Saturday, September 18, 2021
My autobiography & more
Sunday, September 05, 2021
Web Marketing XVIII
The month rolled over, and I did the blog stats for August. August came back to normal, but stats are good because July was so outrageous. It was like some web crawler came in, in July, and inflated the figure for every blog such that blogs that usually get 30, now got 800. What's up with that? I have no idea where hundreds of new blog trawlers came from, but they seemed to hit almost all of my blogs in July (I noticed Aug. 1), and it seems to be over now.
The next order of business is making the blogs match my current interests. I have blogs about linguistics, blogs about Texas, and a few that I just don't really use all that much. The Folk Tales blog may come alive again as I'm considering writing folk tales again. But a lot of them, they're just kind of sitting there. Plagiarism is revived. Pop art isn't going anywhere (still don't like the design of the blog). Lots of them need work.
I do have a plan to start a new one, though, that does match my current interests and will get considerable traffic. It will be called "best of indie" or some such, and will feature the books I've read that made a big impression on me. I plan on making reviews that are very personal, so that I can say things I wouldn't say on an Amazon review. And I'd like to see if that drives any traffic. Not that I would know or even keep track very well. but my indie author friends, I think, would really appreciate the lift.
I am part of a crowd that's always on the hustle for more reads, more traffic, more sales. There are a lot of hucksters out there - people who don't read, or who say they will read something and don't. Sometimes it appears to be an accident - you think they're not reading, but they are, or their reads somehow don't count on the meter that we all use. I have no idea. Sometimes I'm surprised anyone is reading anything at all.
I'm slowly getting less attached to the short stories. Nine volumes of them, and in a sea of silence for so many years, and now many of them have ratings at a million or near a million, which is actually good as they spent years in the 6-mil, 5-mil category. Now they are being seen and read. but now I'm beginning to let them go, too. I have other things to peddle, and am not sure it's worth pushing them around forever.
But I do ask people to read them, and all the time. So now I'm getting a better sense of what people like and don't, and whether they can tolerate short stories or what. Short stories aren't as big as they used to be, I'll say that. I'm not sure I'll ever find their market.
It's a ratings hustle, but I"m getting better at it, and eventually I'll figure it out. ONe has to stay on one's toes.
The next order of business is making the blogs match my current interests. I have blogs about linguistics, blogs about Texas, and a few that I just don't really use all that much. The Folk Tales blog may come alive again as I'm considering writing folk tales again. But a lot of them, they're just kind of sitting there. Plagiarism is revived. Pop art isn't going anywhere (still don't like the design of the blog). Lots of them need work.
I do have a plan to start a new one, though, that does match my current interests and will get considerable traffic. It will be called "best of indie" or some such, and will feature the books I've read that made a big impression on me. I plan on making reviews that are very personal, so that I can say things I wouldn't say on an Amazon review. And I'd like to see if that drives any traffic. Not that I would know or even keep track very well. but my indie author friends, I think, would really appreciate the lift.
I am part of a crowd that's always on the hustle for more reads, more traffic, more sales. There are a lot of hucksters out there - people who don't read, or who say they will read something and don't. Sometimes it appears to be an accident - you think they're not reading, but they are, or their reads somehow don't count on the meter that we all use. I have no idea. Sometimes I'm surprised anyone is reading anything at all.
I'm slowly getting less attached to the short stories. Nine volumes of them, and in a sea of silence for so many years, and now many of them have ratings at a million or near a million, which is actually good as they spent years in the 6-mil, 5-mil category. Now they are being seen and read. but now I'm beginning to let them go, too. I have other things to peddle, and am not sure it's worth pushing them around forever.
But I do ask people to read them, and all the time. So now I'm getting a better sense of what people like and don't, and whether they can tolerate short stories or what. Short stories aren't as big as they used to be, I'll say that. I'm not sure I'll ever find their market.
It's a ratings hustle, but I"m getting better at it, and eventually I'll figure it out. ONe has to stay on one's toes.
