There’s a saying in marketing that only 20% of marketing efforts are successful. The problem is that no one knows which 20%. It’s applying the old 80/20 rule with a bit of tongue in cheek. In this day of the internet I don’t subscribe to this saying…..so what have I been working on?

Over the past week I’ve built a tracking system that will help me work out which marketing effort seems to be more successful over another. This has been going really well and I’ve found some interesting information….but I’m still refining the data as it comes through. What I’d really like to do is tag Amazon so that I can get conversion data…..I’m not sure if this is possible as yet.

As a by-product of my tracking system it has also become a short URL creator. I can do things such as sp4a.com?rid=34 and it will display an image with a URL this long http://michaelgilmour.com/images/banners/2015Year/20141220_battleframe_468x60.jpg This capability is great if you are doing tweets!

I decided to put together a promotional video that is designed to sell Battleframe to the masses. I really want to see if I can put this video out into the mainstream to get a bit of interest for my book. I’m definitely not a Stephen Spielberg but it seems to hang together. Check out what happens after about 30% of the way through….I’d love any feedback….so here it is:

So how did I make the video? For a start I came up with a creative concept that reflected the book. I then used a JVC handicam mounted on a tripod or held in my hand for the principle footage. I edited the video in Microsoft Movie Maker (comes with windows) and Camtasia (costs about $100) and downloaded free sound effects from the Internet. I also recorded my daughter, wife and myself for the dialogue. Voila! There you have it.

Now that I have the video, banners and blogs….I plan on getting them out into the marketplace. Let me know if there is anything that you can do to help out....trust me when I say that I'd be happy to reciprocate. Cheers!

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. He also recently published his first scifi book Battleframe.

Since my last post a few days ago I’ve been trying a lot of different ways to market my book, Battleframe. Please treat this as a case study rather than me “pushing” my product as many of the principles I’m tackling are very appropriate for any business.

I’ve done a lot of things over the past week. For a start I’ve joined a number of forums and taken part in the many conversations. If you plan on doing this then please ensure that you obey the moderators rules about self-promotion as they can be a little testy.

For instance, in one forum I haven’t promoted my book, domain name or anything about me at all. They have a rule that you need to get to 100 posts before releasing anything about yourself. In some ways this makes sense as by a 100 posts you should be pretty well committed to the community by then.

After a bit of googling around I’ve setup profiles on a number of commercial websites such as goodreads.com. This allows me to interact with new readers and at least be available.

There have been a couple of developmental tasks that I’ve been working on. The first is setting up a link area to thank domainers, friends and others for linking from their websites to  http://michaelgilmour.com. You can see this area under the community menu on my site.

If you have linked to my website either by using one of the banners (which are pretty cool!) or with a text link then please let me know so that I can return the favour. I’m a firm believer that what goes around comes around….so let us help each other.

The next project I’ve been working on was to develop a system for tracking the effectiveness of any future marketing initiatives. So I dusted off my PHP skills and got programming a redirect and tracking system so that I can know how often an advertisement has been displayed, how often it’s been clicked and ultimately…..with a bit more work, whether a sale as resulted.

After a few hours work I can now redirect traffic to anywhere, log everything, work out the average budget for a website, campaign and redirect. From here I can work out my approximate cost per thousand visitors to help sort the wheat from the chaff. I think that I have about another 4 hours or so left to work on the system before I can use it in anger.

Another change that I made was to move onto the Kindle Select Program. This means that I have to be 100% with Amazon for at least 3 months. This was fine with me as I had a lot of other things on my plate. A couple of things that this does is expose me to a raft of new marketing initiatives via Amazon and also to the Kindle subscriber system that allows people to get books for free.

I’ve also made the first overtures towards a games company. The goal here is to add value to the game via my book while generating a few dollars for both parties. It will be interesting to see if they take up the offer….!

I big piece of work that I would like to get completed tomorrow is the 2 minute promotional video. I have the concepts worked out but I now just need to execute them so that there is something that people can look at that will get them inspired to fork out a few dollars and buy the book.

So far, I’ve had no day with no sales. This either means that I’m lucky or something is going right…..fingers crossed that it's the latter. :-)

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. He also recently published his first scifi book Battleframe.

Since I wrote the last article I’ve sold between one to ten copies of my book Battleframe per day. Not bad when you consider that all my marketing efforts have cost exactly zero dollars. So what’s the next steps?

I’m doing a number of things, all of which are important and all are crammed into the time I have available while I keep on working in my company ParkLogic.

Grow the Content

Marketing is useless unless you are also growing the content on your website. You’ll find that michaelgilmour.com is constantly changing and being tweaked with upgraded graphics, new articles, forum posts and anything that would be of interest to a potential reader. I’m also encouraging people to sign-up to the website by providing free maps of key locations from the book, news updates and access to the forum area.

I’m the first person to say that I’m not an SEO expert but there is one thing I know and that’s Google loves regularly updated content. In fact, I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to SEO….just give Google what it wants and be done with it!

My wife Roselyn, videoed me opening my box of books and seeing Battleframe for the very first time. If you every want to see raw emotional joy then check out the video. I hope that it puts a smile on your face....you'll see that it did for me.

If you want to pick up your copy in either ebook or paperback formats then go to my authors page at amazon.com/author/michaelgilmour.com

For the past few days I’ve been watching my UPS package traverse the world with the first copies of my book, Battleframe. As I tracked the package I’d say to my wife Roselyn, “It’s in Honolulu!” This was then followed up by, “It’s now in Australia!” and then finally, there was a knock at the door…..

With our son Timothy taking photos and Roselyn on a video camera I slowly opened the box with the order of five books. Seriously, my heart was racing and I felt like I could barely hold the knife to cut the tape!

Seeing the first copy through the packaging on top was nothing short of one of the best moments in my life. Don’t get me wrong, I love ebooks but seeing a physical copy of something that you’ve worked on for so long was awesome! I think that the above photo captured the moment for me when I held Battleframe in my hands for the very first time. I was deliriously happy!

After enjoying the moment with my family I called my Mum and Dad who have both been such a great support in the writing of the book. They were around in about 10 minutes! I kept book number one but I presented my father with his own copy of Battleframe. The first thing that he asked was how far I was through book number two……Dads! LOL!

I couldn’t resist screen capturing the UPS delivery docket (see below).

If you’ve ever wanted to write a book, I hope that the happiness in my photo inspires you. It’s a magical experience seeing your writing in print and one that you’ll never forget.

I also want to take this time to thank all those people that have purchased their own copies of Battleframe. I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. Don’t forget that after registering at michaelgilmour.com you can get access to maps of key locations, discussion forums and more content over the weeks ahead.

I can’t resist…..if you want to buy your own copy of Battleframe then it’s available on Amazon by clicking here or the image below.

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face.