What if we try it with 100 percent
more sound, how does that work?
Oh, yay.
Thank you.
Thank you,
friendly chat minions to tell me that I
forgot to turn my mic
on while I was panicking.
So what you did not hear
me explaining was that
I was all ready to go and I got an error
message that my stream key was invalid,
which, you know, it's the same stream
key and I haven't changed anything.
And I'd been streaming my prep screen,
so I don't know what was going on.
I've angered some streaming
minor deity somewhere.
And so this is, we're fixed now.
We're good.
We're ready to go, OK?
All righty, so how's everybody
doing this week?
We're in September, which is crazy.
I was telling a friend this week,
I'm like, how can it be September?
Like, on the one hand,
2020 has lasted for seven years.
And on the other hand,
how can it be September?
Because I haven't done anything this year.
So it's this really odd dichotomy of feeling,
you know, just completely strung out
and compressed at the same time.
So, OK, so this week we are going to do
something new and that is literally it.
That's literally the topic.
We are going to do something new.
So I just was asked about that a few
minutes ago and I was like,
oh, we're doing something new.
Oh, no, no, seriously,
that's that's actually what we're doing.
So we're going to get on that.
I do want to share some
news to start as well.
So I have been calling this "the thing"
for, since late July.
I think, whenever it was that I got started
here and, you know, I didn't want to call
it "the show' because it sounded way too
pretentious and it didn't want to call it
the "Laura talks for a while" because,
well,  way to sell the product.
And I didn't, you know, just, I
didn't have anything I wanted to call it.
I was, what, this is like me and my
microphone and blah, blah, blah.
But I realized that I was going to have
to name it if for no other reason then
after we're done here, I take this
recording and I put it on YouTube and
I need a way to tell people
how to find it on YouTube.
So where I know people have been listening
to the replays there and commenting
and such, which is great.
Thank you guys for for being there
when you're hearing this later.
And then I'm also going to put it
into a podcast so that we can, because
seriously, nobody needs
to see me while I'm talking.
Right?
So there has to be a title if
you're going to do these things.
So we have a title.
I hate titles, by the way, like
when we're doing this,
if anybody has any great creative input
on how to title things,
that's what I need you guys to do
for me, that is my weak point.
So anyway, we are -- drumroll --
To Write And Have Written.
A Writers Guide
to the Business Side.
There we go.
That sounds, I don't know,
it sounds very pretentious and faintly
wizard like and it's what I got.
So that's what we're doing.
So I will be putting in.
Oh, wait.
I actually, do I have.
Let me see, hold on.
We were going to oh, that's not
why I wanted to be sorry, hold on,
but this is what the.
There we go, look, look, a visual, hurray.
All right, if you're on the podcast here
later, you will not be able to see that.
But it's the same album art that you
will see in the podcast.
So so thank you guys for
tolerating my fun little thing on that.
I've been working on that that title
for way too long because I'm
not great at titles, so.
Oh yeah.
Thanks.
Chat people.
I like it.
I like that you like it.
Hurray.
Thank you.
OK, so.
Yeah.
So we're doing this live.
I always love people to come and,
and chat and ask questions and let's make
this interactive because seriously nobody
wants to listen to me talk for an hour.
Right.
So please, please talk and make
interactive, make this interactive
and fun, but then it will be on YouTube.
It always takes a while to get up
on YouTube, usually about 48 hours, but
that then goes up with closed captions.
We're not doing closed captions live
on Twitch because,
I mean, that would be hilarious.
But I've found that the closed captioning
services don't really like what I say
naturally, especially when I was doing my
talks about Japanese history and whatnot.
For some reason, Aizuwakamatsu is not
a default in the dictionary, who knew?
so it gives me a chance to run
the the transcription and check it for
readability, sensible words.
And then that goes up on YouTube
and then it will also be on the podcast.
So that's where we're going with that
and brief update in the land of Laura just
because because it's my show
and you can't stop me.
But yeah, I've been working
on Kin & Kind this week a lot.
I went back and oh my gosh, I have
actually quite a lot of words in this
manuscript and some of them
are really good words.
And there are some parts
that are really good.
So.
So there. Oh hi, Joe.
Welcome.
So so that's that's what's going on.
I am wearing, I will throw
this as a video.
I'm wearing my my personal
Shard of Elan swag.
This is one of my favorite
shirts.
It's just a shirt that says
"Luca deserved better," which is
a extremely accurate line in the book.
So there you go.
So yes, I'm wearing my own swag today.
And the last couple of weeks you've been
hearing me talk about the story that was
due at the end of August that I was kind
of panicky about because I was like,
oh, deadline, I've got
a month to write this.
I need to get it up there.
Well, it turned out that story is
not due until the end of September.
So, yeah, I've got
got a rough draft.
It's not great, but it's there.
But I've got a little
more time to work on it.
So that was good.
And then
the end of last week,
I got a little email saying, hey,
just a reminder, if you haven't turned in
that ghost story that you agreed to write
eleven months ago and then forgot to write
down in the proper way so that you didn't
realize that deadline was coming up
and you completely haven't even thought
of a plot for it, much less worked
on a draft or anything like that.
