Monday, January 11, 2010
My new book, FREE Internet is starting to pick up sales on Amazon. One of the reasons is probably that I'm doing a little promotion on it. Not much as yet, I just started on the 3rd of January, and I'm only using the free resources available on the Internet, but for no more than I've done, I'm beginning to see some results.
The first thing I did, was to put this blog up. In order to figure out what (if any) results my efforts are having, I'm analyzing my website stats and Amazon sales to see if there has been any noticeable improvements and recording all the information on an Excel spreadsheet.
I'm pleased to announce that I've seen some encouraging results already. I took the total number of hits on my website for the months of November and December and averaged them by the week. The seven day average for the 'home' page was 229 hits per day. This blog is being updated on January 11th, so I only have the Jan 07 number available in my stats. The Jan 07 stats showed the average number of hits to be 358. That's about a 56% increase in hits over the previous 8 weeks. I don't know anything else that could have accounted for those hits except my promotion efforts.
I'm also tracking individual pages inside my website. On Jan 01, the "Free Internet" page received 194 hits. Now these weren't necessarily 'landing page' hits. Most were probably hits from the home page where someone clicked on my Free Internet page icon. No way to tell with the stats provided by my service provider. But the hits have increased every day. Here's the hit total for the first 10 days in January.
Jan 01 = 194
Jan 02 = 216
Jan 03 = 210
Jan 04 = 225
Jan 05 = 229
Jan 06 = 239
Jan 07 = 247
Jan 08 = 256
Jan 09 = 260
Jan 10 = 269
Jan 11 = 269
Jan 12 = 274
As you can see, the trend is climbing. Again, I contribute this to the promotion.
On January 2nd, I released a press release on the website FreePressRelease.com. I didn't use their Free press release, but rather their $1 press release. The $1 allows you a lot more leeway in your press release. You can have more words in the release, as well as up to three pictures/graphics. They also track your release so you can see how many people actually clicked on it and read it.
On the 6th, I sent out another press release. On the 10th I sent out a final press release. All of these were to promote the Free Internet book, and all of them were original, not copies of the previous release.
Here's the results as of the 11th of January. This is the number of 'hits' they've received.
Date PR #1 PR#2 PR#3
Jan 02 61
Jan 03 101
Jan 04 134
Jan 05 141
Jan 06 142 46
Jan 07 142 104
Jan 08 142 104
Jan 09 142 104
Jan 10 142 104 10
Jan 11 144 104 80
Jan 12 144 104 138
Jan 13 144 104 138
Notice that the number of hits just died after about the 3th day of each release. I used the Technology -Internet field for the category of the release. I'm going to wait a few weeks and release two new PRs under other categories to see if it makes a difference.
I also put out a totally different release on another server on Jan 10th. This company allows you to chose three different categories to send the release out to so it will be interesting to see if this will make a difference. This Press Release site only has FREE releases. Ok, I'm editing this on the 14th. It went 27, 27, 28 for the first three days...28 hits is not very encouraging. Looks like these releases are good for about 2 to 3 days, then they are done. The Free Press Release site had a lot more hits the PRlog. But, it cost a dollar a release and the PRlog release was totally free.
This blog will contain a running description of how I'm doing with my book sales, what promotions I'm trying, and what is working and what is not! Any self-published authors who might be doing the same thing should find the information interesting and helpful for your own projects.
I also have a book that I'll be promoting called, "How To Publish Anything On Amazon's Kindle" that has actually been out for about 18 months. It's in both Kindle e-book and paperback formats. I've sold over 950 of these books on Amazon with absolutely ZERO promotion... So I'm really looking forward to seeing if these kinds of promotions can make a difference in its sales too.
I'm not selling my books from my website. Only from Amazon. I've sold 4 Kindle and 6 paperback copies of Free Internet since this promotion began. Not many I know, but I'm amazed that I've sold any. How in the world anyone is finding the book without any search engine help is beyond me. Right now, I'm led to believe that it's through these Press Releases and blogs...
I'll put up next weeks sales and stats as I get them...
