This next one is hard for me. It’s so honest. So raw. And such a completely true feeling for writers and editors everywhere.Â
2. How do I “sell” myself when I feel like a failure—but a failure who could stop being one?
Entries Tagged 'marketing' ↓
How to Sell Yourself - Letters to a Young Editor 2
June 5th, 2007 — editing, inspiring, marketing, publishing
Blog Like Einstein - Finally a Formula that Predicts Blog Traffic with a 0.8 Correlation
May 26th, 2007 — blogging, marketing, thehighcalling.org
So, what’s the best conclusion I can draw from all of this? I need more data. More importantly, I know that more data will be useful because even this small experiment showed that it is very possible to harness the power of blogs in a simple grass roots way. With a little bit of careful instruction, I hope to plan future experiments to target the relative importance of specific variables.
Here are some of the things I’m wondering:
WebLiquid Helps Me Think
May 25th, 2007 — blogtipping, inspiring, marketing
Yesterday, I asked readers to help me help you. The two comments surprised me completely.
6 Characteristics of Blogs That Move Serious Traffic
May 25th, 2007 — blogging, marketing, thehighcalling.org
The top five referring blogs sent us 64% of all the traffic from blogs. Although that’s a lot, our traffic flow was much more evenly distributed than the 80/20 rule you sometimes hear.
So I thought I would just describe some of the common things I noticed in these top 5 blogs.
Blog Tours - What Mattered and What Didn’t
May 24th, 2007 — blogging, blogtipping, marketing, thehighcalling.org
First, I need to give another disclaimer about data set. It is too small to draw a lot of conclusions. However, it is large enough to help me develop some future tests for measuring the power of blogs.
That said, here are the two variables that seemed to matter the most in predicting whether a blog would send traffic or not.
Help Me Help You
May 23rd, 2007 — marketing, readers
John Wesley over at Pick the Brain has 27 lessons he learned while growing his blog readership to 3000 in just six months. (That’s quite a bit higher than the conservative first run of medium-sized Christian Presses, by the way. Also, it’s higher than the subscription rate of many literary magazines.)
Blog Tours - 3 Blog Tricks That Don’t Work
May 22nd, 2007 — blogging, marketing, thehighcalling.org
OK, I’ve got good news and bad news. Let’s start with the bad news first shall we? Here’s what didn’t work.
1) The site reviews didn’t seem to affect traffic.
The more bloggers wrote, the less likely they would send traffic.
This was a surprise to me, but it makes sense. Continue reading →
Blog Tours - What Is a Successful Blog Tour?
May 21st, 2007 — blogging, marketing, networking, thehighcalling.org
We defined success in a simple way: I wanted to prove that blogs can organize themselves to send measurable and significant traffic numbers.Â
But going in, I didn’t know if the High Calling Blog Tour would generate any traffic at all. Remember, our goal was traffic, not sales. And I measured the most conservative estimate of traffic possible: unique users.
So did it work? Did a simple blog tour increase traffic noticeably?
You bet.
Publish At Your Own Risk: a Secular Master’s Advice
March 6th, 2007 — blogging, business, editing, marketing, writing
I found this Robert Silverberg quote in the Nebula Awards Showcase 2006. They called him “Master” not me, but it made for a punchy post title. Silverberg explains the need for caution in publishing:
Each new book usually stands alone, unsheltered by the other titles its publisher may have issued, and if it sells badly, its author will very quickly find himself in commercial trouble, because everybody knows everybody else’s figures. One conspicuous failure from a big house can doom a writer…
‘Browse Inside’ Is Much Ado About Nothing
February 28th, 2007 — blogging, marketing, publishing
Patrick Borders on Emdashery pointed out “Browse Inside” yesterday. It has the potential to be an interesting tool from HarperCollins for readers and bloggers. But it still has some problems.
