How People Are Trying To Sell Stuff [With Numbers]

Selling stuff is hard. Ever tried setting up your own Etsy site for hand-knitted underwear? Ever tried to get a booth at a Farmer's Market to sell your handmade wooden shoes? Ever tried to get people to visit your blog or stop by your farm stand to buy duck eggs?

The reason it's hard is because before you can sell anything, you have to make it. You have to spend hours and hours and hours knitting or carving or writing or taking care of ducks. Then, once your project is done (or started at least), you have to tell people it's there. And you can't just put on a chicken (or duck) costume and stand by the side of the road. People will laugh, but probably not buy anything.

Every week I read a couple of newsletters that dump author interviews into your inbox. The interviews ask authors a few different things: who are you? What have  you written? What are you reading? What advice do you have for other authors? 

But one of the newsletters asks one question I particularly like: "What is your best method or website for promoting your books?"

You can scroll through some of these interviews on your own if you'd like to, but over the months I've begun to notice a pattern of responses, and I thought I would draw out a four "strategies," some of which might work, and others of which... definitely won't. Then I'll go into a few of the numbers.

The Patterns

1. Careful evasion of the question.
Either they write something profound that they learned ("you have to find a way for marketing to bring you joy in order to be successful!" or "Is there a best method? I try to write good books!") or they just leave the question blank. 

2. Saying, "I'm new to this and don't know what works!"
While that may be the truth, you don't have to admit it, and what "works" is all relative based on where you are in the process. When I first started out, selling stuff to my friends and family worked best. (Spoiler: this is not a good long-term strategy.) Now, I have a marketing strategy that utilizes a wide variety of methods, all designed to bring value to readers.

3. Listing a social media site as being successful.
Now, this may the most successful marketing some people have done. But I think most people would measure this based solely on the engagement they get on Facebook or Twitter or the amount of time they themselves personally spend on the site, and not how well this translates into sales. (It's also possible they haven't actually tried anything else.) The problem with a marketing strategy consisting solely of social media is that the best way to sell books (or anything else) through social media is to yell louder than everybody else, and that just mostly annoys people/customers.

4. Listing actual sites or strategies.
This was more of a random smattering of people than a pattern. I appreciate this, because then I go check the sites out on my own and maybe find something that works.

The Numbers

Now let's look at the less-than-accurate numbers. I would love it if someone did a real count on these, but here is my half hour scan.

I read through approximately 120 author interviews, with the HUGE caveat being that I have no idea how most of these people are measuring "success". I would measure it in sales, but those are hard to track. Others might measure in engagement, # of page likes or followers, or simply based on whatever they happen to spend the most time doing.

Here's what I found: 

• At least 36/120 authors listed social media as their primary marketing strategy (there were others that listed it as one out of many strategies):
  • 20 listed Facebook (1 person specifically mentioned Facebook Ad Campaigns and 1 person specifically mentioned the Facebook Call to Action button)
  • 13 listed Twitter
  • 6 listed Goodreads
  • 2 listed Google+
  • 1 listed Tumblr
  • 1 listed Instagram
  • 1 listed LinkedIn
  • 1 listed Pinterest
• 29 people said "I'm new and don't know what works!" or "I don't market" or "I have no idea what I'm doing." Good news, folks: you're probably selling more than they are.
• 19 people listed the site hosting the interview (Awesomegang.com) as the most effective tool--this note is extraordinarily helpful to the people reading the interviews (*sarcasm alert), even if it is true.
• 15 people listed their own personal website, which only works as a marketing tool if they are somehow attracting people to their site--which is a different marketing strategy all in itself.
• 11 people said "putting yourself out there" as the best strategy, or "doing all the strategies!!!"
• 7 people listed Amazon as their primary marketing strategy. I have to be honest, I don't really understand what they mean by this. Amazon is a distribution platform, not a marketing platform. Your goal as a marketer is to drive traffic to Amazon. Two people mentioned KDP, which could be considered marketing, but I'm not sure about the others.
• 4 people mentioned "word of mouth"
• 3 people listed book signings or live appearances, and one person just said "face to face"
• 3 people mentioned a newsletter
• 3 people mentioned hiring someone to do your promotion or getting a publisher
• 3 people mentioned getting reviews
• 3 people mentioned writing the next book or co-writing a book
• 2 people mentioned free giveaways
• 1 person mentioned press releases, and 2 people mentioned printing bookmarks
• Several people listed one or two sites that they use. These are by far the most helpful responses, because at least you can go check them out for your own edification. I bolded the ones I've used, and italicized the ones I decided not to use for one reason or another: 
  • Ereader News Today
  • Rave Reviews Book Club
  • Bublish
  • Bargain Booksy
  • eNovel Authors At Work
  • Books Go Social
  • BookGoodies
  • Freebooksy
  • EReader Cafe
  • Fussy Librarian
  • Bknights on Fiverr
  • Ebooksoda
  • Fussy Librarian
  • CHBB/Vamptasy

