Marketing in the 21st Century

I started as a photographer marketing and selling my own work, so a self publisher. Made a lot of money.

I evolved into being good enough to get publishers to buy my work for their publications. Made some money.

Then the Internet hit the industry and many of the webmasters who could put up a site, were not able to create anything to put on their sites. So I sold to them. Made a lot of money.

Then they decided they could do it for themselves and went back to making some money. All the time the old part of the industry was in rapid decline. This story fits many industries and now is hitting authors and traditional publishers. One of my clients who published my work amongst others, tells me he's unable to get "traffic". Yet that's the easiest part of the Internet selling process. The key and hard part is selling to them.

More later. Dog walking time, yes I'm semi retired.

As I said before getting traffic is easy, maybe not to your site just getting them to see what you offer. The problem is getting them to buy something and make it profitable. J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, etc can buy Adwords and make a profit. Anyone can buy Adwords, not everyone can make a profit from them.

Getting published is too easy, which makes for most selling very hard. Back in the day, if your work wasn't good enough no publisher would take it. Today many online publishers will take it or the writer can start a site and no one buys, well very few. Because even if you build a better mouse trap, no one knows what door to know on to buy it. Especially when so many build rotten mouse traps and make money because they have a big sign on their door.

Yes I talk like this in real life.

After the book is finished, comes the job of getting people to your door. A very different skill from writing.

For sure.