Saturday, January 16, 2010
These last few days have been a blitz of article submissions. I'm lucky in a way. I wrote a syndicated Internet column for almost 8 years. I finally just got tired of writing about computers and the Internet, but I produced 457 articles over that time period. All around 600 words in length, perfect for the submission sites.
That database of articles is really paying off now. Article submissions is one of the best ways to draw readers to a website. I went through those articles and pulled the ones that weren't 'time stamped' so I could rework them and bring them up-to-date. I chose about 50 to work with. I'll draw on the others as need be.
Instead of having to start from scratch, the article is basically written. I just need to make sure it's still pertinent in todays markets. Many of these articles were 'how to' articles so they could just be submitted as is. I was able to submit 10 articles in three days. Six of them have been reviewed and published, one was kicked back (too many outside links, four is the max and I had six! Easy fix.) and three have yet to be reviewed.
The nice thing about submitting articles (Ezine, ArticleDashboard, and Isnare are my main targets) is that once they are published, the can be picked up by various online publications around the world and you get 'back-links' to your website. I provide a link to my website in my author's resources. These back-links are what search engines look for and they help improve your page ranking. My Google page rank is 2. At one time it was 4. That was when I had 23 newspapers in syndication. Most of them carried my column on-line as well as in print so I had a lot of very good back-links...Now, I'm just starting to build back-links again.
Being on the first page of a Google search is extremely important if you want people to be able to find you. I've been on the first page at the number one position under Randy Benjamin for five or six years. What I'd like to accomplish with the article submissions and press releases is to get other key words to bring up my website. Especially when someone types in the name of one of my books.
This will be an ongoing project. I hope to get at least one article submitted every day through the end of January. Fifty articles would be great. I don't think that will be a big problem with the database I have to draw from.
I'll keep you posted on how this effects my website percentages. So far, it's way to soon to see much difference, though I have seen a nice jump in 'hits' since my last book came out right before Christmas. I'm tracking everything (especially the views on articles, press releases, and web stats) on an Excel spreadsheet.
I just joined a Kindle Forum today where there are several authors. Networking is very important.
Oh, the press releases have topped out at where they were in the last post. So for about 3 days is all the exposure they seem to produce. From there on, I'm getting zero hits on them. I'll probably release a new one twice a week. The 'dollar' one outperformed the 'free' one by about 5 to 1 in views so I'd say it's a dollar well spent.
All for now,
Randy
That database of articles is really paying off now. Article submissions is one of the best ways to draw readers to a website. I went through those articles and pulled the ones that weren't 'time stamped' so I could rework them and bring them up-to-date. I chose about 50 to work with. I'll draw on the others as need be.
Instead of having to start from scratch, the article is basically written. I just need to make sure it's still pertinent in todays markets. Many of these articles were 'how to' articles so they could just be submitted as is. I was able to submit 10 articles in three days. Six of them have been reviewed and published, one was kicked back (too many outside links, four is the max and I had six! Easy fix.) and three have yet to be reviewed.
The nice thing about submitting articles (Ezine, ArticleDashboard, and Isnare are my main targets) is that once they are published, the can be picked up by various online publications around the world and you get 'back-links' to your website. I provide a link to my website in my author's resources. These back-links are what search engines look for and they help improve your page ranking. My Google page rank is 2. At one time it was 4. That was when I had 23 newspapers in syndication. Most of them carried my column on-line as well as in print so I had a lot of very good back-links...Now, I'm just starting to build back-links again.
Being on the first page of a Google search is extremely important if you want people to be able to find you. I've been on the first page at the number one position under Randy Benjamin for five or six years. What I'd like to accomplish with the article submissions and press releases is to get other key words to bring up my website. Especially when someone types in the name of one of my books.
This will be an ongoing project. I hope to get at least one article submitted every day through the end of January. Fifty articles would be great. I don't think that will be a big problem with the database I have to draw from.
I'll keep you posted on how this effects my website percentages. So far, it's way to soon to see much difference, though I have seen a nice jump in 'hits' since my last book came out right before Christmas. I'm tracking everything (especially the views on articles, press releases, and web stats) on an Excel spreadsheet.
I just joined a Kindle Forum today where there are several authors. Networking is very important.
Oh, the press releases have topped out at where they were in the last post. So for about 3 days is all the exposure they seem to produce. From there on, I'm getting zero hits on them. I'll probably release a new one twice a week. The 'dollar' one outperformed the 'free' one by about 5 to 1 in views so I'd say it's a dollar well spent.
All for now,
Randy
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
Thursday, December 31, 2009
It's New Years Eve, 2009. "Free Internet" has been released for a few weeks now though no promotion has been setup for it as yet. The premise of the book is about how to get online for free by building cheap ($10 or so) high-gain WIFI antennas.
I've already sold several copies (How anyone found it with NO Amazon promotion is beyond me.) and people are sending me questions about projects they're working on.
Most of the questions concern logging onto a wireless IP without knowing who owns it. I'm not a lawyer, so anything I say should not be taken as fact. That said, as a rule of thumb, I try to track down the Internet connections I'm interested in.
