You've Written A Book And Nobody Knows...What Now?
There are couple of ways to go on a website. You can pay for one. I pay about $90 a year for www.rcshivers.com, through Ipower. They are a great hosting site that offers me a lot of flexibility. If I decide to self publish, I can even initiate Paypal to sell my books. There are plenty of hosting services that are reasonably priced and also offer website templates and design software as part of the package.
If you don't want to pay the money for the whole hosting thing, then you can find plenty of free hosting services as well. The differences are minimal, but important to understand. First, the free services will place ads on your page that may not necessarily be in line with what your site or writing is all about.
Second, you will most likely have a long site name such as www.myhost.com/myepicbook, or some nonsense like that. An easy way around that is to find a free hosting service that allows domain parking. Then you can purchase your dream site name and park at the location of your free site. Domain names can run from $2.99 to $10.00 for names that are not being auctioned for high dollars. Let's be honest. You can come up with a good site name that will fit in the low dollar range.
Now that you have your site set up, you need to market it. Submitting to search engines is one of the most commons ways to promote your site. When you submit your site, the search engine includes it in their directory and will update your info whenever they update their listings. Weekly, monthly, quarterly...but that is not the best way to get your site noticed anymore. With all the popularity and affordability of websites, there are just so many out there that your listing will probably get lost in the results.
So now it's time to build your sites' recognition. I know, it seems like a lot of work, and it is, but not for long and it pays off in the end. The best way to get yourself noticed on the web and climb higher in the search results is to get backlinked. This is a process of building links to and from your site.
Social networking has made backlinking very easy. Go to Facebook and Twitter and Myspace, and whatever social network site you think might help build your popularity. There are a ton out there. On these sites, create a profile and find a name that you will be able to use across all of them. Find something catchy but not hard to follow. For my country music news columns, I am known as Country_Writer. As I developed more towards my books, I chose RC Shivers Writer. Its simple, but it also helps link back to my website name.
Start posting pages and links from your website on these networking sites and place badges from these sites on your website. Now you have backlinked to social networks. The next step is to build on this linking. Facebook, Twitter and Myspace have different "apps" that allow you to post links from one site to the other without going to each one and redoing what you just posted. When I post to Facebook, the post goes to Twitter and then to Myspace. Each one of these will go back to my website.
Now, go to a search engine and find ShareThis. This site has a toolbar with several dozen bookamarking sites. Delicious, Google Bookmarks, Digg and Stumbleupon to name a few. Whenever you post something new, you can find a channel or subject on one (or All) of these sites and submit your new page to it. Now your new page or site is available to millions of people who search these sites daily to find something they are interested in. You can build a profile, and develop a following just like on the social networking sites, but now you are selling your writing.
The next step for me was creating a blog. There are several great blog sites to choose from, and some of you may already have a blog. For those who don't, you can check here on Orble, or on Wordpress or Blogger. I went the whole distance and set up pages on all three. To be honest, I had about six, but it was getting to be a pain in the A$$. So I just work with the three now. This is your next opportunity to backlink to your website. I have all of my blogs listed on www.rcshivers.com and my site is also listed on my blogs. Backlinking in all its glory.
Now that you have your blogs set up, and you are beginning to post updates. You can take the next step. On Facebook, there is an app called Networked Blogs. When you join this and register your blog, every time you have a new post, it can automatically get posted to FB...and then Twitter and then Myspace....and the chain of backlinking continues.
When the search engines continue to come across the same links on different pages, you climb higher in the results. When I had just a website, it was hard to find me even if you specifically searched my name and "writer". Now, many lessons later, I can fill the first five or six pages of a search.
It also helps to have some online columns. I write two country music columns and one general news columns right now. Sometimes I slack off on new articles, but I do my share and keep relevant.
Now that you have done the footwork, guess what? It's time to write again. Write what you like. Write about your writing. Then write even more about some more about things you like. Just make sure it is all somewhat relevant to the original purpose. Get Published. Below I have listed some of the sites that I have. Check them out for yourself and see what backlinking actually does. After you check out the sites, then go search "RC Shivers" on Google or your favorite search engine and see if I am right. Then go do it for yourself and good luck with a publishing deal.
RC on Wordpress
RC on Blogger
RC on Slurred Words
RC Shivers Website
RC on Examiner Columbia
RC on Examiner Charleston
RC on Twitter
Country Writer on Twitter
RC on AC
RC on Facebook
RC on MySpace
