An idea to increase traffic to your book website

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dominicgaj

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If you have published a book and are trying to get more traffic to your book
website, here is an idea that may help.

I recently wrote a large document that was a series of biographies of the
characters from my first book. I was going to simply place this information on
my website for people to read, but I decided to do something slightly different
- I created an area on the website for people to join, for free.

Only once people join up as members, will they be able to access what will be a
"secret area" of the website (under construction at the moment), to read these
biographies.

This has, in turn, given me other ideas. As time goes on, I will add further
pages to what will turn out to be an "encyclopedia" of the land that my book is
set in, such as landmarks, maps and a general history of the place. I will
also, make this information available to members only.

I made membership free, so I hope it will go well.

Jasan
 

Mac H.

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If you have published a book and are trying to get more traffic to your book website, here is an idea that may help.
..
Only once people join up as members, will they be able to access what will be a "secret area" of the website (under construction at the moment), to read these biographies.
It's an interesting experiment - but I'm not sure what the logic is.

You encourage people to come to your site by not letting them access information on it until they've filled in a form ?

Think of the websites that you visit often - websites that get your traffic.

If some changed to use this strategy - would you visit more often or less?

I can see that there might be some advantages - more committed visitors, for example. But the idea that there would be MORE visitors?

I just don't see the logic.

Mac
 
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yogapoet74

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A friend of mine has started a great site (www.literaryliving.com) and eBook "The Power of Deliberate Thinking: 5 strategies for staying at the writing desk (despite your self-doubts!)". I think that your strategy is interesting for sure, but how does someone get people to the site to begin with? My friend is currently struggling with this.
 

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Hello cone sippers, I got about tree fitty's worth for 4 uzz. Yogapoet, please do not take this as criticism, it actually a compliment for your friend. I did not click on the link, but here's is what I have figured out about you're friend and I think it's genious. She couldn't keep herself on task, got a writer's block, and decided to do what any genious would do. Write a book, on how to beat writer's block and negative thoughts. Genious. Dan Poynter writing a book on writing books, Genious. In Dan's book he mentions my favorite part of the book(ok, maybe not fav as it is soooo valuable) but he mentions hiring writers to put your thoughts onto words for you. Basically you come up with ideas, they figure out how to express it. But the best part, The person who wrote the book "The lazy man's guide to getting rich", hired a person to write it for them, and got rich!!!!!Motherfargin Genious right there. Anyways, back to the topic at hand.
Cool Idea. Yes, getting them to sign up will make them think of it more and hence sell more. A great marketing tip that made my brain what it is is this;
Have you ever watched a TV commercial and thought, wooh, that was so incredibly stupid, cheesy, pointless, what was the commercial for, anything, that , means it's a good commercial. When you watch TV now, don't pay attention to what they want you to, unless you like living off ramen because you bought a bunch o stupid shhtuff you don't need or want. What you need to pay attention to is what they're after. The recent Domino's commercial asking you to send them in pictures of their pizza's, is only made to make it seem that they truly care. Then what happened? All cheapzz nasty commercial pizzas come tasting and looking like 30 cent pizzas, and all burnt. What happened is that they had planned the entire time not to show good pizzas, but to show bad ones and say the want to improve. They do this, because of course most commercials have very touched up beautiful food. They decided they would go (good cop route) and try to tell that they care. If they cared, they'd actually improve the quality of their pizza, but they don't. They care about what every company in America care's about, customer satisfaction(NOT!) Food styling or photography is very interesting, I have seen shows on it and worked with a food stylist once.
You have to study marketing, that's the only way you'll make it (self-publishing).

But, you're method is a pretty sweet idea. I read this in a book last week actually. He mentioned having members sign in, but I can't remember what for. I decided I'm gonna buy this one, but no taxes and free shipping. The book is the ULtimate Guide to Pay-Per-Click advertising. It's a pretty good about Google Adwords, studying the web site visitor patterns, your competition, analyzing other's marketing campaigns, saving money, not wasting it on this, etc.. But, then again maybe the word "Ultimate" in the title, the credibility I give him for creating ADGuru software may have skewed my judgement or tricked me into thinking it was good. Alright, if it was the sheeznit, I would've ordered it, but it definitely would pay for itself. You should check it out or at least skim it at BN.
 

dominicgaj

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dominicgaj

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It's an interesting experiment - but I'm not sure what the logic is.

You encourage people to come to your site by not letting them access information on it until they've filled in a form ?

Think of the websites that you visit often - websites that get your traffic.

If some changed to use this strategy - would you visit more often or less?

I can see that there might be some advantages - more committed visitors, for example. But the idea that there would be MORE visitors?

I just don't see the logic.

Mac

1) It is only a small portion of information that is blocked, not the whole site.

2) The logic behind the strategy is to get the committed visitors in and then (hopefully) the committed visitors encourage others to join. It's a long-term strategy.

For it to work, the quality of the hidden information has to be great. I'll see how it goes.
 

dominicgaj

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A friend of mine has started a great site (www.literaryliving.com) and eBook "The Power of Deliberate Thinking: 5 strategies for staying at the writing desk (despite your self-doubts!)". I think that your strategy is interesting for sure, but how does someone get people to the site to begin with? My friend is currently struggling with this.

Try this link for some ideas. I (try to) follow the principles within it myself.

http://www.spacejock.com.au/MarketingYourBookOnline.html
 

mscelina

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With book sales, it's pretty darn important to make the process as easy and customer friendly as possible. I don't think asking people to work extra for the little bit of hidden info is going to work for anyone other than a JK Rowling-status author. On her website, you could get into a secret room and discover occasional clues about the upcoming Harry Potter book but only if you knew how to follow all the steps. Once I've acquired that kind of audience, I'd think about doing something like that.

But at the moment? I want my website to persuade the reader to purchase my book, so I'm going to make it as painless as possible.
 

thothguard51

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A friend of mine started a website for one of his characters. He tells his characters stories and viewers will leave his character questions, which he answers in character. While he has got dedicated readers that return time and again, he is unsure if it has increased his sales more so than the book site which lets readers view an excerpt from the first chapter. He says the character website is much more demanding of his time than the book website and he is unsure how much longer he is going to keep it going...

The trick for any authors website is how to get more hits on the web site AND increase the number of viewers hitting the buy button. Hits do not necessarily add up to increased sales.

What I learned from the blog I have, which I have done very little with in the past 6 months, is the increase in traffic is directly related to the Tags used for the search engines, like google.
 

dominicgaj

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Thanks all for the feedback. I am definitely getting mixed responses as to the idea. It is alerting me to keep an eye on the results. If I perceive that it is hindering progress, I may abolish it/suspend it/reduce it accordingly.

Too early to know yet, though.
 

dominicgaj

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Thanks all for the feedback. I am definitely getting mixed responses as to the idea. It is alerting me to keep an eye on the results. If I perceive that it is hindering progress, I may abolish it/suspend it/reduce it accordingly.

Too early to know yet, though.
 

8thSamurai

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Let's see. I hit a new website, about some new book or series - cool. Usually, I'll scroll through the writer's blog.

Having to sign up for information that I don't need, and can't look at to decide if I want?

Not so much.
 

Anne Lyle

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I confess this idea crossed my mind, after I saw it suggested somewhere online, but in the end I decided that it was a) too much bother to implement and b) unlikely to result in more traffic. I know I hate it when sites ask me to sign up for no good reason. If it's a forum like this, where people will contribute (and need moderating), then sure - but just to surf a few pages? Not so much.
 
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