Author Shares Guerilla Marketing Tips that Work

Danny Kofke doesn't have a big platform, nor does he have a lot of time. He teaches full time in a public school (special education) and is raising two young children. Yet, he's selling far more books than your typical author, largely through his own publicity efforts. On his media page, I find four radio shows and one book signing that are booked for the next couple of months. And it's not a brand new book. It's been out over two years. It's called How to Survive (And Perhaps Thrive) on a Teacher's Salary.

Here are some tips I picked up from him in a phone conversation this morning:

1) Face it, it takes time and effort to sell books. They don't sell themselves.

2) Book marketing is fun! He's been at this for over two years and still gets a charge out of doing radio interviews, TV and other media. He still fondly recalls the excitement of doing his first radio interview.

3) He takes advantage of both large and small opportunities. You never know what might pay off. He had one interview he did for Bank Rate that got picked up by the FOX site. Another went secondarily to AOL's home page. The point? Just get out there and do something, even if it's small. Do something enough and cool things start to happen.

4) His main method is to research viable media and send e-mails to them.

• He starts with a Google search for such topics as "radio stations about teachers", "financial radio shows," etc. Then, he finds them on the Web and studies the show. If it's all about, for example, recommending stocks to buy, he doesn't pursue it.
• Next, he finds the contact person on the site. E-mail them a pitch. The pitch must be powerful. Remember, it's not about your book, it's about their audience. With the first paragraph, share a startling statistic or something to grab them, demonstrating that their audience wants to hear what you have to say. If you've gotten publicity before, link them to your media page so that they can see or hear past interviews.
  

5) Follow-up and keep good records. Danny emphasized this over and over. He'll pitch anyone and everyone, then write on the calendar to follow-up in a month or so if they haven't responded. If they still don't respond, he may e-mail again several months later, saying something like, "Hey, I just spoke on this station and was mentioned in this article. If you'd like to interview me...." And he keeps following up until someone says that don't want to hear any more.

As you can imagine, good record-keeping is vital. He calendars items that he needs to do at a later time. He keeps a notebook as to who he's e-mailed, how they responded, and when to follow-up. If someone declines and wants no further pitches, he notes that as well.

Example: He contacted the "700 Club" early in his marketing. They declined to interview him. But recently he e-mailed again, telling them what other events he's done and linking them to his author site so that they can see his other interviews. This time, they booked him!

6) Interest can build over time. The media isn't just interested in new books. Once you get one interview and put it on your media site, this can leverage more reviews. Now the media has something to judge whether or not you're a fit for their program. The more interviews you get, the more impressive you look. It's called building a platform from scratch. It's called leveraging one opportunity to get other opportunities.

Danny sent 10 e-mails over time to CBS about getting on their early show. Finally, he could say in an e-mail, "Hey, I was just on CNN." This time, they replied and asked to see his interview from CNN. That's progress! Hopefully, he'll let us know if it comes through!

7) Danny uses HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to give his expertise to journalists who need to interview experts, or regular people with specialized experiences. Responding to a HARO request got him into the Wall Street Journal.

8) Set up your media page. We've already mentioned how he's using it. I like it for two reasons:

1. It gives the media exactly what they want to know, all there on one page where they don't have to waste time searching for information. They can click on both articles and interviews and see that Danny can handle himself well on interviews.
2. It's free and takes minimal time to maintain. I can hear marketing experts saying, "You need to post a blog every day, or at least a few times a week. You need to get links from other prominent sites. You need to post on other people's blogs." To which I'd respond, "Danny doesn't have time for all that crap. He's got something that works for him. Why ruin it?"
   
   Danny's blog is free and functions well for his purpose. He set it up on blogspot.com and didn't even bother to buy a distinct url. Apparently, he doesn't need a url, so why pay $10 a year to get one? That goes along with his book on how to live on a teacher's salary. You don't buy things you neither want nor need.
   
   
3. It's easily up-datable. You don't have to use DreamWeaver or ExpressionWeb or have to hire a webmaster. Blogspot gives you all the basic tools you need.
   

9) You don't have to do everything. If I understand Danny correctly (I'll let him edit this), he isn't putting his book in book fairs, sending it off extensively for review, going for book awards, writing articles for magazines, and traveling extensively. While he has his eye on other opportunities, like presentations to school faculty, he's hung in there with something that's working for him - doing radio shows. I've heard that one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs to do is to stick with a winning formula once they've found one. Danny's making it work, and for that, I greatly admire him!