Yeah, that's due on the first.
Make sure you get it in.
And I kind of went, oh yeah.
So so that's what I did this weekend.
And I wrote this fun little
horror story in two days.
And I have I posted this on my on my page
online, if you've seen it already,
where, you know,
for all that we talk about,
you know, I've talked before about
there's definitely a reason
to practice
cramming as many words into an hour as you
can, just working on output, you know,
turn off the inner editor,
just crank as much as you can out there.
That's not the way you
need to work all the time.
Absolutely not.
But there is an advantage to working on it
periodically for both craft
and development, which we're
actually going to talk about
in October,
I think that's on the calendar for that,
but it's also very helpful for that situation
when you realize that you totally forgot
that you had a hard deadline
with absolutely no extensions
as per the editor's email.
There we go.
So it was like, hey,
let's get this done.
I'm actually pretty happy with that story.
It's it's got the surrealists in it
and post-modernism and
a little bit of ghost action and.
Yeah, it'll be fun.
So.
So Natalie says that.
Yeah.
"Good words.
I love that.
'Oh hey, this doesn't even suck'
feeling when reading my own work."
Oh my gosh.
That is,
you know, because we're all used
to the to the you're reading
your work and you're like, hmm,
we had to have a first draft.
This is it.
Hurray.
OK, but then there's those moments where
you read it and you're like, oh wow,
this isn't awful, you know?
And then there's also moments when
you're like, this is fantastic.
Who wrote this?
And sometimes it appears on my computer
and I have no memory of writing it,
but it's in a file that only I have.
So it probably was me logically,
but I'm holding out possibly
the theory of the little
cobblers of the elves that make the shoes,
possibly writers have little elves
that come in and put good scenes in their work.
I don't know.
So, OK, that's enough of that.
Let's oh, do we want to do a brief
reminder recap, I guess, from last week.
Last week, we talked about
getting started with marketing and
just defining branding and starting to put
together the pieces of an author platform
or let's be more general
a creator platform.
And so, again, it's not a kit.
You're not going to get it
all done in the first day.
But you can you know,
we're starting to get those pieces in.
And one of them, one of the things I asked
you to do at the very end
of that was to create a spreadsheet.
We're going to track what we're
calling author snapshots.
I did not come up with that term,
but I don't know whom to credit.
I'm so sorry,
but it's just the first of every month
we're going to say, OK, this is
this is what our data is.
And then we can use that data
to make good decisions.
And I was supposed to do that today,
but my day did not go as planned.
I'm supposed to do a lot of things today
that did not get done before this video.
So I will be doing those later tonight.
Yay midnight. So
I wanted to just ask, did anybody
out there in Chat Land do this?
And so one of the things that I actually
still have mine open because I did just
a little bit of it while we were
trying to get organized here.
So I noticed I wanted to share my
email subscriber lists and
excuse me,
my my list is several thousand people.
But I just wanted to say over
the last few months, the the
it's been fluctuating by up
to about 100 and people.
So I just want to say, like in April,
it ended in 655
and then May 643
637, 669,
650, 587.
So it's been going up and down
over the course of the year.
And I'm not been, I've not been doing
a lot differently in marketing
over the last six months.
But I just noticed that when I was
entering that, that's
fluctuating about 100 people.
And I just wanted to say again,
that's totally normal.
If we remember last last week when I said
I'm not worried about a change from one
snapshot to the next,
I'm worried about trends.
That's what I'm more concerned about.
So, again, don't stress out.
You get on the scale in the morning,
you're up a pound.
Who freaking cares, it's twenty four hours.
You can't tell anything, right.
You don't freak out about a pound anyway.
Just don't, don't do that to yourself.
But my point is like we're interested
in trends. So.
OK, Grace is waiting for a new cover so
she can start data on a good baseline.
Awesome.
"So there's no there's no
really no data right now."
Yeah.
And this is what I'm saying,
like just start collecting the data.
You can process it later.
You know, Grace says "that sounds better
than I forgot,"
but trust me, I'm so with you.
OK, I did.
I was supposed to do work
on my ads this weekend.
So Monday I opened up my ad spreadsheet
and I was like, I am just
going to log some data.
Look, I'm done.
There we go.
And I'm not going to process it.
I'm not going to make any decisions.
There we go.
Also, I accidentally let all my ads expire
so I don't even have new
data to enter on some of them.
So that's on me.
So I got to do some cleanup
there and we'll get restarted.
So Natalie says she is still under a rock,
but did write it down as a thing
to do later, which is fantastic.
Yeah, you know, and here's the thing.
I just want to reiterate,
like I tell myself this all the time, so
I'm just going to reiterate for you guys,
the data does not judge you.
It is just a number.
Nobody like, really, don't
give it more power than it has.
You know, it's just a number.
So if I look at my newsletter subscribers
and I'm like, oh, my gosh, like this,
you know, this is this is
less than my friend has.
You know, I have fewer
subscribers than my friend has.
Who cares?
OK, like, again, first of all, a number
of subscribers is a vanity metric.
We talked about that the engagement rate
is far more important than
the number of subscribers.
