Loyal readers will note that I have come out strongly in favor of having your own publishing website even if you are driving most of your sales to Amazon. I often get push-back, though, that talks about how expensive having a website can be. Fair enough; let's talk about it.
I spend about $13 on a domain name (like, for example, DegreePress.com). I also pay for hosting that website. While it's hard to tell exactly how much I pay there because my hosting account covers more than a few websites. I can tell you that you can host a single domain at HostGator for about $5.50 a month (if you pay for a year). So, total for a year for the domain and hosting is $79.
Might I suggest that, if you cannot afford $79, you might not want to consider self-publishing.
However, let's continue. At this point, you would likely let me know that there is more to having a website than just a domain name and hosting service. And you would be right. There is the website development piece (i.e. making it look right for sales).
Do you know about Wordpress? Wordpress is the software used by many companies and individuals to create websites. What you may not know is that, as soon as you have paid for hosting, you likely have access to Wordpress for free. It is available in your cPanel as an option. From that, you can create a very plain website.
The "vanilla" version of Wordpress is ugly. It's not meant to be used for a website. You will want to select a WP theme to use. Many are free; some cost money.
What you may not know as well is that there are many resources available from which to learn how to use Wordpress. Youtube has many videos and there are many websites solely dedicated to teaching you how to create WP websites. Here is an example of a Wordpress site that I created myself. It's fairly good.
I should tell you that I have no great Wordpress or website development skills. For better, higher-profile websites, I hire someone to do the work for me. That being said, I feel that my skills would be enought to create an adequate publishing website doing exactly what I have described here.
And so can you.
Look for my next article where I show you one of the free ways to develop a publishing website. I also have an interview with my web developer coming up. You will be able to see what he has done for me and for others (and, I should note, he does it using Wordpress).
Do you know why I like Bob Martin? It's because he gives away vast amounts of information and support for free. I believe that is why he has been so successful. I have, many times, emailed him with questions and received quick responses that get me back on track.
I have been fortunate to work with Bob Martin on a number of projects. Some of my better websites are solely his design. I like what he does, so I go back to him again and again. Over the years, we have become friends and, I admit, support each other in a myriad of ways. One way is to let you know about him here. Bob also publishes books (in addition to all sorts of other things; check out the bio below). He is certainly a kindred spirit. I encourage you to take his advice below to heart.
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1. Why is it important to have your own website for selling your books?
Let me change up a little bit here, Tom. Instead of why I think it is important to have your own website for selling books, I want to talk about why it is important to have your own website. Selling books is such a small niche. I have many websites (around 50) of my own. Only one of them is for selling books. Some of my other sites are for selling other types of products. Some of my sites are for providing information to people for free, and are supported by advertising revenue. Some sites are only for my pleasure, and don't make any money at all. So, there are many reasons to have a website, not just for selling books! :-)
However, for the purpose of this interview, I will concentrate on why it is important to have a website for the purposes of earning money. Why is that important? Really, we are in a new century, and I believe that we are entering into a new type of economy. To be honest, I saw this coming back in the late 90's, although it has progressed more quickly than I thought it would. Look at the job situation these days where there are so many people unemployed or underemployed. I believe we are entering a time when far fewer of us will be employed in the traditional sense, and more of us will be more self employed, and primarily using the Internet to make our living. We may be selling books, doing consulting over the net, selling physical products or any number of other money making methods, primarily through the Internet. Because of this, we will need to have a website, or multiple websites to facilitate that type of scenario. I personally believe that we all have something that we can contribute to others, and through our particular type of expertise we will be able to make money in a far less traditional way where fewer of us will have what we think of as "jobs" today. Getting into this type of mindset now, it is still early enough to be ahead of the curve and position yourself ahead of the masses of people who will figure this out over time.
2. What is the best way to set up your own website?
These days, it is far easier to set up your own website. Even if you choose to hire somebody else to set it up for you, you will still need to be able to keep the website updated with fresh information, maybe make some visual changes to the site from time to time and such, so even if you don't "set it up" you will need to be able to do some maintenance type things on the site yourself. Fortunately, today it is much easier to be able to do those things yourself than it was a decade ago. Today, there are a lot of "content management" types of software that make setting up a website quite simple. These days, if you know how to use a program like Microsoft Word, you can also work on your website, adding fresh content and keeping things up to date.
