You can save $15 on the e-book, bringing the total price to $22.

But act fast. The discount is limited to the first 25 buyers!

To get the discount, visit WebWritersGuide.com and enter HOLIDAY2009 as your discount code when ordering.

To get the discount, visit WebWritersGuide.com and enter discount code PROMO1 at the bottom of the page when ordering.

Today I’m releasing a workbook-only version of the first e-book in that series, consisting of the 13 worksheets and templates I created to accompany the e-book content. (If you already own the full e-book, do not order this workbook – you already have everything included!

Here’s why I chose to offer the new version:

• The main content of the e-book is specifically for beginners, but I realized the worksheets and templates could be equally useful for more established freelancers. I wanted to give you a way to get those without having to pay the full price of the complete e-book.
• I know not all new writers need or want hand-holding through the early process. This gives them the opportunity to take advantage of only the most interactive elements of the e-book.
• Even though just one gig will more than pay for the cost of the full e-book, I know some writers currently writing for very low rates have been hesitant to invest in the full product. This gives them an abbreviated option consisting of the workable tools without the more thorough advice and guidance.

The full e-book sells for $37 and comes with three bonuses.

This workbook version will sell for just $17, and will come with only one of the original three bonuses. Here’s what you’ll get:

• A specialty selection chart
• A goal-setting worksheet
• A rate-setting worksheet
• A one-page business plan template
• A one-page marketing plan template
• A target market worksheet
• A prospect list template
• A client brief template
• An email query letter template
• A proposal template
• A casual proposal / email response template
• A professional website planning worksheet
• An invoice template

You’ll also get the 12-month marketing calendar I created as a BONUS! You get it all for just $17.

Better yet, to give you an even bigger reason to check out the series (and especially the workbook, as it’s only a small taste of the much bigger marketing workbook for freelance writers to come), if you order soon, I’ll even give you an extra $5 off!

That means you can get the new workbook version of my Web Writer’s Guide e-book for just $12 for a limited time!!!

To get the discount, you have to enter discount code “launch” (without the quotes) in the order form. You can order below or order at any time from WebWritersGuide.com.

Well, I recently gave them one more (last) shot. I’m pleased to say, so far so good.

While I don’t believe in using article directories for personal branding or building an authority status (because they simply don’t carry the weight of more targeted outlets for that marketing energy), I figured it might be a worthwhile endeavor to give article marketing in that sense another go in promoting a product (my Web Writer’s Guide e-book).

Now, I’ve only written four new articles so I don’t want to get my hopes up too high, but so far all four were approved without even a hint of a problem like those I had previously.

Let me put it out there to others who use them more frequently then – have you noticed changes for the better with EzineArticles over the last few weeks or couple of months?

BACKGROUND

I chose to evaluate WebWritersGuide.com, because it’s a relative infant compared to some of my other blogs. That means it has a huge amount of room to grow from this starting point. If you follow this blog regularly, you also know that I recently launched the first in my Web Writer’s Guide e-book series – the blog was originally launched as a vehicle to promote those e-books. It’s made no trackable income on its own yet through the last complete month (September 2008), and I’m obviously hoping to change that through e-book sales. That makes this the perfect time and the perfect blog for an evaluation – I can see what I’m doing well, what I’m doing wrong, and make changes to improve the blog’s value to me.

THE EVALUATION

• Audience – I think the audience here is reasonably well-targeted, and doesn’t need a change. The title makes it clear that the site is targeting Web writers, and I think most of the content makes it clear the site focuses on two primary things – 1) Freelancing (not full-time employee jobs) and 2) Web writing for yourself. I do have a blogging category setup that has no posts yet, so I should branch more into that to try to attract more bloggers to the audience (especially since there’s an e-book planned down the road specifically targeting bloggers). I’d also really like to put my marketing / PR background to good use and make this site the source for freelance Web writers to find information on effectively marketing themselves.
  
