My Mistakes and Procrastinated Bits
By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
The last time I ran a post on mistakes I’d made, it helped illuminate areas I’d fallen behind on so that I could stick them on my calendar as to-dos. I’m hoping that will be the same today, too (some things can’t really be fixed, but can serve as a warning to others).
Here we go:
Not making sure I’m updating all the pages in my website. Embarrassingly, a reader emailed me on this. She wanted to see immediately, on my site’s home page, when I had an upcoming release. She’s right—that’s really the point of the site. I had the information on my books page, but the welcome page is a bit better. Plus, I hadn’t updated that page often, thinking I’d left it as a static generic welcome. Not so…it listed “recent releases” from a year ago.
Not setting up PayPal/e-commerce/a way to sell ebooks on my site. And I’m still not there yet. I keep hearing this is an easy/smart thing to do on our website (see Savvy Writers’ post, “How to Sell Your Books From Your Own Website.”)
Not setting up Amazon Affiliate links. It’s kind of silly that I haven’t, considering that I always have links to my books here and others’ books. Problogger Darren Rowse has a post explaining the benefits: “The Ultimate Guide to Making Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program.”
Being slow to send newsletters (see last post—I’m working on this).
Wasting valuable time figuring out how to do something when I’d have been better served paying someone to take care of it. I am somewhat technical in that I know enough to be dangerous with nearly everything. This encourages me to keep tinkering with things that I really have no business working on. That time would be better spent writing. For me, it’s much better to hire someone to help with website design, book formatting, etc.
Not saying no enough. I’m not the only one in this boat, am I? I’m getting better—I can say no in email and on the phone. It’s the in-person bit that I still struggle with.
Being slow to host my blog on my website. As Thomas Umstattd explains in his post “7 Secrets for Amazing Author Websites”for AuthorMedia: “(Websites with integrated blogs) get more traffic because blogs posts are more likely to be shared on social networks than static content. Blogs also boost your rankings on Google. Each blog post is a chance to get Google points to rank high in searches. Think of it as a lottery ticket. The more blog posts you write the bigger chance you have of hitting it big.” At least I’m here now.
Not making my content work harder for me earlier. I’ve mentioned this before. But instead of focusing 100% on creating new content, we should remember that the content we’ve already got can go on sale in different formats: print and audio, for instance. I’d just offered digital ebooks of my self-published books for a long while…and now I receive regular income by publishing my content in other formats.
Setting up separate Twitter and Facebook and Goodreads identities for my pseudonym. I’m not sure how much time I thought I had, but this was a clear miscalculation. Not only that, I really just needed to promote everything through my actual name.
Where I’ve done better:
Reserving my name on various social media whenever the Next Big Thing comes out. Even if I have no plan at the time to engage on the platform.
Knowing my strengths and weaknesses and saying no to projects and editors/publishers when I’m asked to do something I’m not great at.
Keeping to a schedule.
Not rushing my self-publishing.
Doing things I don’t enjoy but know to be good for visibility…like the occasional giveaway on Goodreads.
So there we have it. Hope that listing some of my missteps might help others avoid them. What kinds of things have you learned as a writer? Things you’ve done right? Things you haven’t? What have you procrastinated on?
Image: MorgueFile: jdurham
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