Syndication Is Back - Share your content with us
By tweeting this post, you can earn promotional tweets from me as part of the Amazon Tweet Exchange.
Details here.
Details here.
If you've followed the site for quite a while, you may remember that we offered FREE blog syndication in the past. I took the feature away because promos were picking up, and I simply didn't have as much room for posts that weren't directly helping us out financially. But it was a good feature, and I've always wanted to bring it back.
Can I get away with Paid Syndication?
When I say paid, I mean you pay me, not me paying you. A lot of syndication programs online are the other way around. You submit an article and get paid. In those cases the site gets paid from other sources. And their traffic is high enough — much higher than ours — to warrant such a system.
The longer I have worked at this site, the less I've wanted to do for free. My time is just too valuable. But I don't want to seem like a Scrooge or ungrateful for the assistance of others. So, charging for syndication has always been bugging me in the back of my mind. I've wanted to do it, but not in a way that annoys people or turns them off of our service.
The Simple Solution
The simple way to get away with paid syndication is to offer both a free version and a paid version. The paid version will be cheap enough and offer extras that may entice some people to give it a try.
| Free | Basic Paid | Premium Paid | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Book Ad | Cover only | Bigger Cover, title, short synopsis | Same as basic |
| Number of Tweets | Limited—about 50 | Several hundred | At least 500, on par with paid promos |
| Composed Tweets | One main tweet | Different tweets to attract attention to the post |
Same as basic, though most likely more tweets composed based upon the content |
| Book Club | Yes | Yes and highlighted | Same as basic |
| Index | No | Yes | Yes, listed above basic syndication |
| Priority | None | Over Free Syndication (but not higher priced promos) |
Scheduled just like paid promos |
| Premium Features | None | None | Advertise a giveaway, list of links to your best blog posts, author bio and pic, etc... |
| Get all the basic features for only $5 and all the premium features for $15 |
|||
Book Ad
Free syndication will come with only a medium sized book cover. Basic and Premium Paid syndication will feature a full book ad, like the one that follows.
Cover links to Amazon.com |
Oracle of Delphi #1 By Diantha Jones Genre: YA Fantasy, Paranormal, Mythology She has a destiny so great Read more here... |
Composed Tweets and their Total Number
Free syndication will come with only the one main tweet. This tweet will be shared on Twitter about 50 times during the initial marketing phase. After that it may occasionally be tweeted, but that's true of just about all posts on this site that are still relevant.
Paid syndication will feature different tweets. These tweets will be shared on Twitter several hundred times for basic and more than 500 for premium.
Why is this important?
Because 90% of our traffic comes from Twitter. If I take a day off and don't have tweets scheduled to go out, our traffic is lower by several hundred page views. Extra tweets means more eyes seeing your content ... and your book ad.
Book Club Newsletters
All syndicated posts will be featured in an email to book club members, probably the one that typically goes out on Sunday to promote the Weekly 99¢ list, but the one advantage with the paid versions is that I will highlight them in some way. Probably just bigger, bold text to make them stand out. I may mention them in narrative form if I think the posts have that little something extra about them.
Indexed List
For paid syndication I will keep an indexed post, listing all the paid syndicated articles, premium articles above basic ones. This post will be regularly featured on Twitter and will have a spot in the navigation menu, under the Features tab. Free syndicated posts will not be listed.
Priority
Paid syndication will have an obvious priority over their free counterpart. In other words, if I have paid syndication waiting to be posted, I will not put out a free one. However, basic paid syndication will not have any priority over higher priced promos and other regular features.
So, there may be some waiting period with basic paid syndication, but not that much. It will all depend on my time and what all I have to do that day. Premium paid syndication will be scheduled just like paid promos, so you'll be able to pick the date it runs (or as close as we can muster).
Premium Only Features
Because premium posts will be scheduled on the date you specify, you can easily advertise a giveaway or have me put the post out to coincide with a blog tour or other special event.
You'll also get a list of your best blog posts to advertise your blog to our readers. Your syndicated post will also have an author bio and pic.
And another word about blog tours. The syndicated part of your post can be just about anything you want: actual piece of syndication, a guest post you write for us, author interview, character interview, or just about anything else.
But in the end it's still syndication
Even if you write something new just for this promo, it will still be syndication. It must be posted somewhere else first. The reason is simple: it makes my job a ton easier. If you email me your guest post, I could easily lose it. If you give me a link in a form, it will be there when I need it.
But you don't have to post it on your blog first. In fact, you don't even have to have a blog or a website to take advantage of this promotion. You could post it on Facebook, for example. If you truly want to write it simply for us, post it on our Facebook Fanpage. No matter where you post it, you can provide a link that points directly to it.
To find the URL of a Facebook post, see the following pic. The red square is where you click to bring up the post's URL.
NOTE ABOUT SYNOPSES ON THE PAID FORM
I ask for two synopses on the paid syndication form. Both must be very short—150 characters or less. That's enough room for a very short synopsis, not much more. Not even that—it's more of a hook. For example:
"Three ways to combat Writer's Block and why they work so well." — 62 characters
"Wendy's husband is murdered, and she is the prime suspect. What does she do? She runs, of course." — 97 characters
The author bio can be up to 500 characters, which is still pretty short. In other words, I want things quick and snappy.
Your syndicated post cannot be a post about your book. You can mention your book, but the gist of the post must be about something else. If you want me to promote your book directly, you can buy a promo post.
If you would like to have us syndicate
your post for free, see this post.
If you have any questions about the form or this promo in general, please send me an email.
msl_007@live.com