So if you have 30 percent of the people
opening your letters, and that person
with more subscribers only has five
percent of the people
opening newsletters,
that's a significant difference
and that's much more important.
So, yeah, anyway, collect the data.
You can make decisions about it later.
So there's your homework.
I'll be doing my homework
late tonight, so.
All right, let's get back to.
So tonight we are going
to try something new.
And just to give you the full,
full view of where we're going
tonight, it's trying something new
in marketing and next week it's
trying something new in craft.
So you're going to see "try
something new" both weeks.
But we're still on different topics
because we are on our weekly topic change.
So.
Oh, "rejoined Twitch there.
My spreadsheet is off to a good start."
Yay!
Thank you, Kate,
and thank you for joining us.
Awesome.
So yeah.
And then like you said,
you're always going to adjust
your spreadsheet as you go.
So this this month I had to add a column
for Twitch subscribers because it's the
first time I've had Twitch subscribers.
So thank you guys.
All right.
So.
When we're going to try something new,
so I'm going to talk about things that I
am attempting, things I have attempted,
things I probably should
attempt to someday.
But here's the thing.
Now that you've got that fantastic
spreadsheet,
use it because you want to log it before
and after so you can make an educated
decision on whether
what you tried was useful.
You want to be able to find out
what your return on investment was.
And I'm going to say there's
two ways to evaluate this.
One, is it making you money?
And, that is, where I'm going with that is
we're going to skip the vanity metrics
and go straight to, is it productive?
So
I'm not necessarily going to worry about "I
need more Pinterest followers than,"
you know, whatever the set number is, the
arbitrary number I'm going to make up,
because we know that social media is
not really going to turn into sales.
Social media is great for other
It's great for other things,
other aspects of marketing,
but it's not really great for sales.
So I'm going to look
at what is the actual worth,
the actual monetary value of this
time and effort that I'm
putting out in this new thing.
The other thing is, do I enjoy it?
Because if you hate it,
you're not going to keep it up.
So don't do it
because you won't do it well.
So it's not going to work or be worth your time.
And
sometimes you can do things
because they're fun.
I know, right?
But even in business, sometimes you
can do things because they're fun.
You just have to make sure that you don't
only do the fun things and not do any
of the productive things.
At that point, it is not business,
it is a hobby.
And there's nothing wrong with having
a hobby, so let me get that out there,
but if you're
if you're working at it,
calling it a business,
trying to make it a business, then it needs
to be handled as a business
and not as a hobby.
If you're approaching it
as a hobby, more power to you.
OK, but if you want it to be business,
if you want it to be a career,
then you've got to do at least
a little business work, I'm really sorry.
But that doesn't
mean you don't get to also have fun.
So, for example, I'm just going to
I mentioned last week
that I technically have a Tumblr presence,
but I don't consider it
really part of my marketing because I
don't put any time and effort into it.
I don't develop it.
I don't maintain it.
It's it's not really part of my marketing,
but I occasionally have fun
scrolling through Tumblr.
OK, so so that's allowed.
All right.
And then as you're assessing
this return on investment,
some of this stuff is
going to be a long tail.
Some of the stuff is going to take
a while for you to see results.
And
what I know from my day job
where we're we're working on behavioral
changes and we're using data
and all of this wonderful stuff,
there's there's two aspects, two reasons
why you might need to be tracking data.
One is if it takes a while to see results,
your memory is fallible.
And if you're like, oh, well,
I think I have more Twitter followers
than I had three months ago.
But why would I remember the number
of Twitter followers I've
had three months ago?
I like first of all, it's 2020, and
three months ago was seven years ago.
And secondly, you know,
I've got other things hopefully going
on in my life than staring
at my Twitter follower count all day.
So your memory is not going to be
not going to be super reliable.
And the other part is your memories
are incredibly subject to emotion.
And as I mentioned, it's 2020.
And emotion is not your most, your best
decision making metric right now.
So I absolutely -- I mean, I'll tell
the story from my from my behavior life.
I had a client.
We were working with a service dog.
And, you know, she was trying to get
the dog to to move through doorways in a
certain way with her that assisted her.
And so I gave them some homework
to work on with with the doors.
And she called me.
She's like, there's no way I can do this.
This is insane.
It's taking us three minutes
to get through every door.
I can't live my life to take
three minutes to get through a door.
I was, ok,
OK, OK.
Let me come out.
Let's see what's going on.
And so I came out and I timed her.
I was like, show me.
Go through this door five times,
show me how long it's taking.
Show me something.
What's going on.
And I timed her and it was seconds,
literally just a few seconds
to get through the door.
And when I had actually timed her,
you know, I had numbers.
This wasn't three minutes.
This was eight seconds or whatever it was.
And
then she stopped and she's like, oh, OK.
I see that.
She's like, you know,
I've been really stressed.
I've been really upset.
And I'm like, yeah.
So everything felt bigger and more
difficult and it felt like you were making
less progress than you actually were.
Emotions.
Absolutely, absolutely
filter and influence our memories.
So don't do that to yourself.
Give yourself hard data to work from.
So.
All right, sorry, bunny trail, whee!
OK,
so.
