World, Writing, Wealth discussion
All Things Writing & Publishing
>
With all the talk of author websites/blogs...
date
newest »
newest »
Absolutely. Goodreads needs a 'like' button.
Thanks Michael. I would be very interested.
Definitely interested, Michael. Good luck :)
Okay I guess 3 is a good start... I will try to brief in my self-analysis. Here is some background...
Twitter followers 17,100. I add about 3-4 per day.
Facebook Friends - 2100. I add about 1 a day
LinkedIn - 500 Connections
Im telling you that since right now that's where Im generating most of my traffic. I havent bought any ads yet.
I blog 2-3 times a day and will re-post 1 previously story everyday for 3-4 total social media posts about the blog per day across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Once a week I post something about my book. All of the other posts are focused on Italy - current news, genealogical info, the Vatican, Italian food and photos from my trips there.
My novel is historical fiction, centered in Italy. Therefore, I am making the assumption that if you like to read about Italy, you are a potential reader of my novel. Im trying to pre-qualify my readers.
The site/blog was launched on August 2nd.
My stats for August...
971 Unique visitors
2885 Page views
2.97 Pages per visitor
76 Likes
9 Comments
47 Countries Represented
Top 5 Countries...(in order of total views)
USA
Italy
Canada
UK
Australia
Top Referrers (views)
966 Facebook
584 Twitter
174 LinkedIn
60 All Search Engines Combined
September Stats...
1341 Unique Visitors
2909 Page Views
2.17 Pages per visitor
83 Likes
0 Comments
62 Countries Represented
Top 5 Countries... (in order of total views)
USA
Canada
Italy
UK
Argentina
Top Referrers (views)
880 Facebook
828 Twitter
210 All Search Engines Combined
63 Wordpress
38 LinkedIn
From August to September I increased Unique Visitors and Total Page Views. The Page per Visitor slightly decreased. The number of Represented Countries increased by 15.
The biggest surprise was increasing my Search Engine traffic by more than 3x - from 60 to 210. It accounted for 15% of my Unique Visitors. Which I was very happy with. I would like to get it to 20%.
My goal at this point is to increase visitors by 30% in October and then again in November. So basically 1600 Unique Visitors in October and then 2000 in November.
Next week I will start paying for FB ads and Google Ad words, not for the book but just the blog.
The novel goes on pre-sale on October 31st. And then for sale on November 25th, Black Friday.
On October 24th I will put up a offer for the first 6 chapters (or audiobook) with a join on the mailing list. Right now I have about 48 people on my MailChimp list. I havent really pushed it though.
In early November I will do an ARC offer on the site.
My goal (though it may be unrealistic) is to drive 2% of the site's Unique Visitors to buy during presale or at launch. If I can hit my target that would be about 100 sales.
This is a lot of work for 100 sales, but its gotta start somewhere. I will join Amazon as an affiliate to see how many sales I can drive there just from the site. This is in addition to the 18 or so beta readers and 15 family & friends and the 15 or so others from my email list that have promised to buy during presale.
I have 4 clients/friends that have a combined 1.1 million Twitter followers that I will also tap for free advertising/tweets after the novel goes on sale.
Beyond selling books, the real purpose of the site is branding. The Home Page is basically the cover of the novel. I want to familiarize visitors with the name/font of the title, my name, the crest (logo) and the photo of the Vatican.
Sorry that was so long winded...
If anyone has questions I am happy to answer them...
Thanks for sharing that, Michael. I do like your site, it's a good source for me for Italian news seeing as my fluency isn't great and they talk too fast on TV. Good luck with your launch, I'm sure it'll do really well.
I'm very interested too and thanks a lot for sharing all this helpful info and plan. Sounds solid with realistic projection. Hope sales exceed your expectations!I'm definitely all ears, as I also plan to launch a site at some stage
Great info, Michael. Really interesting to be along for the ride. I have a couple of questions : how does your objective of 100 sales on pre-order or launch compare with the average indie launch? Also, what is a "unique visitor?" Does it include returning visitors?
Thank you everyone... Joanna wrote: "how does your objective of 100 sales on pre-order or launch compare with the average indie launch?
..."
I have no idea how it compares. I assume its somewhere in the middle, probably towards the lower side. Im sure there are indie authors that sell a lot more and some that sell less on launch. I set that as my goal based on what Marie Silk said about getting the #1 Best Selling spot - that it is possibly, depending on the category, with 100-150 in one day sales.
Joanna wrote: "Does it include returning visitors?"
I assume so but here is how Wordpress describes a Unique Visitor "A visitor is counted when we see a user or browser for the first time in a given period (day, week, month)" So based on that I would assume that some reoccurring visitors are counted as Unique while others are not counted at all.
Thats why you have to compare all of the stats from one month to another. In August I had 971 Unique Visitors. In September I had 1341. I hope that all 971 in August returned in September and I gained an additional 370 new visitors. With the increase in Represented Countries growing from 47 to 60 I believe that to be true. And I hope to have those 1341 return in October and add another 300 to 400 new visitors through ads.
Im getting a 2% response rate on my social media - 20,000 approximate followers with probably about 400 to 500 of my followers coming to my site/blog. Because those are people that know me and interact with me on social media, I hope to be able to convert 10% of them to book buyers in order to account for 40-50 sales. The remaining 50 sales or so I hope will come from those prequalified visitors (who enjoy learning/reading about Italy) that come from Search Engines, ads or someone who happens upon my site/blog.
FYI - 2% response rate is the statistical average for direct mail. I am treating social media posts and ad buys as direct mail. Im hoping for a 10% conversion rate on the 2% response rate.
Selling on the internet is a numbers game. Its axiomatic that the more traffic you push, the more sales you will get.
Your website and blog look amazing! Sounds like you have a great plan in the works!
Michael: Thanks for answering my questions in such detail. For what it's worth I am passing along something I heard at a webinar I joined the other day: to offer a little gift/something free to those who pre-order. I also got a newsletter today that mentioned a website "http://www.Beacon.by" which tells you how to put some/all of your favorite blogposts into an e-book in nanoseconds.
It might be worth offering an ebook of blog posts on Italy to friends and fans who pre-order. Just a thought.
Thank you Marie I saw that as well. I like it but I have products Im going to send. Ive sent Sorrento olive oil and marmalade to my beta readers already as a thank you and Im about to send them limoncello from Sorrento as well. I might send the pre-sale clients limoncello samples as well. I am about to close a deal with a producer to import my own branded limoncello to sell to my readers.
Michael wrote: "Ive sent Sorrento olive oil and marmalade to my beta readers already as a thank you and Im about to send them limoncello from Sorrento as well...."Hmm... starting to consider embarking on a beta-reader career -:)
Thanks to Joanna I decided to send out a social media post about signing up for the email list to receive free limoncello - got 5 joins... People like liquor. lol
Its an experiment and I have no idea if the website/blog will lead to sales/downloads/reviews but I am willing to share info and be transparent as a learning experience.
It might be a colossal waste of my time or it may pay off....
Anyone interested ?