#IWSG–None of My Marketing Seems to Work
This post is for Alex Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writers Support Group (click the link for details on what that means and how to join. You will also find a list of bloggers signed up to the challenge that are worth checking out. The first Wednesday of every month, we all post our thoughts, fears or words of encouragement for fellow writers.
This month’s insecurity – None of my marketing seems to work.
This is for my non-fiction books. Not to say they aren’t selling, but I’d like to increase that and have failed miserably in doing so:
I’ve tried all sorts of SEO on the website to increase traffic, both paid and free, to no avail.
I signed on to Google’s Adwords (where they show those text ads next to search results) and spent a ridiculous amount of money, to no avail.
I signed on to Amazon’s version of Adwords–got no increased traffic.
I sell all my books on Google Play–which I thought would easily compete with Amazon. It’s not even close.
I’ve tried a wide variety of those ‘list your books for free on our marketplace’ sort of sites. Nada.
I’ve made all sorts of changes to my social media platforms (I have a ton of them–which takes lots of time to manage) with nothing to show for it.
What does work:
Amazon
Teachers Pay Teachers
word-of-mouth
There are a lot of active approaches I could try–
presentations
book signings
seminars
…but they require much more investment of time with no assurance of either success (will anyone show up?) or results. I seem to have stagnated. I’m frustrated.
I will soon (maybe six months) start marketing my first fiction book and want a better feel for what works. What’s been most successful for you?
More IWSG articles:
Am I good enough? Does it matter?
When does technical become boring
Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman
, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her book at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.
Filed under: writers, writing Tagged: insecure writers group, iwsg
