Business -1.0, and a contest

[thedarkages]

I have just finished rejiggering my professional website. Business has been dismal over the last few months, despite a Google ad campaign that I have been hard-pressed to financially sustain. Google brought some traffic to the website, but there was no corresponding rise in inquiries.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with my work. I provide a lot of value for little enough money, and have made believers and repeat customers out of many clients. My testimonial section on the website could be much longer. But something about my marketing is wrong. I know that many of my competitors are seeking out naive or first-time authors, flattering them as to the quality of their work, and making extravagant claims about publication. I can't do that. Print advertising is extremely expensive -- hundreds of dollars per insertion -- and web advertising, e.g., on the Writer's Digest site (which I loathe), is hardly less so. Blog ads in my price range have the problem of small viewership.

Hence, I announce a contest. The best marketing suggestion submitted by Monday, July 9th will garner a $20.00 Amazon gift certificate. You can suggest ways to change the website, deals on ads I may not have thought of, and so forth. My advertising budget, not including the website, is $60/month, although if business gets better, I can probably double it. Good luck!

Comments

[ryba-kit.livejournal.com]

I can make a couple of suggestions if you want... I am a bit hesitant since last time I offered you weren't so interested, and this is much in the same vein; let me know. I don't care about the 20$.

[thedarkages]

Go ahead! It can't hurt.

for what it's worth

[ryba-kit.livejournal.com]

Regarding the website:
Home Page.
Make the logo clickable (it should point at your home page).
As an editor, you want to project meticulousness. I would go with a photo of a pen rather than a drawing, it looks blurry: wrong image, imho. At the very least, get your logo to align properly. It is very nice that you have divs that adjust the content to screen width - but your logo does not adjust itself, and ends up too wide or not centrally aligned in a number of resolutions I tried.

On your home page you have different fonts in the link bar and bottom sections - that's fine, but get the font sizes to match your main text. If you have to have different sizes, main text should have the larger font size. The eye first falls on the text that is larger, and you want that text to be your sales pitch, rather than your clients' books on Amazon. Same is true of quotations: a very nice touch, but way too prominent.

Background: Your last paragraph begins with," To date, I have completed over forty book-length manuscript editing projects. Many of my clients are repeat customers or have been referred by word of mouth. ..."
This is a very important paragraph - this is what your clients want to know. They are interested in your credentials, but rarely will people read through four paragraphs of it the first time they visit (they will read everything if they decide they like your site, but you need to get them there). Put the last paragraph first, or better yet, transfer it to the home page.

In general: In your background and elsewhere, you mix your writing credentials with your editing credentials. You put most of the stress on your writing experience, but I am guessing that you want to attract clients who are looking for editing as well as writing services. Those would probably not be the same people. If I were you, I would carefully separate editing from writing and make information easier to find. E.g. title "Samples" is misleading, since it could mean "samples of editing" as well as "writing". Announce it clearly as "writing samples", or put it under a general Writing page. I would also suggest a separate general Editing page, where you should put some basic information in a "list" format, e.g. the types of editing you do, the texts you worked with, length of projects, etc. I think it is important to have basic information in a list rather than a narrative, because people as a rule do not spend lots of time reading narratives the first time they visit a professional site.

I hope that something out of this will be useful to you. As for promotion, having an occasional column or blog where you post short professional essays might help personalize the site and attract regular readers (who could become clients or recommend you to others).

Best of luck!

Re: for what it's worth

[thedarkages]

This is very insightful; I thank you. I've already implemented some of your suggestions.

Re: for what it's worth

[ryba-kit.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear that!

[2wanda.livejournal.com]

I think your website looks fine. It's informative, direct, easy to access. My only thought is that since most of your past clients have come to you word-of-mouth, that perhaps there are ways to increase that type of advertising. I don't know if this would work, but there are LJ communities for most of the universities. Ads are often tolerated, as long as you don't overdo it. You can email the maintainer and ask first, if you are worried about getting a bad reaction. The maintainer of the ucsc lj community is kind of a jerk, but I think he'd be ok with an ad now and then. However, these communities don't attract as many graduate students as they do undergrads. I think graduate students would be the best clients for the services you offer. But I could be wrong about that. Maybe some of those kids have parents with deep pockets who would be glad to pay an editor to look over their children's work, to ensure that they get good grades. You never know.

Another thing you might consider is to expand your client base by contacting small graphic design shops. I used to use the services of one such shop here in San Jose while I was working in high tech. I asked the owner once about his employee base (because I was in HR, so the topic interested me at the time) and he said that he outsourced a lot of tasks, including writing and editing, and only had artists on his payroll.

My last suggestion would be to create some sort of banner link that people can put on their websites that when clicked would direct people to your website. Something that says, "If you want to get high marks on those essays, click here!" Hee. Sounds hokey, but I'd put one on my website and LJ, if you provided one.

[thedarkages]

Thanks for your suggestions. I am loath to market to undergraduates, because it's a grey area that can lead to compromise on my part and academic dishonesty on theirs. A dissertation stands or falls on its ideas. Generally, committees will let students with purely formal difficulties use an editor. By contrast, undergraduate papers are about mastery of the forms, so it's problematic for me to help on that level.

Advertising which claims to improve grades, to my mind, is unethical. The logic may seem unusual if you haven't taught undergraduate composition, but the idea is that students have to do the work themselves.

[2wanda.livejournal.com]

As I suspected. I was brainstorming, and you know how that goes. A lot of garbage gets thrown out, and sometimes you find a gem. Well, good luck with your search for better marketing ideas!