Self Publishing

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I just started a new thread for this:

@Harlowe: Looks like your link in the other thread slipped by me; I'll take a look!

@LuLu: I mentioned to my sister that she totally needs a blog as part of her big picture strategy. She said she had this great teaser chapter. It is interesting material. I can't get more than about 5 minutes of her time at a time, so I've only heard little snippets. So, I would like to see the blog myself.

Here are some drawings which I found because I saw a link saying that this was purported to be an alien programming language. The drawings are certainly interesting. I don't remember her exact comments on these other than she said she saw some of the same _math_stuff_ in this that she was seeing elsewhere.

Below are a couple pieces of the diagrams, and here's a link to what looks like the complete set. As far as my official opinion as a computer engineer, beats the fuck outta me.

http://www.top10ufo.com/displayimage.php?album=5&pos=4

[Freecare Spiritwise]

This is in response to LuLu's post that I copied and pasted in an email...

Hey bro,
I just read this, and it is really good advice. It sounds like traditional publishing is the way to go, and I'm not really afraid of that. I used to edit technical documents for a living, and I also used to teach English grammar, so I am way ahead on the curve when it comes to both editing and presentation.

I started writing a "Summary of Work in Progress" today as a sort of teaser to show the hundreds of people I will probably meet in England. It will allow me to get instant feedback on my ideas, as well as drum up interest in the book.

I'm assuming I can leak certain parts, and then publish the whole thing later... Will you confirm this with your friend? I'm going to try to keep the summary under 10 pages, maybe 20 at most... then I will print a bunch of copies to take with me, and I will post it on the web also, maybe in blog format... I dunno... I don't think I have time to establish a blog before I go. I just have too much to do.

My new goal is to get the book finished and published by the end of this year. I think it is doable, especially if I am strategic in the connections I make next month. The woman who is giving the private tour of Stonehenge, _redacted_ is one of the photographers who flies over the crop circles and takes pictures every time a new one appears. It would be nice if I could secure the rights to use any of her photos in my book...

Anyway, thanks for the help on this, and cheers, mate!
~A.

I told her to send it to me and I'd get the blog done. Oh and /jealous of the private tour of Stonehenge. Also, I redacted the name of that photographer, just because I'm a dumbass about stuff like that. I'll add it later once I ask...

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Blog Promotion

My daughter said something like:

You should not only be promoting your own blog, but you should be promoting the blogs of people you know, as well as befriending bloggers you like and promoting them too. That way, everyone gets their blogs promoted. Also, try to earn the respect of and befriend some of the larger bloggers, because they have the larger audience.

Sounds like good advice to me. She also said to start a blogroll and get used to reading as many blogs as I could.

Facebook Promotion

I have purposely tried to keep my FB friends list down to just the people I know and like. What a concept. But that's not so great for whoring out my blog posts. So, the question in my mind is: Should I create dedicated FB pages for my blogs?

[Alluveal]

Just a quick note (I'll post more later).

I wouldn't put any sample chapters online just yet. Her work would then be considered "already published." And yeah, I agree with the blogging. The best thing to do is visit other sites similar to hers. Also, have her check out message boards that might direct people to her site. Not just showing up and posting links, but developing relationships within certain communities. abovetopsecret.com is a good place to start.

Will answer more later. Just got home and need to sit on the couch and stare at nothing for a bit.

[Alluveal]

Hey back! Been busy and under the weather.

On blogging chapter stuff. Yeah, I'd be careful on posting chapters on blogs and such. That makes it hard to get the work published sometimes. BUT, I only know fiction. Maybe Nonfiction is different? This is where she'd have to research.

The drawings are really fascinating and this kind of stuff is a huge hit on the coast to coast radio show. If her book gets some nice attention, who knows what might happen. She could be like crazy-haired ancient alien dude on the History channel.

On promotion, have her read Konrath's site and get some ideas there. He's a whiz at it, even if it's the douche-lord. Just by joining Twitter, I have all kinds of people joining my feed that have similar interests. It's weird. Twitter is awesome. And, many of those people have blogs that she can add to a blog "roll" or whatnot.

As to your question about FB, yeah. Absolutely. Have a separate FB page, but use it for other things besides just whoring out blog links and such. Be active on it. Post other links to other folks with similar ideas. I have to manage a FB blog for my company, so I make sure to share, link, and post to as many other similar/like-minded sites as I can.

I hope that helps! Let me know how it goes. I'm fascinated by this.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

My blogs are getting some page hits, and it's estimating my income this month into the 3 figures, though I don't understand most of those numbers yet. And one of my flashlight reviews on my outdoor blog (link below) caught the attention of the manufacturer. They really liked the review and pictures. I doubt it'll ever be a living, but I sure the hell won't turn away checks from Google. I thought it would take longer to hit this first milestone as a blogger.

Here's the review I'm talking about. It's a badass little AAA flashlight. On low mode it will go almost 30 hours in an emergency, with a common alkaline battery. And on high, you get a car headlight for an hour, on something that fits on your keychain. I like knowing that anyone that drives one of my vehicles has a small flashlight with them.

Review: Thrunite Ti [AAA keychain light]

I started blogging just to blow off steam and give my engineering resume some street cred with a tech blog, but I'm having a seriously good time with this. I'm also not too far away from getting some free schwag for doing my reviews. And having no expectations makes it literally all gravy. Blogging is fun!

@LuLu: My sister said thanks for the advice. She's having a good time as well. She was saying that she looks forward to going on some of those radio shows like the one you mentioned to plug her book. I guess it's easy to get on those shows. Her blog will have to wait until she's back from England. And yeah, everyone has called her stupid for planning her trip right before the Olympics. But it still sounds cool. I could setup her blog but most of that basic setup has to happen organically I think. Her blog is her blog. We might trade authorship access, though. I'm trying to figure out how to add my stepdaughter as an author on my blogs.

[Alluveal]

That is way cool, Free. How are you doing the income with the google ads and such? And how are you drive traffic to your site? Just by doing some google word stuffs? God, it's been a while since I've even dabbled in marketing and crap online.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Yep, Google AdSense. All my blogs are monetized with ads. By default when you turn AdSense on, it makes the ads a little obnoxious. But you can control all that, and what I did was make a single ad location at the lower right hand side. The ads will always be below everything else. I took them out of the feeds too. I'm totally fine with saying "please support my blogging by visiting my sponsors", which is different than the ad banner farm that most people have set up.

For promotion, right now I'm just posting on a few different boards. I keep my blogs in my signature, like I do for this one. I usually wait until I'm established on a board before I put a single link. The last thing I want to do anywhere is be seen as spam. I also (as you can see) post my blog links on my FB. But I also post a lot of related links from other blogs too. Again, I'm trying for a balance. I also have some manufacturers Liked on FB. They might do a FB post about a new product, and in that feed I will give a link for my review of that product. I'm trying to do more stuff like that.

The best I can tell, I'm doing exactly what Google wants me to do, which is build a legitimate user base from the ground up. There's lots of ways to screw with SEO (search engine optimization, i.e. your search rankings) and Google pretty much hates every one of 'em. The way I'm doing it, Google is in my corner from day one.

[Ddrak]

For promotion, right now I'm just posting on a few different boards. I keep my blogs in my signature, like I do for this one.

It's pretty amazing how much this improves your rank in Google.

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

For promotion, right now I'm just posting on a few different boards. I keep my blogs in my signature, like I do for this one.

It's pretty amazing how much this improves your rank in Google.

Dd

It's one of the very few legitimate ways to do that. In the short term, it sucks because I'm competing against pretty much everyone looking to illegitimately manipulate their rankings. But I think I win in the long run by building something real. Plus as a famous comedian once said: "When you only sleep with your wife, you can't fucking get caught", so I won't ever have to look over my shoulder wondering if I'll get caught. The more Google eyeballs me, the more they like me. Most people don't realize that Google has actual human beings surfing every single user-created blog and web site on their turf.

...but I can tell this is going to be a slow process. Though, building something meaningful usually is.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Here is Google's SEO starter guide, if anyone is interested.

And here's another great resource: 101 Free ways to promote your blog

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I bought a couple domain names for my technology and outdoor blogs. For the outdoor blog, after I bought the domain name I noticed there was a similar name already registered. Oops. So, we decided to hold our ground on it if anyone has beef. We decided that if one of them goes big, then we'll ante up for the trademark.

Also, I linked all my blogs to pintrest. Now there's a pintrest button next to every post. It's a really cool widget. When you click the button, it brings up every picture in that blog post. Unlike the pintrest button on my browser, which seems to just take the fist picture.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

A lot going on for both of us.

My sister just got back from London. She got lots of data and made some good contacts, including a few authors, photographers and even a publisher. And with all that, a fairly well known self-defense blogger approached me to have her do a guest post on his blog (about her survival skills from the Peace Corps) and she turned him down because she's so swamped.

My blogs are doing pretty good too. It's funny that the little side-project outdoor blog is the one blowing up. I'm getting about 50-100 page views per day lately on that blog alone, and it's growing exponentially. A few people are even clicking the ads. But the golden rule for blogging seems to be networking, and I'm meeting some interesting people. It's obvious to me now that blogging and social networking are going to be an integral part of being self employed. For July, my blog made 1/400th of my salary from my day job, but at this rate I'll be where I want to be when the boss retires. My goal is for blogging to end up at least 1/3 of my income. Lots of room for improvement.

@LuLu: how is your blog doing? I saw it go by on FB one time, but I didn't jot down the link. I did like the article. We should all be subscribed to, linking to and clicking on each other's blogs!

[Alluveal]

Sup Free! I don't blog like I should. The book is on hold because of health issues (which will hopefully be resolved soon). I'd like to blog more, but ugh... I'm in a 2-3 week crunch time before the semester starts, so I'm just not sure when and how that will happen!

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Yeah, hopefully you get your surgery soon. I can't stand waiting around for surgery. Just put me out, fix me and get it done with.

Shoot me a link to your blog some time and you'll have one more follower. I'm up for any collaboration as well. Whatever puts more eyeballs on our blogs. My thought is that as long as my writing doesn't suck, then most of the work is going to be on the promotion side. Writing (at least for me) is the easy part. People are lucky to shut me the hell up on any given day. It's the promotion part that seems like work. All I need now is a 4000% increase in revenue and I'm set for life!