You're tracking your data,
you're writing things down,
you're going to see whether or not it
actually does anything for you,
whether it's just fun,
and then you get to make a decision on
if it's not doing anything for me, if it's
just fun, do I want to spend time on it?
And if it is doing something for me
and is fun, that's the ideal.
That's the sweet spot.
So OK, so and so I would say set when
you're trying something new, set a goal.
So I want to get more
newsletter subscribers.
I want to
get
50 clicks on this buy link or, you know,
whatever, whatever your goal might be.
But be prepared to get a different
achievement than the one you planned for.
So maybe you didn't get a lot of clicks
through on your buy link, but you did
pick up subscribers in the newsletter.
I don't know whatever the case may be.
So just be prepared
to experiment and you won't notice those
other changes if you're not tracking.
So track.
All right.
So things that you can experiment
with right now in 2020,
I am playing with Amazon ads,
which I had briefly ventured into before,
didn't know what I was doing.
Absolutely worthless to me because I
didn't go in with a lot of knowledge.
So it's not, I think I
lost like twenty dollars.
So I didn't
not eat that month or anything.
But also that's twenty dollars
I'm not getting back right.
I don't wanna just set fire to money,
throw it away.
So this year in 2020 I was like
OK, I should probably actually figure
out what I'm doing with Amazon ads.
So I signed up for a course
and oh my gosh, did homework.
I don't like homework.
I'm such a, I'm still
the eight year old child inside.
I didn't want to do my homework but doing
homework is the only way you're
going to get get anywhere.
And so I've started seeing
I've got, I'm not deep enough
in to know the long term benefits of this,
but I'm not actively losing money,
so that's a good sign.
And so we'll see.
I'm not yet one of those people who is
making five five figures a month just off
my Amazon ads or whatever,
that that'd be great.
Not there yet.
But
I started with something
small that I could scale up.
I actually --
no reason to be coy about this--
I signed up for Brian Cohen's five day
Amazon ad challenge, which was
which is a free thing.
He runs
three times a year.
I'm not sure exactly.
And maybe four, I don't know,
three or four times a year.
And it's free.
It's five days.
It's actually really useful
information for in five days.
And then you can experiment with that.
And, you know, if you want to if you want
to take that information and then go
deeper, there's other courses you can
sign up for that are that are paid
or, you know, I would say just take the
five day course and get what you want.
But I will say that's one of those,
know where you are in the process,
because if you have
one fairly niche book,
it may not be the best use of your time
and money because you're really
going to get a lot more out of
a good ads program.
What am I trying to say?
It has approach.
There's a.
An entire there's a noun,
there's a noun right there.
The point is you will get more bang
for your buck if you have a larger
catalog or a series to work from.
It will be easier to
to invest and get a larger return
because you're focusing you can use a few
ads to sell a lot of books, you know,
kind of thing, as opposed to using a few
ads to sell one book
or a lot of ads to sell one book.
So, you know, again, I'm not telling
you that you need to do this.
I'm just telling you things I'm
experimenting with because, you know,
several years ago I tried
ads and I failed miserably.
So don't
don't do something because I
because I said, this is what I'm doing.
Do something.
Look at look at your own situation.
But anyway, that's the thing
that I'm working on.
And I will give you
more feedback as we go,
because like I said,
I stupidly let all of my ads expire
on July 31st because I was
distracted by something shiny.
And so then I'll be on that.
So other things you can try that are new
is experiment with a new feature.
Oh, I'm sorry, strategy.
Natalie's helping me out in the chat
and I was too busy wrapped up in my head.
Strategy is a good word.
It's not the one I was going for,
but it will absolutely fit that niche.
So, yes, you're going to get the most,
most, most benefit from a strategy
that that is benefit that is targeted
toward multiple books or
a series or something like that.
All right.
Other things that I am experimenting
with or have experimented with,
if you've got a newsletter,
try a new newsletter feature so
this can work in different ways.
I'm just going to list some things
that come off the top my head
because I didn't make notes.
So here we go.
But one that I did mentioned last
week is recommending other books.
So if you are
trying to establish yourself in the horror
genre, totally just making this up,
recommending other good horror,
ghost stories, paranormal, some, you know,
just things in that vein so that people
get used to finding good stuff
that they enjoy in your newsletter.
So a recommendation feature,
something that I experimented with briefly
in mine was a, oh my gosh,
I even know what I called it.
Reader spotlight, something I don't know,
but I would pull out a piece of fan art or
something like that that I could then
include in my newsletter -- with permission
and with links and all of that,
not just taking people's stuff without
without attribution,
but and then I would, you know,
share that in my newsletter.
And I got a little bit
of feedback from that.
But not,
I did not personally,
other mileage may vary,
I didn't personally get enough
enthusiasm generated by that to make it
worth tracking things down,
multiple emails to get permission
and links and all of that.
So for me, it was not
the best use of my time.
Still enjoy it.
Please show me your fan art.
Love that!
OK, but that particular feature
in my newsletter, that wasn't
what my readers were there for.
OK, great.
You know, I'm still happy,
Some of them were and I'm happy
always to direct people to cool stuff
that I find, but enough to make it.