Here's an example... there's a Subway and a McDonalds withing a few blocks of me that have FREE Internet advertised on their signs. I can pick up both of them using the WIFI CANnon. In fact, I have a Magic Jack running on one computer (old laptop) that does nothing but run my telephone. This works fine. I get about a 1.3 meg connection from the Subway's router. This is fast enough to give me a solid telephone connection. Since the Internet is free, all I'm really paying for is the $20 a year Magic Jack charge. That beats the local phone company's $22 a month charge hands down.
The connection to the McDonald's router is a lot better. If I take my laptop inside the building, I get a 5 mbps connection. From my home, (Three tents of a mile away by my speedometer.) speed tests average about 3.4 mbps. There are a lot of houses between us that really knock down my connection speed...but that's still pretty good, and considering it's free, it's GREAT!
Both of these businesses have banner adds that come up when you first log on. So there's no doubt as to who is providing the FREE Internet. And since their outdoor signs are telling me to, get online for free - I do! Almost all FREE Internet providers have some kind of advertising that will pop up when you first log onto their IP. They provide the free service as a way to draw in business.
My neighbor and I have a small wireless network. I have to turn my antenna to pick up his router but it's easy as it's just sitting on top of my computer. We like to play Texas Holdum and it works great over the wireless network. I can also get online for free using his Internet connection because he's given me his password.
If you bring up "FREE Internet" on Amazon's website, and look under "Customer supplied pictures" you'll see two screen shots showing the IPs I pickup with the WIFI CANnon aimed in just one direction. One screen shot is with the WIFI CANnon, and the other shows the results of using the USB adapter by itself. It's amazing how many more IPs you will discover with a simple devise you can build for about $11.
It's also amazing how many people leave their home router's encryption turned off. I think of the 21 connections in the screen shot, nine are 'wide open,' totally accessible to anyone who can receive them. The book also shows you how to encrypt your router so this won't happen to you.
If you have questions about how to get online for free, let me know and I'll try and answer them.
Here's a link to Amazon for the print version of FREE Internet.
http://www.amazon.com/FREE-Internet-internet-hundreds-building/dp/0967936136/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259787434&sr=1-14
Here's a link to the FREE Internet page on my website.
http://www.randybenjamin.com/html/free_internet.html
Have a great New Year...
Randy
I've already sold several copies (How anyone found it with NO Amazon promotion is beyond me.) and people are sending me questions about projects they're working on.
Most of the questions concern logging onto a wireless IP without knowing who owns it. I'm not a lawyer, so anything I say should not be taken as fact. That said, as a rule of thumb, I try to track down the Internet connections I'm interested in.
Here's an example... there's a Subway and a McDonalds withing a few blocks of me that have FREE Internet advertised on their signs. I can pick up both of them using the WIFI CANnon. In fact, I have a Magic Jack running on one computer (old laptop) that does nothing but run my telephone. This works fine. I get about a 1.3 meg connection from the Subway's router. This is fast enough to give me a solid telephone connection. Since the Internet is free, all I'm really paying for is the $20 a year Magic Jack charge. That beats the local phone company's $22 a month charge hands down.
The connection to the McDonald's router is a lot better. If I take my laptop inside the building, I get a 5 mbps connection. From my home, (Three tents of a mile away by my speedometer.) speed tests average about 3.4 mbps. There are a lot of houses between us that really knock down my connection speed...but that's still pretty good, and considering it's free, it's GREAT!
Both of these businesses have banner adds that come up when you first log on. So there's no doubt as to who is providing the FREE Internet. And since their outdoor signs are telling me to, get online for free - I do! Almost all FREE Internet providers have some kind of advertising that will pop up when you first log onto their IP. They provide the free service as a way to draw in business.
My neighbor and I have a small wireless network. I have to turn my antenna to pick up his router but it's easy as it's just sitting on top of my computer. We like to play Texas Holdum and it works great over the wireless network. I can also get online for free using his Internet connection because he's given me his password.
If you bring up "FREE Internet" on Amazon's website, and look under "Customer supplied pictures" you'll see two screen shots showing the IPs I pickup with the WIFI CANnon aimed in just one direction. One screen shot is with the WIFI CANnon, and the other shows the results of using the USB adapter by itself. It's amazing how many more IPs you will discover with a simple devise you can build for about $11.
It's also amazing how many people leave their home router's encryption turned off. I think of the 21 connections in the screen shot, nine are 'wide open,' totally accessible to anyone who can receive them. The book also shows you how to encrypt your router so this won't happen to you.
If you have questions about how to get online for free, let me know and I'll try and answer them.
Here's a link to Amazon for the print version of FREE Internet.
http://www.amazon.com/FREE-Internet-internet-hundreds-building/dp/0967936136/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259787434&sr=1-14
Here's a link to the FREE Internet page on my website.
http://www.randybenjamin.com/html/free_internet.html
Have a great New Year...
Randy
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