Author Tech Tips » Websites

6 Reasons Why You Should Avoid GoDaddy

Thomas Umstattd — Tue, 18 May 2010 11:50:01 +0000

There was a time when I have almost 40 domains with GoDaddy. I started using them almost ten years ago back when GoDaddy was a new website with dungeon low prices.

Now I don’t own a single domain with GoDaddy. Here are six reasons why you should move away from GoDaddy too.

#1 GoDaddy Has Terrible Support

I had one client who had constant trouble with her email because GoDaddy support constantly gave her wrong advice. She would have a small problem with her email and would call GoDaddy. By the end of the call her email would be totally broken.

Finally, she hired me to conference in with the GoDaddy representative and interrupt each time the GoDaddy rep would give her bad information. I had to interrupt a lot.

#2 GoDaddy is Expensive

GoDaddy lures customers in with prices that look low. GoDaddy makes it look like .com domains cost $1.99 per year when in reality domains cost $10.69 per year.

Price Breakdown:

GoDaddy $10.69 per year
Namecheap.com $9.69 per year
Name.com $8.99 pear year

They then try to up sell you worthless services like whois “protection.”

#3 GoDaddy is Hard to Use

I cringe any time I hear a novice say they bought a domain on GoDaddy.

GoDaddy spends so much time trying to upsell customers that it takes an act of congress to just buy what you came to buy. If you don’t know what you are doing you may find yourself paying for all sorts of things you don’t need like WHOIS “protection.”

You have to be fairly savvy to use GoDaddy and not get ripped off.

#4 GoDaddy Hosting is Slow

iThemes, a major WordPress theme development company, recently blasted GoDaddy for overselling hosting space. GoDaddy puts thousands of websites on a single server. All those websites compete for server processing time and bandwidth. This causes the sites to run slow especially if any of them are popular. The GoDaddy speed issues are exacerbated by the fact that Google now penalizes slow sites on its search results.

Not only is the hosting slow but making server changes is slow as well. If you change the wrong thing you may not know anything is broken for thirty minutes and it may take another thirty minutes to unchange whatever it is you broke.

#5 GoDaddy Gives Too Little Control

Not only is GoDaddy slow but their server back end is difficult to use and limited. Instead of giving users an industry standard admin interface like cPanel or Plesk they give users a proprietary admin interface that is more interested in selling you more GoDaddy products than in giving you the tools you need.

#6 GoDaddy Uses Smut to Sell

Some people are more concerned about the moral degradation of our country than others. Many people feel the country is moving in the wrong direction. Let me just say that GoDaddy is no force for good in our culture. GoDaddy notoriously has the most offensive Super Bowl ads every year. Each year they submit ads that are deemed too inappropriate even for TV.

They then feature these “too hot for TV” ads on their homepage.

Even the ads that do get approved objectify woman’s bodies and degenerate women into objects of lust for the purpose of making money. This is inappropriate, uncalled for and not something conscientious people should support with their money. If we allow companies to manipulate our sexual desires to make a profit how can we say we are any better than the animals

Thinking authors can do better than GoDaddy.

The Good News

You are not stuck with GoDaddy.

I help authors move away from GoDaddy every week. Namecheap even offers a discount to GoDaddy users who transfer their domains away. Just use the coupon code Switch2NC and you will get a year added to your domain for only $6.99.

There are also a lot of better hosting providers. We here at AuthorTechTips recommend:

Media Temple (Best speed)
Host Gator (Best value)

We recommend that your domain be registered with a different company than where you have your hosting. Your website is safer when you don’t have all your eggs in one basket and the companies who are the best at domains (like Namecheap) are often not the same companies who are best at hosting (Media Temple and Host Gator).

Disclosure: While I have signed up for the Host Gator and Namecheap affiliate programs none of the links in this post are affiliate links. I want you to believe me when I say GoDaddy is not the best choice.

Related posts:

How to Track Your Author Website’s Effectiveness

Rob Eagar — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:51:13 +0000

Just because you have a website doesn’t mean that it’s effective. Fortunately, there are easy ways to track if your website is helping to build your author platform.

Monitor Tangible Outcomes

First, you can monitor tangible outcomes, such as tracking new subscribers to your newsletter, speaking engagement inquiries, media interview requests, or book sales from your website. If you send visitors to Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com (which I don’t recommend) you can check your book’s ranking and see if it improves. Use www.TitleZ.com to gauge your book’s Amazon ranking over time.

