Publicity Through Philanthropy For Writers – Writing
Publicity Through Philanthropy For Writers
Zachary Weiner
I am twenty three years old, have sold over four thousand copies of my first book in a matter of a month after its release and recently been contacted for contracts with Random House and Harper Collins for two new titles. I think a good deal of my recent success is highly correlated with my Reading for Charity Contest and the attention it has drawn. Ill explain the entire background, but as pre-thought I think it first manifested itself through a combination of my looking for a good way to market my first book, while balancing out my karma a bit. A way to interweave my love of novel writing, increase my books visibility and provide a benefit to society in some way shape or form. All of these tasks have seemed to be accomplished- although my karma could still probably use some more balancing.
What is the Reading for Charity Contest: Over sixty organizations, a group of corporate sponsors, and a handful of volunteers are the result of the charity contest. I took my very recently published book and decided to give away a certain percentage of its profits to charity. There was a catch though, the charity I will give my book profits to is being voted on, by the readers. So once you read my book, you can go to my webpage or find me at one of my book tours and vote for your favorite cause and the highest voted cause receives the profits Which should be quite a bit. That was the reading for charity contests basic beginning. Its the focal point of everything else that now surrounds the contest and of course my book. The contest was than expanded on by a few different means which, furthered the accomplishment of my goals.
1 Rather than your basic book tours I turned my book tours into a way to highlight the organizations participating in the contest. I have a large stand representing all of the participating organizations with their information and donation cards. Next came along a couple of benefit events- a silent auction, a couple of benefit dinners etc... Things that were really quite easy to put together, but could have a great benefit for the charity groups I was working with. Now this may seem like a good deal of work, which it was, but the benefits for the organizations had been huge, and the benefits for me personally has been equally spectacular.
The benefits all of this had for me: I was able to get involved with over sixty non-profit organizations and use my book and contest as a way to highlight their efforts and eventually provide them with a financial benefit as well. There is no truer statement that giving is a two way street. In return for my help with the organizations the organizations did their best to help out me. I am featured with my book in over fifty non-profit newsletters, on a large number of webpages, as well as postings and fliers from the organizations. Some organizations have newsletters with readers in the ten of thousands. It is equivalent to being featured in fifty newspapers across the country that are targeted directly to the reader.
2 The book tours are not only philanthropic, but also bring in a good deal of people and create a lot of buzz. After some attention a number of companies offered to sponsor the events. I was able to receive all of my marketing material for my book and contest for free from corporate sponsors. T-shirts, fliers, book marks, posters, business cards, mail outs, coffee cups, even mousepads with my book cover on them. My entire marketing plan which is now pretty extensive costs only about five dollars a month to cover the price of my website, that is it and nothing more.
3 When you have a purpose and are providing aid you directly relate with the community you are assisting. Since the organizations I have involved are spread out throughout the entire United States it has proved to be an excellent source of publicity, from radio, to newspapers, to magazines, even a couple of upcoming television shows. It has given my book an unbelievable pr hook in a market where it is difficult to get a story in a paper just because you recently published a book..
4 In basic when people read my book they are doing more than just being entertained, each copy bought goes directly to a great cause. The readers of the book are allowed to interweave their love of reading with a greater purpose in an interactive fashion. Once again a win-win situation.
I would like to expand a bit on the reading for charity contest idea. I think there are a world of ways to further the efforts and provide the joint benefit for some organizations out there, and assist me in my publication and book marketing endeavors. As a model however it has been incredibly successful, I think there are a lot of incredibly creative ways to market a book on a low budget like I originally had and turn it into a success. Once again I will state that giving something always brings in something, and in my case, it brought in an incredible book career.
About The Author
Zachary Weiner is 23 and has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers. He is the author of the recent novel "City at Night" and the upcoming novels "A Simple fate of twists" Ballantine Books "The Experts Speak" Harper Collins.