I like to use WordPress software to make my websites. I feel that WordPress makes it easy to do, to the point where I can concentrate my efforts on providing information to my readers instead of focusing my time and efforts on making my website look good. After all, the reader is what it is all about, and having loyal readers on your site is how you will be able to leverage your site into making money for you. Of course there are other software packages that will do this for you as well, but WordPress is my choice, and is currently the most popular website building software in the world.
The process of setting up a website consists of a few steps:
1. You will need to purchase a domain name (www.yourname.com). The domain name will cost you roughly $10 per year to register and keep for your exclusive use. 2. You will need "hosting". Basically this means that you will rent space on a web server through a hosting company. There are literally thousands of hosting companies. A popular one that I have used extensively is Hostgator.com. You can rent a hosting account for $5 to $10 per month for a normal website. If your site becomes super popular you will end up spending more so that you can have a more powerful server that can handle the added needs that come with a more popular site. 3. You will need to build the site (yourself, or hire somebody to do it). I prefer to do this using WordPress, as I said, but there are lots of ways you can do it.
3. Should you hire someone to create your website or should you try to do it yourself? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
For a beginner, it is probably best to hire somebody. As you gain more and more experience doing these kinds of things, venture out a bit and give it a try yourself! I learned everything I know just by doing it and learning from my mistakes!
I would say that one of the biggest advantages of hiring a professional to do your website is that it will be exactly that... professional! In particular, if you are selling products and you have a website that looks more amateurish, people will be reluctant to buy anything from you. They will consider two things.. firstly, are you really legitimate? If they send money for a product or service, will they really get what they are paying for, or are you just there to get their money? Secondly, if you are legitimate, what is the quality of what you are selling. If you have a website that looks like it was done by an amateur, how good is the information in a book that you wrote? Another important consideration is that by hiring a professional to build a nice site for you, you can spend your time concentrating on the things you do best, creating quality items for customers and such.
The biggest disadvantage? I suppose that I kind of covered that when I talked about the advantages! It is a two way street and the advantages and disadvantages kind of go hand in hand.
4. Is it possible to create an inexpensive ("cheap") website that still does what you want it to do?
Of course, it depends on what you consider "inexpensive" to be. But, generally, yes, it is possible to do an effective website on a budget. So, inexpensive.. how much is that? $5? $50? $500? Really, you could create a website on any of those budgets, of course the more you spend the better. You won't be able to hire a professional for $5 or probably even $50, but for $500 you could get a nice website, without a doubt!
Now, if you are making a commercial site where you are doing e-commerce, selling things and such, then you will need to spend more to build the site. But, still, for $500 or so you can have a great site that can make you real money. The way I look at it $500 is cheap. Think about 20 years ago where if you wanted to sell stuff to make a living you needed a "real" store, so you had to either buy a building or rent a place, that was much more expensive. Today, with just a website you can make a nice living. These days, I make 100% of my income online, and I make a lot more money now than I ever did when I had a "real" job. It's an amazing world we live in!
5. Anything else you would like to share?
Really, I would just like to encourage anybody to get a website up! Now is the time to get into the game, and if you wait much longer you will run the risk of being left behind. We are in a new economy that works much differently than your Dad's economy. We are already earning a living in much different ways than our fathers did, and the future holds more changes. I started earning money online in the early 1990s, and the changes I have seen in that time amaze me. It is easier to make a living online now than it has ever been. Now is the time to join the revolution and be part of the new economy! Don't let fear keep you away, the best thing you can do is jump in, you will learn much more easily than you imagine!
+++++ Bob Martin is an Internet Entrepreneur. He is an American who has lived in the Philippines since May of 2000. Bob has been earning a living on the Internet for more than 20 years already, and enjoys helping others do that as well. Bob writes books and sells them online, he also designs and builds websites for clients. If you are interested in contacting Bob for a website, or for any other reason, visit his personal website: http://MindanaoBob.com and send him a message through the contact form.
