Well, my blog and book launch failed...

Poetry: Nothing wrong with that. May make the world a more enjoyable place. But, wow, that's a tough online niche.

Perhaps, try making YouTube videos of your friends/guests/colleagues doing selected poetry readings from your book. Just an idea. But lots more work involved. It's just a hard niche, but anything is possible if you believe and keep doing it long enough. The world's a big place, and it will take time to connect with your ideal fans around the globe.

I was having a discussion with a friend few weeks back...
Same topic, poetry.. How to market that?

So.... base on the trend nowadays we kinda theorycrafting and looking it from various angles.

One of it was T-shirt printing or Teespring, Get a poem that relates to an occasion or even a campaign.
Some nice pictures or icon to go along with it...

And since you have a list (If i understand correctly on what you've mention the 7400.) Well, might work.

Anyways it's all just theory...

I think the videos sound like a good idea!

Every fail is a win when you learn from it. I think What you have to do now is to seat down and write your mistakes in a paper and try to improve for the next time. Maybe it has to do with conversion of your site, the targeting or maybe with the price of the ebook . Try to figure out what's wrong. It's rare to win from the first try but as you improve your work you scale up your earnings.

Is the "email out to 7,400" your list or a solo-ad/email blast to another list?

You should definitely be building a list in this niche. As well as social marketing, you want to build a captive audience you can address directly. A list is a great source of instant traffic.

Also think niching down into genres of poetry. Religious poetry, motivational poetry, inspirational, sports, peace, military, humour, etc.

Use that to cross target other markets.

Another important point was made by amenwolf.

You need to brainstorm ideas to monetize. Poetry books are tough sells, but poetry related products sell very well.

I think you should give away your book for free (not knowing much about your plans or the book) in order to get people on your list. Then make money with affiliate offers and poetry related products.

There are many hands-off POD (Print On Demand) services like Teespring and Cafe Express you can use to create your own products.

Think mugs, t-shirts, posters, iPhone covers.

I think iPhone covers with a poem over a beautiful image would sell well in many niches.

Create an app. It is very easy to make an app that simply displays content from a web page. You could probably make a "Daily Poem" app for the iPhone/Andriod with simple point-and-click app creation software or on Fiverr.

Because you have picked a market that is difficult to monetize, you need to work harder, be more aggressive and think outside the box about how to build an income.

EDIT:
For a Kindle book, I highly recommend this thread. His method and genre are 'erotica' but the method of promotion would work well for any Kindle book. Very thorough instructions. You could start at Step 5.
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...2-erotica.html

Great to see you took action in something you like. But pay attention to what you just posted. One minute you say your are doing this because you love it. The next minute it is all about the Money.

You sent a ton of traffic to a site expecting a big pay day. To recover all your costs. But were any of those people targeted buyers. No not at this time. Sounds like your site has potential, but you are going about it the wrong way. Just like a Brick n Mortar store. If you open up a large Store in the most expensive district. That has no one really needing something from that store, it will fail.

It may take a long time for you to recoup your expenses if ever. Do it for the love of poetry and provide value. You may start bring in the poetry lover that wants to buy from you. The guy that wants to impress his wife or girl friend by reading your poetry to her.

As one poster said you may need to niche down some what. Identify your buyers and provide them the value they seek. You may have thrown the snow ball down the Mountain. But it is just may need a few more snow balls to build the momentum to get the Avalanche started. Good Luck !!

So you didn't become a billionaire in the first 24 hours of launching a poetry book, and you're already calling yourself a failure?

You do realize that Grisham, King, Sandford, Collins and all the biggest writers of the 21st century spend millions of dollars on advertising and six months of their lives on book tours to sell their fiction, don't you? In fact, any successful author will tell you that writing the book is about 15% of the job....the other 85% is marketing, networking and marketing some more.

So if you're willing to give up after 24 hours, then that's probably the best possible thing for you to do. Marketing is not easy and NOBODY has big success after a few weeks of sending emails and building a site....so you're either in it for the long haul to become a success or you're not.

My suggestions are use Adsense and make a store for poetry books, so that people can buy at least non-interested book.

Don't lose hopes, find out other ways to make money online, build large fan page on Facebook to market your poetry books.

Did you fail? You launched a blog and generated 700 visitors. Sounds like you need to look at the positive side of things. You now already know how to get traffic you just have to find out what your traffic wants to buy.