Analyze Website Statistics

Another good tracking tool is to analyze your website statistics. If your web designer or hosting company doesn’t provide this information, you can set it up for free with Google Analytics. After you create a free account, Google will provide you with special computer code that you embed into your website’s individual pages. Once you do this, then Google will track all of your website data for you.

When you examine your website statistics, however, make sure you concentrate on the right information. For example, basing your site’s effectiveness on how many “hits” or “pageviews” you get is a flawed notion. These are inflated figures that don’t give you accurate information about your web traffic. A better guide is to track how many “Unique Visitors” your site receives. This number reflects how many different people actually visited your site, which is a better reflection of your real platform.

How to Bring Visitors Back

If you notice a decline in visitors, sales, signups, or other factors, it could mean that people are bored with your website. So, take time each month to assess where you can add new content that provides value to your readers. If you run out of ideas, bring in guests with a similar message. People will appreciate your desire to help them, and they’ll show it by returning to your website on a regular basis. And, the more often people return, the more likely they will buy your books.

Used with permission from WildFire Marketing by Rob Eagar

Related posts:

The Top 5 Author Website Mistakes

Thomas Umstattd — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:26:24 +0000

Here are five things not to do with your author website.

This is a must read if you don’t yet have a website because these tips will save you a lot of heartache in the future.

If you already have a website read with caution.

Website Mistake #1 – Focusing on Design Over Content

If you want someone to visit your website it must be the most interesting thing on the Internet – for that person at that time.

Your website design is like the frame around a picture. Many authors spend more time on the wrapping paper than they do on the present. The design makes little difference regarding how successful your site is. You may disagree but Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson, is with me on this.

Website Mistake #2 – Focusing on the Author over the Reader

Yes yes you’re a big famous author. But people still don’t care about you. They care about themselves. Think that is selfish? Take the plank out of your own eye before you can point the finger. If you offer something of value your readers will want to come back. Photos of your kids will not bring them back.

If you focus on your readers they will love you.

If the goal of your website is to stroke your own narcissism then it will never succeed.

Website Mistake #3 – Hiring Your Brother in Law

Many authors get a friend or relative to build their website. In all of the consultations I have done at writers conferences I have yet to hear an author who is happy with this arrangement. The exception to this rule is when the web guy is also the husband. I have seen that work.

The story is usually the same. Your brother in law has some fancy website software and promises to keep it up to date. The problem is your brother in law has no idea how often you want to update the website. Since its a free project it becomes a low priority and the author spends years frustrated about her “free” website.

Updating your website becomes as important as cleaning the garage. It will get done next week. Promise.

Website Mistake #4 – Building it Yourself

Some authors spend hundreds of dollars to buy Frontpage or Dreamweaver and build their website themselves. The problem is most authors have no idea about how to build a website. They don’t know about search engine optimization or how to integrate a blog.

The result? They have a blogspot blog and an ugly site.

Building your own site does allow you to update it yourself but there is a better way.

Website Mistake #5 – Out of date

If you can’t edit your website it will always be out of date – unless you have a budget to hire someone to update it for you. But is it really worth $60 to make a minor update? Begging your brother in law to update your site for free is an exercise in frustration. If you pay someone to build you a site make sure you get a site you can easily update yourself.

My Recommendation

Hire a company to build you a WordPress website. A template driven WordPress site usually costs less than $1000 and will look professional and be easy for you to update. WordPress is also easy to search engine optimize and can look very sharp. You can also get WordPress custom designed for between $1500-$5000. You can get bids from hundreds of WordPress developers on elance.com. My company, Umstattd Media, also builds WordPress websites for authors.

If you are on a tight budget I recommend Squarespace. It costs $20 a month and is easy to design. You can hire a designer off of elance who can help you customize it for a couple hundred bucks.

What do you think?

Do you agree?
Are you happy with your website? Why or why not?
What do you look for in an author website?

Related posts:

The Top 5 Domain Name Traps

Thomas Umstattd — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:25:24 +0000

When you pick a domain name for your website make sure to avoid these traps.

Once you commit to a domain name changing is a lot of hassle.

Learn what to avoid now before it is to late.

Trap 1) A Short Domain Name

The general rule of thumb is that the longer the name the harder it is to remember. But you must measure length carefully. ThreeWordSite.com is a shorter site than vpci.net.

Why?

Because with ThreeWordSite.com you only need to remember three words whereas vpci.net forces you to remember four letters.

Trap 2) Alternative Domains

There are only two types of domains in this world. .com and everything else. Get at a .com at all costs. The only time to get something other than a .com is if you simply cannot find what you are looking for. In that case only get a .org or .net. Anything other than those top three and you won’t be taken seriously. If you get a .org be prepared to loose traffic to the .com unless you buy them both.