Follow-Up Interview

Out of 20 first contacts that you make, how many do you estimate end up
actually booking you?

Danny -I would say maybe 4-5 even replied to my message and maybe 2 would book me.

SM - Now that you've got interviews on your press page that they can look at
and realize that you've been in major media, is it easier to book interviews? If so, how many out of 20 responded at first and how many out of 20 now?

Danny - Yes, it's easier to book interviews now. Most producers want to see how you can fit into their show and help their listeners/viewers out. It is not about you or your book most of the time - it is about your message. Since I have been on numerous TV and radio shows, producers can take a look at these and see if I would be a good fit for them. They no longer have to guess what I would sound/look like since they can see first-hand. I would say I now get 5-6 responses (still not half) from the pitches I send out.

SM - Is 90% of what you're doing going after radio?

Danny - No, I would say about 60% radio, 30% television and the rest various print outlets. At first, before I had any television exposure, I was mainly going after radio but now, since I have had exposure in all three areas I mentioned, I pitch appropriate people in all of these areas.

SM - How many contacts (new and followup) do you think you average each week?

Danny - I would estimate 100 or so. Some weeks it is more and some less but, overall, I would say that is the average.

SM - How much time do you think you average marketing your book each week?

Danny - It is an endless job since there are so many ways to market. I have come up with a balance to be the best husband, father, teacher and marketer I can so I limit myself since I could probably work on marketing 10 hours a day! I would say I spend an average of 15-20 hours a week working on book related stuff.

Thanks Danny! That's great information. Thanks for being so generous with us!

Bookstores vs. Amazon for Sales: Part II

The New York Times article on James Patterson (James Patterson, Inc.), was instructive regarding how publishers, and thus bookstores, cater to the big-time authors. A couple of paragraphs told about how the big publishers now put most of their marketing efforts behind their best selling authors, much more so now than the past. The result is that best-selling authors sell even more books, but the mid-list authors get very little marketing dollars. Publisher pay thousands of dollars to reserve top-placement sections of bookstores for their best-selling authors. Thus, the best-selling authors keep selling more copies while the rest of us may initially get into a bookstore, but will soon be sent back to publisher if we fail to sell, never to return.

Thus, even if the smaller authors get into the bookstores, if there isn't a strong marketing campaign (either by the author or the publisher), then people won't come to the bookstore looking for the book, and it will get returned.

I'm a small-time author, and am glad that my books are offered through Baker & Taylor and Ingram, but the bulk of my sales come through Amazon. And yes, in a sense, Amazon is just passive, but isn't that the current revolution in marketing - from "interruption marketing" to "I'll help you find me marketing"?

By optimizing my Amazon pages, posting articles on popular sites and blogs, getting reviews on popular sites and newspapers, and by having all these linked back to my Amazon page, I get regular sales. And I get 35% of each sale on Amazon - much, much better than the percentage of my sales to bookstores through the big wholesalers.

So for me it's both/and, but Amazon is becoming the bigger and bigger player for me.

J. Steve Miller
President, Legacy Educational Resources
Author of Enjoy Your Money! How to Make It, Save It, Invest It and Give It
"The money book for people who hate money books."
http://wisdomcreekpress.com/press_kits.html

Brick and Mortar Bookstores vs. Amazon for Authors

An experience, a stat and a reflection on brick and mortar vs. Amazon:

An Experience

I write resources for those teaching character and life skills in public schools. When the two Superbowl contenders are decided, I immediately find out who the highest profile athletes are so that I can research them for character stories (what led them to such a high level of success.)

So Kurt Warner was quarterbacking in the Superbowl a couple of years ago and I decided to read his autobiography. He'd led his team to the Superbowl several years earlier in a spectacular bag-boy to Superbowl hero story and I thought, "This is as high a profile person as you can get. The Superbowl's a week away, the most watched media event of the year; so I'm sure his autobiography will be in my local bookstores."

I called Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books a Million. None carried it. One said they couldn't even order it. I ordered from Amazon.

A Stat

A few experiences like this one and people begin defaulting to Amazon. Here are the stats from 2008:

Barnes and Noble.com = $466 million
Borders/ Waldenbooks = $3.11 billion
Barnes & Nobel/ B. Dalton = $4.52 billion
Amazon.com = $5.35 billion (book sales only)

More importantly in 2008, Amazon’s sales grew by 16% while each of the other bookstore chains lost money. If this trend continues, Amazon will rapidly become a bigger and bigger player for authors, and bookstores will become less and less - particularly for small-time authors who can't be guaranteed to get into bookstores and be continually stocked there.

