Your Website

Nate Fortner

Get a website. You need to have one as an author and preferably you should have a separate one for each book. Web hosting is cheap. If you are the do-it yourself type, you can get a single shared hosting plan and host multiple websites under the same plan.

If you do not have website coding skills, you can easily find somebody. I recommend finding a local web development company. You can also find individuals at Meetups in your area. If you can’t do that or you are REALLY on a tight budget you can find freelancers online. The quality of site you will get is mixed and good communication important. Remember that not all of them write and read as well as you. Their skills are in computers, not communications. The cheap ones will barely speak any English.

What are some of the things that need to be on your website?

You need a biography, preferably with a picture.

You need information about your books.

You need a calendar of events for your book promotions (if you are running any).

You need links to your Facebook and Twitter pages.

You need a blog or a link to your blog. This is the topic of the next chapter.

And you need a way to build your email list.

Let’s focus on that last one.

How do you do that? Sign up for a list service. I recommend Mail Chimp. Sign up instructions are on their site. They are one of the easiest to use and integrate into your website. An email list provider will make sure you stay on the right side of Spam rules. Have you ever had to click a confirmation link to confirm you want to be on somebody’s email list? That is the doing of the list provider.

You want to keep in touch with your fans. An email list is the way to do it. Not everybody is on every social media account. Some people aren’t on social media at all. Almost everybody in the world has at least one email account.

Now what do you do with your email list? An email list is long-term marketing. I am fond of saying that you can’t eat an email list. However, you aren’t just stopping with one book, are you? You want to be able to market all of your books to your audience. After all, if they liked one then they are more likely to like the others.

Are the people on your email list knowledgeable marketers? Maybe some of them are? If you are selling you book on Amazon (and you certainly should be) then remind your readers that if they promote your book through the Amazon Affiliate program, they can earn a percentage of the sales they drive your way.

They get money. You get money and readers. Everybody wins.

What else should you have on your website?

It goes without saying, that you should have links to where you can buy your books. Somehow, this is not addressed as it should be. If you are selling on Amazon, make sure the links are affiliate links so that you can earn a little extra from each sale. Amazon explicitly allows this.

Buy the full ebook!    "Book Marketing In the 21st Century"

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