Building Brand Awareness Through Tradeshows – Marketing
Building Brand Awareness Through Tradeshows
Susan Freidmann
Branding is a basic marketing concept that is designed to set your products/services apart from the competition. By using a particular name, phrase, design, symbol or a combination of these, you can create a unique identity. When choosing a brand name, consider the following five criteria:
It should suggest product/service benefits.
It should be simple, memorable, and unique.
It should fit the image of the company.
It should have positive connotations for the target market.
It should be easy to pronounce and to pictorialize.
Branding is not a sales and marketing gimmick. Instead it refines and defines corporate culture and identity. A brand must have meaning to its consumers, its organization and its employees. Brand is an emotional link between you and your customer. It is what people buy when they buy your product or your company. The most important part of a brand
Sell Multiple Products Through a Single ClickBank Account – Merchant Account
Sell Multiple Products Through a Single ClickBank Account
Tim Coulter
A ClickBank merchant account allows you to define and sell up to 50 separate products. If you have more than one product in your range, it makes sense to sell them from a shared ClickBank account. Here are three good reasons why:
Every active ClickBank account incurs a setup fee of $49.95. Why pay this more than once
Managing multiple ClickBank accounts adds unnecessarily to your administrative effort
The combined sales of multiple products through one account will significantly boost your Marketplace ranking
Unfortunately, the architecture of the ClickBank system has, historically, not been well suited to selling multiple products from a single account, especially for merchants who use affiliates to promote their products. The problem is that, although you can define 50 products within ClickBanks account control panel, you can only specify a single landing page URL - the destination page that your affiliates will refer their prospects to.
The result is that all referrals must arrive at your site via a common page. This forces you either to present all your products on a shared sales page or to create an intermediate page, from which your visitors must click through to see the product of their choice. Neither option is ideal as they both create obstacles that will distract your prospects and seriously reduce your conversion rate.
For optimum sales effectiveness, affiliate referrals should go directly to the sales page for the product of interest. This is known as deep linking and is widely acknowledged as the best way to convert affiliate referrals into buyers. But ClickBanks lack of support for this technique is a major barrier that inhibits effective use of its growing affiliate network.
To tackle this problem, a number of pioneering merchants have developed their own techniques to work around ClickBanks shortcomings. Some of these innovations have even evolved into successful commercial software products. Most implementations rely on intercepting the inbound referral and automatically redirecting it to the relevant product page, as indicated in URL parameters passed by the referring affiliate. There are several variations on this theme, but they share a common gambit - using scripts, installed on the merchants web server, to intercept and redirect requests.
However, the need for smoke and mirrors to fix ClickBanks limitations may soon be a relic of the past. In October 2003, ClickBank announced plans for major improvements to its hoplink system - improvements that will all but eliminate the need for workarounds or enhancement products.
The new architecture - known as the enhanced hoplink system - employs a more flexible referral URL format, in which affiliates are able to specify the numeric code of the product they are referring their prospects to. Using this code, ClickBanks server will look up the corresponding sales page URL and send referrals directly to it, handling cookie-tracking and other admin chores in the normal manner.
The main attraction of the enhanced hoplink system is its simplicity of implementation and maintenance. Whereas add-on products require at least a moderate understanding of script installation and configuration, the hoplink system is maintained entirely via the ClickBank account control panel. This means that a merchant selling multiple products even across multiple web domains can expose them for affiliate deep linking, simply by configuring the relevant sales page URLs in his account.
At the time of writing, ClickBank has published the format of the enhanced hoplink URL, but has not completed the database and control panel changes that will allow the configuration of multiple landing pages. So, although we can visualize the new architecture and dream of the benefits it will deliver, we remain in eager anticipation of its release.
About The Author
Copyright © Tim Coulter. All rights reserved.
Tim Coulter is a consultant and software developer who helps netpreneurs to harness marketing technologies.
He is also the author of "ClickBank - The Definitive Guide" The Ultimate ClickBank Tutorial & Reference Manual.
http://www.clickbankrevealed.com/