Small Press Blog

Working on the other stuff

As loyal readers know, I am an advocate of having multiple revenue streams. I know it doesn't sound as romantic as being solely a book publisher, but it certainly helps pay the bills.

I am also an advocate of making sure that all my products whether print or web are of good quality. A recent project that I have been working on is a redesign of my main website on online high schools.

So why a redesign? Here are a few reasons:

1. The site is three years old and looks much the same as it did those three years ago; and
2. There were things that I wanted to do that I could not do with the old design; and
3. I thought I could make more money with the site by doing a redesign.

The new site went live two days ago and it seems to be doing all three of those things. Perhaps. Always hard to know until you are a month or two into it.

So what does a website design have to do with publishing books. I am able to tell that many of the books that I sell come from folks who go to that site and then click through to Amazon. If that is your model, and it is certainly mine, then it makes sense to have a website that attracts folks and that provides a real service.

And that is redesigned upon occasion.

I encourage you to take a look at the new site.

Building up your online presence

Those of you who are regular readers of the SmallPress Blog know that one of the major projects for Degree Press is BestOnlineHighSchools.com. It is a place to not only sell a book, but also to sell advertising. At this point, there are eight schools that advertise on the site.

Up to this point, I had not added other schools. Today I made the decision to add some schools, but only the name of the school and its website. This should do several things:

• When people Google the name of that school, our site will pop up.
• It increases the number of pages on the site which should increase the amount of money from Google Adsense.
• It could entice schools to advertise on the site because they want to flesh out their listing.

BestOnlineHighSchools.com is the top independent site for online high schools on the Internet. This should only add to our presence.

An experiment

Okay, so I was bored and decided to see what would happen if I put a copy of my latest book (Complete Guide to Online High Schools) up on Ebay. So I did it. I started it out at 0.01.

Here's a chance to buy it cheap.

Why did I do it?:

1. I was curious; and

2. I have been reading the blogs of several people that sell extensively on Ebay.

Maybe it sells and maybe it doesn't. I told a friend about it and it already has a bid (granted for that 0.01, but a bid nonetheless).

Welcome StumbleUpon folks!

I would like to welcome the thousand or so of StumbleUpon.com folks who have come to visit this site in the last 24 hours. It most definitely is a record.

And, yes, it is greatly appreciated.

And even more, yes, I hope you will come back. Basic topics covered here include self/independent publishing, writing, book marketing, and more. You can get a lot of great information just by reading some of the many interviews that are on this site.

And, again, thanks for visiting!

Self publishing gets a new resource

I would like to announce the creation of a sister website for the SmallPress Blog. As of today, Self Pub News is online.

Self Pub News provides a place for publishers, publishing organizations, and others to announce events, to mention new books, and to offer other activities related to the independent publishing community. It is my hope that it becomes a one-stop announcement shop that provides useful and necessary information..

We absolutely reserve the right to shorten/delete/neglect to mention announcements.

If you have something you would like to announce, please send it to info @ selfpubnews.com (being sure to move all those parts together to create an email address).

Reviews on the Right Sites

Getting online reviews is important. Getting online reviews on the right sites is even more important. If you have a choice, you almost always want the site that gets the most traffic. Try using Alexa.com to determine which one that might be.

Complete Guide to Online High Schools has just been reviewed on About.com. If you have not sent a copy of your book to an About guide with a related topic, you've just made your first mistake. Thankfully, it is an easy mistake to fix.

About.com gets huge traffic. My review just went up on the site last week and it is already showing up in the second spot when I do a Google search for my book title. The only site that beats it is Amazon.com.

Google is your friend. Use it. And that means that traffic is king.

The one and only exception is niche sites that don't generate much traffic, but that get you folks who will buy your book. That's why I started this post with an almost-lie. The real truth is that, if you have two places to get articles or reviews, choose both.

The Domain Game

What's a domain worth to you? Is having the perfect website, particularly in these search-engine-friendly times, worth $100? $500? More?

