Marketing Monday, or Lack Thereof

 There won't be any marketing today.  I haven't been sleeping well and I just didn't have the drive to create a sale.  And I knew I wouldn't be in any shape to do morning marketing today.  (We finally slept last night, which was good.)

The problem with not marketing is with no marketing comes no sales.  I mean, I'm still getting some page reads, but nothing to shout about.  :shrug:

Unfortunately, even with the marketing, I'm only averaging about $20 a month.  I keep hoping something will take off and fly, but so far, nothing has.  When I look at the amount of effort versus the return, it really makes me not want to market.  

This, of course, is all free marketing.  As in, no money is going to to accomplish it.  On the other hand, I'm spending a lot of time.  We won't go into how many hours I spend to make $20 a month, okay?  That's just depressing.  I get paid more than that for working on a single spreadsheet for an hour.  

Anyway, I know that if I paid someone else for marketing, I'd trade cash for time.  The problem with that is the last time I paid for ads, I made an 11.06% profit.  In 2019, I paid $355.31 and cleared $39.31.  Not sure if 11% profit is awesome or pathetic, but there it is.

With FB being a turd about how much I can market, I'm definitely going to need to start delving back into other sources.  I've started that, kinda.  At least, I've gone through and determined which newsletters are defunct, so I have a good list to use when I start back up again.  Bleh.

Tomorrow's post will be of a personally relevant nature, as opposed to a writerly nature.  Maybe I'll talk more about this marketing thing on Wednesday.  For now, though, it's time to get to my morning routine.  Have a great day, wherever you are.

Thursday This n That

2019 is the year of the bugs.  Oh, we're still dealing with the grain bugs from last year.  And there are always the spiders and crickets and cockroaches.  And ticks and mosquitoes.  It's all part of living in the woods.  But this year has been bad.  The oak mites are particularly rampant and rabid this year.  Then Kira got fleas.  (We're knocking them back, but it's an ongoing thing.)  And Tuesday, unbeknownst to me, the bags of corn I bought and hauled in the back seat of my car, were infested with maize weevils.  To the point where you could actually hear them inside the bags - crawling, scratching, chewing... :shudder:  Lucky for us, Hubs noticed before he loaded them into our attached garage, so they never made it inside the house.  I carted them back to the feed store and got some non-infested bags of corn.  Then we unloaded the car and proceeded to deep clean in there.  Dozens of weevils, crawling all over everything.  I even had them on the ceiling of the car - one dropped onto my shoulder and crawled toward my cleavage while I was driving home from exchanging the infested feed.  Gross.  I'll be so happy when cold weather arrives and knocks the damn bugs back a bit.  All I can say is thank goodness weevils don't bite.  That would suck.  Literally. 

Scrolling down the BookGorilla newsletter last night looking for free new books to read when I passed a cover that looked extremely familiar.  I scrolled back, certain I couldn't have seen what I saw.  Yep, there it was - Accidental Death in the BookGorilla newsletter.  I didn't do it.  I can't afford an ad in BG.  And since I didn't do it, it was listed at full price - $2.99.  It's pretty far down in the newsletter and I didn't see any sales as far as I could tell, but hey, it was a pleasant surprise.  Who knew BG did stuff like that.  Gee.

I woke up late this morning, which is to say, around 5 instead of around 4.  (Or in the case of yesterday, around 3.)

I had some time before a doctor's appointment yesterday, so I stopped at one of the local thrift stores.  Before this year, I thought they only carried clothing, but on a whim, I went in and looked around.  Way in the back, they have tons of books.  So, anyway, yesterday their stock was a little thin, but I still managed to pick up 6 paperbacks and 3 hardcovers.  All for $2.  Nothing really groundbreaking in there, and I've already DNFd one, but I'm happy with the haul.

Around here, the thrift stores get a little lean in the summer, what with all the tourists and summer people picking through everything.  But it rights itself in September when everyone starts cleaning out.  I really hope someone out there donates a lot of old crime novels.

A friend who knows I circle the thrift stores looking for books put in two requests.  So now I have a sticky note in my purse with two titles to look for - a Nelson DeMille title and something by Eric Larsen. 

I went to school with a guy named Eric Larsen.  Probably not the same guy.

Okay, that's enough out of me for now.  What kinds of things are you throwing into the this n that today?

Thursday This n That

How did it get to be Thursday already?

My ad got approved for Ereader News Today for the 27th.  So, the genie books will be on sale early August 25th thru the night of the 31st.  WIOH - 99c, the others $1.99. We'll see if a discount prior to Labor Day does me any good.  My only problem is UWC's Kindle thingie ends on the 24th, so whether it will be a Kindle Countdown Deal or just discounted on its own remains to be seen.  No accounting for when ENT gives me a date.

When I've been making burgers lately, I've been toasting the buns and then buttering them before I put the patty on.  Lemme tell ya... yum.

Every time I think the world as gone about as nuts as it can go, it says 'hold my beer' and leaps off the diving board into a whole new depth of loony. 

We had a turtle in the yard the other day.  Awesome.  And bummer.  When the turtles start coming into the yard again, it means the bug spray is wearing off.  Love the turtles.  Hate the ticks more.

If you're into bladed weapons (or forging, I guess), you really need to watch Forged in Fire.  Doug Marcaida testing weapons is a thing of beauty.

I made enchiladas the other day.  I usually put seasoned chicken and rice in them, but I was totally lazy and rice can be such a pain in the buns, so I substituted Ramen noodles for rice.  I boiled the noodles for 3 minutes, drained them, and dumped them in with the seasoned chicken.  Stirred until they were all seasoned, too, then stuff the mix into tortillas.  Rolled 'em up, laid 'em in a baking dish, and covered them with green enchilada sauce.  Yummers.

