Bloggers, Blogging, and Book Deals – Oh, My!

So it looks like I dove into blogging at exactly the right time, kids – we’re all getting book deals!  Hazzah!

I wish.  Sarcasm aside, it seems that many publishers these days, all looking for the next big thing, are approaching bloggers and offering them super-nifty book deals. I don’t think I’m getting one anytime soon (what do you mean my blog lacks focus?), but the hope being offered up by Brianna Ehrlich at mashable.com is appreciated just the same.  As you can see if you follow the link, Ehrlich wrote a fantastic blog-to-book deal article today, highlighting 6 particular success stories.

More importantly, and certainly more relevant to the alleged direction of this blog, what this story serves to illustrate is the reality that blogging is the next wave of the written word.  This often confuses the bejeezus out of older, more academic generations who dismiss blogging as irrelevant, self-indulgent, or worse, useless.  True, any Tom, Dick, or Sally can start a blog.  True, our friends Tom, Dick, and Sally need not pass a writing proficiency exam to continue blogging.  (Only a tiny sector of bloggers actually report to an editor.)  Still, though, my point is that you can make money off of blogging, and not just off of ads, etc.; book deals are possible.

As soon as blogger Ben Huh acquired FAILBLOG.org in 2008, it seemed only natural that a publisher would snap up the ever-popular humor site’s content for a book deal.  A collection of photos, videos, and associated commentary, FAILBLOG has single-handedly introduced the term “epic” fail into the common vernacular.  Mighty impressive, no?

I think so.  But, then again, who am I?  Just another girl with pipe dreams of someday author-hood…and, for now, blogging is the perfect way to express myself, but I must find a niche.  Not just any niche, but something highly specified, like FAILBLOG, or one of my other favorite blogs-turned-books, Twitter Wit, which is a cute archive of brilliance…in 140 characters or less.

So work on that blog, and keep dreaming of that book deal…it’s possible.

“It takes a lot of page views to equal one book sale. We’ll just leave it at that.”
Ben Huh of FAILBLOG

Ta-Da! Ben Huh's blog-to-book deal success story...materialized.

Blogging in Circles…

As any reader can tell, I am quite fond of ellipses.  By far my favorite form of punctuation, ellipses, to me, indicate a work -or even a thought- in progress.  This of course, ties in quite nicely to my general feelings on the topic online marketing, my understanding of which is without a doubt just that: a work in progress.  Here’s what I know so far:

It’s all about the SEO.

In the online marketing world, SEO, or search engine optimization, is the task at hand.  Essentially, the goal of SEO is to improve or heighten a particular website’s internet traffic vis-a-vis “natural” search results that have not been paid for by the client.  (SEM, search engine marketing, on the other hand, deals with paid inclusion in said search results.)  There are several ways in which a search engine can be “optimized” to meet a particular client’s needs, mostly related to editing and indexing a website’s content, HTML, and associated coding.  I don’t think there is any way that it’s this simple, but so far in my world, it seems as though the more links you have pointing back at the your website, the better off you are in the Google galaxy…right?  Right.

Mo’ Blogging, Mo’ Traffic.

I’m gonna go ahead and say it: this blog is being written for almost exclusively therapeutic purposes.  Deep breath.  Okay, glad that’s out…again.  Back to the topic at hand: the more blogs you have that ultimately link back to your website (or at the very least, reference it), the more traffic you inspire.  Oh, and the more you comment on others’ blogs (with your user name linked to whatever site you are attempting to generate interest in), the more likely other readers will bother to investigate who you are and what you’re all about…and, hopefully, what you’re all about is promoting your client.

Increased Traffic = Happy Client

This right here is a no-brainer.  The more people visit a site, the more that client’s name circulates among the internet community.  Ultimately, the greater the buzz, the greater the sales.  It’s probably quite a bit more complex than this, but -voila!- the bare bones lie before me.

As always,

To Be Continued…

In the meantime, don’t be like post-it guy…it’s all gonna be juuuust fine…