Trap 3) Dashes

Avoid dashes at all costs. They-are-hard to remember and don’t add value to your domain. It is better to use CamelCase. CamelCase uses capital letters to distinguish the words instead of dashes. It is just as easy to read and much easier to remember. Dashes cause your website to fail the radio test.

Trap 4) Abbreviations

Abbreviations make your domain harder to remember. Especially if the domain is part abbreviation and part whole word. I worked for a non profit called Stoneworks International. Was their website StoneworksInternational.com? No. It was StoneworksInt.com a much harder to remember name. Now they have StoneworksInternational.com and StoneworksInternational.org. Abbreviations also cause your website to fail the radio test.

Trap 5) Phonetic Landmines

Some domains contain more than one word. For example www.therapistfinder.com could be read as TherapistFinder.com or TheRapistFinder.com. The capitals help make it clear but your domain will usually be shown in alllowercase. Read your domains carefully before you buy them.

Related posts:

How to Track Your Message Online

Rob Eagar — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:26:46 +0000

Whether you’re an author, speaker, or publisher, your goal is to sell more books and spread your message. But, how do you know if your message is really spreading? How do you track the success of your book marketing and platform-growth efforts?

There are several obvious factors you could use, such as increased book sales, speaking engagements, or newsletter subscribers. In this article, however, I want to share two little-known services that you can use for free to help gauge your book marketing effectiveness.

Google Analytics

Your website is your most important book marketing tool in today’s economy. But, many authors fail to utilize the power of the Internet. Instead, they settle for a barebones website, rarely update the content, forget about it, and wonder why book sales are sluggish.

In contrast, you can use your website to your advantage. And, there’s a great tool that can help called, Google Analytics. This is a free service available at: www.Google.com/Analytics Once you create your account, Google generates a specific piece of computer code that you embed on each of your webpages. It’s a simple task, but if you’re unfamiliar with html code, then ask your webmaster or designer for help.

After your code is setup, Google automatically begins to track all of your website statistics and provide insightful reports. Here’s why it’s so cool. According to Google, their service shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance their visitor experience. They provide reports that identify important information, such as:

How many unique visitors come to your website
Where each visitor comes from
How long people stay at your website
Why they leave and which pages are popular
What keywords people use to find your website

For instance, knowing what keywords drive readers to your website is invaluable. You can use that data to adjust your site in ways to help boost web traffic and grow your author platform. In addition, Google Analytics can help you improve your website’s return on investment, increase conversions, and make more money selling products.” Sure, the making more money part isn’t as easy as it sounds, but Google can at least point you in the right direction.

Until recently, website analytics software was really expensive. But, thanks to Google, it’s free. So, if you’re struggling to make your website work for you, consider this service.

TitleZ.com

If you’re an author who loves to peek at your book’s Amazon ranking, then you’re going to love this next tool. There’s a free service still in beta testing called TitleZ, which allows you to analyze the sales trends of books based on data compiled from Amazon’s sales rankings. The current database contains sales history information for over 500,000 titles. And, if your book isn’t currently being tracked, you can easily add it to their database.

TitleZ lets you analyze sales for an individual title, a specific author or publisher, or even an entire segment. The sales history of titles is broken down into seven-day, 30-day, 90-day, and lifetime averages. Plus, you can compare the sales trends of several books against each other.

I like this service, because you can also track your book’s sales history over time, even down to a particular date. This ability allows you to see if a specific media interview or marketing initiative created a spike in book sales.

Since Amazon’s sale rankings are not totally accurate, do not get obsessed with their numbers. Amazon is just one small slice of your book’s total sales. But, it can be one way to track your book’s overall success. For instance, you could check your “lifetime average” ranking and compare that with this chart on my blog for a rough estimate of Amazon sales.

Amazon isn’t the most reliable book sales tracking tool. But, since it’s almost impossible to get current sales information from bookstores and publishers, TitleZ.com can be a useful resource. Take advantage of this free service before they start charging for it.

Related posts:

Don’t Play Hide & Seek with Your Readers

Rob Eagar — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:35:26 +0000

While surfing the web recently, I visited several author websites and noticed an alarming problem. Whenever these individuals offered a free resource to download from their website – the documents were devoid of any contact information! Don’t be guilty of the same blunder.

