Monday, January 14, 2008

Advertising And Sales on This Blog



Advertisment for the 1913 Encyclopedia Britannica


I've had the first time in a while to just look at the news today. Most of it is slightly off putting. I wish they had some more positive news going on in the world.

I went into my storefronts sections and erased all of my commission junction storefronts. They seem to be a waste of time. I got 353 impressions but no sales. I think if this was advertising impressions, I might have made a small amount of money. Straight advertising might work better than attempting to sell things.

The other option is to find some really unique book or book related items to sell.

I still haven't made a single sale from Powells. I am still going to use it as an information source for the books I've read. People are looking at the books list, but not buying a single thing. Again, if it had been advertising, it might have worked better. Sponsorship might work better.

I also went into my Amazon storefront and found no sales. A big $0. So I am not making money on this blog. I have to go back and think about what I am going to do. I will be looking at those wicked places which give ad sponsorship. I might try something different with my reviews. Almost all of the review sites I have looked at have a picture of the book with a link embedded to Amazon. I might join the herd and do this. Most people don't seem to mind this because the picture adds to the review.

I think people will like this blog better with less advertising links. A lot of people hate advertising in blogs.

Maybe, I'll take some time and even look at places like Problogger and John Chow. Scary to think of it. I was reading Problogger a minute ago.

I still haven't gotten the book I have on hold on the business of blogging. Maybe, this is meant to be a personal hobby. I am really enjoying doing this. It has helped me improve my writing tremendously.

I was looking at some marketing blogs and found something fairly entertaining. Marketing Deviant has translated The Art of War into a business poem which is kind of interesting. It follows the same tradition of using classic military books as strategy books for business like Musashi's, The Art of War.

http://marketingdeviant.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/art-of-war-poem-ebook.pdf

I've put in some little Amazon picture boxes of books. Please let me know if this works for you.

5 comments:

chica said...

I use amazon product links in my book reviews, mainly because I like to show the actual book I read in my reviews (at the same time hoping that maybe someone will click on it). Apart from that I have an Amazon ads bar at the bottom. But I haven't earned anything from either. I don't
think visitors to my blog will click these, so I am not really expecting any money from it.

Book Calendar said...

All I can ask is that it ads an interesting quality to the blog.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you found the AOW poem entertaining =D!

Anonymous said...

I used to use the Amazon product widgets in my reviews because I liked having the picture of the book there and I had hoped someone might click and buy. I never got any sales that way so I decided to stop doing that. I use Amazon's affiliate program to get the pictures for covers, but I upload and save them to my site and I don't bother putting in the affiliate link.

If you're getting tons of impressions and clicks, but no buys, you might want to consider using adsense instead then. The ads that adsense generates should match the content of the site and hopefully you'll be getting clicks and earning some revenue that way. Remember though, in order to be paid you have to reach $100

Book Calendar said...

A lot of people don't like adsense. In effect, I asked myself do I want to be more popular or earn $100. I would rather be more popular.

Ideally what I would like is some kind of sponsorship or advertising that was specific, environment, writing, reading, books, poetry.

I have no idea how this would happen.