I wrote a post a couple weeks ago called What I’ve Learned In Six Years of Growing An Indie Author Business. One of the points ran as follows:
Even if you’re traditionally published, you still have to do a lot of the heavy marketing lifting. As an indie, be prepared to do it all. You can hire someone for some things, but not everything.
Today is about all those other things.
The 800-Lb. Gorilla
For authors, Amazon is the 800-lb. gorilla in the room. Sure, some people buy books from other sources. But one way or another, you have to have an Amazon presence. I’m pleased to announce that I now accept Amazon Pay as an option for book purchases via this website. (Go here to see all of them.)
This is something I’ve been looking at for a while. While I wanted to have easy payment options on my own site, I also wanted to make sure people could navigate away from the site and buy their selection via Amazon.
The only problem I had with this method, as a business owner, is that you really don’t want people to navigate away from your site…especially to the world’s biggest superstore. Instead of buying the book, they might suddenly go, Oh, right, Amazon. That reminds me, I need to get some of those socks. Then they search for socks, fall down a clothing rabbit hole, and forget all about that book of mine they were about to buy.
Enter Amazon Pay. Okay, if they can click Amazon Pay on my site, then I don’t have to worry about the above scenario, right?
We shall see, friends. We shall see.
Another Gorilla
The other massive corporation you have to contend with as a business owner is, of course, Google. Again, I’ve struggled with the ever-evolving changes to Google Analytics, wanting to make sure I’m complying with all the rules and regs. Also, I thought it would be nice to have the latest version of Google Analytics, since the search behemoth kindly reminded me to implement their G4 (“more intelligent”) experience.
When I say I’ve struggled with Google’s changes, I’m not exaggerating. I found the old Google+ nearly impenetrable, and I’ve rarely tracked my web pages as a result. Lately, however, I’ve really wanted to do so, and that meant I’d need help. You know, hiring someone for those other things.
So today I got my guy to set that all up for me. Yes, I really needed help with it all—especially things like connecting the Search Console with the Google Analytics with the Page Speed. You know, the stuff that’s way over my head.
I’m still the CEO, and the head of the Marketing Dept., and the chief cook and bottle washer. But thank God there’s someone who has the tech expertise I lack who can do those “other things” for me.