The best advice I found out of the interviews I read was this: 

"I don’t think there’s just one method or website that works best for promoting my books. I use a mixture of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as my website in general by blogging about my books and helping other authors promote theirs. I also really like Goodreads...  I think interacting with readers and book bloggers and just being present in the realm of social media is one of the best things an author can do to promote themselves. When a reader messages me, I message them back as soon as I can. I also try to post updates on my website enough so that my subscribers are interested in said updates but not enough to where they’re deleting every email from me instead of checking out the post." --Steph Nuss, romance author

For those of you who are curious, this is what my author interview said: 

Well, I think my website is pretty slick (www.arielesieling.com), but I get most of my sales by doing promotions all over the place. Email blasts, blog tours, and social media are extremely helpful tools. I have also been doing a lot of in-person events; my favorite is going to different Comic Cons. At the next one I will dressed as Kailee from Firefly, and my two colleagues will be Mal and Jayne. It’s going to be fun.

So what's the magical formula? 'Tisn't one. So what's my primary strategy?

Doing something marketing every day.

It might be little--posting on Facebook or Twitter; it might be medium--writing a blog post or paying for an online promotion; or it might be big--sitting for 12 hours with a booth at an outdoor festival or writing another book to sell the first few--but I do at least one thing every single day. 

Now, I'm no Hugh Howey, and right now I am dumping every cent I make back into selling more, but the sales continue to climb. And I wish the best for my fellow authors who are out there working to climb Mt. Everest one treacherous foothold at a time.

Meme from MemeCenter.

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Writing A Baseball [An Extremely Extended Metaphor]

I'm learning to throw a baseball. For those of you who don't know what that is, it looks like this: 

Apparently, there are a lot of things that go into throwing a baseball, particularly if you want it to go farther than a few feet. For example, you have to let it go at just the right spot, with just the right momentum, and with just the right force. And your feet have to somehow be in alignment with the rest of your body or it's just like shooting yourself in the foot--or throwing a baseball at your foot, as the case may be.

Not only that, but baseball is different for everyone. Sure there are certain strategies that work across body types, but here's the thing: no one is built with the same proportions, the same strength, and the same coordination as another person.

Now, before this week I have never thrown an actual baseball in my life (that I can remember). I've thrown lots of other things: rocks, sticks, buckets of water, basketballs, chuckballs (this will appear in another blog post at some point in the future so stay tuned), food, brothers, phones, bats, pool toys, eggs, dead mice, chickens, etc.

So imagine my irritation when some guy (an adult with two boys) yells from the other side of the fence, "you throw like a girl!"

Now first of all, I find this incredibly insulting. Because, it is an insult regardless of who's saying it to whom, and then on top of that it's sexist, and on top of that it's rude. I'm pretty sure he wasn't trying to associate my throwing skills with Mo'Ne Davis, but instead implying that from his perspective women are weaker and less skilled at athletics... but before I get lost down the never-ending rabbit hole of feminism that wasn't my initial point, I also want to point out that it was a terrible influence to the kids he was with. Now they're going to go home with newly reinforced backwards societal norms and think it's okay to insult their friends while simultaneously degrading women. 

So what did I do to said offender? I yelled some offhand comment that hopefully communicated "go away" and went back to throwing baseballs at Josh.

Baseball throwing requires skill, patience, practice, and the ability to ignore people around you acting like idiots who downplay the importance of practicing the skill.

What does that sound like? Yes. Writing.

There are a lot of things that go into writing. You have to have a story to tell. You have to choose the right words to tell it. You have to have structure, plot, characterization, tone, voice style...

