Blogs, New Books and Learning Curves

Technology. There are times I think back to 1986 and cringe. '86 was actually a very good year. My specific 'cringe' comes from the fact I purchased a desktop computer back when most people did not own one. I actually KNEW the technology of the day fairly well.

Word processors were not the huge, intricate collegiate level courses. They were simple, straight-forward and easy to understand. Sure, they did not have the functionality of today's programs, but hell, their simplicity was wonderful. Hey, that first computer's hard drive was 20MB. Yep, megabytes. AND, I was told that was all the memory I would ever need. Oops!

Somewhere in the late 90's and early 2000's I got left behind. I've been playing catch-up ever since. A few years ago, I jumped on Blogger. I knew I needed to blog, and the learning curve with Blogger was relatively small.

Now I find that I've outgrown Blogger. Yes, Blogger allows you access to Google AdSense, but the functionality of their blog-sites and the limitations no longer serve me well. Word Press sites offer higher SEO recognition, polling, better templates and a host of widgets that allow you to tailor your blog to what you need.

What I need is traffic. Don't we all . If Blogger sites are not easily found by search engines, why be there when you need traffic? I set out on the road to blogging upgrades and found Word Press to fit the bill. One of the things that prompted my switching blog hosts was a book I recently uploaded to Kindle - More Writing is Easy .

I no sooner had the book uploaded and for sale when - poof! I sold a copy! Literally within an hour of the book being available, someone purchased one. I had not promoted it at all. The descriptive copy must have been well-written or the $2.99 price-tag must have been right. I know this is a great little book, but a sale without promotion is - luck.

I want to get the word out about this book and my Blogger site has struggled to get traffic for two years. I read something a couple weeks ago about search engines not finding Blogger sites easily. I also checked out a blog one of my cohorts posted on WordPress. 216 hits in a couple months with only one true post? I'd posted the crap out of my Blogger site and after a couple years only have 431 hits.

I thought my content sucked. Ok, maybe it did! But I'm sure it didn't suck so much as to only get that paltry number of hits. Hence, my move to Word Press. I struggle with understanding Word Press, but heck, I struggle with grasping other aspects of what's happening in the computer world these days.

I've found the ability to learn is directly related to the amount of patience I show myself. As long as I don't get too frustrated, I can figure out how to get things to work the way I need them to work. As an author and a publisher, I need book sales. To get book-sales, I need to be able to promote these books to an audience. One major audience I aspire to reach is online. Blogs help.

Writing is a tough business. Most of us who write do it because we love it. Getting paid would be a nice thing, though. Overcoming the learning curves in building a successful blog can help new book promotion. Getting set up with a blog host that helps drive traffic appears to be essential. I know patience is an absolute requirement. Time to switch another blog over...