3 Reasons to Stop Hiding

Whenever you offer any kind of resource from your website or blog, ALWAYS INCLUDE YOUR FULL CONTACT INFORMATION. And, if my shouting all-cap font isn’t enough to convince you, here are three reasons why:

Leaving off your contact information makes you look like a forgetful amateur. Professional authors know how to cover their marketing bases, which means they make sure anyone can always find them. You should, too.
If someone downloads a resource from your website to read later, but you didn’t list your contact info – then they may forget where they got the information from – which means you just lost a potential sale.
Most important: Many people may download resources from your website to give to a friend (this is called “word-of-mouth” – the holy grail of marketing). But, if you don’t include your contact information, then the new person can’t find you – which means you just lost another potential sale.

What to Include

Contact information…put it on everything. And, don’t be stingy…include your:

Website address,
Phone number (preferably a toll-free number),
Email address,
Mailing address (or P.O. Box).

Don’t play hide-and-seek with your customers…because people can’t buy your books if they can’t find you.

Related posts:

8 URL Display Traps Authors Fall Into

Thomas Umstattd — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:47:18 +0000

So you bought a fancy new domain and now it is time to print business cards and fliers. Many authors print their URL in such a way that no one remembers it. Don’t be one of those authors. The following post has the 8 taps most authors fall into and how to avoid those traps.

Special thanks to our good friends at Good URL Bad URL for letting us use their photos.

Trap 1 – alllowercase

Don’t do this. typinginalllowercasecausesthewordstoblendtogether. If you want people to remember your URL use CamelCase.

Trap 2 – ALLUPERCASE

Don’t do this either. When you go all caps people start thinking about the letters instead of the words with is much harder to remember. THISISJUSTASBADASALLLOWERCASEBUTITLOOKSLIKEYOUARESHOUTINGTOO

Trap 3 – http://www.

This third trap not only catches authors when they print their domain but also when they say their domain. You never need to put “http://”. You usually don’t need to put the WWW either.

Imagine you are doing a radio interview and you hear the closing music start to play. The host asks you to give your website one more time. What do you say?

What not to say: “For more help about (book title) visit my website at http://www.booktitle.com”
What to say: “For more info about (book title) visit BookTitle.com.”

Do you see what just happened? You were able to mention you book title twice right at the end of the show. The listeners are much more likely to remember your title and website than they were zoning out to http://www.

Trap 4 – Multiple Lines

Displaying your URL across multiple lines is a great way to get people to fail to find your site. Many people will think this is an add for USA.com which it is not.

Trap 5 – Too Small

It is important that you make sure you URL is big enough to be seen. Imagine yourself 40 years older. Can you still read your URL?

Trap 6 – Confusing Spaces

Spaces get you into trouble. Is this site Boredom.com or BanBoredom.com?

Trap 7 – Not Owning Common Misspellings

Amazon.com also owns Amizon.com why? Because people say “Amizon” and are likely to type the word the way they say it.

Trap 8 – Confusing Fonts

Sometime fonts can help make long URLs more clear. In other instances the fonts can just make the URL more confusing.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and let us know.

Related posts:

How To Setup Google Analytics on WordPress (Video)

Thomas Umstattd — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:45:01 +0000

Google analytics answers the who visits your site, when they visit and even why they visit.

This post has a video that explains Google Analytics in clear easy language. And it has a pause button if you want to follow along.

How To Setup Google Analytics on WordPress

This video gives you step by step instructions on how to install google analytics on your self hosted wordpress blog.

Related posts:

Where To Find Free & Legal Stock Photos Online

Thomas Umstattd — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:26:46 +0000

Stop using google image search. Using those images is often illegal and they are not the best images anyway.

Here are a dozen sites that are better and legal.

1. Stock Exchange

Of all of the stock photo sites on the web sxc.hu is the best. It has high quality free stock photos. But be careful. The first row of photos cost money. Clicking on them will take you to a different site where you have to pay. Most of the photos we use here at AuthorTechTips.com come from sxc.hu.

2. Flickr Creative Commons

Flickr has a huge selection of photos mane of which are protected under the Creative Commons which means you can use them legally as long as you attribute the photographer.

3. EveryStockPhoto.com

Every Stock Photo searches several other stock image sites for you. It does not filter offensive images, so use with caution.

4. MorgueFile.com

Morgue File has many photos that you are free to use commercially without attributing the photographer. The photos are mostly snapshots and not true stock photos.

5. FreeStockPhotos.com

Not only does Free Stock Photos have some great nature photos it also has a list of over a dozen other free stock photo sources.

