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[I18]I Dont Need Money

by Mike Scantlebury, Mik

Perhaps the biggest surprise to all would-be writers and first-time authors is that they don't need to spend a pile of money to see their brand new book get into print. You can do it through the internet these days for practically nothing, probably for not more than the price of each book itself. Look at it another way: most aspiring authors imagine that one day they can go into their local bookshop and see their own books up there, on the shelves, alongside all the other great and famous people. Then, taking a book down, they would probably march up to the counter and proudly say, 'I'll take this, please. After all, I wrote it'. Then you pay. That's fair, isn't it? You wouldn't expect the bookshop to give you the book for free, would you? No, it doesn't seem unreasonable that at least you might have to put out for the cost of a single book. Well, that's how 'print on demand' publishers work on the web. You want a copy of your book, you pay for it. One at a time. You want six? You pay for six. Same as if you found it in a bookshop.

The big reason it's a darn surprise is because that's not what authors are being told. They are led to believe that there is only one way to get your book published at little or no charge, and that's through having a contract with a Traditional Publisher. Every other route, we are told, will end up costing us an arm and a leg. There isn't any sort of cost-effective alternative, we are assured. Of course, that's wrong. It might be how things used to be, in the old days. Back then, it was either get a publisher to like your book and let them publish it, (at their expense), or else pay a 'Vanity Publisher' some exorbitant amount of money to transform your proto-manuscript into book form. It cost, and you ? the author ? would pay. The 'old days'? Those days are gone. Look up a company like Lulu on the internet and see what their terms are. You'll be amazed.

Of course, there's the other end too. That's the point at which Traditional Publishers give you, the author, money. Writers need cash, we are told. You need to be rich, the publisher tells us. That's a lie, too. People who create books, then put them out through the internet are amazed how quickly they can make a small amount of money from sales. Then ? even greater pleasure ? they find that they don't have to share their 'winnings' with an assortment of hangers-on. No, it all goes in their pocket. The alternative, up to now, has been the dream of landing a big offer from a publisher. Just imagine: your manuscript is languishing on the desk of a publisher or agent, when suddenly the phone call comes. Your work has gone through a bidding process, they tell you, and the talk is of offering you a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Hey, that's great. Uh, two problems. One is that the figure is gross, before deductions. They haven't yet mentioned the top slices that all the hangers-on want. The literary agent wants ten per cent (at least); and then there's the solicitor, the accountant, the PR guy, and the advertising exec (plus the advertising budget that you'll be expected to pay for yourself). And there's tax to pay ? isn't there always? Second, and an even bigger disappointment, is when you find out that what they're offering is not a fee ? it's an 'advance' on your earnings. If you sell a lot of books (and you might not), you'll be pleased to receive a statement from the publisher telling you you've earned, oh say, a quarter of a million after the first year of sales. Great. Big bucks! Well, no, because you've already had a hundred and fifty thousand, remember? It was an 'advance', so it's simply deducted from the amount they were going to give you anyway. You got it up front, so that was good, but it was still your money, and you don't get any more until you've earned it through sales. (No sales? You might end up owing them money!)

The two scenarios are two sides of the same coin. The idea that publishing is all about large amounts of money ? lots of money in costs to publish a book, and lots of money to be earned from a book. Neither of those long-established but dubious 'facts' is still true, in today's internet age. But there's another kicker in the tail. The lure of 'big money' is one of the promises that has, up to now, managed to sustain the top-heavy world of Traditional Publishing. Because there are a few big earners in the world ? and, let's face it, you could count them on one hand ? all the other hopeful and trying authors get a false vision of what could be waiting for them out there, in the future, once they've written the 'best seller'. Let's be brutally honest. If you've written a book, the most likely outcome is that you will send it to a few publishers, they will turn it down, you will get disappointed and quit. The chances of you every getting it published are low, to say the least. But, and this is where it really starts looking like the world of Traditional Publishing is a casino at best, even if you do get published, (which was a long shot, remember?), the chances of you making 'big bucks' is remote. Most published authors don't earn a living from their work, let alone a fortune.

That's a 'double whammy', as we call it in England, and a pair of reasons why Internet Publishing is so much an option for the vast majority of writers. Here's the plan: write the book; publish it on the internet; think about submitting your efforts to Traditional Publishers. Hmm, somewhere along the line, we lost the promise of big money, huge houses and a luxurious lifestyle. Since it was only a vague and distant promise in the first place, actually we haven't lost much, have we?

Every website owner has a somewhat unhealthy obsession with driving more traffic to their site. We all want more traffic, if for nothing else to be able to brag to others how many unique visitors we've received. Competition among web owners aside, actually doing something with that traffic is equally as important as getting it. Yet for some reason, most site owners make the mistake of focusing most of their time on getting more traffic and rarely, if ever, focus on improving their conversion rate.

What is a conversion?

A conversion happens whenever a visitor to your site performs a desired action. It might be purchasing a product, signing up for a newsletter, signing up for an account, or even clicking on an advertisement (although I'd advise against making the goal of your site to have someone click away from it). One way or another, if you have a site, you've got a desired action that you want the user to perform.