You know, that was not what made
people open the newsletter.
So there we go.
So anyway, just think, find things,
another person I know always has "this
is where my cat is sleeping this month."
So we just experiment.
You know, if you've got
a readership that's really into
cats in general or your cat,
that can be a good thing to do, so.
All right.
Something else to experiment with,
and again, all of this is just
experimentation,
trying a new social media. Now.
We are in the middle of a
dramatic period socially and so if social
media is not good for you right now,
be careful where you're
putting yourself out.
so you know, don't don't be,
"Oh, my gosh.
I'm trying to take a social media break,
but Laura said I need to do this,
so I'm going to go to the most dramatic
platform and start something that--"
No, that's not what we're doing.
OK, but, you know, it might be a good
place to say, OK, you know what?
I'm going to see what Instagram does for
me because I haven't been on that yet.
And then just just try something.
Get your toes wet.
A great thing about social media is
there's very little
monetary outlay for that.
You can, you know, it costs time.
Everything costs time.
But you can be selective about
how much time you put in.
I do strongly recommend being selective
about how much time you put into social
media for a variety of reasons,
everything from productivity
to personal health, but,
you know, pick something and go
in and and just experiment and find
out if you have a base there
that you could connect with.
You know, we talked last time about,
you know, you're looking for people
who also want to watch cat videos or,
you know, whatever it is
that you have to offer.
So just go and to a new new platform
and put out some material that's pretty
representative of your brand
and see if you get any nibbles.
This is where it is very important --
I'm going to reference last week again --
None of this is selling.
This is not selling.
There is no part of this that is selling.
You're just putting out cool stuff
that relates to you and your product.
But I'm not asking anybody
to buy from me at this point.
I'm just throwing out, "hey,
here's this amazing photo of three seals
leaping from Loch Ness at the same moment
that forms the little Loch Ness Monster.
Isn't that cool?
I like cryptids.
How about you?"
Like, just, you know whatever
and then people can,
"Oh my gosh, I do love cryptids.
So let me follow this.
There's more cryptid stuff.
Oh, there's more cryptid stuff.
Oh you've got a cryptid story.
Cool."
OK, so that's the kind of
kind of thing you do.
And yes I did post a photo like that,
I don't know, four years ago something
when I had a cryptid story coming out so you
can find things that relate
to what you are going
to be promoting later.
But right now,
when you're first experimenting in a new
platform, it's all just branding.
It's just marketing, sharing, cat videos.
It's not selling.
OK, and again, just a reminder,
social media does not sell books.
Social media is great for establishing
and maintaining a brand.
Social media is great for staying
in contact with readers you already have.
Social media is not good for retail.
So just keep that in mind.
Big numbers in social media
does not translate to big sales.
It's just a vanity metric.
So don't sweat that that hard.
The other thing that you can do is
enhance what you're already doing.
You're going to try something new
with what you already have
and sometimes you just stepping back,
looking at what you're doing.
OK, let's do a little maintenance.
I'm going to clean out the deadwood
on my newsletter list so that I'm getting
rid of all the subscribers who have not
opened an email from me in 16 months,
because if you are using a commercial mail
service, those people
are costing you money.
If you regardless of the kind
of service you're using --
By the way, when I'm talking about
commercial service or self hosted service,
at no point is this you sending your own
emails off your own
email account, that is.
Don't do that.
We can go into that another time,
but the short answer is no.
OK,
so but if you are
using a service like Aweber or Mailer Lite
or something, or if you're using a self
hosted service like Sendy,
which is what I do.
Either way, having the that
those those subscribers on your list
who do not open, they actually inhibit
the deliverability of your mail
to the people who do want what you have.
So getting rid of that deadwood,
it hurts your subscriber list size.
But remember, that's a vanity metric.
So at one point I had
I want to say about fifty five hundred
people on my newsletter list, but I had
a open rate of just under 20 percent.
And I didn't check any
of these numbers before this.
So I'm going off memory.
This has been a few years ago
and, you know, just under 20 percent.
I mean, it's it's better than industry
average, but it's really not great.
OK, so I went through and
ran some filters and found the people
who had not opened something
for me in over a year.
And I sent an email just to them.
It was actually a series of a couple
of e-mails just saying, "hey,
I see you haven't opened anything for me.
You know, I understand like life gets
complicated and whatnot,
but if you would like to stay,
click this button,
you'll stay on the list.
And if you are not interested or
here's an unsubscribe link, OK?
Or if you're not interested,
then in two or three months or whatever,
you will be removed from this
list automatically."
And I sent just a couple of those and I
got some people who clicked to stay.
I got a couple of unsubscribes and then
I got people who just timed out.
And so then I cleaned that out.
And I want to I want to say I
cleaned out like 2000 people.
That's a lot guys, like I watched my list
just cut in half, which, augh, it hurt,
but my engagement rate went way up.
And because, 1) more people,
the people who stayed were the people
who were interested, and 2) more people
who stayed were getting my emails now
because all the servers were recognizing
that a higher percentage of those emails
were being opened and therefore they're more
likely to be real email
and not spam and everything.
Oh, my deliverability went up.
