Category Archives: Business Tips; How to add ease of use and value to your website

Tips for book creation, production, promotion, business tips and more…

What Are You Doing to Help Make Your Book Website Interesting

Make Your book website interesting.  Consider basing your build design on these two principles: 1.)  that a person is interested in themselves 2.) that they are interested in other people.”

Ask yourself “What will make your home/or/book page interesting?” Good design plays an important part in your site’s being received. AND even more if you make the benefits  clear… the ‘what the viewer gains” like on my home page I spotlight being professional, building confidence, engaging readers.  All with the value I offer in mind.  The “what” you say your product/service can do is much more attractive than a beautiful web page with weak copy.

Promote with the benefits instead of a bio,  credentials or  the features of your product/service. Put them in their proper place on your site. But your audience will most want to know the value of your service/product to them.

Try not to answer questions like, “Will it solve my particular problem?” “What will I gain?” Some universal benefits answer the how tos: getting more passion, more energy, less fatigue, more money, good relationships, more time, less trouble, less stress, less drama and trauma.  Here’s a quick tutorial on creating an interesting home page:

1. Develop a list of 10-20 benefits for your book’s topic. Let you audience know the whys…

So on your home page write about the reasons why to use  your concepts, buy your book, use your services, what they will gain, or grow or be recognized.

2. Be specific. List the benefits. Describe how your customer will feel after buying your product. For example, after you buy my book you’ll look and feel ___blah blah. Then post a picture of that examples this statement. Make your page interesting by listing specific benefits.

3. Let the passion for your book topic show in your content copy. Which arouses your interest more.. to dominate to Plan, to Convert, to stop dreaming and take action. Fill your book page with passion and create desire with your audience.

4. Develop the skill of writing headlines. Provocative titles will stir interest. Provocative statements capture our attention like a fish on a hook. They throw out a question that causes them to ask… “What?”

Use a statement for an immediate effect. Don’t forget the power of the simple ‘How To” information title. It alerts your audience that the information that follows will be simple and easy to digest. Capture the attention of your reader with a book page filled with action, questioning,  headlines.

5. Give your links the power of benefits. See if you can avoid links that are not specific with where you are clicking to. Give life to all your links with benefits. Those left over benefits and titles you developed earlier in this article. Review each link and pretend you have to get every visitor to click on it.

Start slowly until you get what it is you need to do, remember, you have invested time and perhaps money into writing and publishing your book. Now, create the interest to your book page by giving your bulleted lists, headlines and links the power of benefits. Make it interesting and filled with benefitls and your book page and prosper!

Remember do something every day toward the production and promotion of your book, product or service and contact me to help keep you on track.

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Case Study: needs a teleseminar line that will do a pre-set broadcast.

Case Study:

Client looking for as teleseminar/ conferencing service that will allow them to pre-tape a hour-long interview and then schedule it and play instead of doing a live interview. There logic was that a live interview has lots of unnecessary chatter that they wanted to edit out and give their listeners only the “good stuff.”

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Solution:
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Posting to ibookstore…from your PC

Some idle info for getting your ebooks on / in the ibookstore. Seems like if you have a MAC access is easier than if you have a PC. Here are some alternative options I’ve heard about if you have a PC.

  1. Check out  smashwords, seems they have an arrangement with ibookstore so check out their info. They also have a very comprehensive manual about how to put together your manuscript for conversion to epub.
  2. There’s a company that lets you log in and use their Macs by the hour.
    MacinCloud www.macincloud.com
    There are FAQs on their Facebook page.
    https://www.facebook.com/MacinCloud/app_340820536415

These are just a few idle tips, be sure to do a comprehensive search if you need more information.

Idle Knowledge: taking a screen shot

I use this all the time for documenting information to a digital file. It’s great for ‘how to’ and training instructions. I have a MAC so I know the directions are correct. The PC directions came from my cousin so I hope they are correct.

How to take a screen shot.

MAC:

hit shift command 4 at the same time and your cursor turns into a crosseye that you can then click and drag over the image you want to copy. If you hit shift command 3 you will capture the full screen. This should capture Continue reading

Tips: Copyright info; printing post cards etc.; sending fax changes…

Here are a few tips about anything book or business…of course there are a lot more… and please write them in the comments section below. It’s always nice to share your knowledge.

1. when you send changes marked up ready to fax... be sure to use black ink. If you use blue or pencil the fax might not read it clearly and you’ll have to resend.