A Reflection

Don't get me wrong; I love bookstores! But after a couple of experiences like that, I began defaulting to Amazon. I support bookstores. I hang out at bookstores. But I depend on Amazon. It's a time issue. A local bookstore can carry only a small percentage of the millions of books in print, even of books that are recognized classics in their fields - like a Psychology text on "Persuasion" I couldn't find locally. After signing up for Amazon Prime, we never pay postage. And books come quickly to our door.

If you're a major selling author like Sue Grafton for novels or David McCullough for biographies, traditional brick and mortar bookstores, Walmart, etc. are wonderful sales outlets. For the rest of us, they are a useful outlet that people can order from, but not likely to carry us long-term.

If a person with as high a profile as Kurt Warner's (incredibly "high platform", which all publishers are looking to publish) can't keep his autobiography in the bookstores several years after it was written (and it was truly a well-written, inspiring book), then what chance do us low-profile authors have of keeping our books in bookstores over the years? At best, for low-profile authors, I'd suggest that brick and mortar bookstores are typically a short-term rather than long-term strategy.

I have a book on church music, published 17 years ago with a traditional publisher, with no marketing done for it in the past 15 years, that still sells steadily on Amazon. It probably lasted only a couple of years in bookstores.

On Getting Articles Published

It's one thing to write insightful and well-crafted prose, quite another to navigate the business of writing - actually getting published and making money from your craft. Most of the ideas for this post come from The March/April issue of Writer's Digest, which attacked theme: Your Economic Survival Guide. Lots of great stuff here. I'll center in on ideas for getting articles published.

1. Build Relationships. Maybe you meet writers at socials or writers' conferences. Offer to take them to lunch to ask for advice. If you've written for someone before, keep in touch! Keep a good client list. If you came through with a good article last time, they're more likely to take your idea next time. Submit to them regularly.

2. Understand the Market. Perry Perkins makes a full-time living writing articles. At first, he wrote articles and used Writers Market to try to find appropriate places to place them. Then, he took a different approach. He spent several days reading through Writers Market, cover to cover, studying it. This knowledge can become a brainstorming list to dream up articles a certain publication might love. Then he could write queries based on what magazines were looking for, rather than trying to taylor his articles to fit their purposes.

There's an interesting parallel to Warren Buffett's advice to a young person wanting to learn how to invest like him. Basically, he told him to start like he did, studying every publically traded stock in the United States. The person objected - there are thousands of stocks! To which Buffett replied, "Start with the A's". I think Buffett's point was: if you want to pick the best companies, it helps to understand how they compare with other companies. The more companies you know and understand, the better decisions you can make.

Writing is a skill. But we sell our writing in a market - an industry. The more thoroughly we understand that market, the easier it will become to find the perfect match for our articles, and to propose articles that would be the perfect match for specific publications.

3. If your writing is good, then it's a numbers game - put out lots of submissions. Trying to move up from making a partial living to making a full living, Perkins upped his submissions from an average of 2.5 per day to 15 per day (assuming a five day work week). It worked!

4. Query big, well-paying publications first.

5. Don't put hours into an article until you know someone wants it. Query first.

6. Know the publication, giving editors what they want, when they want it, how they want it. You know this by studying their guidelines for submission and reading their publications.

Leftover Questions

I've written article for magazines, but have never done extensive article submission. Do most magazines accept multiple submissions? I suppose that since Perkins recommends hitting the big publications first, they he's giving them a week or a month to respond before submitting the proposal to lesser publications. How long do you give the major publication? And if there are 10 lesser publications, do you send out those 10 at the same time? What if more than one wants it? Do you write two similar, but different articles?

If you have answers or suggestions, please let me know.

31 Recent Blogging Insights

From a blogging seminar and Writer's Digest article:

1. Be extremely specific/niche. Find what's not already published on Amazon.

2. Blog about what you love.

3. If you need to make money off it, find a topic where "Something You Love" meets "Something People Will Pay For." You may love to write about your cat and the cutesy things he does. But will people pay for it? (I think this is one of the most overlooked insights in people trying to make money with their blog. It's not just, "blog every day with quality content." You've got to ask if you're putting out information that people are willing to pay for in some fashion.)

