Today is probably the best day of the year to talk about your poor underperforming website

Last year, one of my clients did $51.3K with the Black Friday email I wrote for them and the corresponding page I sent them to. Now I’m kind of sick, hoping the email I wrote this year does as well.

Let me tell you a stupid story. Totally true.

Back in 2002, when Oprah was still featuring books on her show, she featured a book about women “pioneers” of the internet. I was one of the women in that book. I’d been building websites since 1997. My work had been featured in The New York Times, Forbes and a bunch of places like that.

I say that only to indicate that I’ve been doing what I do for a really long time.

I used to design websites for a living. Like, rotating door of clients. Today I mostly I do the marketing for five sites that have been with me for over a decade. I maintain their sites, rebuild pages that aren’t performing, write their email campaigns and do their SEO, because SEO is marketing, too. It’s a lot of work.

When their site is stapled to the top of Google for hundreds of keywords in their industry, that’s because of their website. When they add a thousand people to their list every month, that’s because of their website and the corresponding emails drips.

I’ve never in my life sent a “you snooze, you lose” email. There’s a point to that. I’ll come back to it in a minute.

November marks 25 years since I built my first website. God, when I think back I was a kid with a kid. Here’s the real irony. 25 years later, most people still don’t really “get” websites. Including a lot of people who call themselves designers.

Too many people think websites are about stuff they’re not really about. Like the technology, for example. People learn to use Wordpress or Squarespace and call themselves a designer. They never stick around long enough to see the response rates or ask why the site is converting at 1%. Not their job, I guess? I think it is.

Too many people think marketing is about stuff it’s not about, too. I blame “internet marketing.” I did a site once for a consultant. I told her the problem is that she sounds like a sleaze ball. If we clean that up, she’ll make more money. She did.

I’ve mentioned (a couple of times) that I’m working on a workbook for authors. Because, god, authors have the most abysmal results of any industry and I’ve worked in a lot of industries. 1% of books sell over 5000 copies.

Selling a book is harder than selling home renovations on the internet and I know because I’ve built a website for that, too. Took the company from two struggling dudes to seven figures and a feature on HGTV. This is what I do.

The problem I’ve been having with the workbook is that there’s 4 parts you need. Not one. Part one is your website. Part two is the strategy that drives it. Part three is the outreach that brings new people to your site. And part four is the email marketing that brings old faces back to your site and eventually turns them into a customer.

Almost no one buys anything on the first visit. Almost no one. Not even a book. It’s not about the price. They don’t buy cheap things on the first visit, either.

That’s where the you snooze, you lose part comes in. It’s the least effective way to use email marketing that exists. It’s why people moan about horrific open rates. It’s why authors don’t even bother using email marketing. They don’t want to do that. And thank God for that. But there’s a better way, I promise you.

So what I’m trying to work on instead of one workbook for authors is the entire thing. Here’s the website. Prebuilt, with lorum ipsum content. So you don’t need to learn how to built it first. Plus, the strategy that drives it. Plus, how to promote it. Plus, how to use email marketing without acting like a sleazeball.

The website part is almost ready to go. Working on the supporting materials.

I’m telling you about this today because about a quarter of the internet is going to clean up this weekend. Black Friday will be the best day of the year. Jeffie is going to earn a new mansion this weekend. Maybe a new rocket ship.

But for most people it won’t. Especially creative people. They won’t sell extra books or art or writing gigs or whatever they sell. It’s going to be just another day. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

Here’s what I’m going to need. Case studies. A portfolio of examples. Maybe even a group of people to launch this thing with. So I can see which parts need more clarity. I haven’t been new to this for a long time. I need eyes to see through that aren’t mine. So the first dozen or so will be stupid cheap. After that, maybe not so much.

If you’re tired of the results you’re getting, let me know?

Maybe we build something awesome together.

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More Reading…

• This One Writing Tip From John Green Pretty Much Beats Them All

• The Author Who Used Her Pulitzer Money To Secretly Help Her Haters

• I Understand Why Writers Throw In The Towel And Just Stop Writing

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Thanks and have a great weekend.

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xo
Linda