When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and
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Have you ever known something was true? Deep down in yourgut where it matters most? Something everybody around you alsoknows? Have you been there, yet something deep inside just won'tbuy it? Well, I'm in that fix right now. I have been for years. Ebook fiction won't sell. I know it's so. And so do most. Likely you do as well. Folks curl up in a chair, sprawl on thecouch, lounge in the bath tub, and so forth to read fiction. Hey, this is the way it is! Still ... You see I love fiction. I love to read it. And I lovedwriting it for many years. (I even sold a novel, "Fatal Games,"Pageant Press, 1989) And I'd love to write another tale. But Idon't want to pay the price to print it. With a minimum order ofa thousand copies at $4-$5/copy? (And don't talk to me aboutprint-on-demand; I've been there and seen that.) So maybe anebook. Maybe. I've been saying this ever since I first heard ebooks. But I have never tried one. Now I'm going to do it. The risk? About 40 hours and 40 bucks. I've a dandy tale ready to go. Sure, all may go down the drain. In which case, I'll reallyknow. But there's that outside chance, like the 40-1 long shotin the race, that at least *some* people *will* read fiction inthe ebook format. So I'm going to ...Go To BizMinisites.Com
(The sales pitch is at
) They have a neat plan for mini-site builders. You get 500Kof disk and lots of supporting extras, all for $9.95 per quarter. Heck, that's not much more than $3/month. And it's a smoothrunning service. Great download times. You don't even need adomain name, but you can use one if you like. Next Stop? GoTo.Com I'll hunt up the keyword suggestion tool at I'll enter some obvious choices. "Male fiction" and "maleadventure," for these are the catagories into which the talefits. There's no telling how much time this will take, because I'vesimply got to find keywords actually being entered. Then selectfrom those entered most often the ones that are as close to theabove as I can find. This is a critcal step, for there's nopoint optimizing a page for keywords nobody uses. Then it's off to Google to enter my keywords there. I'll belooking at counts of pages that come up on each phrase, hoping tofind some low. Those with the highest counts at GoTo (Demand),and lowest counts at Google (Supply) will become the set ofkeywords I'll use.Building Site Content Here's where the time may fly. It takes a while to figurewhat to write about. Topics that work well with the keywordphrases selected. The home page will be the sales presentation,with the major content that blurb you see on the backs of somepaperbacks in bookstores. Something to hook the reader intowanting to read the book. I haven't a fixed idea about actual content. Maybe somethingof the task of writing in the male adventure genre. Some moreabout why it is no longer being published. I can't say until I have those keywords. The object here is to have all pages point directly to maleadventure or male fiction, thus creating a small theme site,currently popular with some search engines. The catch is that it's tough to write an optimized page forthe search engines that also works well with visitors. But it'sgot to happen. And it can take time. (For suggestions aboutcreating such a page, send any email to)The Launch I'll upload the pages, double check them, then head for thesearch engines. Next, I'll get on about serious business, andwait a time. It takes a while these days to get listed. I may take a crack at the pay-per-click search engines, justto get hits more quickly. But to play this game seriously, youneed hard data on hits versus sales.Something Different I'm going to use an approach that again is not supposed towork with fiction. However, it works great with How To titles,so I'll give it a try. I'll let visitors download the book and read the first 50 to 60 pages or so. They will order only if interested in reading the rest of it.Checking And Testing With the above, the site purpose becomes very simple:Generate a download of the book. This is a lot easier to achievethan actually closing the sale. Given any hits at all, theeffectiveness of the site in getting this job done will be easyto measure. Of course the bottom line is, 1) Will anybody be interested? And 2), if so, will anybody buy? That last one is going to be a cliff hanger for a time.What Next? Given sales, I'll know 1) # of hits to get a download, #2) # of downloads to get a sale. Thus I'll know the value of a hit. Sure, it will be soft data; you can't be sure until counts get into the thousands. But hey, if $100/month seems likely, with upside potential, here's what I'll do.Launch More Sites I have five other manuscripts that are equally good. So I'll put them up as described above. If results are equally good, I'll build a central site, still themed, to which the original sites are satelites. Then ...Watch My Dust I'll open the site to other quality work, perferably ingenres no longer published. There are a lot of people likemyself around who have written good tales that never made it into print.If It Works I'll be into a site that cost many hundreds of hours to puttogether, particularly when you add in some scheme for decidingupon new titles to offer and converting them to ebooks. Dollarcosts might be more than $4000. But it will be a winner, for I will have demonstrated at every step along the way that there are enough people who will read ebook fiction to make it fly.An Unwarrented Risk If Built From Scratch In the paragraph above, I consider a fuzzy view of thefuture, one that may not come about. But look at the differencein risk of time and dollars. To build the above, then finallyaccept failure a year out would be a disaster. But with the minimal risks in putting together that firstmini-site, hey, this is going to be fun. I can easily afford a little time and a few bucks. And what if it pays off? So What About You? What crazy idea do you have down deep inside that makespeople chuckle or laugh every time you bring it up? However wild it may be, no matter how many scoff at it, riska little time and a few bucks. You may be able to demonstrateyou were right after all. And you'll be on your way to success. And if it flops? No problem. Just try an even crazier idea. Keep it up, and you'll find gold. Lots of it. Article Tags: Search Engines
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