2. copyright issues
The Copyright Permission and Libel Handbook, A Step-by-Step Guide for Writers, Editors, Publishers by Lloyd J. Jassin and Steven C. Schechter

The Permission Seeker’s Guide through the Legal Jungle: Clearing Copyrights, Trademarks and other rights for entertainment and media productions by Joy R. Butler, an entertainment lawyer.

3. printers I like and use
http://www.printrunner.com
http://www.psprint.com

Zipping or Unzipping a file…

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Do you have trouble zipping OR unzipping a file….

Here are two choices  both companies offer a MAC and PC version
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WinZip:  http://www.winzip.com/downwz.htm  they offer free and fee versions
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Most MACs used to come with Stuffit which now is $29.99
http://www.stuffit.com/v2/mac-s.html  AND is worth the investment if you don’t have it already.

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Websites: How to Get and Use an API key for your WordPress site

WordPress is a great way to build your website and web-presence. They offer free software that loads to your server, plugins to extend the use and function of your site and themes that create the image you project. This is an easy and time effective way to get on-line and start your business within 1-3 hours depending on your skill level.

  • Are you using WordPress for your website?
  • Do you get lots of spam?
  • Do you wonder what your stats are?

Continue reading

Tips: naming files; home pages; using icons

Here are a few tips about anything book or business…of course there are a lot more… and please write yours in the comments section below. It’s always nice to share your knowledge… and we love to hear it!

1. Naming files: don’t use punctuation. No ‘,’ commas or ‘.’ periods or ‘/’ slashes or other such OR spaces. Try to fill in any blanks with a ‘_’ underscore or a ‘-‘ hyphen. This will make your files read better is uploaded or imported.

2. Home pages: these do best when organized from the beginning leaving room to grow. Start with a flow chart of what you do and what you will be offering. There is a saying… nothing is more than two clicks away for your important messages. And don’t forget that the home page is best received by spiders when the SEO is clear and on keyword.

3. Using icons on your website: icons help an otherwise dull site to come alive and have / give direction to the people who come to the site. There are many places to buy full sets so they look the same or make your own using royalty free images and placing a name to them. Try to keep them in standard places from page to page and post to post, this way you begin to identify a process for your audience to follow to your information.

Web-Presence: A plugin for your WordPress sites that adds a "Related Posts" section to each post.

The “Best Related Posts” plugin to use with your WordPress site is great for promoting more of your book, product and services at the end of each post you make. Why is this a good thing you ask? For your page ranking stats, your SEO of course!

Google ranks a website according to how important they look. How may pages you have and how many links you have and how good your content is, are among the top ways. But, the main way that Google determines this is by the amount of links that point to a page.

Google considers two types of links in their Continue reading

Book Design: Now what was that phrase again…? Finding the lost words.

screenshot ©netspeak.org

I just heard about this site http://www.netspeak.org that finds words that finish phrases for you… all you do is type in the part you remember and a symbol suchs as ?  *  {   }  [  ] and it’s little wheel starts spinning and poof there is a list of completions for you to choose from.

I wonder if they have an app?

I know when I write I don’t always remember the phrases I’d like to use and tell stories about… this will come in handy.

Do you know of any other tools that might add to the writing experience? Let us know in the comments box on the post page.

and…

Accepting Credit Cards from your Cell Phones…

screenshot from ©squareup.com

Squareup.com technology catching up with our needs! I remember when I couldn’t accept credit cards except with one of those slide over the receipt processors thingys… then there came the electronic readers then online terminals, virtual accounts and all sorts of restrictions on how you can use them… and then if you are out of the office how to access them… and the fees… oh my goodness one for the service and another for the transaction. I know, it’s just the cost of doing business and I’m ok with that… I like doing business…

AND now we have the option to add a reader to our phones… check them out… this might be what you were waiting for!

Did you know there are "Delivery Charges" for ebooks… What??

As we move along into a world of digital ebooks, there appear new items to keep informed about… PC Pro published an interesting article about “delivery” charges when selling an ebook Kindle version.

The main ingredient to be watchful of is how many images you add to your file. You see, images take up more space, and to get good quality images they need to be sharp, and to be sharp it helps if they are a little larger file size than 72dpi. AND if they are or if you have lots of images… your file becomes larger therefore…. TAKING longer to transfer! That’s it… the delivery charge is for Continue reading

Book Promotion: How to make a Membership Site part of your plan…

(affiliate link)

I use Wishlist Member. For several reasons.

1. It’s easy to use and integrates with most mail list and payment processing services.
2. It works with WordPress software
3. It’s affordable, only $99 for a single site license
4. The back-end interface is clean and easy to follow
5. It Creates a level of participation with the people who use my site.

Anyone can have a membership site. It’s a way of creating a Continue reading