I have written about domains before. I own a bunch; a little over 160 actually. Most of them are set up in some way to make money. Some are much more successful than others. Many of them are centered around a similar topic (which is online schools). Lately, I have been considering what I should do with so many domains that truthfully are costing me more each year than they pay out. Still not sure.
That being said, I readily admit to an illness with regard to purchasing domains. Most of you have no need to do what I have done.
So, to the point of this post, how many domains should you, as a publisher of one or more books, have?
At the very least, you should have:
Your publishing company domain.
Your own name.
Yes, I own both Degree Press and Thomas Nixon. If you own both of those, you are in a very good place. You have likely spent a grand total of $30 to do so. Don't go cheap here; don't use other sorts of websites and domain names that you do not own.
At the very least, even if you don't create websites for those, you can set them up to forward to wherever you might like. For a number of years, Degree Press pointed toward my Amazon Associates bookstore. It now, of course, points to itself.
Yes, I know that it sounds rather odd to think about an app when you talk about writing or publishing, but I can tell you that this app has changed the way that I do all of this.
What is it?
It's DropBox. What does DropBox do? It allows you to sync information across devices. So, for example, I am currently working on a book that makes great use of a database. In my DropBox folder, I have deposited both the front matter (the text) and the database. I have DropBox loaded on my iPad 2, on my netbook, on my Android phone, on my computer at home, and on my computer at the office.
From any of those devices, I can access my files for the book. Any changes I make on any of those devices syncs out to all of them as soon as I log on to that particular device.
In addition, it's an easy way to create a back-up. Once you have dropped your files into the DropBox folder, those files actually live in the cloud.
One thing to remember, though, is that when you are working on your book, make sure you are using the version in the DropBox. It does not sync to your desktop. You want to make sure that you are using the most-up-date version.
As I noted yesterday, the second edition of Complete Guide to Online High Schools will be available within the next couple of weeks. This availability will include both the print and digital versions.
So what am I doing now?
Yesterday I sent an email to my rep at Lightning Source letting her know to suspend availability of the first edition. I don't want any further print copies sold now because I would prefer that people buy the new version. It will be better and more inclusive of the number of available schools now.
Part of the reason for closing down Lightning Source early is that there are sellers on Amazon still selling my book (although you will note that it is no longer available from Amazon). Where do they get the book from? From Lightning Source, for the most part. Some copies are used. I want that stopped because it is now all about sales for the second edition.
I also went to Payloadz.com to suspend sales of the digital version of my book. Truth be told, the second edition will never make its way there. It will start on Amazon in Kindle form and then, in a few months, I will push it out for sales elsewhere.* The world has changed a great deal since I began using Payloadz. To my thinking, there are now better ways to do digital. More on that later.
So I am not done with the database, but I did get an amazing amount of work done. It should be done by the end of the week and that works for this project. Considering that there are hundreds of listings with quite a bit of information on each, this is a time-consuming project.
One of the things that I discovered was that I need to get some work done to the database. I have a couple of ways that I would like the data to export that it is not now capable of doing. That's the sort of work that I can get done cheaply on eLance.
I am spending this long weekend working on the ever-elusive database. The rest of the book is done. However, the challenge with the database is:
1. Making sure that I have all of the schools that I can find and that are a good fit; and
2. Creating the text that goes with each listing. The listing information (address, telephone number, etc.) is relatively simple, but I do need to have a couple of sentences for the listing as well.
But this weekend I am ploughing ahead. I will let you know Sunday evening how it all went.
I have recently written an article for the Virtual Earner website about how to select a partner for creating your web presence. One thing I mention over there is that it is about more than web development skills.
I have a book that I was working on for a while, but other things have intervened. I now actually have some time and some desire to finish this book. Most of it is still to be written and that includes a significant amount of text to be inserted into my database.
All that being said, I have time this month, a significant amount of time, and it works on a number of levels, so I am going to do it. Really all it takes for me is time and the strength to write every day. This is my fifth book, so I have some sense for how this all works.
I hope to report here periodically on my efforts as I work toward publication. I will probably start my putting in some time tomorrow. That is the hard part.
Why is that hard? Because I have to see if my memory of how much has been done matches the reality of what has actually been accomplished. I expect that I have a lot to do.
