It used to be that hosting ads on your content-driven site was a no brainer – there was lots of money for ads out there because there wasn’t much evidence as to its effectiveness. Everyone was throwing money at the internet just to see what would stick. These days it’s unclear whether the time/money/thought you put into online advertising is actually worth it in the end. This doesn’t mean that online advertising is a bad idea, it just means you need to go about it thoughtfully & creatively.

Read more about ways to advertise effectively and creatively…

I’m sure you’ve seen all those people on Twitter who tweet their blog posts, and you’ve probably also seen blogs where they either link to their Twitter account, or show their tweets right there on the page.  How do they do it? How *do* you connect your blog and Twitter?

» Read on to discover how to automatically add your blog posts to Twitter…

Even though books are available in new formats (audio books, downloads, portable for the Kindle…), they’re still made up of words – so how do you make that sexy by leveraging modern media formats?  There are lots of ways!:

• Podcast Promotions.  Whether you’re creating the podcast yourself, being interviewed by a podcaster, or offering your book as an award for a podcast promotional contest, you’re bringing a huge targeted market to your book.
  • If your book is about something practical, creating a podcast to accompany the book is a huge way to connect with your audience.  Many times podcasters go on to be authors, but authors can also move into podcasting!  For example, if your book is a how-to guide to training puppies, a podcast that offers tips and tricks is a great way to spread your message around.  It will bring a new audience to your book, and sustain/enhance your relationship with your readers until your next project is ready.  Just like Rachael Ray started with a cooking show, moved into cook books, then into affiliate marketing, then into her own TV show, magazine and cooking-related products… you too can span the venue boundaries to make yourself an expert!
  • There are existing podcasts, some hugely popular, and cover just about every subject.  So, send some emails to podcast hosts that target your niche (also works for blogs)…
    1. Write a quick introduction
    2. Offer a free copy of your book
    3. Offer up yourself to talk about it/set up an interview
    4. Then offer to help them setup a promotion for free copies to give away to their audience.
    5. Don’t get disheartened if it doesn’t work right away, they likely get lots of similar emails, but will jump at the ones that make sense for their audience. It’s still worth it to make the offer to gain exposure to the right people.
• Book Trailers.  It’s less expensive than you think to create a simple book trailer.  Some people go all out and create hollywood-quality shorts, but even an animated slideshow set to music, or a video of you being interviewed about the book is a step in the right direction.  Help your readership understand the tone of the book in a new way, and bring some life to what would otherwise be left to the imagination. (Note: there’s nothing wrong with leaving a book’s content to the imagination, in some cases that may even be the desired outcome.)
• Television (?!).  Did you know there is a new, dedicated TV show for authors?  Open Book TV, in their own words, “focuses on the writers and other storytellers living and working in a different spot on the planet each week.”  Their episodes are even embeddable in websites (just like YouTube).

If you’re self-publishing (and even if you’re not), chances are that you want to make sure people can buy your book from your website.  It only makes sense to convert visitors into sales.  Although you never sell your book to your audience you always want to offer your product up for sale.  You’ll want to start by providing purchasing options for the most popular online book retailers: Amazon.com & BarnesandNoble.com.  Unsuprisingly, they’ll take a big cut of the price of the book, but will bring you a huge audience.  If you want to take your sales to the next level, there’s the Amazon.com Associates Program – through this free service, you can earn up to 15% in referrals for products sold on Amazon.com… namely, your book.

But what if you want to sell your book yourself? You don’t need to make a big investment in a shopping cart service, or even spend your days waiting in line at the USPS -  you can easily set yourself up with a PayPal Merchant account, create a quick button for purchasing your book to put on your website, set your shipping preferences, and off you go!  100% of the sales of books sold on your website is profit to you (minus any printing costs of course) — so even if you can’t compete with Amazon.com on convenience, you can beat them on price.  If you sell your book yourself, offer a discount (say, 10%) off of Amazon’s cost & offer free shipping, you’re providing a huge incentive to your audience while still making much more money per sale than books sold through Amazon.com.  You can setup a channel for shipping through your distributor, or, if you’re willing to do the shipping yourself, you can also offer the incentive of a signed copy.

So, how do you bring people to this page where you’re offering your book for sale? You tell as many people as you can about it!  You can provide a link as part of a promotion for a social organization, a club, a team, an event…  you can participate in affiliate marketing (especially with those who enjoy great success), or buy ad-space on popular blogs that target your readership. Additionally, you can offer your book as a give-away in a contest for a popular podcast related to your genre, or as part of a blog-promotion.   Each of these gives you the chance to link back to your book purchase page.

So get out there and get selling!

While Facebook, Twitter and Linked in are fabulous ways to connect with a community, it can often leave you lost in the myriad options of their all-encompassing approach.  What’s an author to do if they want to connect with people who love books?  Shelfari is the answer.  In their own words:

“Shelfari introduces readers to our global community of book lovers and encourages them to share their literary inclinations and passions with peers, friends, and total strangers (for now). Shelfari is a gathering place for authors, aspiring authors, publishers, and readers, and has many tools and features to help these groups connect with each other in a fun and engaging way. Our mission is to enhance the experience of reading by connecting readers in meaningful conversations about the published word.

Shelfari’s members:

• Build virtual bookshelves to express themselves to their friends and to the world
• Discover books that are popular in their trusted circles of friends
• Influence peers by rating and discussing books online
• Discover and learn from people with similar reading tastes
• Participate in online book groups to further explore literature and share ideas
• Interact with and learn from authors”

In combination with participating in the readership community at Amazon.com via AmazonConnect and Profile pages, Shelfari allows you to jump right into your niche without first wading through the rest of everything else!

One of the challenges faced by freelance designers working remotely is choosing the best way to communicate your ideas without being in the room to draw them. It can also be challenging for those working with remote freelance designers to present feedback in a way that it won’t be misconstrued. It’s not always necessary to visualize your thoughts, but sometimes you need to take the extra step to map your ideas out to be sure everyone is on the same page before moving forward into design execution.  Here are some great, free, easy-to-use tools to help bring your visual ideas to life:

1. http://www.bubbl.us/ (example) – Here’s what they say about their service: “Bubbl.us is a simple and free web application that lets you brainstorm online.”  I think it’s a great way to visually establish the architecture of a website or web application, or even to organize content into logical groupings.
2. http://www.balsamiq.com/ – When you want to draw a simple mockup of what a web page might look like you could turn to Photoshop or Illustrator, but for much less hassle, you could also use Balsamiq Mockups. Even during a discussion where you’re sharing your screen, you can create live images to illustrate your ideas.
3. http://www.skitch.com/ - If you’re taking a screenshot, marking it up, and then sending an email asking for feedback over and over again, Skitch may be for you.   It makes the process of sharing images with markup super easy.  Watch their intro video to see how it works.