  



• Content – I see two current problems with the content right now – 1) There’s not enough of it, and 2) Most of the recent posts are about the e-book rather than value-added content for visitors. While that’s expected near launch time (announcing sneak peeks, announcing the launch, announcing the affiliate program, etc.), I should have been working in other content at the same time, and I’ve done a poor job of that. So increasing content needs to be the #1 priority I think.
  
  
• Search Rankings – There are currently 31 pages indexed in Google. That’s pretty “normal” given that there are only around 15-16 posts live, plus the home page, category pages, etc. To improve my presence there, I need to post far more often.

  In Google’s search results, one of my pages comes up #8 for the site title (not in the top 30 for other general phrases like web writers or web writing yet). Ideally, I want this to be #1 for at least the site title, or at a bare minimum in the top 3 – 5.  There’s a book with the same short-version title, so that’s going to be the primary competition to beat out for placement. I’m completely anti black-hat tactics, so it won’t be a terribly quick process to fix that, but I’ll start by evaluating my site meta details, adding post meta details to all new posts, tagging, and doing more link-building for the site title. In essence, SEO is just a limited form of PR (which is what I do best). It’s about visibility in a narrow medium (search engines), and that’s what I need to work on. At the same time, I’m very against becoming a “Google slave” – relying on search engine for the bulk of my traffic, and therefore income / sales. So I’ll be putting emphasis on improving traffic from other sources far more than directly worrying about SEO constantly – this has proven to ultimately lead to much higher rankings for target phrases in the end for me on other sites, and I don’t plan to mess with that strategy.
  
  

• Traffic – Traffic has increased quite a bit in October since the e-book’s launch, but let’s focus on full months for now. The first month with traffic was May 2008, with only around 50 unique visitors and a little over 500 pageviews – pitiful. I’ve done a terrible job of building the site up between then and September, which is my own fault for not posting regularly and building up a solid following on that site for blog itself (which was designed to later be the promotional vehicle for the e-book series).

  This is an area where I need to make some major efforts to see some major improvements. Stats in September were a little under 150 unique visitors and a little over 2200 pageviews (while not officially counting it here, there are already over 500 uniques and 5000 pageviews for October, so it’s definitely improving with the launch of the e-book, and that’s only been live for about a week now – November should be the first full month to witness changes related to the e-book being released).

  I’m fortunate in that I have four other writing-related blogs, and a business-related blog. I basically relied on knowing they were their with built-in audiences, rather than building a significant separate audience for WebWritersGuide.com – that’s going to be one of the biggest changes moving forward (more notes in the branding section). I’d really like to see this at 2-3k uniques per month and at least 20k pageviews per month within 3 – 6 months, more in line with where this blog was with the same amount of effort. I need to get it on a regular posting schedule, and make it “my baby” for a little while.
  
  

• Inbound Links – Google’s Webmaster Tools show 1605 incoming links, and Yahoo shows 2517 Inlinks. This is as high as it is most likely from my own links from other sites in my network, as well as forum signatures. I need to build more natural links. I won’t submit to link directories or submit my own sites to social bookmarking / networking tools (while I used to have no problem with this, over the last year or so I’ve come to consider it unethical, and don’t want my blog’s brand tied to it). A new free report I’m hoping to launch soon may help with this.
  
  
• Brand – The blog (and e-book series) have strong branding potential, but are both too new and unknown to have a solid brand yet. I need to map out the brand image I really want to establish, and work out a PR plan that combines both branding for the blog and e-book series with personal branding (for example, there’s very little personal branding now – I need to add a photo of myself for the trust factor, more background info, etc.).
  
  
• Profit – Assume no profit through the last full month (Sept. ’08). The few ads there weren’t uniquely trackable, and profit would have been minimal if anything. Also assume no costs beyond $10 – 15 for the year (for hosting and the minor portion of the Web hosting package it’s included on).