How big of a difference can it make?

Consider Company A and Company B. Both sell online subscriptions to their news services for a one-time fee of $100. They each attract 1000 unique visitors per day. Company A converts 2% of their visitors whereas Company B converts 5%. Big deal right? How much does 3% really matter? Well, Company A sells 20 subscriptions per day, or 7,300 per year for $730,000 of revenue. Not bad. But Company B sells 50 subscriptions per day, or 18,250 per year for $1,825,000 of revenue!

Without any variation in traffic, you can improve conversion rate on your site and drastically increase revenue. Now, is increasing from 2% to 5% going be a challenge? Certainly, but it is by no means impossible and in most cases is probably easier than you think.

What's a good conversion rate?

Some people will tell you that an “average” conversion rate is 2%-5% and an “amazing” conversion rate is 10%-15%. To me, that's a broad statement. I'm not saying that you should completely ignore those numbers, just that you should understand where they are coming from. Those numbers tend to apply to e-commerce sites selling to consumers. They also don't factor in where traffic is coming from, product pricing, and about a hundred other potential factors that could affect your conversion rate.

There are times when a 2% conversion rate is phenomenal. For example, if you are selling software licenses for $20,000, converting 1 in 50 visitors is pretty exemplary. On the flip side, if your goal is to have people sign up for a football newsletter and all of your traffic is coming from an ad you placed on NFL.com, 15% might be considered really poor.

My answer to “what's a good conversion rate” is any conversion rate that's better than your current one.

Start by doing a self-evaluation and set a baseline

Before you can even think about trying to increase your conversion rate, you need to have a system in place to track your current conversions. In its simplest form, conversion rate can be calculated by dividing the number of conversions into the number of visitors to your site for a specified time period. Most site owners will want more in depth statistics (such as what page visitors came from and what pages potential customers left their site from) so I would recommend a web analytics program like the free Google Analytics that provides in-depth reporting and can calculate your conversion rates for you.

How will I know if my changes worked?

In my mind, the only way to think about conversion rate is to start at your current rate and start striving to convert 100% of the visitors to your site. Is that ever going to happen? Probably not, but as Les Brown said - “shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” Shoot for 100% conversion rate and even if you don't get there, in attempting to do so you'll be instilling the necessary qualities for amazing improvements.

With that in mind, you should begin the process of trying to improve your conversion rate from your baseline. The bad news when it comes to increasing conversion rate is that there is no “one thing” that every site owner can do to increase it. The good news is that there are literally thousands of things that you can try that might increase it. Each one of those things might help, or each might hurt.

And therein lies the key to success in increasing conversion rate – testing, evaluating, and then testing and evaluating some more. Each time you should be striving to “beat your previous best.” If you went from 2% to 2.2%, keep the change and try for 2.5% with your next change. If you went from 2% to 1.5%, undo the change and try to get back over 2% with your next change. In general, you should give a sufficient amount of time to evaluate a change – I generally use one month as a rule of thumb, but you should factor in how much traffic you get and how large the change is when determining how long collect data for before evaluating a change.

What type of changes should I make?

As I mentioned before, there are thousands of things that you can change that can affect conversion rates. So where should you start? Start by walking in the shoes of your customer. Using the example of an e-commerce site, there are several types of customers that find your site. For the customer looking to buy immediately, is it easy to find the “buy” button or do you have to look around for it? For the customer wanting more information (product info, shipping info, or info about your business), is that easy to find? And for customers just browsing, do you have a way to entice them to buy, or at least entice them to sign up for a newsletter so that you can try to convert them at a later time?

Asking yourself those questions should result in several subtle changes and probably a few not-so-subtle changes that you can make. In addition, ask yourself whether or not the design of your site - logo, layout, colors, and font - appeal to senses and make it easy for people to find what they're looking for.

You should also seriously consider the content of your text. Is it possible that some people don't understand what your product or service does? Could international users interpret your phrases differently than domestic users, and if so, is there a way you could re-word your copy to avoid confusion? Ad copy is a funny thing – a subtle word change can often drastically affect conversion rates. The only way to know is to test.

Remember, you should only make one change at a time to be able to properly evaluate it. Each change will help point you in the right direction of the next change. Much like SEO, increasing conversion rate is not a one time event, it is an improvement process that you facilitate over the life of your site. That said, it is not an extremely difficult process, and when used in conjunction with sound SEO it can bring results to your site that you could have never imagined.

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Both Mike Scantlebury & Adam Mcfarland are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Mike Scantlebury has sinced written about articles on various topics from Internet Marketing, Writing and After Divorce. Mike Scantlebury is an Internet Author. He has written many novels, then taken his own advice and published them on Lulu. He also has videos on Youtube, including some of his own songs. He lives in Manchester, England, yes, that Manchester. Check out his. Mike Scantlebury's top article generates over 27100 views. to your Favourites.

Adam Mcfarland has sinced written about articles on various topics from Home Based Business, Photography and Entertainment Guide. Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize - simple that can be edited at any time from any place in the world. Email, print, check from your mobile phone, subscribe vi. Adam Mcfarland's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.