6. IconsPedia.com

Icons Predia has the best selection of free icons. If you want to add a cool Twitter Bird to your website this is the first place to look.

7. BiblePlaces.com

If you need biblical photos BiblePlaces.com is a great place to start.

8. NASA

I’m not sure how this happened but if the U.S. government takes a photo they often release it into the public domain. If you want high quality technology or space photos you can’t do much better than NASA.

9. StockVault.net

StockVault has 13,000+ high quality stock photos. The photos are high quality but low selection. The site does not offer safe search so use at your own risk.

10. FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Freedigitalphotos.net has high quality photos but the selection is not great and the terms of use require a link back to use the photo for free.

11. FreePhotosBank.com

FreePhotosbank has a lame selection of mediocre photos.

12. HistoricalStockPhotos.com

If you want vintage photos Historical Stock Photos is the site for you. Don’t expect much color here.

Related posts:

7 Tools for Finding the Ideal Domain Name

Thomas Umstattd — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:16:51 +0000

Have you ever needed a new domain name (something.com) but not known how to find the right one? Here are some free tools that can help you.

Getting a name does not need to be hard.

#1 Instant Domain Search

By far the fastest tool in the roundup, Instant Domain Search looks for names while you type. If you don’t own YouName.com go to Instant Domain Search right now and see if it is available. As an author there is no alternative to owning your own name. Go check right now. If its available you can buy it from NameCheap.com for $9.69 a year. You will be glad you did. We’ll still be here when you get back :-)

#2 Domains Bot

Domains Bot is my favorite tool because it not only looks for available domains but also domains for sale by someone else. Sometimes the best names are already registered but for sale at a higher price. Buying a second hand domain can be much more expensive but may be worth it depending on the site you are creating.

Domains bot can also help you find available domains based off of key words and synonyms.

#3 Name Boy

NameBoy lets you put in a couple of words and then it looks for domains around those words or similar words. The interface is clunky and the prices are high but once you find the name you want to buy you can get it cheaper from NameCheap.com.

#4 Domain Name Generator

Type in a word or phrase and the Domain Name Generator will help you find an available name. Put in key words and out pops recommendations.

#5 Domain Name Typo Generator

Just like the name suggests the Domain Name Typo Generator helps you think of typos. When I first heard about Amazon.com I typed in Amizon.com because that’s how I thought it was spelled. Fortunately, Amazon owns amizon.com so no harm was done. Imagine if some other site bought that name. They could use it for some nefarious purposes.

#6 Domai.nr

There are a lot of new domain extensions out there. You have probably seen .us and .uk. Sometimes websites will take those strange extensions and use them to spell a word. The most famous is del.icio.us. It spells the word “delicious” but all they had to buy was icio.us. Matt Mulenweg Purchased ma.tt.

Domai.nr helps you think of cleaver spellings like that on unusual extensions.

#7 Picky Domains

If you are simply at a loss Picky Domains will connect you with over a dozen domain experts who will recommend domain names for you. You deposit $50 and give them your specifications. Their contributors start submitting domain name suggestions hoping to earn $25 from the deal. When you see that perfect domain, you just register it. If none of their suggestions worked for you – you just get your money back.

What do you think?

Are there tools you use not on this list? Share them below.

Related posts:

6 Things Readers Want from Your Author Website

Thomas Umstattd — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:49:23 +0000

If you build it they won’t come. The only way to get people to visit your author website is to give them something they are looking for. But what is that?

This article summarizes research done by the Codex Group about what readers want from author websites.

1. Exclusive Content

43% of respondents to the Codex Group Survey want exclusive online content.

This is an untapped goldmine. Provide special goodies exclusively on your site and watch your visits blast off. Give them fun stuff they would be willing to pay for. MP3′s short stories, whole books. Go crazy.

Seth Godin gives more stuff away for free on his blog than most other authors. He also sells more books than most other authors. He gives stuff away on his blog only to his blog readers. He has no “goodies” page.

2. Your Speaking Schedule

36% want speaking schedules, book signings, and appearances.

This is really true, particularly for guys. I check Mark Cahill’s website often just to see if he is coming to Texas. Posting your speaking schedule can also increase your appeal as a speaker. If event planners know you bring your own crowd they will be willing to pay you more.

3. Recommended Books

36% want to see recommended books; “explainers,” or inside information about the book.

This is also a great way to make a little extra money on the side since amazon will give you a commission on any book sales you refer using their affiliate program. Garr Reynolds does book recommendations well. He doesn’t just recommend a book, he explains the jist of the book visually. He also has a list of recommended books along the right side of his site.