4. Break up copy with bold headlines, subheads, etc.

5. Have several beginnings of posts on your blog home page, where they can click for more.

6. Headline Tips:

• Be Concise
• Use full names of people and places
• Include key words and phrases
• Include story details.
  

7. Choose your own domain name, cheap from godaddy.com.

8. Link back to earlier posts = 2 page views.

9. Ask for input - engage your audience!

10. To build a following, post every day for 30 days, then 2 - 3 x per week.

11. Comment on other blogs and track back.

12. Wordpress Direct (wpdirect.com) is search engine optimization on steroids.

13. Set up supporting blogs that link back to your main blog.

14. Reciprocal linking is suspect to Google - looks like an arrangement.

15. Try www.hootsuite.com to manage several of your social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) at once.

16. Pre-populate your tweets and blogs to save hours.

17. People and search engines love "Top Ten," "How to..." and Videos.

18. Embed the video on your blog rather than just link to youtube.

19. Put your blog address on the video.

20. Try live streaming free at ustream.com, to connect with people in real time.

21. Monetize with e-books. The blog is the jumping off point.

22. Monetize with "Donate" button. "If anything I've written helped you, donate now." Just set up a merchant account with PayPal and embed the code.

23. One person with an airline insider weekly e-mail asks readers to donate once a year. It's enough to make a living. The average donation is $50 per month. He works at it full time.

24. Monetize with premium resources. So you have lots of free resources available, which lets them know you do quality stuff. Then you sell e-books or a members only section.

25. Monetize by being an Amazon Associate. When you recommend a book, you have a link to Amazon. If someone buys, you get a cut.

26. Monetize by selling ads. But you have to have a lot of traffic to make it work. You might do better approaching a compatible company than just going with Google Ads.

27. Approach other blogs with posts they could use. That gives you links coming back. Some successful bloggers get most of their traffic from other blogs.

28. Write guest posts for another blog or publication. One blogger writes a monthly column for her state's main newspaper. It gives her respect and brings people in.

29. Use 1.5 spacing. More inviting.

30. Go to Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends) to find hot topics and hot searches. Other sources of trends = Technorati, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit.

31. Submit appropriate posts to article marketing directories such as http://ezinearticles.com/ or http://www.associatedcontent.com/.

32. Do clear calls to action: "Sign up for my newsletter," "Buy my book."

"Blogging is just like networking - the one with the most friends wins!"
"We need 1,000 eyeballs looking at our writing!"

Summary of First Year Marketing Book

Often, what I find lacking in book marketing literature (I've read 15 such books so far) is the answer to the question:

"Okay, so you've told me 10,000 ways to market my book. But how can I decide which of those ways are likely to have the best payoff? I know every book's different, but what methods tend to work best and what often doesn't sell books at all?"

To help answer that question, a big part of this blog over the past year has been to track my efforts to sell my book, Enjoy Your Money! How to Make It, Save It, Invest It and Give It. I've admitted grand schemes that produced no sales at all and lots of tiny efforts that apparently, taken together as a whole, are now producing significant sales on a regular basis.

So here's my 11 month summary, which I used for a consult with Brian Jud (guru at marketing books "Beyond the Bookstore) and Guy Achtzehn (formerly with Simon & Schuster; current president, The Marketing and Sales Group and The Promotional BookStore. Represents such brands as Black & Decker/DeWalt, Bulova, Coleman, Fuji and Ralph Lauren. Here's information on doing your own $49 consult with them. )

Enjoy Your Money!
Marketing Summary

Bottom Line: Much of the ground work has been laid (glowing reviews, attractive and inviting Amazon presence, useful media page) and the book has proven itself to be a valuable resource (readers like it). I think we’ve arrived at a time that we can leverage these tools to seriously get the word out about this book. The big question: of all the available marketing methods, which will be the most effective to pursue, given limited time?

Background

My literary agent contacted many traditional publishers, all of whom turned it down. She has relationships with many of these, so she asked them why. None of them had a problem with the quality of the book (one asked for a copy, should we get it published!). They felt that I lacked the platform – “financial books won’t sell unless you have a national radio show”. I respectfully disagreed, started my own publishing company and published print on demand through Booksurge (now CreateSpace) in March of 2009.