Having the right domain, the intuitive domain, can help your business. I often type in the name of a business, add .com, and hope it works out. It often does.

For $1000, I can buy HighSchoolDiplomaOnline.com. This is someone that did their homework, I suspect, and regularly buys domains that rank at the top of Overture for keyword selection. In evidence, this next book is about online high schools. I went to check keywords and that is most definitely at the top. By a large margin.

Is it worth it to spend $1000 to get that domain?

Some would argue that it is, but I go in the opposite direction. This in no way means that I haven't bought domains on speculation. My company owns about twenty domains. Four are active at the moment, but there are plans for some of the rest. However, all of those were bought at the GoDaddy regular rate of $8.95.

Unless a domain specifically identifies a new invention, a new gadget, a new process, a new business, there are always alternatives. Now, would I spend $100 on that same domain. Hmm...

By the way, most of the websites related to online high schools are not real websites. They are shills for domain sellers and such. BestOnlineHighSchools.com is the only site solely dedicated to online high schools that is actually a site for online high schools. And if that sounds odd to you, it should.

Internet Marketing Lesson, #2

Survey says, "Know your Alexa Top 20." At the very least, know the Alexa rankings for sites on which you focus your online marketing efforts. Try to get your information on as many of those sites as is possible. No, I am absolutely not telling you that you need to spend 3 hours each day on MySpace adding friends and chatting with the girls. However, at the very least, you should have a presence.

Why is this so important? Alexa ranks the most-visited websites, and this is one of the things that Google and others use to determine how important your site is.

The Top 20 as of today are:

1. Yahoo.com
2. MSN.com
3. Google.com
4. Youtube.com
5. Baidu.com
6. MySpace.com
7. Live.com
8. Orkut.com
9. qq.com
10. Yahoo.co.jp
11. Sina.com.cn
12. Wikipedia.org
13. Ebay.com
14. Microsoft.com
15. Blogger.com
16. Megaupload.com
17. sohu.com
18. 163.com
19. Google.co.uk
20. Yahoo.com.cn

It is a fairly simple process to get yourself and your book on some of those sites (albeit much harder or impossible for some of the other sites). 

Another possibility is to look for where your readers might be. The Top 10 for the Arts looks very different than the list above. Many categories. Well worth the look.

Do it. Do it now.

Internet Marketing Lesson, #1

In which I will describe marketing techniques as I come across them. I developed exactly none of them, but they work, so pay attention!

The technique for today is using anchor text to drive up your Google ranking. Google likes to look at anchor text. See the hyperlinked text below and place your cursor above it. Notice where it goes.

high school diploma online

Google's places a great deal of preference on anchor text like the words above and to what that anchor text links. It is much more valuable to have the above than this below:

BestOnlineHighSchools.com

Yes, it is still worth having the link to your website, but have the anchor text with keywords as well.

By the way, why did I choose to use high school diploma online instead of online high school or something else? Because Overture told me I should. Overture lets you know which are the most common keywords for your topic. Intuitively, I had thought online high schools, but by a significant margin, it offered "high school diploma online."

Use those freebie websites

What would you do if I told you that you could increase the number of websites you have without increasing the cost? Do you have any unused domains at Godaddy (or, I suspect, one of the other domain companies)?

Part of this depends on where you have your domains parked, but with GoDaddy.com, every time I purchase a new domain I am given free hosting for that domain. Here's an example of what it normally looks like after you buy the domain, but just let it sit there:

ReligiousDistanceLearning.com

and here is one example of what you can do with that same sort of site:

CompleteGuidetoOnlineHighSchools.com

Clearly a simplistic site, but a site with keywords  and a link to an email newsletter that has already resulted in new sign-ups and people to send out book announcements to when it is available. And that is the bare-bones site. It also comes with a free quick blog account or the ability to create a larger website, so you could build it into something more.

Yes, it does have the GoDaddy banner across the top of all of those, but I think this is much better than the entire site being a GoDaddy commercial.