Tweet

Discover one way to use blogs to market and sell more books

Guest post by: Kathleen Gage

Article Overview: Blog Tours have always been a very expensive way to promote books. For many authors it has also been extremely ineffective. When done right, you are able to reach more of your target market.

Discover one way to use blogs to market and sell more books

Those who make great money online are those who continually seek opportunities to position their expertise. An excellent way to do this is with blog tours and guest blogging.

What is a blog tour?

Blog tours became popular by authors who were seeking a more cost effective way to get the word out about a book. In days past a book tour for an author consisted of going from location to location to do readings, signings and hopefully sell a few books.

This has always been a very expensive way to promote books. For many authors it has also been extremely ineffective.

Enter blogs. Somewhere along the lines someone got the idea that rather than simply writing for their own blog, why not do guest appearances.

What was a very mysterious activity as recently as only a few short years ago is now a very common practice. And rather than simply promote books, a tour is now used for promoting a number of different things such as live events, teleseminars, information products and services.

A simple definition of a blog tour is a virtual tour where you stop at a number of blogs and post relevant information.

Participating in a blog tour has replaced the need to make "personal" appearances for many experts.

In the purest sense a blog tour is done over a specific period of time where the expert "visits" several blogs.

A blog owner hosts one stop of the tour unless of course, they have several blogs you are posting on. The best part of all is you can do a tour from literally anywhere in the world as long as you have Internet access.

Some people prefer to do sporadic guest blogging rather than a structured blog tour. In essence guest blogging is exactly as it sounds. You post on a blog as a guest. But, you must get the blog owner's permission to do this type of posting.

Being a guest blogger is different than simply posting comments about other people's posts. In essence you are the "star" blogger.

In this lesson you will learn what you can do to make your star shine each and every blog you are a guest of.

Benefits to blog tours and guest blogging

There are a number of fabulous benefits to either. You definitely increase your visibility and credibility. Both allow you to create a buzz about a book, event, or telseminar to name just a few things.

Without a doubt your writings will be viewed by new eyeballs. This is exactly what you want.

When done right, you are able to reach more of your target market. The reason you want to be clear on who your market is and who is reading the blog you are going to post on is for increased reach with the best market.

There's no point in writing for blogs that are not viewed by those who are interested in what you have to say and offer.

Guest blogging opens up opportunities for potential joint venture relationships with the blog owner. What better way to get your foot in the door than to do a stellar job with your guest blog appearance?

Search engines love blogs and when you use the right keywords you are creating incredible opportunities for better SEO.

In addition, you can increase your own opt in subscribers if you do have a link in your bio at the end of your post.

Related Articles
  Online book campaigns – friend or foe?
  Books as naked conversations
  How to Use Keyword Research to Search for Clients
  Is Twitter useful or a waste of time for authors? Judge for yourself
  Which Is Better; eBooks or Physical Books?
  What's The Difference Between Authors, Bloggers And Internet Marketers?
  21 Ways to Promote Your Blog
  Social Networking and Success
  Earn Extra Income Online: 4 Great Ideas To Choose From
  Using Blogs for Business - 3 Tips on How for Best Result
  Marketing Your Writing: The Basics of Selling Your Book
  Niche Marketing - Your Chance to Succeed in Internet Marketing Business
  My No. 1 Networking Lesson
  Can You Really Make Money Flipping Blogs?
  What You Need to Know About Publishing Your Book
  Online Businesses - How to Make Money with Blogs
  DoFollow Blogs Build Links Get Traffic and Improve Your Google Rankings
  Home Based Writing Jobs: Start Your Own Business
  Do I need a professionally designed website to have an online business?
  Amazon Bans Junk e-books

Article Tags: build a business online, Making money online, marketing, online marketing
Referred by: http://www.sandcconsulting.com



Related Forum Posts
Re: New Business - For getting popularity on Google, it’s best to participate on social forums, blogs and article sites. I suggest you upload your books on eBay, Docstoc, Scribd, Google Docs and Servana etc. These are good places to sell books, policies, and research papers to potential clients. Moreover generate business leads and a platform to keep in touch with your customers, fans and other visitors.
Use of Blogging For Promotion - Blogging is the easiest way to get market for your product and contact directly with your clients, blogs can create a buzz in very less time, if you can do something which brings a lot of backlinks from other big bloggers to your blogs, then it will also bring quality traffic to your site, How much have you been profited by power of blogs ?
Blogging For Promotion - Blogging is on of the effective way to get market for your product and contact directly with your clients, blogs can create a buzz in very less time, if you can do something which brings a lot of backlinks from other big bloggers to your blogs, then it will also bring quality traffic to your site, How much have you been profited by power of blogs ?
Re: Starting a Online T-shirt Company - I recently started a tshirt printing and embroidery business. We are still in a start up phase but have already found out how important your niche is. We spent a lot of time finding our niche, our customers and how we would reach them. As soon as we attempted to market to our niche we found several flaws in our marketing plan. Luckily we were also able to talk to some people in our related niche and got some excellent ideas on how to market our products. I would suggest that you think about who you are going to sell to, where they buy their clothes now, who your competition is and how do they market to their customers. Then do a test marketing to see if it works. During the test of our marketing is when we found out it would take way too much time and money to market the way we had planned. Now we are marketing to a different market but with the same end customer. An example would be wanting to sell t-shirts with sport team logos. The market appears to be the sports fan. But when you look at marketing to all the sports fans in the country, state, county or school, you will find it very expensive and impractical. But if you have a unique enough of a design you can market it to the sports stores or concession stands and have them sell it to the sports fan. Yes, the money may be less, but the profit will be higher as you will sell more shirts than you could on your own.
Make your strategy - First up, you need to identify where you want to go; 1. Who do you want to sell to? 2. How do you want to sell it to them? 3. What do you have to work with in the way of resources. 4. How much do you need to sell it. 5. What do you need to sell it. 6. What makes your product different to everyone else’s? I saw your design, you're a talented graphic artist, but immediately selling a design featuring only your logo without an existing market presence to back it may prove to be a mistake. Have you thought about offering a range of apparel, or even offering custom designs to people as an option?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

The Death of the Sales Magazine

Why We MUST Reinvent The Wheel

Counselling - Who Needs It?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.