I believe I've mentioned before how much I love food.

Gah, I can't wait for summer to be over.

And that's it for me.  What's it for you?

Sunday Update - Week 25

Almost halfway through the year.  Ugh.  Not sure what happened to the first half.  It friggin' flew by.  And here we are again at the beginning of another month.  Here's what happened the last week of June...

I didn't do any writing again.  I figured it was so close to my edits coming back that why bother?  Yeah, I was rationalizing there.  I did get an idea for the next SCIU book, but I'm not ready to write it.

I got my edits back for Sleeping Ugly last night.  So much pink.  I set it aside and I'll start dealing with it today.  I've set a deadline for having it back to AWE no later than the 18th.  (As long as I can deal with all that pink in that timeframe.)  Perhaps once I get SU closer to publication, I'll be able to sit down and work on UatB,

I was reading a lot last week.  Four books read, two put down without finishing.  Three are in the Wrap Up and one I finished last night, so it'll be in next week's post.

In marketing news, I booked an ad for Project Hermes with Bargain Booksy.  It's due out on Wednesday, cuz, ya know, Independence Day is the perfect day to advertise a political thriller, right?  Well, maybe not.  I'll let you know next Sunday.  And it's not a 'sale' ad.  I'm leaving it at $2.99 and seeing what happens.  :fingers crossed:

Most of the week was spent hiding from the abysmal heat we're having here.  Thank all the little gods for AC.

Speaking of the heat, it's making my commitment to activity a little harder.  I only did 5 days out of 7 last week.  Mainly because if I don't get active first thing in the morning, I'm screwed for the rest of the day because it's too damn hot. I did get down to 189.0 last week, so it wasn't a total loss.  That's 5.4lbs since I bought the new scale and about 8lbs down for the year.  (I think.  I wasn't keep track as diligently as I am now, but it seems like I was at 189 on the old scale, which was 8 pounds off.)

And that's it for me.  Did I miss anything?  How'd things go for you last week?

Thursday This n That

It rained yesterday for the first time since May 25th.  We got 4/10ths of an inch.  Not a deluge, but it's a start.  I had Hubs open the front door so we could listen to it.  Not for long... cuz, you know... bugs... but it was nice for a minute there.

Is it just me or has the world gone batshit freakin' insane lately?  Oh, holy crap.  Can't read my FB feed without purging someone from my view.  And forget Twitter.  I wasn't even on there for a minute before I ran screaming from the virtual room.  And saying 'I don't usually post about political things but I can no longer hold my tongue' and then spewing a load of verbal diarrhea?  Yah, ain't helpin'.  If it's wrong now, then it was wrong two, five, ten years ago, so what held your tongue then?

We had a lovely visit with our company.  Super nice people.  Interesting to talk to.  Fun to be around.  He was Hubs' best friend in high school and his wife was a former librarian.  What more could you ask for?  Sure, I still had to take a five minute alone break, but that's me.  Socialization, even with the best of people, is tiring.  Of course, I overbought on the cold cuts.  We have a ton of leftover deli ham and turkey.  Sammiches for everyone! 

Today is the day I'm supposed to have an ad going out.  Problem: it's a new source for me and I hadn't signed up for their newsletter until this morning, so I probably won't actually SEE what the ad looks like today.  Problem #2: After I signed up for their newsletter, they had links to their FB and Twitter.  They haven't posted to FB in years.  The Twitter feed is current, but I'm not sure if what I paid for includes tweets.  Caveat Emptor.  But more about that another day.

We saw our first fawn of the season yesterday!  So tiny and so cute! 

The rabbits have now accepted Hubs as one of their own.  They still move out of the way of the giant human, but not very far and as soon as he moves, they go back to where they were.

Okay, that's about it from me today.  What's it for you?

Riding the High

Yesterday my ad was accepted by Ereader News Today.  And I was squeeing like I'd won the lottery.  I even posted to FB with a snoopy sticker of him doing a happy dance, I was so excited.  Suddenly everything was brighter and the world had a happier outlook.  Over one ad.

And I told Hubs later that it was silly to be so inordinately happy over one stupid $40 ad.  But I was. 

I mean, let's put this into perspective a little.

Getting an ad with any of the big venues is incredibly difficult.  I had an ad with ENT back in May of 2015.  It was the best sales month I have had since I started this 3 years ago.  Hell, 2015 was the best sales year I've had.  I got another ad with them a couple months later and that did almost as well.  Then I couldn't get an ad with them to save my ass. At one point, I gave up.  Why keep submitting ads with them only to get shot down every time?

And then I got over it and began trying again.  I requested an ad earlier this year.  Oh, they shot that down, too, but I tried again.  This time it worked. 

Which, like I said, suddenly made everything better.  I suddenly became like a bipolar, swinging on the happy side.  I was laughing and smiling and filled with the hope of better things to come.  Hell, even dinner turned out awesome - with the salmon cooked to perfection and the sweet potato chips full of salty-sweet goodness. 

Kind of sick when you think about it.  One $40 ad.  They're like freakin' drugs, those ads.  Once you get the high of an awesome sales day, you're forever chasing it.  And it gets really depressing when you can't have it.  Yep, when they reject your ad, it's like they're denying you the drug and you're totally jones'n. 

So, I'll be running an ad with ENT on May 24th.  Wish in One Hand will be on sale for 99c/.99p from the 22nd thru the 29th.  I'll probably put some more ads out for that, too.  Smaller ads with like Author Billboard and PUFB.  We'll see what happens.  The hopes are that people will snag WIOH and then get the other genie books, too.  :fingers crossed:

For now, though, I'm trying to ride the high of getting the ad and I'll worry about whether it pays for itself later this month.