My Travels on the Net

I’m helping a long time client create an ebook about writing a business and marketing plan for the new year. She has a treasure trove of stuff she’s written on the topics of business planning, marketing planning and face-to-face networking over the last ten years. So you’d think it would be easy to just throw it all together into an ebook, right? Nope. Just because you have a bunch of great content, doesn’t mean it’s ready to become an ebook. Here’s why:

Throwing things together when cooking can be brilliance. In ebooks, it’s garbage.
Every good article, white paper or report was written with a specific goal, call to action, publication and target market. Although there might have been common themes, each article had its own unique recipe of factors. So just because each original document was brilliant doesn’t mean the combined effect will be brilliant. Start by pulling together all the material you want to include but plan to do some major rewriting. Other wise it won’t make sense, it will sound disjointed and you will annoy your reader.

Before you edit, answer these questions:

• Who is this book for?


• What problem does this ebook address?


• What will the reader have or know when they are done with this ebook?


• What steps am I asking them to take? (Be specific!)


• Why am I asking them to take these steps?


• Do I have the steps in the right order?


• Are they getting their money’s worth?

You need an editor.
If you’re a good writer and editor, you might be able to get away with writing the whole thing by yourself. If you’re writing it by yourself to save money, you’re wasting your time and you won’t save money. You will write a bad ebook that won’t sell. You’d be better off doing client work.

When it comes to formatting your ebook, just pay somebody.
Unless you or your assistant has spent ten years learning the ins-and-outs of formatting long documents for digital publication and has an amazing eye for detail, you will wind up very pissed off. Many times over. Why punish yourself? Just pay someone who knows what they’re doing. You might wind up paying them $50 an hour for 5 hours ($250) which is cheaper than paying your $15 an hour assistant for three days worth of work ($360) and it’s still screwed up and she’s ready to quit from frustration and she’s done nothing else in those three days… You get the idea. Just cough up the money.

P.S. Not only can I edit and format ebooks, I can set up the payment process on your website and help you creatively sell/market your ebook. Just hire me. We’ll all be a lot happier.

Labels: ebook editor, ebook formatting, informational ebook, tips for writing an ebook

In a recent issue of High Rankings Advisor, Jill Whelan answered a question from a reader who was worried about potential ramifications from changing the page names of his company website. He was changing them so they would include keywords in the name in the expectation that keywords in the URL’s would improve the website’s rankings.

(For those of you new to search engine optimization, DO NOT change the page names of your website without consulting a professional. It is not a decision to take lightly. It would be the same as if you changed your phone number on a whim and didn’t tell anyone. That would make it tough for clients and prospects to find you wouldn’t it?)

In Jill’s reply she cautioned the reader against it for several reasons most of which boiled down to her belief that the perceived benefits of keywords in page names were actually due to other factors that got ascribed to the new page names. I think the most valid point she makes is that although web pages in the top of the search results often have key words in the page name, someone is intentionally trying to get that page to rank well and are probably doing many things to improve its rankings.

Now I’m not entirely sure I agree with her but Jill is a well respected expert in SEO so I definitely have to give her opinion a lot of credence. One thing I did learn from the post was that if you’re going to use keywords in your page names, separate them with hyphens instead of underscores. Rats. I’ve been using underscores. I think they make the page name easier to read but apparently Google doesn’t read an underscore as a word separator but they do with hyphens. Oh well, what Google wants, Google gets.

Labels: High Rankings Advisor, Jill Whelan, keywords, page names

I recently got a Zune (Microsoft's version of the iPod.) and I really like it. Being a long time NPR listener, I've heard about Audible for downloading audio files and decided to try it out. They have a one month free trial. (Or so they make it sound. Read the fine print.)

First Red Flag
Audible required a credit card for this "free" offer. They're hardly the first company to do this but it still says to me, "We're going to try to get every penny we can out of you. Please forget when you signed up for this service."

Second Red Flag
In order to get the book I wanted, I had to download special software to download the book. That's baloney. You shouldn't need special software to download an MP3 file. (I've already got all the usual programs used for downloading audio files.)

Third Red Flag
I wasn't downloading an MP3 file or any other commonly used file type. I was downloading a file type proprietary to Audible. They do this so they can control what you do with your purchase.

Fourth Red Flag
Once I installed their special software and then downloaded the file I wanted, I was asked what device I wanted to download it to. My new Zune was not one of the options on their list. Granted, a Zune isn't an iPod but it's made by Microsoft for heaven's sake! There are more than five of them out there!

I'm not going to describe how I finally got my "free" download onto my Zune. What's important is that it took another hour and a half to do.

The Final Straw
Since it required an advanced degree to download files from Audible to my Zune, I obviously wanted to cancel my account. Once I logged in and re-confirmed my password (Fortunately I keep track of passwords because they didn't send it to me when I created my account.) I was able to find the directions for canceling my account. In the cancellation process, I was asked why I was canceling my account. The first time I selected "unhappy with service." I was then sent to a screen telling me to call an 800 number during East Coast business hours to cancel my account. I then selected "technical issue" as the reason for canceling my account. I got the same screen. On the third try, I selected "financial" as the reason for canceling my account. I was then taken to a screen offering me a reduced rate for the next three months. I had to decline that offer to actually close my account.

I don't know what Super Genius thought is up but they need to be fired. This is no way to build a business. A service I really wanted to like, I now hate. And now I'm telling you about it. That's not good for business.

P.S. I sent Audible customer support and email about this experience. If I hear back f rom them, I'll let you know.

P.P.S. The next day I got a very nice reply from an Audible customer service rep letting me know that she personally didn't know that it was so difficult to cancel your account. She was going to bring it up to her supervisor. I wanted to send her a reply but noticed that they Reply To email address was a generic email address and probably wouldn't have gotten to her which is another pet peeve I have about big company customer service departments. It's kind of hard to build rapport when your customers have to talk to a different person each time the contact you about the same problem.

Labels: Audible, cancel account, customer service

If you've read my artilce about Google Alerts, you know that I've got alerts set up for my name and business name. A few days ago I got an alert directing me to Tom Pick's Web Market Central blog. His post was about the Top 100 Social Media & Social Networking Blogs for 2007 according to VirtualHosting.com's blog. Although mine didn't make the list, Tom was kind enough to suggest that maybe it should have.

Thanks Tom. Right back at'cha!

Labels: blogs, Google Alerts, social media, social netowrking

The Newbiew Guide to Social Networking - This is a good primer on social networking. It does a good job describing how to find niche social networks and things to consider when setting up your account.

The Blogger’s Guide to SEO - I don't agree with everything they say in this guide (sucha s telling you not to use a service like Blogger) but it does give you good info for how to think of your blog from an SEO perspective.

SEO Digger - With this SEO tool you can find out for which keywords your site ranks high enough to be in Google Top 20. You can analyze your own sites as well as sites of your competition. The only problem is that you can't tell it which key words to search for.

Tips for Using Digg - I'm doing reserach for an article on social media and came across this video on SEOmoz. I had to watch it several times to understand the points Matt makes but it's worth the effort.

Labels: social networking