4. Book News

33% want weekly e-mail news bulletins with updates on tours, reviews, and books in progress.

Let your website visitors feel like they are on the “in crowd” they get to know about stuff first and get special perks by visiting your website.

5. Your Contact Information

Nothing is more frustrating for readers than to digg up an authors website only not to be able to contact that author. Setup an email address just for getting reader feedback. The practice of corresponding with readers is centuries old. C.S. Lewis used to spend hours hand writing responses to his reader’s letters. If he can do that the least you can do is give people your email.

5. Your Social Networking Information

Are you on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter? Make sure to include buttons so that your readers can connect to you on those networks.

6. Good Photos

People don’t want to see lots of plain text when they come to your site. They also don’t want to see that snapshot your husband took of you in the back yard. You don’t need photos of you necessarily but you need photos of something. Use photos that relate to your topic. Get some professional photos of yourself.

Related posts:

Easy E-Commerce and Fulfillment from Home

Rob Eagar — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:38:05 +0000

As a follow-up to my article, Don’t Bow Down to Amazon, maybe you’re wondering, “What’s the alternative? Isn’t Amazon the best way to sell my books from my website?” No way, and if you haven’t, first read my previous post for the 3 big reasons why.

Instead, I encourage you to consider selling books from your website and doing the fulfillment yourself. Now, I know you’re immediately thinking, “But that’s time-consuming and expensive! I’ll have to pay big bucks for a fancy website store and waste all my writing time shipping book orders.” Not anymore.

Today, you can use PayPal to handle e-commerce and all credit card sales directly from your website. Plus, you can setup a free online account with the U.S. Postal Service to buy postage, print professional mailing labels, order free shipping supplies, and ship packages – without ever leaving your house. Once you setup your system, most book orders can be completed in less than five minutes. It’s one of the best deals in the history of bookwriting!

With PayPal and the USPS.com, you don’t have to setup a separate merchant account or stand in long lines at the Post Office. Plus, you get credit card fraud protection and a virtual terminal from PayPal and free delivery confirmation from the USPS. And, all transactions are completed online.

Stop sending your website visitors to buy your books at Amazon.com. Otherwise, you’ll miss out on important profits, customer contact information, and marketing effectiveness. You don’t need Amazon to make it as an author – you can do it yourself.

Note: If you’re a fiction author, you’re probably reading this and crying out, “But my publisher will be mad, because if I sell books from my website or at events, then it won’t count towards my sales numbers!” Relax…if you’re helping to sell more books and grow your platform, your publisher won’t care about selling books from your website. They’ll be happy, because they know that you’re growing your platform, which means higher sales potential for your next book.

Some of you need to stop worrying about your publisher’s concerns and start worrying about making your writing career last longer. Remember, to publishers, it doesn’t matter where the book sales come from, as long as there are sales. And, happy, growing authors make happy, growing publishers. Without successful authors, publishers can’t exist.

Related posts:

Authors: Don’t Bow Down to Amazon

7 Ways to Send More Traffic to Your Website During a Radio Interview

Thomas Umstattd — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:53:21 +0000

Imagine you are doing a radio interview and you hear the closing music start to play. The host asks you to give your website one more time. What do you say?

#1 Repeat Your Domain

On average, radio listeners listen for about 5 minutes at a time. So If you are in a 30 minute interview and you mention your website twice more than half of the listeners will never hear how to get more information. Don’t wait for the host to remind you to push your site.

#2 Include a Goodie

You want to give the listeners a reason to visit your website. I’m not just talking about a sample chapter here. Give them something they can only get on your website. This tip alone can more than double your hits after an interview.

Whatever you give away make sure to get it professionally edited. Then you can setup an auto responder so that anyone who signs up for your newsletter gets it for free. Or just add it as a pdf download.

Fiction Goodie Ideas

If you write fiction take some of that back story you cut and put it together into an interesting 10 page short story.

Or put together some short stories from your box of short stories.

Non Fiction Goodie Ideas

Non fiction has a ton of potential for creative goodies.

Writing a book on marriage? Put together a 10 Dating Ideas for Married Couples guide.
Writing a book on parenting? Write up the 7 Funniest Things Children Say.
Writing a book on music? Include a free mp3 download.
Writing a book on personalities? Include a free personalty test.

Be creative. This is also a chance to supplement your book with videos, music, tests and other media that paper cannot convey.