I sent galleys to all the major reviewers four months before publication, but got no reviews.
I pursued other reviewers and financial columnists, got a publicist who helped me with press releases, etc. Sales have continued to increase as a result (see next section for specifics).
Wholesalers: Available through Baker & Taylor (from March, 2009) and Ingram (by March, 2010), without a return policy. Thus, I don’t expect bookstores to be a main source of sales at this time. I could pay extra to have a return policy with Baker & Taylor, and probably with Ingram, but some advise not to.

Distributors: In December, the Follett Corporation ( http://www.follett.com/about.cfm ), a major player in distribution to young adult libraries (juvenile collections in public libraries, high school libraries), started receiving some orders and they contacted me. We signed a non-exclusive contract for them to distribute. They actually market their books, so I’m hopeful that this will be a solid outlet. I paid Premium Book Company (Through Brian Jud) to search for bulk sale opportunities. Nothing so far, but I know this is a long-term project.

Marketing So Far
What’s Working and What’s Not

#1: Amazon Sales: At first, since there were no big-time reviews, books only sold when I did some initiative: like letting Facebook friends know about it, or a review came out. But by the Fall, sales have begun taking a life of their own, even when I have no specific initiative going on. Apparently, word of mouth is taking over. Prior to December, it was selling a bit less than one per day. In December, it sold about 2 per day; in January, 3 per day. Perhaps we’ve hit a tipping point! Or maybe December and January are just good for financial books. Who knows?

#2: Bulk purchases for gifts: A CPA bought 100 copies (and promises to purchase more) to give away to graduating seniors. A pastor bought 30 copies to give to graduating seniors. A lady bought 30 copies to give as gifts. I have a personal relationship with all three of these, so people who don’t know me already may not be as eager to jump on it. Following up on this, I personally visited several CPA firms in my city and gave them a free copy to look over, in case they wanted to purchase in bulk at $10 each for Christmas gifts for their clients. None followed through, although some secretaries bought copies.

#3: Bulk purchases for speaking: I’ve spoken at two retreats where they bought the books for each of the students at $10 each – about 30 copies per retreat. I relate to students well and enjoy communicating with them. I’ve also spoken to adults in both churches and civic organizations, and can begin seeking out more opportunities if I decide to go this direction.

#4: Sales from Reviews: I found 30 major newspapers that have financial columns, e-mailed the columnists, sent free books to those who requested it. I got only one review, but it was from a syndicated financial columnist from the Oakland Tribune, and I got multiple sales immediately after he published. I don’t know how many direct sales have come from reviews, but I think that, even with no-platform reviewers, the word gets out. So far, I’ve sent out about 320 copies to people for review, to enter contests (I received a “best books” award), let teachers review it, see if a CPA would like to order in bulk, etc. I seldom send it to anyone without contacting them first and getting a request.

Bookstores sales: Two local bookstores haven’t sold any. A bookstore in my home town sells a few copies regularly. A local university bookstore has sold copies and pushes it during graduation. I don’t have a lot of confidence in this book’s ability to sell well in bookstores, if it’s not pushed by the owners. If a media wave hits, then maybe it will send people to the bookstores to buy it.

Stores that aren’t bookstores: Several non-bookstores (a coffee shop, a fitness center, a video rental store, a home office/copy place) have tried to sell it, with only a couple sold. But a Trade & Play Video Game store owner sold some copies saying that the secret is that parents look at it while they’re waiting in line and he recommends it. He seems pretty excited about it. (My theory was to put it in a place where parents bring their kids to buy stuff, and while the parents are wandering around with nothing to do, they’ll pick up the book and look it over.) I think the key here is to find store owners who’ll actually read the book and catch a passion for helping people by recommending it.

HARO (Help A Reporter Out): I’ve contributed to several articles, one of which resulted in a lot of traffic to one of my sites. As Murphy’s Law would have it, this was a few months before my book was published.

I was on two major Atlanta TV stations and sold none. (I bought the rights and put them on youtube, however. Also, I got a link from their site, which could be very important.)

I did one radio interview and sold none.