It's different for everyone. Everyone has a different voice. Each of us has different goals, different strengths, a different purpose, and a different story to tell. But we all mostly have to follow the same rules and the same guidelines. No one work is exactly the same as another. (We call that plagiarism.)

And then, there are those jerks that stand on the other side of the fence (many of which have never thrown a baseball in their life [or written a word]) yelling, "you throw like a girl!" or "ugh, I hated this piece of trash" or "I hope this person never writes another word in their life."

You know, I'm not a huge fan of Stefanie Meyers or E.L. James' work myself, but imagine the courage it must have to keep writing despite all the trash talk about their work. Even money doesn't fix emotional trauma, and while I'm on the topic [SOAPBOX], just because you don't like their work or think it's morally wrong or talks about an issue in a way that legitimizes abuse, it doesn't make cyber bullying okay (yes, free speech; yes, criticize the work itself; no, don't bully). It's like killing someone because they stole your TV. If you don't like the work, quit talking about it, quit paying money to consume the stuff, encourage everyone you know to do the same thing, and start a campaign to end sexual violence against everyone. [END SOAPBOX.]

If you love writing, the most important thing is to focus on the writing. Hone your skills. Learn to create better characters. Learn to build believable plot lines. Learn to fill your worlds with tantalizing details. Write what you love. Ignore the troll on the other side of the fence and be proud of all of the throws it took for you to become Mo'Ne Davis.

Never stop writing.

Source

Source

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Beekeeping Things: Ariele and Peter Look In A Wild Hive [Video Series]

This is me, vacuuming bees out of a wall in a house that is scheduled for deomolition.

One of the cool things my dad does is take bees out of people's houses. I've only done a couple of removals with him, but he's done tons. Bees like to make their homes anywhere that offers a cavity of a certain size that is also dry and safe. House, garage, and barn walls or between the floor and ceiling are the ideal nesting place for bees.

Many people try to kill colonies that have moved into their buildings with poison, rather than calling a beekeeper, because to remove a colony that has already started building comb and having babies takes a lot of time for the beekeeper, and the bees are not happy about it, making them defensive and sting-y. So beekeepers tend to charge for this type of work. 

In today's video, Dad removed a wild hive from someone's house and has put it in a hive box to see if it will survive the winter. You can see the comb that the bees built--Dad has placed it in the hive box so the bees won't lose their hatching brood.

I've also thrown together some photos of me and Dad removing bees from various places.

In this picture, Dad has ripped the siding from an old house and is working at removing the bees that have taken up residence inside. This ended up being 2 colonies and an 8-hour job.

In this picture, a massive swarm descended on the front yard of my parents' house and settled in the plum trees. It was 9 pounds of bees.

In this photo, Dad readies the smoker as we prepare to remove some of the supers to harvest honey.

This swarm decided that rather than move into a nice safe wall in somebody's house, they'd start building their comb in a tree. This is a rare occurrence where either they couldn't find a nesting place, or finding their home took so long they naturally started depositing comb on the branch. In cold climates building your house outdoors is an unwise course of action for the bees. Isn't the comb beautiful, though?

And there you have it: this week's Beekeeping Things! Stay tuned next week for some more wild and wonderful in the world of bees. Or check out last week's post: Beekeeping Things: Ariele and Peter Catch a Swarm [Video Series].

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Beekeeping Things: Ariele and Peter Catch a Swarm [Video Series]

Given the nature of my next book (beekeeping!), I have decided to dust off some old videos of me and my dad doing beekeeping things over the years. Now, this is going to be both embarrassing for me and nostalgic, and I am very much looking forward to it.

The first video is of me and Dad playing with a swarm before catching it. It includes sticking our hands in the swarm and getting stung. I was 19 or 20 in this video, and although you can't see it, I was not wearing shoes. Unless flipflops count as shoes, which I'm pretty sure they don't.

This is a bad habit that I have carried with me into my slightly older age. Eventually, Dad will scold me enough times that I feel compelled to wear shoes in his apiary.

The video is 8 minutes long, but the good bits are at 0:05, 0:58, 2:35, 5:15, 6:14, and 7:28. 

Enjoy :)

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The Trials and Tribulations of Rutherford the Unicorn Sheep

I recently came out with my first children's book: Rutherford the Unicorn Sheep Goes to the Beach. Cute, say the people that have picked one up so far (get your copy here!).