  A new income stream was launched in October ’08 – the Web Writer’s Guide e-book series. Sales have been off to a slow start, with no current affiliate sales. The biggest thing to do now to increase profits is to promote the affiliate program. I also need to come up with a broader promotional strategy for the e-book for direct sales.

  While I don’t believe in general article marketing through article directories to promote personal brands / services, I’m considering trying it with 5 – 10 articles promoting the e-book in the resource box. I’ll also be making the sales page the link I include when commenting on related blogs in the niche, and will be introducing graphic ads onto other sites within my own network before the end of this month. I’m also planning to release a free short report to promote the e-book in the next few weeks.

  Another obvious way to increase profits moving forward will be to add more e-books to the series, although not too quickly in succession (don’t want to jeapordize the sales potential of each title by oversaturation within my target market too quickly).
  
  

• Design – The design is a free template without major edits. Overall, the color scheme suits the niche and audience, and the general layout works well, giving me room to promote the products and blog posts equally well (including multiple decent potential ad placements, which will let me play with conversions in different areas if needed).

  There are some minor things I can do to improve the design – for example I could decrease spacing between lines, and increase it between list elements for easier scanning. The current blue for the links in-post is a bit washed-out looking, so I could darken that and see if it improves clickthroughs.

  In the long-run, if the design seems to inhibit sales, traffic, etc., it might be worth getting a custom theme created, but for now it doesn’t seem to be necessary for this particular site.
  
  

• Domain – The WebWritersGuide.com domain was registered in February 2008, so it’s still a relatively new domain. Nothing can be done about that but to let it age.

  The domain itself is top-level (in this case .com), key-word rich, and brandable, meaning it’s generally a good domain for the niche and blog (and products promoted there), and doesn’t need improvement on that front.

So I’m going to kick off this blog by giving you a vague list of the book and e-book projects I’m working on, or that I plan to start working on within the next several months, and talking about the strategy I’m hoping will allow me to pursue my writing to my fullest potential.

Types of Books and E-books

I’m primarily a business writer, but also want to move into some fictional projects to let my creativity flow a bit more.

I’ve been (very slowly) working on a nonfiction book for probably around two years now that’s related to my work. I’ve also fully outlined one novel, which I plan to make some changes to, but ultimately finish, and I’m in the middle of outlining a second novel now. I’ll be outlining a third later this summer. It might sound like too much fiction at once, but the first novel was outlined and shelved for a few years, and the other two outlines are a part of an experiment I’m doing – testing methods from two authors claiming to teach you how to draft or outline a novel in 30 days (more about that in a later post).

On top of that, I write e-books. I published my first in late ’06 I believe, and loved the experience (and of course the payout, considering it only took me a few hours to write in full). I have several e-books partially written, but my primary e-book focus will be a series I’m doing as a guide for Web writers.

My Projects and Ideas

I’m obviously not going to go into a lot of depth about plots and characters here – partially because I want to protect the ideas until at least the rough drafts are all finished, but more because those things keep changing in this early phase.

Here is a list of what I’m currently working on:

• Sarah – Sarah is simply the first name of my heroine in the book I’m currently outlining. I don’t have a working title in progress yet, so for now it will be referred to as “Sarah’s Book” or something similar. It’s a fantasy horror novel. I won’t go into the sub-genre. I’m not even 100% sure that I’m comfortable with that genre classification yet. I’m outlining this book as a part of an experiment, using the method detailed in First Draft in 30 Days.
• Creative Self Promotion – This is the nonfiction book I’ve been working on for a while now – it simply hasn’t been a priority time-wise enough for me to make a huge amount of progress lately. Most of my work on this project is still in the interview phase – reaching out to music industry contacts from previous work. To sum it up in my early “elevator speech,” I suppose you could say “it’s a book about what musicians can teach business executives about using creative self promotion through online marketing and PR channels and social media to turn customers into ‘fans.’”
• Web Writer’s Guide to Launching a Successful Online Writing Career – This is an e-book, and will be the first in a series of e-books targeting Web writers (and tied to my blog at WebWritersGuide.com). I’m hoping to either finish it, or at least a good portion of it, this weekend. Material was written for a larger e-book previously, and I broke it down to create the series, so much of the writing is just a matter of expanding, adding examples, etc. Some of the previously-written material has also been broken off to be used in subsequent e-books in the series.