Assets|

1. The book itself. People like it, but it doesn’t sell itself (I’m neither Donald Trump nor Dave Ramsey.)

2. My presence on Amazon (all 19 reviews are five-star!) and my Media Pages. All include great reviews:

Main Media Page: http://wisdomcreekpress.com/press_kits.html
Media Page Targeting Educators: http://wisdomcreekpress.com/personal_finance_text.html
Amazon Page: http://www.amazon.com/Enjoy-Your-Money-Make-Invest/dp/098187567X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237211789&sr=8-2

3. Work ethic: I don’t have lots of time, but I can do something each day. I can set long term goals and execute.

4. Flexibility: If I find that something works better than what I planned, I change course.

5. Patience. I excel at plodding. I’m fully willing to do things for months that might produce multiple sales years from now. I see marketing this book as a life-long effort, so I’m willing to set decade-long goals.

6. I’m a voracious learner. If I don’t understand it the first time, I’ll get it on the 30th time. If you tell me that I need to read certain books to understand certain aspects of marketing, I can do that.

7. Speaking: Although I’m not a world-class speaker, young people and adults enjoy my presentations and give me great reviews. People ask me back. But I can’t get out a lot, due to family responsibilities (seven boys and caring for 104-year-old granny.)

8. Articles: This book lends itself to limitless articles. Lots of material, tons of research, lots of interesting angles.

9. Royalties: I get 35% of the retail price on each Amazon sale. At this point, this is my main avenue for sales. Since CreateSpace is owned by Amazon, there are no costs to me for this transaction (no mailing to Amazon, no yearly fees, etc.) To sell it myself, the book costs me about $4.60 to purchase it in bulk, including shipping to me. So I can still offer it at a 55% discount to wholesalers/distributors (if they pay postage, which Follett does), and make a profit.

10. My Websites and Newsletters: My not-for-profit, Legacy Educational Resources, encompasses two websites that I have full control over: www.character-education.info and www.youth-ministry.info . Together, these sites get about 900 unique visitors per day. My quarterly e-zine goes out to about 8,000 people who’ve signed up on these sites. Unfortunately, although many of these are educators, a relatively small amount would be actually teaching person finance, so links from these sites and mentions in the e-zines have produced insignificant sales.

11. Rights: I own the rights to the book, so that if I can publish booklets, excerpts, e-books, or whatever I please. If a company or book club wanted to order in bulk, I could price out an offset run and even personalize it for the company.

12. Social Media Savvy: I have three blogs, a twitter account (@enjoyyourmoney), am on Facebook, LinkedIn, and participate in several marketing forums. I don’t put a lot of time into these, but at least have a presence. In general, for me, I’m finding more value in “going where the people are already gathered,” rather than trying to gather people around me.

13. Website: www.enjoyyourmoney.org Open to input here.

Limitations

Limited Marketing Budget. I’m small time. But since the book’s making money, I can devote that money to marketing.

Limited Time: I run a not-for-profit, am raising 7 boys, and care for my 104-year-old granny. I can do something every day to market my book, but I can’t devote full time.

Small Platform: I have no strong platform (radio show, syndicated column, etc.) except for the platform I’m building (leveraging bigger blurbs from smaller blurbs, etc.).

Geographically, I’m physically constrained. I can’t get physically far from home very often at this point in life. I can’t be a full-time travelling speaker, nor do I desire that life. I can speak once a month or so.

Current priorities

(Do you agree? Which of these would you prioritize? What do you specifically recommend for me to do?)

This is where I really need your input. There are so many ways to market this book, and I could devote a solid year to several of them. Which do you think would be the most effective to pursue (if any of them.) At present, this looks like a good way to prioritize. What do you think? And with the avenues you’d pursue, how specifically would you pursue them?

#1 – Shoot for multiple sales to schools, including home schoolers. How, specifically, would you do this?

• Try to get some initial classes to use it, so that these teachers could recommend it. Haven’t succeeded so far. (I give myself a “D” for poor follow-up.)
• Follett has a division that works with textbooks. Perhaps I can cultivate this relationship.
• Continue to develop my free, online resources to accompany the book at www.enjoyyourmoney.org .
• Find the most popular home school blogs and sites and newsletters and offer them a free book for review.
• Find where traditional educators go for advice on texts and try to get in there.

#2 – Offer the book to well traveled blogs/newsletters/sites/magazines on topics like personal finance, success, raising teens, etc. Not only does the word get out to their audiences, but many of these people are influential in other realms besides their newsletter (like recommending texts to their local schools). Ulrich’s and Gale’s Directories give me hundreds of these. I can also use Technorati, Google Blogs, etc.