Well, last weekend I headed out to beautiful Western NY to do the photo shoot for the next book in progress: Rutherford the Unicorn Sheep... something to do with Beekeeping. It was fun, if tiring. I like hanging out with my parents, and of course I love doing bees with my Dad. But I encountered some difficulties I certainly didn't expect. 

1. My first batch of photos were entirely overexposed. Talk about stressful. I went back to the house after an hour and a half in the bee yard with some supposedly great photos, and sad, sad day, most of them looked like this: 

Very distressing. However, during the second half of the day, I fixed the issue and proceeded with much higher quality photos.

Lesson Learned: Buy a better camera and take some photography classes.

2. It was extremely hot. Now, I've worn a bee suit plenty of times in my life, but when you stop the work to take photos of everything that is happening, everything takes twice as long. This means wearing the bee suit for twice as long, not being able to drink water as often (due to the hat and veil), and still having to finish work despite the fact that you've been working all day. 

My Dad deserves a shout out at this point, for putting up with all my shenanigans, being patient and letting me taking a bajillion pictures of everything that was happening while I was simultaneously being less than helpful to him.

I got some great action shots of Dad looking all beekeeper-y.

Slightly warm would be an understatement, literally melting would be an overstatement.

We ended up getting a bunch of work done in the beeyard and also harvesting something like 50 pounds of honey. Not a huge amount, but still worthwhile. Plus it was gorgeous, light locust honey.

Lesson Learned: Drink more water and don't take pictures while doing bees in the middle of a hot summer day in a full bee suit.

3. I got stung. This is to be expected, when doing bees, particularly when you're like me and rather careless. I wore flipflops and one bee crawled up my pants and got me smack on the leg. The other one was an accident--I was balancing to take a picture and lost my balance and put my hand right down on a bee. Poor girl.

Bee stings are an interesting thing. There is a general sort of tension or fear of getting stung--even as someone who has been around bees my whole life--but once I got stung that second time, the tension completely went away. My dad says it goes away for him after the third sting, and he's been a beekeeper for decades.

This is the stinger that I pulled out of my leg. Pretty cool, huh? 

One time, when we were taking a colony out of a house, I got stung eleven times, but only the first three hurt. Apparently, I built up a temporary immunity to the venom. That's a nice feature of being a non-allergic human when you're harassing a well-built colony for hours. The swelling for my stings went down within a few hours, and the itching was gone by the end of the next day.

Lesson Learned: wear socks and shoes while beekeeping.

4. Skunks like to eat bees. This was definitely a problem. In addition to his hyper and excitable personality, I had to work extremely hard to prevent Wilfred the Walnut Skunk from eating every bee he came across. The Beekeeper was a great help in this regard, as Wilfred holds a great deal of respect for someone that can manage so many delicious snacks at once without giving into the temptation to binge. The Beekeeper assured him that he doesn't feel this particular urge, although bee venom is particularly banana-y, but Wilfred didn't really get it. Which is good, as it helped keep him in line.

At the end of the day, after Wilfred the Walnut Skunk had behaved himself, the Beekeeper did let him eat one drone. This was a huge treat, and the Beekeeper didn't mind as the drones are mostly useless.

He enjoyed the snack a great deal.

Lesson Learned: Don't take skunks into the bee yard.

5. I drove 8 hours for the photo shoot. Normally I try to combine trips like this with trips just to visit, but this time it didn't work out as I plan on releasing this book on September 19 at the Honey Harvest Open House in Howard, NY (put that on your calendar) and needed to move up my schedule. So I ended up driving 8 hours on a Tuesday afternoon, working in the bee yard for 1 day, and then leaving the next morning to drive back to NH. It was a loooong 3 days.

On the other hand, June is the absolute best time to visit upstate NY. Everything is green, the clouds are stunning, it's warm but not hot, cool but not cold, and generally the people are in a much better mood than any other time of year. Bonus plus: wild strawberries! Dad and I picked a few handfuls, and then my wonderful Grandma Sieling gave me 2 quarts of homegrown strawberries to take home with me. Double bonus plus: DUCKS! I love ducks.

It was definitely worth it.

Lesson Learned: Plan my business trips better and make time to have fun. 

Stay tuned for the release of the next Rutherford book - something about how he gets to go visit a beekeeper and meet bees! Or, you can see more sneak peek photos on Rutherford's own blog!

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