Look I have failed more times than I can shake a stick at but I always learn from my failures. You need to take what you can from this learn from it and come back. Always come back stronger and better.

Get to know your target audience. Build a relationship with them. Get them on a mailing list. You know most people who buy a product do not buy it till the third time they see the product. So get them on a mailing list. Send them samples. Do whatever it takes man.

I recall a very successful site from many years ago which was built on the back of just ONE poem. Many people loved it, signed up to the email list, and the site owner was able to monetize it over years through selling a poster/printed version of the poem, rallying his audience behind a project related to the poem, and many other things. If I remember the name of the site or the poem, I'll post. I even tried to do something similar with another popular verse, but it didn't work too well (probably because it wasn't my area of real interest anyway!)

EDIT: Found it! http://www.thetimemovie.com/

Thanks for all the good comments. I LOVE THIS FORUM! I have so many ideas. I will post back an update tomorrow or in the next few days I have somethings to think about.

Sounds like you had / have a great idea but your business model / system is lacking a bit; I typically work with people stuck in these positions.

Do you know what people in that niche are looking for? what services or solutions they need? what they want for free? what opportunities they might be looking for?

I think if you structured your funnel a little bit differently you could increase your conversions.

A little bit of research and a little bit of tweaking on your part could definitely change your projects outcome.

I wish you the best of luck.

How did you get that list of 7400 emails? Sounds like that could be the problem.

If you had a list of 7400 people who loved poetry, it might be a different story. I don't think you failed at all and you're heading in the right direction, just maybe the people you promoted to weren't the best target.

So I went to the site and the first thing is 'buy my book'. No. sorry. who are you? why should I? IMHO Home page should be blog. Make posts every few days, post new poems, post musings, ask readers opinions, engage, build following, get my email so you can notify me when new posts are made. Make it interesting and make me want to hear more. Of course a Facebook page to get likes and direct people back to your site. Tumblr would work well for you - I think your target audience likely is there as well. Then, when the time is right, maybe sell me a book. Make the site about your writing because you love the writing or make a journal because you want to let people know about you and life at school; or a combination of the two. just my opinion.
You did not fail. You have jumped into new waters. You can doggy paddle or tread or develop your swimming technique. Or swim back to shore.
btw - I would sign up. Good Luck

OH yeah - I forgot to mention - Great Logo/heading. I really like it. fits well

Hello - I still think what I said before - but if this is just to sell a book - put this review where people must see it on the home page - this will sell it if someone is 'on the fence' Use the 5 stars image - people relate to this


5.0 out of 5 stars `i am/ in these pages/ and i can only hope/ i wrote us in these pages too', March 7, 2015
By Grady Harp
This review is from: hello distance (Kindle Edition)
Young New York author Daniel Wallock has a running start on a literary career. He has published three books and his writing has appeared in Burningword, Wild Quarterly, Paragraph Planet, ExFic, The Vending machine Press, Agave Magazine, The Vending Machine Press, and The Bolt Magazine. He's received multiple writing awards including first place in San Jose State University's Nonfiction Short Story Contest. He also received a Gold Key for nonfiction, the highest regional honor, from Scholastic's Art and Writing Awards. Daniel worked as manager of marketing at Ginosko Literary Journal and he's founder of This Very Breath Journal and Hello Distance Poetry Blog.

Daniel's poems in this collection are like passing thoughts, ....... (read more)

Make read more link to Amazon page.
Good luck.

Your page doesn't really describe the book. The title should somewhat describe what the book is about.

I think this was the main problem. You can never get attached to a niche or product that doesn't sell well - no matter how much you love or adore it. No problem though. Take a week off, regroup your thoughts, and come back with something better, smarter, and something that will more than likely succeed from your hard work.

Don't feel too bad. This is how we learn. Yes success in this industry does cost money. Just do a little more research the next time round before you drop any money in paid ads.

Uuummm... probably you are not doing a targeted marketing (you need people interested on what you offer)

You should be proud of your accomplishments. What you did was labor of love. You even said that you did it not to make money out of poetry. It's one of your passions and what's important was that you made it happen.

Successful people actually had to go through several failures. Learn everything that you can from your experience. At least, you already know how to start and finish a project. Also, next time make sure that your goal is to make money out of the things that you're passionate about.