So
just doing maintenance on your
email list or on your social media or
the things that you're doing is good.
The other thing that I did just recently
and I mentioned I've had a YouTube channel
for a while, but I'm starting to, I'm
putting these videos up there now.
And I realized that my YouTube video
descriptions were incredibly basic.
You know, like
"this is Laura talking about marketing," you
know, whatever, not not really useful.
So I made my YouTube descriptions a little
more, a little beefier and I
added links to each of them.
Those links ran to my
my website and my newsletter
subscription form.
And to Twitch, like,
"if you like this video, here's where it's
actually happening," you know, thing.
And so I went through my YouTube
video descriptions and just pasted
that series of links in
and I did that all at once.
Just copy paste.
It's relatively quick.
Within an hour.
I had new subscribers here
on Twitch just by adding
the video,
by adding the links on the YouTube video
that led people back to this.
And I don't know, maybe maybe you
guys would have found your way here.
But but I made it easier for people
to find their way here by adding a link.
So make it easy.
Always rule number one, never make it hard
for your customer to be your customer.
OK, that's just basic business.
So,
you know, just going through and doing
something so simple of taking care
of something that I was already doing,
it was no extra effort
to paste those links in.
So I'll be doing that moving forward.
And yes, I do know that was the source
because I'm using trackable links.
So I do know exactly how that worked.
And so I'm using Switchy
Bitly is another really popular option.
I do prefer -- I used to use Bitly.
I do prefer Switchy.
Now, however, Switchy is
not cheap, like I think it's actually
pretty expensive and I couldn't normally
afford it, but I got an AppSumo deal,
so, God bless AppSumo.
But whatever you're using for tracking
your links, which I strongly recommend
that you do because you can,
it's another way to tell what is useful
to you and what is not.
So you can see where people are finding,
you know, where to spend
your time and effort.
But make sure that your,
that your links you're using to to
to be found to share more things,
make sure they are trackable,
which lots and lots and lots of those all
of your freebie services will do that,
but then also make sure
they are updatable.
And that's why I switched away
from the free Bitly service when
I got the chance to get Switchy.
If you create a short link and then
share it and then
something changes so that that link
that that short link goes to is no longer
valid, but that short link's
are already out in the world.
So I'll give you the example that happened
to me was, I created a bunch of links
for my newsletter that went
to MailChimp years ago.
And
so those are all out in print books
all across, all across the country,
all around the planet.
And then I'm no longer using MailChimp
for a variety of reasons and
I can't do anything.
Those links are out there.
I cannot update it with because I made
them with the free service of Bitly,
which maybe it's changed.
I don't know, whatever, at the time.
I could not
update those links.
So I still get people signing up
for a newsletter on MailChimp,
that doesn't exist.
So periodically I go into MailChimp and I
harvest those addresses and I
try to bring them over.
That works because I still have an account
that I can get into on Mailchimp.
It wouldn't work if I, you know, in all
situations that wouldn't be possible.
So
"how do you organize the link tracking?
Is there a way to tag or categorize within
the link service or is
that another spreadsheet?"
There is a way to tag
in the links service.
It's great.
So I actually have folders in Switchy,
like these are the links
that I use on Twitter.
These are the links that I use
and my YouTube descriptions, you know,
these are the links that I'm
sending out an email or whatever.
So I can see just at a glance
I'll open up the YouTube folder.
There's a list of all of my links and I
can see, oh, somebody, this link's less than
an hour old and somebody has
already clicked through to Twitch.
And I have a new Twitch subscriber.
OK, so
so, yeah, that's you could do it all
on a spreadsheet, but most of your
link service that's going to be worth
the use is going to have
a tracking system for you.
So just drop those
into folders.
So
are you guys familiar
with AppSumo? AppSumo is the bomb.
OK, so AppSumo is a
oh, a clearing house,
it's a it's a catalog.
It's a service that finds useful
software or services and then
and then brokers deals to get people to,
you know, basically,
I'm assuming it's a it's a really
fast capital builder for companies.
So so, for example, Brain FM is
something that I've mentioned before.
Brain FM is the
music, the mood setting music,
not just music, not just mood setting,
but it's I don't know,
it does stuff in the brain.
It's not binaural beats,
but it's another
performance enhancing drug for your
brain delivered via music.
And, you know, there's
a monthly subscription for it.
But I got a lifetime deal
on Sumo for twenty five dollars.
I did like five, six years ago.
And so and I'll have it forever.
So there's it's definitely,
definitely useful.
I actually hold on.
I'm going to shamelessly,
shamelessly give you guys a link to this
and...
Hold on, doot de do....
That is, OK.
There's a link in the chat.
So full disclosure,
that is an affiliate link to AppSumo,
but I heartily recommend them.
I use them all the time.
And the customer service is fantastic.
They don't know I'm talking, by the way.
They have no idea that I'm,
This is not a paid promotion.
But within the last year, I had a service
that I had purchased that I really liked.
And, you know, the the service was great.
And the company said,
OK, here's what we have.
You know, these are the new updates
that will be rolling out next month.
Look forward to them.
And I loved it.
