Trying a New Marketing tool

[j.d Stottlemire]

Hey all. Squidoo has a new marketing tool and I'm trying it out. They call it "offers." The way it works is, for a hundred dollars a month, they will put your "offer" in my case a link to my book, on a side bar in every lens in the topic you choose. (More that 20,000 lenses in health and wellness where I am.) People can vote offers up and down, like a social networking site. The problem is, only the top five "offers" on that topic get their picture on the front page of the lens and the rest are accessed by a "see more offers" link.

I've been up for 48hrs now without much success. I'm currently number six so I'm not on the front page. Even those on the front page don't seem to be getting many votes so it may be that the idea just hasn't caught on yet.

I'll post here over the course of the month to let you know if it ends up being worth the money. Also, if you are a squidoo member or were thinking of joining, please go to a health an wellness lens and vote for "You Me and Apollo: Hope Beyond Bipolar Disorder" so we can find out if being one of the top five will increase the hit rate. I only need five or six votes to hit the front page.

Thanks for your help. I'll let you know if it turns out to be a good way to promote writing.

Thx all,

J.D.

Meet my book "You Me and Apollo: Hope Beyond Bipolar Disorder" at http://www.lulu.com/content/1135715

[AB]

Hi J.D. Sounds interesting. I will take a closer look as soon as poss. For now I have featured this on the homepage here so it should appear in the left column when people visit the site. If you ever want to feature something on the homepage you can also use your blog on your own 'My Page'. Adding blog posts automatically pulls it through and shows it in the middle column of the sites homepage.

Please do keep us posted - sounds interesting.

[j.d Stottlemire]

Thanks AB. I'm new to "online communications" and find them somewhat mystifying. I actually remember when televisions had nobs on them and need my 9 year olds help programing my ipod.

Thanks again,

J.D.

[AB]

Hi JD. To be honest some of it is a bit mystifying to me as well. I actually work in the world of web and interactive design and even I am sometimes baffled by websites. This is often more down to bad design as opposed to anything else though. Feel free to get in touch if there is anything you need or want me to create a walkthrough of the site. Cheers.

[j.d Stottlemire]

Hey web design is a hot topic for me at the moment. I need a very small website just to post a link to the book, some images and then do a ton of reciprocal linking and web rings. I've got the skill to build the page myself but yesterday I found that "free" web hosting isn't always as free as it sounds. Do you have a tip on somewhere that is actually hosting "free" or "free in but we post adverts?"

Thanks,

J.D.

[AB]

Not sure if you'll get much for free these days to be honest. Most hosting companies will require a fee for the actual address and the space you get for your files. A colleague of mine just suggested http://www.eukhost.com/ as he uses them and said they're quite good. Personally, I've used http://www.supanames.co.uk/ in the past for freelance projects and found them very efficient. I think you pay about £13 per year for it (this includes the website address if memory serves me correctly) and there is a minimum of 2 years. Might be worth looking at something like this. If you get a fairly generic address you could always use the site for a different purpose down the line if need be. At least you have a web address you can use for any purpose then. The other alternative is to just create pages on sites like MySpace and Squidoo etc. A final option - which may well be the best - is to use the Google page creator. I can't really comment on this as I've never used it - you need a gmail account to sign up. I think it will provide you with a webpage and address without needing any technical knowledge. Let me know how you get on if you use this. Hope this is useful, let me know if you need any more info on anything web or design related, cheers AB

[j.d Stottlemire]

Graeat tips. thanks.

J.D.

[j.d Stottlemire]

Update on Squidoo: I think its a dud. I pushed my ad up so that it would show up on "every lens in health." It says it's visible on more than 20,000 lens but it doesn't seem to be getting many hits. I know it got one because someone voted for it.

There are inherent problems in there systems. Since most "offers" only have a few votes (it only takes thirteen to get on the lens') there is tons of oppurunity for fraud. It would take about a half an hour to generate enough fake email address to log yourself in over and over and vote for you own site. If you were really determined, you could post a hundred votes for yourself in the course of an afternoon. Unfortunately, the project isn't attracting enough attention right now to justify the time.

For a far better use of a hundred dollars, get your book listed on Book Senses' advaced access program. www.booksense.com

[AB]

Especially with sites like tempinbox about. This is a site a guy I used to work for created and it means you can make an email address as [e-mail] and then when you go to tempinbox.com you can log in with that and check any activation links you may need. You could do a shed load in an afternoon if you could be bothered.

[j.d Stottlemire]

Thanks AB. Maybe after a month or two these guys will have a product worth purchasing but right now I think I'm just out a hundred bucks.

J.D.