#3 – Radio. So I’ve got this southern accent working against me, but I think I come across natural and enjoyable in the media. Since radio people are always wanting a new angle on personal finance (particularly during the recession), should I get in the Radio-TV Interview Report (RTIR)? I think that’s where Kiyosaki (Rich Dad/ Poor Dad) made his big break.

#4 – Speaking at Universities? There are all kinds of clubs and organizations there.

#5 – Offer it to not-for-profits and prison ministries and poverty stricken schools at my cost? Hey, I wrote the book to help people. And I get the feeling that the more I can get it out there, the more word of mouth will take over and the more people will actually pay for it.

#6 – Contact those who’ve written “So You Want To…” and “Listmania” Amazon lists on personal finance or personal success, offering them a free book if they’ll add it to their list, if they deem it worthy.

#7 – Military, including military families, military returning home, etc. Find the newsletters, blogs and sites they frequent. Many of these have had their finances done for them, their room and board provided. How can I help them make their transition back home? Do you have ideas here?

Again, I see hundreds of things I could do to market this book. But how do I narrow down the best use of my limited time and limited budget?

Using Articles to Market Books

Surely I could get more mileage out of my articles. I typically put them in the members' sections of my two sites, post them on my blogs, and use them in my newsletters. But after I've spent so much time researching and crafting an article, shouldn't I take a few more minutes to get the article out there somewhere, providing incoming links from the far corners of the Web and helping my Google rankings with key words? That's precisely what a lot of marketing experts suggest.

According to web marketing guru Ralph F. Wilson, "Those who find success with article marketing don't just write one article, they write and submit one a week -- or two or three. Done well, article marketing works very well." (From How to Support Your Site through Article Marketing.)

Here are some suggestions I've run across on submitting articles to free article sites, where people read articles and follow links back to my sites, or where blog owners and journalists find articles to put in their blogs and e-zines.

1. Submit only to about five top article directories and some niche sites. Don't use software to submit to hundreds of directories. Google will see that as spam and penalize your search engine position. Few people go to the lesser directories anyway. Look for the current top directories, as ranked by Alexa and Google. Here are five of the top article directories. I checked their Alexa ranks today (lower numbers are better):

http://ezinearticles.com - Alexa Rank: 132

ArticlesBase.com - Alexa Rank: 424

http://www.associatedcontent.com/ - Alexa Rank: 518

GoArticles.com - Alexa Rank: 1609

ArticleDashboard.com - Alexa Rank: 2965

SearchWarp.com - Alexa Rank: 5800

2. Write short articles: typically between 400 and 750 words. (See what each article directory recommends.)

3. Hyperlink to your site and/or book (see how many links the site allows) in your signature (not the body of the article.) Hyperlink from key phrases you're targeting, not just the url. Search engines rank hyperlinked phrases higher.

4. Format it allowing plenty of white space, using devices like headings, subheadings, bullet points and bold for key words/phrases.

5. Choose your key words carefully. I like to find them here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal . Use them in your title and your first sentence. But don't use them too much. Google's algorithm also accounts for synonyms. And your chances of getting ranked highly for a mega-searched term like "Money" are slim. (Everybody's trying to capture them.) So consider choosing some words that still get a lot of searches, but aren't out of your league.

6. Write quality, timely articles.

7. Write a title that intrigues, accurately sums up the article, and contains your key words. (Good luck!)

8. Additionally, send the article to e-zine editors' Websites in the field of your topic.

Lingering Questions:

1. Would it be better to target certain major publications? Even if I got only one article in the MSN Network or a major magazine, wouldn't that link likely draw more traffic than 1000 links from article databases?

I suppose that once I submit an article to one of these free sites, many magazines will no longer want it, since they may want rights to publish it for the first time. So, if I think an article might be appropriate for a magazine with a large circulation, would I do better to submit it there first and wait until later for the free sites? Or, are the odds so slim in getting into the major magazine (and the corresponding site) that I'd do just as well submitting to free sites?

Looks like I need to read several authoritative articles on submitting articles to magazines to better estimate the odds on this tactic.

2. Is it okay to submit to all these places (including top blogs and sites) at once, or do some want first rights?

3. Let's think long-term. Let's say I concentrate on more traditional magazine/ezine publishing for my better articles. So I get some published in magazines with medium circulation and then some with larger circulations. Isn't it possible that, in a few years, my resume could include "Has written for People Magazine and AARP?" Wouldn't that be better for my long-term career, than just saying, "I put up 1000 articles on free article sites and got them put in a bunch of blogs?"