Good luck and more power!

niches like poetry are kinda like funny video sites....on a much smaller scale as far as user base goes.

its one of those things where you don't really try to make money directly, but rather you encourage the spreading of the content and then monetization comes as a secondary thing.

Poetry seems like a tough niche to approach as a direct marketing type site. never been in the niche, but it just seems that way.

but do you see my point about how it compares to funny videos. those people who are watching funny videos for free online are not very inclined to buy a dvd about funny videos. they are much more inclined to watch more free funny videos online.

So you gotta give them what they want and build up a following rather than trying to make money so quickly and seeing all the visitors come and go and never interact with your site or business again.

Your problem is with properly targeting demographic. Even the most terrible poetry gets some fans. But wasting time and money advertising to even millions of people at random is unlikely to produce sales if that target demographic hangs out elsewhere.

Go to forums where type of people who write and read your specific brand of poetry hang out.Give out review copies to bloggers who blog about your type of poems and poets. Facebook groups. Private Tweet to whoever social media leaders are in your specific niche of poetry and just ask for free shoutout. They might give you one.

And drop price to 99 cents. You are unknown. People do pay 99 cents. They do not pay $4 anywhere near as easily.You can always go with $2.99 for your next book, after you sell few thousand of this one, and then up the price to more if you still think its worth losing extra sales.

Thats why you did not fail! Your just one step closer. I wish it was a perfect world and everything worked like a charm the first time. There could be a number of factors to consider why the numbers are low but everybody goes through it. That why it is important to optimize our campaigns.

I would say you are a step ahead of most with what you have accomplished so far. Now build on that!

I have to go check my bisque's that are in the oven. ;-)

You've learned a valuable lesson and it's not to be mistaken for failure. Most people wouldn't have the correct mindset like you have. I sense from your words you shared with us that you will do very well in this industry. All I can say is - keep growing and taking action.

Sure, don't lose hopes time will tell but we need to patience. I have been blogging from last two years and still did not made much profits from them.

Failure is first step to success. You don't have to feel too bad about this. You should try and figure out your mistakes and keep trying till you hit the bull eye. You may particularly want to look at the traffic sources you used. You mentioned that you e-mailed 1700 people, but were these targeted visitors? There are many people who make good money with kindle eBooks. Just don't lose hope. Remember that most failures happen when you are on the verge being successful.

I looked at your site and it is simple, which I like, but with not a whole lot on it. Being an author and trying to sell a book when no one knows you in the industry is a hard chore. Besides your blog I would actually start marketing offline.

Give the book to a number of your friends, professors, etc and have them read it and ask if they can give you a review for your site. The sales page for the book basically says nothing about it. Testimonials will give it some social proof that it is good reading.

Speaking of reading...I would go to book stores, coffee houses, any place that will let you etc that would let you do readings to get your name out there. Build a list of people that are interested in more.

Why not do a Free Book Promo for a few hours or so whatever you decide to get people reading it, commenting on it and creating a buzz.

How about making a portion of the initial sales as a donation to a local charity. You might get people in the community to buy it just because of that and now they know who you are and if your work is good you might get fans. If it works maybe local media will pick up on it and now you have some publicity for your site etc.

There are a ton of things you can do to get your name and work out there. Just putting up a blog and offering a poetry book is not going to be enough unless you are well known.

Could be that those visiting your blog aren't a poetry buyers or that you presented an offer that doesn't enhance or improve their needs. Go back do a survey with you visitors and email list .Do your market research first at all times .

I think you should focus on the right target market. You said you promoted your blog to 7400 random people. Next time, look for 1000 people who are interested in poetry and see what the outcome will be. It's all about finding people who have an interest in what you're selling. Once you do that, you're golden

Have you tried Tumblr?

Perhaps you should define the work you want do to make a living from, and the work you want to do for fun.

dwall,

Question: How much online marketing training and education have you invested in? Why do I ask? Colby Bryant had to shoot thousands of free throws before he got good.

You did not fail at all. Failure is the pathway to success. You just need more practice. You just need a different set of resources to draw from. You need to develop a new set of skills so that you can re-launch your poetry campaign with greater success.

Here me out...

Do you agree that Apple Computers is one of the most successful companies of all time? say yes

I'm going to share with you why Apple is so successful and how you can use the same thing they use that has put the company in the position they are in today. You can use this to market your poetry and people will be buying your book and following your poetry blog no matter what you write.

