Blogs, marketing, and misfires

With the current drive to "personalise" things - readers buying a book because they liked the author's blog/photo I suppose I should admit something:

I've never bought a book because of an author's blog. However I have not bought books because of an author's blog.

If the blog is simply life, the universe, and everything then unless they have an interesting and unusual job (and I don't mean writing) it isn't going to hold my interest. Since most people's lives are very similar, just blogging about your own life won't pull people. This is especially true if you write about something outside your normal field. It's one reason why I keep my writing and books seperate from my job/work/life/cats blog. Just as celebrities resort to desperate tactics to stay in the headlines, writers resort to more desperate tactics to gain blog readers and problems start to occur.

A few years ago I was following a blog, from someone with an extremely unusual career and a good writing style. Like many people, I followed it, gave advice and help. The writer wanted to change jobs, so they were even negotiating a publishing deal through another readers' connection. About eighteen months into this the writer came clean: they didn't have the job, they had lied about the events and had in fact done it as a creative writing exercise to prove they could write.

The result was not readers praising them as a good writer: it was the total loss of their fanbase. The blog never recovered, and the publishing deal evaporated. I, like most of their other readers, were completely stunned.

I checked recently. The blog has gone and so has the confessional post and everything before it. The person is now back to writing on their first book, and trying to get another publishing deal. Six years lost for one lie. It was one of the most spectacular marketing misfires I have ever seen.

(No I'm not naming the writer. With any luck their life is back on track and they are older and a bit wiser. Teens are meant to make mistakes - it's just that when they do them online the results don't ever really go away.)

The moral? You can lose friends and reputation a lot more quickly than you can make them.

Be honest with your readers.

You only have to check the google rankings, however, to see that a targeted and focused blog will do better in search results and click through traffic, which is why I also run those. So why do I keep this blog going, when I have targetted blogs available? Because I can be a lot more abrasive, accurate in my views, and cover a much wider range of subjects here than on other blogs where I should be worrying about marketing, trying to make everything fit a focused and targeted blog, and work with SEO.

The other reason? On a marketing blog you shouldn't say anything negative or burn bridges. As anyone who has followed this blog knows, in some areas (usually to do with fraud, criminal behaviour, or incompetency) my policy is closer to "Hand me the matches and the petrol and stand well back." Not the best marketing and sales policy in the world.

An update

I haven't blogged for a while since Google's cookie set-up made it difficult to log into my account without having google try to link it to the work account I manage for an employer. (This frantic urge by certain companies to link everything up online is irritating. I hear Facebook is worse.)

Rant for the day: Tailored advertising has resulted in my finally cracking on my desire to not block ads and downloading Adblocker. After all, if I'm not interested in the ad the first time, show me something different on the next page, not the same blasted thing 600 times! I'm not going to click on it, but I may start to think your company are a) annoying and b) rude. Rant over.

Some changes here: I have split my fiction writing into another blog/Squidoo account to make it easier to manage, not least because I've got two more titles out. Currently I'm rather busy with three more books being worked on.

I'm slowing withdrawing my content from Bukisa, after finding some of it on a PLR site (now pulled) and included in a for-profit ebook with someone else's name on it (now pulled). Their switch to shared-advertising revenue has killed any earnings since they won't accept my adsense account, as I'm outside the US and don't have a zip code. It's either going in free e-books online or on lenses. Some may yet end up on Associated Content, but I'd have to check their licencing.

I'm moving my ebooks from Lulu to Smashwords, giving them a re-edit in the process. The result has been a success: The Three Great Ships of Isambard Kingdom Brunel is now their most downloaded non-fiction history title. Rather anxiously, I've turned on premium distribution, so these things should start turning up on B&N, Apple etc. over the next few months.

The cats are still cats. Some things don't change.

Disgo 3000

Yes I am eyeing this up - it's small neat, useful, and if underpowered can still be converted to a great e-reader/wordprocessor.

And combined with a DSL Linux key that runs inside Windows CE? A clean install everytime if you want. The techie in me is drooling.

Powerline networking

Networking without wires? This is certainly old news to most, not particularly secure and has some interesting range issues.

Falling in between wireless and old style wired is th new technology that lets you network your PC over your power cables, using the electrical cables already embedded in the walls to run a network. Not surprisingly, as a true techie, I had to try this.

We've got issues using wireless thanks to interference and location, so when we want to run a PC outside the office it has always involved running a long network cable round to where we want to work. Not ideal, particularly with two cats who view cables as long lengths of string. We bought the version with built-in AES, and set up a stand alone network.

The bad? It can't be plugged in to an extension lead. The good? Plugged into a wall it took about 5 seconds to set up. You literally plug an adaptor in to the socket, plug an RJ45 cable into it, and into your network hub/switch/router, plug another one in where you want to run the PC, and put an RJ45 cables from the socket to the PC. Effectively every power outlet in the house is now a network port.

A moment's thought reveals security issues, particularly if you have exterior power sockets or have ring networks shared with another flat*, but these are less than wireless would suffer, and it doesn't replace the need for antivirus and firewalls on the PC. However it removes the need for cables, is slightly more secure than wireless, and is very easy to use.

We're planning on setting it up as a second network, not linked to our main one, for light/fun use on gadgets like consoles which we can't use on the commercial network.

The only problem a real techie may have? Running out of power sockets...We may be doing some more DIY this weekend.

*We checked with one adaptor plugged into the PC first to see if it picked up any other networks. If you think it might, you may want to try this.

Dragon Cave

A quick apology for the number of dead eggs currently on my scroll - I'm trying to breed a female vampire dragon and it keeps failing!