And then
the company disappeared, like
the site that I logged
in to for the service was down.
The company's social media still existed,
but they weren't putting out anything new.
They weren't responding to anything.
It was like everybody had just vanished.
And so a few weeks went by and, you know,
customers are talking to each other
on social media, like what happened.
So I wrote to AppSumo and I'm like, "hey, I
purchased this software subscription here.
And, you know, they vanished.
Do you know anything about it?"
And AppSumo's like, "no, we don't.
Here's all your money back."
And so there it was, you know, really,
I got I got zero complaints about them.
They're really good.
All right.
All right.
The short version is,
way off the track there,
Whatever tracking link service you use
make sure that it is that you're
getting your tracking,
you're getting your tracking data out
of it and then make sure it's updatable.
So that's what I was after.
OK, questions, you guys, things
that are coming up as I as I ramble,
because I did an awful lot of talking
without interruption there.
I'm going to grab a drink
while I check the chat.
OK,
so.
I really never intended this to be like
a weekly challenge, but last week
I told you to build a spreadsheet.
This week I'm going to tell you
think of something new to try.
I don't care if,
I don't care if it works or not.
I don't care if it in fact,
I'm going to say pick something that
might not work, you know,
go ahead and give yourself permission to
say, "I'm going to I'm going to try this.
And when it doesn't work, I'm going
to yeet it and try something else."
Like
the there's so much that you
can benefit by experimenting.
Go ahead and give yourself
permission to experiment.
And if that means you're going to try
something with a low chance of success
to start so you won't feel bad when it
when it doesn't turn out to be
the best thing ever
do that, if that's going to make you more
comfortable, and if you don't need that,
then go for the moon and good luck to you.
So.
Oh,
Grace says, "I bought a thing off AppSumo
that you recommended a few months ago,
but I only just remembered.
Yes, I didn't use it.
Thanks, 2020."
Yeah, that's
I will confess that I have on more
than one occasion logged into
AppSumo to remember what it is that I was
pretty sure I had bought
but couldn't remember what it was.
So I just went through my order history
until I found it like, yeah,
yeah, that's the thing.
I knew that was going to be
useful and let me go use that.
That is totally a thing that I've done.
But
again, they're really,
really good with their customer service.
And if you have something that you
purchase that you just haven't used, they'll refund
it, like they're just really good.
So and no, I'm not working for them.
But that is
that's just been my experience, I have
been very, very happy with them.
OK,
other things.
Oh, so as I mentioned,
Nan Van says, "I'm glad I'm not the only
one who does things like that."
And it's 2020.
We're all doing things like that.
Yeah.
OK, this is Sub-tember,
so that is Twitch's subscription drive.
So again, you know, if you guys are,
I'm going to be here anyway.
So you guys are welcome to be here.
If you're sitting here
with an Amazon Prime account that you're
not using for a Twitch subscription,
I would love if you would use your free
included Twitch subscription for me.
Thank you.
I would really appreciate that.
If you don't,
but if you're ever considering subscribing,
not with your included Amazon Prime
subscription, September's the month to do it because
it's up to a third off
and then that's great.
Otherwise, you know, you're welcome
to stay here and watch the ads.
I made 12 cents off ad views last month.
You guys, I'm gonna get
rich off this, 12 cents.
So but if you have an Amazon Prime account
and you would like to not have to watch
the ads, please use your
subscription. It benefits you.
It benefits me.
Everybody wins.
Except the advertisers, I guess.
Sorry.
OK,
and I do have a Ko-Fi.
It's Laura VAB.
L-A-U-R-A-Victor Alpha Bravo.
But again, I'm going
to be here regardless.
So thank you guys.
And then I'm going to wrap this because
when we are done tonight,
I get to go out and hide in a field.
So one of the things I, I host is
oh no, not, not in this venue, but I have
acreage and there's search teams that come
a couple of search teams who come
and train their dogs on my property.
And so I'm going to go out and hide
in the woods and pretend to be
lost until a dog finds me.
Oh, hold on, there's a chat question
and then I'll come right back to that.
Oh, great question from Natalie.
"If you have multiple books in mid or late
revisions, but nothing in print yet,
what marketing infrastructure would you
put in place early on versus
stuff you can grow into?
Current books are nonfiction,
but novels are on the way too."
OK, so fantastic question.
Good news.
Nonfiction is definitely the easiest
way to start with this, so.
Nonfiction is all about building
credibility in your field so that people
know that they can get good, useful,
reliable information from you.
So I had a
non-fiction blog
that had pretty good visitation
before I released my non-fiction book.
And and that was hugely helpful because
I was not starting a platform from zero.
So this is a great way you can start doing
this with your nonfiction, getting your
name out in discussion groups, getting.
Yeah, blogging is not dead, guys.
A lot of people were like, when when when
social media gets big, it's going to kill
the blog, and the blog is not dead, actually,
and it's infinitely more
searchable than social media.
If you if somebody puts in, oh my gosh,
pick a pick a topic, "how do I fix
my leaky toilet," I'm just making stuff up.
But if somebody is going
to search for that,
that is going to lead to a blog post
way before it leads to a tweet.
All right.