Here are the other projects I’ll be starting hopefully within the next several months:

• Fairy Tale – I don’t really know how to describe this just yet beyond that basic term, so that’s what I’ll be referring to it as when I post updates on my progress. This is another novel, and the second that I’ll be outlining while comparing the 30-day plans from two authors – in this case using Book in a Month. It’s another dark story, possibly bordering on the horror genre, but I wouldn’t quite call it that. It’s not a traditional fairy tale. It’s not really a “twisted” fairy tale. And it’s not simply an updated fairy tale. It’s not exactly a fairy tale at all – more of an “anti-fairytale” – so just bare with me on the labeling for now.
• Dark Mystery - Again, there’s currently no working title. This is the one that was fully outlined previously (using The Marshall Plan, which I loved working with). It’s been shelved for a few years, and I plan to start revising this outline while I work on the fairy tale outline later this summer.
• Web Writer’s Guide E-books – As I already mentioned, some of the content for these is already written. I’m not going to go into them each separately. Right now the other planned e-books in the series will be The Web Writer’s Guide to: Finding Online Writers’ Markets, Networking Your Way to Higher Paying Freelance Writing Jobs Online, Making Money as a Professional Blogger, and Writing and Selling E-books and Reports. When those e-books are finished, I’m planning to continue the series with other titles, perhaps moving into specific types of Web writing for those more advanced in their careers.
• Indie Black Book Series – This is a series of books I’ve been planning to write and self-publish for several years now (although I may release them as an e-book series or report series instead, because frankly there’s a better profit margin). They will be short books on various indie music marketing and publicity issues or artist management issues (I initially worked exclusively in music PR, so it’s a topic near and dear to my heart, and one where I still have a very strong built-in audience). I’m planning at least five titles in this series, and this is possibly the lowest priority project at this point in time.
• Daughter – This is another one where what I’m calling it here probably won’t make much sense until it’s finished and I open up more about the content. As you may have noticed, all fiction projects previously mentioned are “dark.” This will be a humourous book – I hesitate to call it nonfiction, but until I delve deeper into it, that’s what I’m going to call it.
• 3 Weeks – This will be a vignette-style piece, also on the humourous side. To be as vague as possible, it will deal with the topic of failed relationships (I know – that’s isn’t saying much).

There are a few other e-book projects that have been started, but they’re more “permanently” shelved for now, meaning they’re not something I want to start researching, outlining, or drafting within the next few months. I’ll bring them up down the road if and when I decide to add them to the list of things worth pursuing.

Setting Up a Writing Schedule

So is there any way to realistically approach several long-term writing projects at once (on top of running my business, dozen or so websites, and my freelance business writing career)? I’m sure gonna try!

Right now I have three “active” projects. I think that’s a good number to work with. It isn’t entirely overwhelming, and gives me enough diversity that if I don’t feel like working on one thing, I have other options that might appeal to me in the moment.

I’m expecting the first novel outline to be finished in early July (you can track my progress on my book marketing blog – I’ll be charting progress on the second outline here instead). I’m also expecting to soon be finished with the first Web Writer’s Guide e-book.

When those two projects move out of my “working list,” I’ll be adding the second outline (after a week or two off between them) and editing the novel outline that I completed for the dark mystery a few years back.

So that’s the plan for now – stick to three if possible, and substitute one project in for another. If I find that I just can’t seem to get into one of them, I can move it to the dormant list and stay productive overall by “upgrading” another project in its place.

Wish me luck! And more importantly, if you’ve ever had to juggle multiple book and / or e-book writing projects, please share some words of advice or war stories about how you survived.