#3 Buy YourBookTitle.com

You don’t need to build a new web site for this step. You can buy YouBookTitle.com from NameCheap for $9.69 and have NameCheap forward visitors to your real website automatically. The benefit of pushing YourBookTitle.com is that it makes people twice as likely to remember your book and your website. When you push one you push the other

#4 Don’t Say “Http://”

Saying “http://” is code for “zone out now.” Don’t do it. They don’t need to type it. You don’t need to say it.

#5 Don’t Say “www” Either

People know to type the www. And, even if they forget they will go to your website anyway. Don’t believe me? Type “YourWebsite.com” into your browser and see where you land.

#6 What to Say

What not to say: “For more help about (book title) visit my website at http://www.mywebsitename.com”

What to say: “For more info about (book title) visit BookTitle.com. And while there don’t forget to downlaod my free short story about Carl the cowboy ninja who falls in love with a pirate princes…”

Do you see what just happened? You were able to mention your book title and your website twice right at the end of the show. This is a double win. The listeners are much more likely to remember your title and website than they were zoning out to “http://www.”

#7 Repeat Your URL

We are not kidding about this tip. If you want people to visit your site they must know about it. Repeat Repeat it as often as you can without becoming obnoxious.

What do you think?

Related posts:

5 Things Visitors Don’t Want From Your Author Blog

Thomas Umstattd — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:43:25 +0000

Don’t waste your time doing things on your author blog that turn your readers away.

This post gives you five things your readers don’t want from your author blog.

1 – Posts Over 1000 Words

People have no patience for long posts. Even 500 words is pushing it. If you have 1000 words to say and can’t cut anymore break your post into several shorter posts. For some comparison this post is less than 300 words.

2 – Long Paragraphs

People have no patience for long paragraphs either. Use no more than four lines. The “enter” key is your friend. Remember: It’s all online so you don’t need to worry about wasting paper

3 – Boring Titles

The temptation when writing a blog post title is to describe your post. Never do this. People won’t read your post if the title is a description. Instead tell your readers why they should read the post. Better a long title that sells than a short title that describes. For tips on writing better titles read 5 Keys for Magnetic Blog Titles.

4 – Generic Posts About Being a Better Christian

If you have a Christian audience the thinking is to write a post on some generic subject like grace or love. The problem is that your audience already listens to hours of generic sermons every week.

You must be very specific if you want people to read your work. You need to know who your target audience is and who your target audience is not. It is better to thrill a small group than to please a large group. If you thrill someone he will spread your message. If you please someone she will just consume your message.

5 – Unedited Short Stories

As much as your readers would love to read your short stories and guides they don’t want to read typo ridden overspeak. If you are going to have a goodies section make sure you only have publisher quality content.

Related posts:

The Best Way to Track Site Statistics

Thomas Umstattd — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:55:36 +0000

What do your readers want? Without knowing the answer you can’t make them happy. Tracking your site stats allows you you to make adjustments to thrill your readers.

If you want advocates you need to read this post.

Hits Are Misleading

Tracking hits gives you an and incomplete picture. Many of your “hits” come from non-human visitors called spiders. These “bots” collect information for search engines or leave you spam comments. It is important to know how many humans visit your site, what they look at and why. Tracking Hits doesn’t answer these question.

Comments Don’t Match Traffic

Comments are also a poor way of tracking traffic. I have a page on ThomasUmstattd.com that is my most visited page. It gets hundreds of unique visitors every week. But it only has one comment. I have other posts that get no traffic but have over a dozen comments.

Analytics Are the Key

An analytics package like google analytics tells you much more than just how many hits you have. It answers more than just “how many” but also “who,” “where” and “why.” Here are some popular analytics solutions.

Analytics Solutions:

Google Analytics – Free, accurate and easy to setup. Google analytics makes it easy to track the stats for several sites all at once. AuthorTechTips Pick!
Woopra – Free, fast and snazzy looking.
SiteMeter – SiteMeter has been around for a long time. Free package does not give you much info though.
WordPress.com – If you use wordpress.com you already have an excellent analytics package. They even have a great video explaining how to use it.

Google Analytics

Google analytics will give you the following information and more:

Where your visitors come from. Which sites refer the most people to your blog?
What your most popular posts are.
What search engines your users are using.
What keywords they search to find your site. Use this information to focus new content on those keywords. If you can “own” a word or phrase in google you win.
What part of the country they are from. You might be surprised how many international readers you have.
What browsers they use. Make sure your blog looks good on those browsers. Not everyone uses internet explorer.
What pages they visit and in what order. Do people just visit one page and bounce away or do they go from page to page?
What pages have the lowest bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your website after visiting that page.