Put on your seat belt because you are going to ride with me for a while. You will be riding shotgun.

dwall you have to create a culture. You have to create an audience, a following, a niche market. You have to create an environment where people feel like they belong. You have to provide value to your audience.

You have to get people to identify with you, (you need to learn how to do keyword research more on that later). Apple got people to believe in something bigger than themselves and tied that belief into a product. For you that belief must be tied into your poetry blog.

I know it sounds complicated but it is not hard.

Everything starts with WHY. WHY are you a poet? WHY did you create the poetry blog. WHY did you work so hard for this. Your why has to be bigger and more defined an super clear meditate on it if you have to. It has to be deeper than I love poetry and I love art.

dwall you must start telling your story, everyone has a story, perhaps something happened to you when you was a child and that's WHY you got into poetry.

Perhaps your grand mother raised you and she read poetry to you as a child before she passed. That would be a deep WHY that people in similar situations will identify with.

dwall you must share your vision for the future small visions don't move people big visions move people. Ray Kroc the creator of Mcdonald's did not have a vision of a hamburger stand.

He had a vision of a hamburger stand on every street corner in the world. Now Mcdonald's is in many countries not just the USA. Share your vision.

dwall you must share your beliefs. For example one of my beliefs is that I don't believe that children should be whisked off to daycare everyday while we work jobs we hate building other people's dreams.

I believe that we should work from home building a business of our own on or off line and spending time with our and not allowing daycare to raise our children. That's a belief that other people can identify with. People will start following with you and relating to your story, your vision and your beliefs.

That is why Apple is so powerful and you have access to that same power. You have a passion inside you that is powerful. Your passion for poetry and art is HUGE. Tell people WHY this is your passion. It's so much deeper than I love poetry and I love art. That's to surface. To shallow. dig deep and figure out WHY.

Once you have done this start making YouTube videos sharing your vision, your WHY, your story, you have to take the risk and put yourself out there. People identify with flesh and blood aka. VIDEO your videos will inspire other people who can relate to your story, your vision, and your WHY.

Then your poetry blog will be powerful and your sales will skyrocket because all the people in the world that's right the world beyond Facebook and your college Campus because YouTube is Global.

All the people in the world that find your video and your blog that have the same beliefs, stories, and visions that you have will follow you, they will join your cause. WHAT is your cause dwall. If you don't have one get one and share that cause with the world.

Then send an email to that same 7400 people and 1300 college members and watch how your life will change because you will have changed their lives. Poetry is powerful and you are powerful.

I just gave you a new set of resources to go out there and give it another shot. You know have the Power of apple to inspire people to join your cause, follow your vision, and be a part of a culture that only you can create.

In conclusion, I have poured my heart out to you dwall. Now it's your turn to pour your heart out by sharing your WHY with the world.

To your success,

Barry J. Solomon (Legacy Tribe)

Re: Well, my blog and book launch failed...
Interesting post, and some really awesome replies --- well done everyone! As Andy Shaw says (look him up on Utube) success lies on the other side of failure. If you keep trying you will succeed. I spent many years and far too much money chasing after shiny objects, looking for an easy way to make money online until I discovered there is no such thing. I'd try one opportunity, give it a few days or a week, and when it didn't bring in some money I'd drop it and buy another product that promised me riches. It took me a long time to realize that this was madness and that I wouldn't get anywhere without a mentor --- someone to tell me what to do and show me how to do it. One of the first things he suggested was to join this awesome Forum, and I'm so glad i took his advice, as there are lots of very knowledgeable people her who freely share their advice. Keep smiling!

Well thanks everyone for the support and help! I redesign my website to be more like a email grabbing splash page type thing and I am also now building up website as a blog. THANKS

Looks like I'm late to the party, but the best thing that you can do is learn from your mistakes. It sounds like you've got a new plan in place, and I've read some decent suggestions. I wish you all the best, and I hope that your new plan works out well for you.

Free tip:
Promote your website/ebook using flyers at your local poetry/book clubs and book stores!
It might not make it rain, but maybe it'll help you get some sales.

I think some one already posted doing a poetry reading at a local coffee shop and posting it on you tube, but I want to add that you can add to your poem music. Maybe you can turn it into a song. That helps people with their poor memories. Well, there we go.

Internet marketing experiences are valuable to ur success. If u fail, just pick urself up and move on until u find success from it.

I've also encountered a similar problem to yours and I know how it feels in that situation.