End of Year Five

We've reached the end of the blogging year here at the Retreat.

In short, my plans for the year got goat-screwed by Corona-chan due to cascading consequences of her effects globally. I will call it decent should I get "Hounds of Nimrod" out before New Year's Eve this calendar year.

Not that it's been all bad. In looking for ways to overcome the issues that indie authors post-boom have in getting found, attracting a loyal following, and retaining it across books--this is why I joined and follow #20Booksto50K (see two most recent videos below)--I've come to the conclusion that most authors (trad and indie alike) are leaving money on the table by eschewing merchandising and now it's stupid-easy to do it yourself via Print On Demand. That's why I opened a Redbubble front, and I will follow up at other places soon.

The other thing I finally looked into was how the Affiliate Marketing game works, and that too is something authors can easily incorporate into their ordinary business affairs. You're already running a blog, and you already post to it at least a few times a week, so you're already good to go there. Learning what keywords are, how they work, and how to use them is easy to incorporate into what you're already doing. You'll have no problem getting into the Amazon program, and then you can use affiliate links when posting your book and movie reviews (where you're posting buy links to the Amazon page); post your disclosure of such links (FCC requirement) and review only things you recommend to be safe. Then get into other affiliate programs for places that deal in your subject (e.g. Right Stuff for anime, including mecha) and add those to your review buy links.

The idea that I'm getting at here is that authors can be earning far more revenue without putting in more work once it's set up, and setting it up means skipping a night of TV or gaming that week to open up the POD storefronts and get designs uploaded for approval, submitting to affiliate programs and getting set up there, etc. so even set-up isn't tedious or difficult.

As for what I want to do with it, that's for tomorrow.

Videos: