honestly don't know…