Update...Jan 14th, - ArticleDashboard just picked up an article I'd written called "The Coming Singularity - When Computers Become Sentient" which is kind of neat. You can find it here...
http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/The-Coming-Singularity---When-Computers-Become-Sentient/1315146
Randy
The first thing I did, was to put this blog up. In order to figure out what (if any) results my efforts are having, I'm analyzing my website stats and Amazon sales to see if there has been any noticeable improvements and recording all the information on an Excel spreadsheet.
I'm pleased to announce that I've seen some encouraging results already. I took the total number of hits on my website for the months of November and December and averaged them by the week. The seven day average for the 'home' page was 229 hits per day. This blog is being updated on January 11th, so I only have the Jan 07 number available in my stats. The Jan 07 stats showed the average number of hits to be 358. That's about a 56% increase in hits over the previous 8 weeks. I don't know anything else that could have accounted for those hits except my promotion efforts.
I'm also tracking individual pages inside my website. On Jan 01, the "Free Internet" page received 194 hits. Now these weren't necessarily 'landing page' hits. Most were probably hits from the home page where someone clicked on my Free Internet page icon. No way to tell with the stats provided by my service provider. But the hits have increased every day. Here's the hit total for the first 10 days in January.
Jan 01 = 194
Jan 02 = 216
Jan 03 = 210
Jan 04 = 225
Jan 05 = 229
Jan 06 = 239
Jan 07 = 247
Jan 08 = 256
Jan 09 = 260
Jan 10 = 269
Jan 11 = 269
Jan 12 = 274
As you can see, the trend is climbing. Again, I contribute this to the promotion.
On January 2nd, I released a press release on the website FreePressRelease.com. I didn't use their Free press release, but rather their $1 press release. The $1 allows you a lot more leeway in your press release. You can have more words in the release, as well as up to three pictures/graphics. They also track your release so you can see how many people actually clicked on it and read it.
On the 6th, I sent out another press release. On the 10th I sent out a final press release. All of these were to promote the Free Internet book, and all of them were original, not copies of the previous release.
Here's the results as of the 11th of January. This is the number of 'hits' they've received.
Date PR #1 PR#2 PR#3
Jan 02 61
Jan 03 101
Jan 04 134
Jan 05 141
Jan 06 142 46
Jan 07 142 104
Jan 08 142 104
Jan 09 142 104
Jan 10 142 104 10
Jan 11 144 104 80
Jan 12 144 104 138
Jan 13 144 104 138
Notice that the number of hits just died after about the 3th day of each release. I used the Technology -Internet field for the category of the release. I'm going to wait a few weeks and release two new PRs under other categories to see if it makes a difference.
I also put out a totally different release on another server on Jan 10th. This company allows you to chose three different categories to send the release out to so it will be interesting to see if this will make a difference. This Press Release site only has FREE releases. Ok, I'm editing this on the 14th. It went 27, 27, 28 for the first three days...28 hits is not very encouraging. Looks like these releases are good for about 2 to 3 days, then they are done. The Free Press Release site had a lot more hits the PRlog. But, it cost a dollar a release and the PRlog release was totally free.
This blog will contain a running description of how I'm doing with my book sales, what promotions I'm trying, and what is working and what is not! Any self-published authors who might be doing the same thing should find the information interesting and helpful for your own projects.
I also have a book that I'll be promoting called, "How To Publish Anything On Amazon's Kindle" that has actually been out for about 18 months. It's in both Kindle e-book and paperback formats. I've sold over 950 of these books on Amazon with absolutely ZERO promotion... So I'm really looking forward to seeing if these kinds of promotions can make a difference in its sales too.
I'm not selling my books from my website. Only from Amazon. I've sold 4 Kindle and 6 paperback copies of Free Internet since this promotion began. Not many I know, but I'm amazed that I've sold any. How in the world anyone is finding the book without any search engine help is beyond me. Right now, I'm led to believe that it's through these Press Releases and blogs...
I'll put up next weeks sales and stats as I get them...
Update...Jan 14th, - ArticleDashboard just picked up an article I'd written called "The Coming Singularity - When Computers Become Sentient" which is kind of neat. You can find it here...
http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/The-Coming-Singularity---When-Computers-Become-Sentient/1315146
Randy
# posted by Randy Benjamin @ 6:05 PM 
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