Don't Give Up Too Early

Do you have a story or a blog that seems hopeless? Perhaps sales are low for your book(s). Or your blog seems like the loneliest place on the planet. You feel like giving up, at least on that particular project.

Why throw away time and/or money on promoting that book? Why waste time on that blog?

Don't. Not without trying new things and giving it fertilizer.

About a year ago, a little palm tree I had planted looked dead. It was just an ugly, pathetic brown stick in front of my house. I almost pulled it up and threw it away. But then my daughters and I decided to give it another chance. We gave it new soil, plant food, and watered it daily.

Although it didn't sprout a new frond the first day or even the first week, it revived after a few weeks. Now it's a beautiful, healthy palm tree. This is a picture of it below. Pretty, right? Healthy, right?

Maybe you have a blog that isn't getting much traffic. Few people if any are signing up for subscriptions even though you put the nifty RSS feed in the top of your side bar. Or maybe you have a story that isn't selling well and you want to throw up your hands in defeat. You figure your time is better spent elsewhere on a new project.
 
Ask yourself first, have you given the project a fair trial? Have you tried new things? Does your blog need a face lift? If a blog, are you advertising it sufficiently? Are you posting good content? Is it aesthetically pleasing? Does it take too long to load? Have you posted links to your former posts to increase your page views? Do you post regularly? Do you answer comments and interact with your community? Do you ever give gifts to your readers? Do you help your readers or do you focus on yourself? Do you bore the shit out of them? Do you analyze your blog?

There are several analysis programs available, some free. I use StatCounter. To register at StatCounter click here. Once you're a member, you can view your daily and weekly summaries which includes how many new visitors, returning visitors, and page views your blog has had for this time period.

There are several links on the left sidebar that allows you to check which keywords people use to google your posts, show you where visitors surfed in from and how long they stayed, which links they exited on, etc. I found it quite interesting to see that people surfed into my site the most after using the search terms "naughty" and "nympho".  

Hmmm...

Perhaps I should use these keywords as labels more often. A lot of people surf in from Twitter. The times correlate with my posts that include my blog links. Surprise surprise.

As per book promotion and sales, I recently read that half of all marketing works but unfortunately you'll never know which half.

What does this mean?

It means to try many types of advertising and promotion then keep doing them. Try new things but keep doing the old ones, too. Most authors build a readership over time. It's a process. Few people are overnight successes.

Keep going.

Don't give up.

Former posts you might like to read also:

Snippet Saturday: Kick Ass Heroes and Heroines
Nudists on Strike
Kudos to Harlequin  (It's their anniversary month - lots of free books if you hurry)
Kenzie Michaels Guest Interview
Twitter Works Do You Really Want To Post That?

 

You'll also want to see what Amarinda Jones, Anika Hamilton, Anny Cook,
Barbara Huffert, Brynn Paulin, Bronwyn Green, Dakota Rebel, Kelly Kirch,
Molly Daniels, Sandra Cox, Regina Carlysle, and Cindy Spencer Pape
are up to, so make sure to visit them also. :)