Marketing Your Articles and eBooks: The Biggest Challenge to New Writers and Authors

Article marketing is one of the most necessary activities for a new online writer. The only other writer who needs this activity more than a new writer is a newly published author or their newly published book title. I can speak from experience as a longtime freelance writer and an author of a newly published ebook.

“Shut Up and Write!” (Step-by-Step Guide How to Get Paid to Write Within a Week)

This comprehensive guide is a detailed road map for new online writers looking to write for pay (Additional ebook details are considered below).

Marketing and promoting your articles and ebooks can be difficult for any writer or author, but especially for newbies to the online writing and publishing industry. If you’re a self-published author with a new book release, the marketing challenges are the same for you as they are for the first-time article writers. In fact, marketing will continue to be just as important as your writing progressively improves. That means that you cannot mistakenly think that if you’re a good writer, you don’t have to market yourself or your writing. That is a huge untruth! Even good writers and authors need marketing.

Just think about it for a second. All writers and authors ultimately have the same objective; to get traffic to your pages and readers to your writing. Everyone’s purpose or primary incentive is the same. Not only do most writers and authors hope to receive monetary compensation for their work, but somewhere down deep, we all crave validation (if not notoriety). Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, a good way to gauge just how much validation we’re getting is through readership and sales.

Effective marketing can result in traffic and traffic can result in more readership and sales. Since article and book sales seem to be the way that writers often gauge validation, marketing is one of the best ways for us to get that validation. There’s nothing like seeing your byline on a great article that people are talking about, to make you feel validated. The same is true for a newly published book that is managing to get some decent reviews.

Article writers that are just starting out online often encounter some of the same sources for writing income. Hubpages.com is a prime example of this fact. As I’ve indicated in the contents of the above mentioned resource book, many years ago, Hubpages was one of the first places that I ever began writing for. It was then, and still is, a great place for writers to hone their writing skills while learning about writing related income. Notice this book excerpt from the section on Hubpages.

“Shut Up and Write!” - [BOOK EXCERPT]

When you sign up and get started writing, you’ll quickly discover just how friendly and inviting the atmosphere is at Hubpages. There are writers of all levels, networking among one another. This is an excellent place for writers to find encouragement, hone their writing skills, and meet a variety of like-minded people. You can read great hubs, packed full of useful information for online writers and freelancers. They provide content and useful resources related to a number of categories. Many Hubbers share their special interest knowledge about different topics, including the online writing industry.

Because Hubbers come from all walks of life, not every author who writes for Hubpages has the same objective. Making money may not be their goal therefore, using moneymaking tips may not be important to them. Many hub writers are completely happy sharing information on their favorite topics and receiving nothing more than the joy they experience from writing and being published. The wonderful feedback they receive from the interesting and helpful hubs they write is purely icing on the cake! This may account for the reason that so many Hubbers are actually missing out on the residual income they could be earning for doing what they already do and love!

The statement I made about Hubbers who miss out had reference to members who fail to take advantage of the different marketing opportunities for their hubs. I actually listed several ways to increase your visibility on Hubpages, but also, to market your hubs OUTSIDE of this website. Both forms of promotion are a way to help expose your articles, ebooks, and other related web activities.

Notice the following three marketing strategies that can help you market your articles, hubs, and ebook titles. These are three that I am currently using myself (by way of this example). Feel free to follow this hub or any of my social media accounts if you would like to stay up-to-date with these marketing results.

Marketing your articles when you are new online might seem unnecessary to you. When you start earning small upfront payments from what are known as “content mills”, it is easy to get excited and lose focus. On the one hand you feel like: “YES! I’m finally getting paid for what I love to do – online writing!” But eventually you will start to discover that you could earn a lot more on those same articles if more people were actually reading them. It is a big mistake to simply settle for the small payments you receive and the limited marketing that the website does for your articles. Learn to market the articles yourself, and make it a regular activity that is just as important as your actual writing.

Try These:

Article Linking: Create a link list of some of your favorite or more popular articles and keep it handy (for copy/pasting). Organize the ones that are related to the same topics so you can reference them in your writing and perform simple article linking.

Press Releases: After writing a detailed a comprehensive hub or other article extract the primary points and details so you can turn all the necessary information into an informative press release. Try to include some element of the topic that is actually newsworthy, and if possible, include an authority link in the press release. Use the article link as an additional source at the bottom of the press release. One great place to submit an easy press release like this is at Prlog.com

Monitor Feedback: Another good way to generate more views to your article writing will involve taking time to monitor the actual results. Here is what you can do. Write two different hubs or related articles. At the end of one of your articles, pose a point of view question that directly relates to the second article. Provide a link, and direct the reader to consider the second article and be sure to return to leave their comment. At the end of the second article, pose a second question, related to the first article. You can also restate the original question and ask for a quick response before redirecting readers back to the original article to leave an answer.

Believe it or not, the very same article marketing strategies can be applied by an author, to help market your new ebook title. If you are a published author, you probably still write and publish articles or blog posts somewhere. Why not use the above article marketing activities to discuss and promote your new ebook title? In addition to those activities, you can also try the following.

YouTube Videos: Video marketing is becoming one of the fastest growing resource tools online. According to a Forbes article written for entrepreneurs: "Now is the perfect time to give YouTube advertising a test for your business to see if it’s a sustainable growth channel." Video marketing is something that both article writers and self-published authors can take advantage of.

Recently, I saw the need get involved with this awesome marketing strategy myself. I began an eBook Marketing Strategies video series. I did this in order to help gain more visibility and sales for “Shut Up and Write!” This 60 day video series was created as to be a daily progress and troubleshooting journal. It summarizes a host of marketing strategies that are being performed, and scrutinized closely for effectiveness.

Clearly, this kind of marketing video, and others like it can result in a number of benefits, including more ebook sales and author visibility. My commitment to this two month long video series stems from the belief that this 30,000 word step-by-step guide is one of the best writing resources for new writers this year.

Coupons and Discounts: Thousands of authors know how effective it can be to offer your newly published book title along with a free publication or some type of discount. If your ebooks are created at Smashwords (like mine), they even have a really easy coupon generator to help you create them.

There are a number of ways that you can choose to actually display and offer your coupons. As with everything else online, social media marketing is a good resource, especially since you can now automate your social media posts. But however you choose to provide your special offer, make sure to obtain the reader’s email. This amounts to starting to build a simple but necessary opt-in list. Though they may not be the words that you want to hear, they are definitely words that you NEED to hear. As bothersome as it may seem, Yes, you really do need to start getting emails of potential, current, and future readers. It is an essential part of marketing your ebooks.

Check out how a basic little email form can help your viewers join the list that you provide them. The one that you will see when you follow this link was created absolutely free and it will help to get the job done.

Hopefully, this information has given you some food for thought about article and ebook marketing. If you’re a new writer or author, chances are you still learning and picking up both good and bad habits along the way. Don’t let your lack of regular and effective marketing be the one writing challenge that you never seem to overcome. Start applying different marketing strategies and learn what works best for your hubs, articles and ebook titles.