Friday, October 15, 2010

Loving technology, hating website analyses

Marketing the ebook for the past two weeks has given me the chance to do what I've loved to do for the past 30 years — muck around with technology.

There are a lot of little backroads with the iPhone, and it's fun to see the solutions people come up with when they get stuck in the mud. I already have some updates for the ebook, which will initially appear on the publishers' blog.

The book itself is not selling as well as I'd hoped — the publisher markets to tech-oriented audiences, and those folks don't buy "basics" books. I am discovering that the iPhone newbies who are curious about the book will click through from my marketing pages but don't buy — I suspect they are wary of buying it through the publishers' website, which does not have PayPal or other familiar payment options. I am hoping that when the book is available through iBooks and some other ebook publishers, that payment barrier will be eliminated.

I was fortunate that as I worked on the book marketing and dealt with my injured ankle, my main client had two weeks of downtime.

I was able to complete two small business website evaluations and have decided that I don't want to do them any more. They involve educating the clients about technology, about marketing communications, about online communications, and about SEO — plus breaking the news to them that they need to divorce the web designer who saddled them with a cutesy, out-dated website with no content management system and start from scratch with a WordPress-based site. No fun at all, and I find that I spend too much time trying to make the reports I send them diplomatic as well as informative — so it's not even very profitable for me.

It would be fun about now to take a couple of weeks off to work on jewelry or cooking or furniture refinishing. I tried gardening, but my ankle didn't like it, and I don't dare try digging anything up!

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