So don't -- again, social media is
great for maintaining relationships
you already have.
It's not good for other things.
It's not good for for being discovered
and it's not good for selling.
So use it for what it's good for.
So blog posts are good
being in communities, existing communities
where you can build name recognition.
So if there are
oh my gosh, I'm going to show my age if
there are listservs or email lists that
are dedicated to a topic or again,
this is where
you can use social media.
So if it's a Facebook group or something
like that, that you can be
a participant in this larger community.
Keep in mind, you are just building
name recognition within that community.
That's not going to be searchable
to the to the outside world.
But it's a good way to build name
recognition within
that community as a start.
And and that can lead to word of mouth.
So that's another thing
that that you want.
So,
again, nonfiction,
you're just going to put useful
information out there and people
come to view you as a source
for that useful information.
And then when you have a book available,
you say, "hey, you like all that stuff
that I gave you before,
would you like a more complete version,
neatly packaged in one place?"
And hopefully they say yes.
So that's that's a good way to start
that with nonfiction for novels,
you're going to just start establishing
that again, what we talked
about with branding.
So this is the mood.
This is the tone.
This is the material.
You know, here are
the best cryptid pictures.
Here are the best cat videos.
Here are really good,
sweet romances.
You know, just, you know, things that,
again, you're becoming, you want people
to have a certain association,
a tone and mood.
You're a go to when they are in the mood
for you can supply them with.
And and then that's going to help
establish that that brand for when
you have something ready to go.
So I hope I hope I was in the right
direction and answering that.
So,
OK, jumping back to the search team,
I have a couple of search groups
who who train at my place.
And so one of the things that you'll see
on the schedule when I posted, you know,
we have a a weekly topic,
a weekly theme for this,
To write and have, to write and have
written, I guess now that we have a title
and one of the things is a Learn With Me,
which is where either I explore something.
Well, usually it's probably,
it's me exploring something that I find
interesting
that I went to learn more about and or
something that is frequently gotten wrong
in fiction or film or media of some sort.
So I don't know.
It just occurred to me like, would a search,
would search training be a good one to cover
for that? Because it's something
I know a decent amount about.
But I'm certainly not an expert in it,
but it is also something that I
frequently see misrepresented in media.
I'm thinking in particular of a TV show
where a couple of guys are hiding
from law enforcement, pursuing them,
and one of them has a sandwich.
And the guy's like, Oh,
I can't believe you brought the sandwich,
throw it away because
the dogs will find us if we have a sandwich.
I'm like, those dogs will find you if
you don't have a sandwich.
So that's I think OK, Natalie says YES.
Yes, OK, great.
Yeah.
If you guys and please, please,
please always feel free to let me know
like this is a this is a topic that I
would like to see explored
and I'd like to see gotten right.
I put out
some requests to people to to come
and chat with me about,
about how to poison people --
And just in books, guys, just like,
please use this information responsibly.
But later this month,
we'll have Ceallaigh MacCath-Moran coming
on talking about folklore and how
that's relevant to our story.
So all kinds of cool stuff.
But OK, yes.
Or maybe I will talk to somebody about
coming and talking about search.
Search can be for either
live people or for cadavers.
And there are similarities
and differences between that.
And there's a lot of information that,
like I said, I frequently
see misrepresented in media.
And it would be one of those things that
you could be the person who gets it right.
So OK.
But, yeah, I always feel free to give me
a heads up on what would be
interesting for you.
So if there are no other questions,
I'm going to wrap it here, douse myself
in bug spray and go hide in the woods.
So
this is how I spend my evenings.
Yes.
Just lying in a hole,
pretending not to be here, so.
Oh my gosh.
She's says, "my firstborn child,
if you get an ethologist or biologist
to explain why 100 percent of werewolf
books are wrong, wrong, wrong."
But they really are.
And I have some blog posts on that.
So, yeah, those are already out there.
I actually it was hilarious because
I was invited to be on a romance panel
at a writers conference based purely
on one of my blog posts about why
the alpha male in that particular
trope kind of romance
is a misrepresentation of how actual
hierarchy and animal hierarchy works.
And I'm just like,
how did I get on a romance panel?
Because that's not what I write
and it's not really my field.
But but but I know about I know about
hierarchy and I know about pack dynamics.
So it makes me the expert here.
Yeah, I'm I'm not a good person to watch,
I'm not a good person to share
werewolf romances with.
I'm not a good person
to watch Jurassic World with.
I'm sorry.
Just let me tell you upfront,
that's my thing.
But I'm happy to tell
you how to do it better.
And I actually
have done sessions at conferences on
Your Velociraptors Are Broken or how to write
animal behavior more accurately.
So there we go.
OK,
thank you guys for joining me.
I really appreciate you coming here.
And if you're catching this later
on YouTube or on the podcast or whatever,
love you guys, too.
Thank you so much and absolutely
feel free to contact me.
LauraVAB.com
is where you can find all my stuff,
but also email me about anything that you
particularly want covered
because I will happily take your questions
and turn them into our long rants.
So thank you, guys.
Take care.
Have a lovely evening and be safe.
Wash your hands! Bye.
