Why should book authors consider making a website?
There were not as many writers in the past times as we have today. There are so many book writers, ebook writers, blog post writers, and many more types of writers. If we look at the writing world, it has become an ocean. Therefore, it has a lot of saturation, and it’s difficult for beginners to stand out and make their place unless they have some extraordinary skills. Even when they have exceptional skills, they can remain underrated due to not getting the right exposure they deserve.
Websites and Search Engines
A website is a tool that can do many things. You can make it your internet magazine, and you can make it a video platform like YouTube or a social media platform like Twitter and Facebook where you can connect yourself with the entire world. When you write a query on a search engine, it shows you a list of all websites’ results. What users search on the internet becomes a keyword. The search engine works on algorithms that consider several factors and rank websites accordingly.
Note: If you are an author and want to make your website, you can reach out to a web developer who has experience in author website design making. You should seek website designers for writers because they would understand after listening to your requirement what you exactly want on your website.
As a result, if you have written a book whose title is something that people search on the internet, it can appear in the search results. Even if its title is not that, but you have a website and wrote an ad copy on its landing page that contains the keyword people search, your book will appear in the results. It doesn’t matter if it’s an ebook or printed book. You want to appear it in the search engine so that people can look at it and consider buying it.
Firstly, we will discuss some other benefits of websites for authors. Then we will briefly discuss the how should author’s websites look like.
4 Benefits of Having a Website if you are an Author
1. Your book can become more famous
It’s not easy to make your book stand out amongst others in 2022. There is an n ocean of books in today’s world that are written to do business, and so is yours. You need to make exceptional efforts to make your book popular. Otherwise, it would be hosted somewhere on the internet, and only some people would come to know about it. That’s not something you wish for your book. Having a website will help your book reach more people. How? Just like it makes a brand and business famous. It lets you receive organic search engine traffic.
When users search for a query, the search engine shows them a list of websites. Do you know how search engines show that? Search engines work on algorithms. These algorithms scan websites, which are called crawling. After crawling the websites, it indexes them accordingly, depending on the factors involved in ranking websites. Some factors involved in good search engine optimization of websites include:
- Long-form content
- Good readability and user-friendly interface
- Keywords usage
- Backlinks
- Site speed and structure
Most Effective Way to Do SEO of Your Book
If you keep in mind all these aspects and work on them ideally, you can make your book famous on the search engine as well. We tell you the easiest and most effective, most technical way to SEO your book website. You can do it by making a website and publishing your book for sale. Obviously, no one would buy you a book unless they know what is it about and who’s the writer and what he did, and things like that. You would write an ad copy for your book on your website for that purpose.
Write an excellent ad copy, and then include the keywords you want your book to get ranked for. In your copy, you would need to mention what your book is about, why you suggest people read it, and what benefit they would get from it. Alongside, you need to add relevant keywords in it that will help it appear on the top search engine results page. It’s technical work; therefore, you can hire an expert search engine optimizer for this purpose.
However, remember that SEO is not the instant magic that you do today, and the day after tomorrow, you see its results. Give it a little time, and then see how it works.
2. You can earn more money
Your website will get more clicks when you rank high on search engines, and you will receive a lot of traffic. You can monetize that traffic in multiple ways. One way is you can start running ads on your website. That’s the easiest way to monetize a website. You just need to sign up with the Google AdSense program. Since you are already receiving traffic, you won’t get trouble signing up for it. You get 68% of the amount you earn, and the rest Google cuts as their fee. Some people don’t like using AdSense to monetize their website, so they prefer Media.net, and WordAds (WordPress associated) to display ads on their websites. They give different percentage cuts according to their policies.
Affiliate Marketing
Let’s first understand what affiliate marketing is. When you host another brand’s products on your website (with their permission), and upon receiving traffic and getting sales deals done, that website pays you for it. It is called affiliate marketing. As the name suggests, we affiliate with other brands when does affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is very crucial nowadays. A Statista report says that affiliate marketing will have a successful future.
Moreover, affiliate marketing is a business with no enormous investments and fewer chances of getting flopped. You can host other books related to your one on your website that will get sales, and upon it, you receive a percentage amount as decided earlier.
3. Sell book at whatever price you want
Your website gives you the access to sell your book at your price without needing to give anyone a cut of the cost. However, to sell it at a high price, you need to prove it is worth it. Why would anyone spend a significant amount on your book if they don’t believe it’s worth it? For that, you need to do what we said before; write a good ad copy. Moreover, you can make videos on your book, just like its advertisements, to tell people about it. You can show its few exciting pages to read for people on your website before buying your book. In several cases, it can give people a sense of security to invest safely in your book.
4. Talk to your fans online
It is a benefit of this modern era that you don’t need to travel across oceans to meet someone. However, we used to contact each other back when there was no internet, by writing letters, but the internet has made it fast. Our message reaches the other person’s computer within a second, he replies. People have always loved celebrities. If your book becomes famous, you become a celebrity author in people’s eyes. They would like to meet you, and the best way they can is to contact you on the internet. Many film actors and actresses do it nowadays too. They talk to their fans on Instagram by posting a story asking fans to ask them questions that reply to stories, and either by coming live and answering fans’ questions they ask in comment sections. You can adopt similar ways to talk to people who love your book and you.
That’s how an author’s website should appear
1. A simple and niche relatable landing page
A writer is a creative person. Therefore, his website’s landing page should be simple to understand yet fun to look at. Moreover, it needs to be according to his niche. For example, a fiction writer who wrote novels must have a different type of landing page than the person who is a non-fiction writer, for instance, if he wrote self-help books. A landing page is the page users see when they’d visit your website, or it could be the home page. It’s the first impression. Therefore, that needs to be perfect.
2. Biography section
One reason we make websites is to introduce ourselves to the world. Thus, it’s essential to write your biography on your website. Include a section on your website that includes your history and things you want to tell your readers about yourself. Moreover, mention the names of books you have written in your biography section.
3. Articles Section
Most book authors write articles. Those who have their websites also made a section of articles. For example, Elif Shafak has done that. Articles could be related to anything. You can write on your published books or your thoughts to convey to the world.
4. Writing Tools
We live in an era where writing is somehow similar. We are talking about grammar correcting tools, paraphrasing tools, or any tool related to writing. Some authors have created their tools as well. For example, Jerry Jenkins, the famous novel writer, also provides writing tools on his website for editing, organizing, and marketing.
5. Writing Course
Some people like to teach their writing styles, secret in ways they have used in their career. Making a website makes it easy for them to teach things to their readers. You can create a free or paid course to teach them how to help them in their careers.
Now that you know how a book author site looks like, follow the tips in this piece and make a killer design.
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