What do you think?

What do you use to track site visitors? Do you like it?

Related posts:

Does Your Website Pass the Radio Test?

Thomas Umstattd — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 23:59:21 +0000

When you say your website on the radio can listeners find it? Can they spell it? The radio test is not just important for the radio. Anytime someone talks about your website you want to make sure the listener goes to the right site.

Here are 7 tests to see if your website passes the radio test.

Test 1 – Numbers?

When you say a number over the radio it will fail the test. 12Step.org sounds just like TwelveStep.org. Only one site will help you with addiction recovery.

12Step.org (fail)
TwelveStep.org? (fail)

How to get around this pitfall: Buy both domains then have one forward to the other. So if your book title was 8 Ways to Save Your Marriage I would buy both 8WaysToSaveYourMarriage.com and EightWaysToSaveYourMarraige.com.

Test 2 – Similar Sounds?

My website cgames.com is short but it fails this test. Is it SeeGames.com or SeaGames.com? Can’t tell. I always end up spelling it over the air. To make matters worse, the letter “c” sounds like half a dozen other letters.

cGames.com (fail)
SeeGames.com (fail)
SeaGames.com (fail)

How to get around this pitfall: Before you buy a domain, call a friend and tell them what domain you want to buy. Ask them to spell it back to you.

Test 3 – Acronyms

When your website is an acronym instead of a word you say the individual letters. The letters “b” “c” “d” “e” “g” “p” “t” “v” and “z” all sound the same over a bad radio connection. Buy domains with words not letters whenever possible.

ccsa.info (potential fail)
cbsa.info (potential fail)

This not a universal rule. YMCA.com will work. If people know the acronym or what it stands for you can sometimes get away with it.

Test 4 – Underscores?

Avoid underscores at all costs. They are cheesy and they take too long to say over the radio.

KathyHoward.org (pass)
Kathy_Howard.com (fail)

Test 5 – Dashes?

Most listeners don’t know what a dash is or how to type it. They also get confused with the difference between a dash and a hyphen.

FreedomForGamers.com (pass)
Freedom-For-Gamers.com (fail)
Freedom4Gamers.com (fail)
Freedom-4-Gamers.com (epic fail)

Test 6 – Text Speak

Just because “u” means “you” on a text message does not mean it will work for your domain. HelpForU.com sounds cheesy and it fails the radio test.

HelpForU.com (fail)
HelpForYou.com (potential fail)

I would completely avoid the word “you” in your domain.

Test 7 – Weird Spelling?

The problem with UmstattdMedia.com and ThomasUmstattd.com is that no one can spell “Umstattd.” If the word is not in Websters it will fail the radio test. If your 7th grader can’t spell it, your domain fails the radio test.

UmstattdMedia.com (fail)
ThomasUmstattd.com (fail)

What do you think?

Have you ever been confused with how a URL sounds? How about your domain? Does it pass the radio test?

Related posts:

8 Quick Search Engine Optimization Tips:

Thomas Umstattd — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:00:48 +0000

There is an art to getting listed high in Google. Here are 8 things that can help improve your “Google points.”

Remember: There is no magic bullet for getting high search engine rankings. It takes a while to accumulate “Google points.” Be patient.

If you have your blog hosted on a site like TypePad or Blogger you are limited to the first 5 tips. You need to host your own site to be able to use tips 6-8.

8 Easy SEO Tips:

Provide remarkable content. The more remarkable you are, the more links from other sites you will get. There is no substitute for having awesome content. Remember, for someone to visit your site it must be the most interesting thing on the internet for that person at that time. Otherwise, they will go somewhere else. No amount of SEO will fix boring.
Tag each post. 4-5 tags is ideal. Tags are like keywords that link your posts to each other. Click on one of the tags for this post and it will show you all the other posts with that tag.
Put each post in a category. Try not to use more than two categories. The principle here is many tags, few categories.
Keep your comment section free from spam. Google doesn’t like spam. If your site feels spammy you get negative “Google points.”
Use headings
instead of making text bold. Whatever you put inside a heading tag gets bonus “Google points.”
Use Friendly URLs. Don’t have www.YourSite.com/?p=123. instead use www.YourSite.com/2008/post-title/
Incorporate an XML site map. If you have WordPress the Google XML Sitemaps plugin will do this for you automatically.
Make sure each page title corresponds with the title of that post. If you use WordPress, the All In One SEO Plugin will do this for you automatically.

Did this make sense? Feel free to leave questions in the comments section if it didn’t.

Related posts: