BestSellerAuthors Book Marketing Blog

Archive for February, 2008

Today’s post comes live from the Bloghaus (a room with wireless access) at the Affiliate Summit West show in Las Vegas.

My mission here is to find the best programs to help authors promote books online. There are dozens of interesting possibilities, some for authors that would like to earn money from their blogs and web sites.. others with access to millions of readers for your book.

I’ve been teaching authors to have a blog site for their book, and to write about subjects of your expertise, current events and personal antidotes to engage your readers and create a dialog to build online relationships.

Some authors have asked how to monetize a blog. That’s really quite simple.. just build a regular readership and join one of the many affiliate networks.

An Affiliate Network is usually free to join. It takes a minute to sign up, then  you choose from hundreds of offers that your readers may be interested in, copy a line of code to your blog post, and get paid if your readers click and/or buy the offer.

The offers I’ve seen today include items for small business, parents, self improvement, technology, games and entertainment and health advice There is something for everyone.

One of the largest program is Amazon.com. You can sell your books, or books on any topic you want, and earn a commission from them.

However, the exciting ideas for me here at the Summit were the advertising. We put together a deal where millions of email readers will see articles about new books we are promoting. We will pay for the new leads generated and put our author’s books in front of thousands of new readers during our upcoming best seller campaigns.

I’ll have more on the details coming up in future posts. Leave a comment here and tell me if you are in an affiliate network, and how that is working out for you.

I spent some time with Andy Beal last year. He’s an expert at the kind of marketing I’ve been telling authors to use, and his book Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online will be a must read for any authors wanting to attract readers online and build strong relationships fast.

I read Andy’s blog and follow him on Twitter.. got a message today that lead to this Amazon.com trick

Andy doesn’t have a big promotion promising you goodies for buying. But he is marketing himself and his book, I imagine he’ll be a best seller just with the social marketing that he is doing so well.

As you can see. This is a transparent attempt to get you to buy my friends book, let him know that I support him, and offer something that I know is good for you.

Sometimes all it takes to get book sales is to ask readers to go buy your book

To make a living from your book, you need to have readers… and they need to buy your book

Sounds simple enough.. but most authors struggle. After all, you are a expert at what you do, not book marketing and promotion.

Instead of struggling, you could just hire a firm like BestSellerAuthors.com to sell your book.. but you really need to plan on marketing being an ongoing project. Promoting you and your book can pay off very well.

So here’s my number one trip to avoid the struggle. —> Just find our what works and copy it.

Daniel Grissom, who is the secret sales weapon behind Billion Dollar companies like Google, Hewlett Packard, UPS, NASDAQ, and Eli Lilly has a new book out: Step Up! How To WIN MORE And Lose Less in Business.

You can read his book to find out how he wins.

But more important for authors.. you will want to take a look at the promotion for his book.

Dan put together a team of the best to help him launch, with winning strategies.

Take a look now while you can still get all the special gifts (you will want to look at these too.. to learn from these great marketers)

Leave a comment here and tell us what you think of the promotion, what new ideas you got, and get a bit of self promotion while you are at it.

Dan Grissom book launch

I helped Pat O Bryan launch Portable Empires last year… Best Selling Author is just one of the things Pat does in his spare time.

As Pat puts it.. you can see that life today can be all spare time

It’s not about how hard you are working.. it’s about what you get done. Pat has it right (except for the odd coffee shop choices)

Jay Conrad Levinson is one of the biggest best selling authors of all time. He’s sold millions of Guerrilla Marketing books and made enormous sums of money while promoting his revolution for small businesses.

I’ve read over a dozen of his books, been a member of his association and worked with Jay on a few promotions. He is an author you should be modeling for success.

There are two reasons you need to watch this new video from Jay…

1. Jay talks about setting up marketing that pay you
2. The team working on this new book promotion will give you and example you can learn from for your own book

Watch the free video now to see for yourself how this works.

Then be sure to get the report, and share this link with your friends and partners

Are you still waiting for Oprah to call?

News show, interview programs and reporters of all types now depend on blogs and social media to get their ideas.

Debbie Weil posted the stats.. 75% of reports are reading blogs

Get know online, get a blog and user profile at the social networking sites.. participate by leaving a comment when you read a good blog post. It works.

Should your book be read by millions?

Do you want to be a best seller?

My friend Mark Joyner wants to make that dream come true.

Mark has had 4 best sellers, and knows the formula. As a part of a promotion for his upcoming “Best-Seller Blueprint” course, he is have a unique contest with first prize being a $21,000.00 package where Mark make your book a best seller.

http://bestsellerauthors.com/authorcontest

If you want to become a best selling author, pick up the ZERO COST special report, and then see how you can early enter the contest.

Hurry, all entries must be in by 2/26

Seth Godin started it.

He has this crazy idea to build traffic for his web site by encouraging people to argue

I heard about a hot new technology that I thought would be great for promoting authors. But when I got there, I saw the part about arguements, and build this lens

Hey Seth! Arguments are a Waste of Time

I have a lot of respect for Seth, and love the Squidoo site. When you go to the link above and vote to agree with me about arguments, stick around for a few minutes and see how easy it is to set up your own “lens” (page) on that site. You can get free traffic for your projects, more respect as the expert on your topic, sell books and even earn a little bit of money for your efforts.

Remember to post a comment when you see something that’s interesting. Every comment is your mark that you were there. By joining in the discussion, you are seen by hundreds or thousands of readers, some will want to know you better and come to your site.

I’ve written a few times about the power of blog cross promotion.

Still, some authors ask if it’s worth the time and if will really work for them.

Yes! There is nothing more powerful in online promotion than the simple comments you post. In the past 48 hours, I posted a book marketing tip and encouranged comments. Then I went to the blogs or web sties of the commentors and posted comments or signed up for the newsletters.

Results, I strengthen two joint venture relationsships and privately discussed making more money together. Plus, I found a new partner to cross promote with, and recommended another to a freind I work with.

These releatoinships will be worth thousands of dollars in commission.

But what about the time commitment.

The time to post an honest comment on a blog is a little as a few seconds, and certainly less than five minutes. If you weren’t reading blogs, it could be a major change in behavior, a learning curve and then maybe some time each day… but I know you are reading blogs, because you are reading this!

To leave a comment, just scroll down to the bottom of the blog post and click on the comment link. (sometimes a form is already on the page you are reading). The first time you leave a comment on a blog, you will need to type in your name, email address (always kept private) and your URL (you want to do this, it gets you the link you want).

Then put in a couple of lines about what you think of the article you just read.

That’s all it takes. You get a qualified link back to your web site, a new relationship, and a chance to show your expertise online.

Here’s some of the blog articles I found from recent comments on this blog:
Dreams Become Reality

The love tank

Making Money With Your Blog

Much Ado About Nothing Exegesis

Take a moment now and click on any of these links. Then tell the author what you thought of his/her posts. It’s okay to mention your book title or business in the comments.

Don’t be surprised if you see some new business from this.

My freind John Jantsch writes an excellent blog over at DuctTapeMarketing

How does he get so many great blog posts.. he revealed his secret here.. blogging in bed